ENGLAND AND THE
BRITISH EMPIRE
VOL. III. 1689-1802
A HISTORY OF
ENGLAND AND THE BRITISH EMPIRE
BY ARTHUR D. INNES
In Four Volumes. With Plans and Coloured Maps.
Crown Sv0. 6s. net each.
Vol. I. Before the English came, to 1485.
Vol. II. 1485-1688.
/ Vol. III. 1689-1802.
Vol. IV. 1802-1914.
Also a Library Edition, Demy &V0,
los. 6d. net each volume.
RIVINGTONS
34 KING STREET, CO VENT GARDEN
LONDON
A HISTORY OF
ENGLAND AND THE
BRITISH EMPIRE
IN FOUR VOLUMES
BY
ARTHUR D, INNES
SOMETIME SCHOLAR OF ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD
AUTHOR OF ' ENGLAND'S INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT '
A SKETCH OF GENERAL POLITICAL HISTORY FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES*
'AN OUTLINE OF BRITISH HISTORY,' 'ENGLAND UNDER THE TUDORS '
'SCHOOL HISTORY OF ENGLAND'
VOLUME III
1689-1802
•f
RIVINGTONS
34 KING STREET, CO VENT GARDEN
LONDON
1914
o-
V-3
SYNOPSIS AND CONTENTS
1689 1802
CHAPTER I. WILLIAM III., 1689-1702
1688-1690. I. THE REVOLUTION IN ENGLAND
PAGE
Dec. 1688. The position after the flight of James 11. . i
Jan. 1689. A Convention offers the crown to William and
Mary ...... 2
Feb. „ Declaration of Right and Bill of Rights . . 3
„ The Toleration and Mutiny Acts ... 6
„ William and the parties .... 7
1690. A new parliament with a Tory majority . . 9
1688-1696. II. THE REVOLUTION IN SCOTLAND AND IRELAND
1688. Scotland ...... 9
Jan. 1689. The crown offered to William . . . 10
„ The Convention and Dundee . . . 10
„ The Claim of Rights . . . . 1 1
July „ Dundee's campaign : Killiecrankie . . 12
1689-1691. William and the Scots parliament . . 13
1689-1692. The Highlands : Glencoe . . . 14
1695. The Glencoe inquiry . . . . 15
1688. Ireland . . . . . . I?
1689. Siege of Derry ..... 18
„ The Irish Jacobite parliament . . . 19
„ Schomberg in Ulster . . . .20
June 30, 1690. William in Ireland: the Boyne campaign . 21
French naval victories : Beachy Head . . 21
iii
iv England and the British Empire
PAGE
1690. Maryborough's autumn campaign . . . 22
1691. Athlone, Aghrim, and limerick ... 22
„ The capitulation of Limerick . . . 23
1695. The Penal Laws ..... 23
1688-1697. III. THE KING, THE ENGLISH PARTIES, AND THE
WAR OF THE LEAGUE OF AUGSBURG
William primarily a continental statesman . 25
1689. Holland, France, and England : relative sea-power 26
1690. The English parties and the king . . 28
1691. Preston's plot ; William in the Netherlands . 30
1692. Jacobite plans for invasion ... 30
May „ Battle of La Hogue .... 32
„ Battle of Steinkirk ..... 32
1692-1693. Parliament restive ..... 33
„ Battle of Landen : loss of the Smyrna fleet . 33
„ Initiation of party cabinets ... 34
1694. Place-bills and their motive . . . 35
„ The command of the Mediterranean becomes a
definite object of policy 35
„ The Triennial Act . . . . . 36
Dec. ,, Death of Queen Mary .... 37
1695. William's successes in the Netherlands . . 37
„ Whigs dominant in a new parliament . . 38
1696. Barclay's plot : the Association ... 38
„ The Mediterranean evacuated ... 39
1697. Attainder of Sir John Fenwick . . . 40
„ Advance of the Whigs .... 40
Sept. „ Peace of Rys wick . . . . . 41
1697-1702. IV. THE APPROACHING STRUGGLE
1697. William's position weakened by the peace . 42
1698. The first Partition Treaty signed ... 42
„ Development of the opposition . . 43
„ The question of the Spanish succession . . 43
„ Character of the first Partition Treaty . . 45
Synopsis and Contents v
rAGB
1699. The second Partition Treaty ... 46
1699-1700. Increasing strength of the Tories . . . 47
Nov. „ Death of Charles n. of Spain : Louis xiv. accepts
the Spanish inheritance for Philip . . 48
,, Policy of William ..... 50
1701. A Tory parliament : Act of Settlement . . 50
„ Reaction against Tories in the country . . 51
„ Louis's blunders : recognition of James III. . 52
Nov. „ Triumph of William's policy • • • 53
March 1702. William's death . . ... . 53
V. COMMERCE AND THE NEW FINANCE (
Influence of the Revolution on commerce . 54
The East India Company . . . . 55
1697-1701. Crisis in the company's affairs ... 56
Commercial relations of England and Scotland . 57
1695. The Darien Scheme .... 57
1692. The English land tax 4 . . 59
Government borrowing ...» 59
„ Creation of the National Debt ... 60
1694. Creation of the Bank of England . , . 61
The Tory Land Bank . . . , 62
1695. The new coinage . . . . . 62
The bank, the mint, and the goldsmiths . . 63
CHAPTER II. QUEEN ANNE, 1702-1714
1702-1706. I. BLENHEIM, GIBRALTAR, AND RAMILLIES
1702. National unanimity; Tory predominance in
parliament and council ... 64
„ Marlborough ; the military situation . . 65
„ A successful campaign .... 66
„ Naval operations : Cadiz and Vigo . . 66
1703. The Spanish crown claimed for 'Charles in.' . 67
„ Frustrated military and naval plans . . 68
vi England and the British Empire
FAGK
1704. The Blenheim campaign . 68
Aug. 2 „ Battle of Blenheim . 7'
„ Rooke in the Mediterranean
July 21 „ Capture of Gibraltar . 73
1705. Peterborough in Spain . 74
1706. Eugene in Italy ... 74
May „ The Ramillies campaign . 74
„ „ Barcelona relieved . 75
1702-1707. II. PARTIES IN ENGLAND, AND THE UNION
WITH SCOTLAND
1702. Marlborough, Godolphin, and the Tories . 77
„ Occasional Conformity bill 78
1703. Second defeat of the bill . 79
1704. Harley and St. John . 79
1705. Dissolution, and a Whig majority . 80
The question of union with Scotland in the past 80
1702. The Scots parliament . . 81
1703. Parties in a new Scots parliament
1703-1704. The Scottish Act of Security 83
1705. English retaliatory measures . 84
„ Commissioners appointed to confer 85
April 1706. The Commission agrees upon terms . 86
„ The treaty passed by the Scots parliament 87
„ Opposition to the measure
April 6, 1707. The Union completed . .89
Its continued unpopularity in Scotland . . 89
1706-1710. III. THE WHIGS IN POWER
1707. Marlborough's difficulties .... 90
April „ Spain : Berwick defeats Gal way at Almanza . 91
July „ Failure of the Toulon scheme ... 92
June 1708. Revolt of Flemish towns . . . . 92
July „ Battle of Oudenarde .... 93
„ Wynendael and Lille .... 94
Sept. „ Capture of Minorca .... 94
Synopsis and Contents vii
PAGE
1706-1708. Cross-currents of party politics ... 95
1708. An abortive attempt at invasion . . . 96
1709. Failure of peace negotiations : the Barrier Treaty 97
„ The Malplaquet campaign ... 98
1710. Exhaustion and inactivity . ... 99
1710-1712. IV. FALL OF THE WHIGS
Mrs. Masham and the queen . . , loo
April 1710. Dismissal of Duchess Sarah . , „ 101
1709. Doctor SacheverelPs sermon . 101
Feb. 1710. Impeachment of Sacheverell . . . 102
Sept. „ Victory of Harley and St. John . . .103
April 1711. Succession of Emperor Charles VI. . . 104
„ Tory negotiations with Louis . . . 104
Dec. „ Walpole attacked : Marlborough dismissed . 106
1712. Peace negotiations and intrigues . . . 107
May „ Britain deserts the allies .... 108
1712-1714. V. THE TREATY OF UTRECHT AND THE
TORY DEBACLE
1712. Rivalry of Oxford and Bolingbroke . . 108
April 1713. Treaty of Utrecht ..... 109
,, Proposed treaty of commerce defeated . . 112
„ The Whigs, the Tories, and the succession . 113
1714. Bolingbroke's struggle for power . . . 114
July 30 ,, The Whig coup de main . . . 115
Aug. i „ Death of the queen . . . . 115
CHAPTER III. THE HANOVERIAN SUCCESSION
1714-1721. I. GEORGE i. AND STANHOPE
Aug. 1714. Accession of George I. .... 116
„ The Whig triumph . . . . 117
1715. Flight of Bolingbroke and Ormonde . . 118
viii England and the British Empire
PACE
Sept. 1715. Death of Louis XIV : the Orleans regency . 118
„ „ Mar raises the Jacobite standard . . . 119
„ The rising on the Border . . . . 1 19
Nov. 13 „ Sheriffrnuir and Preston . . . . . 120
1716. Collapse of the 'Fifteen' . . . . 121
„ The Septennial Act 121
„ Great Britain and Hanover . 0 o 122
„ The French succession . . , 123
„ The situation on the Continent . . . 123
1716-1717. Stanhope ; the Whig schism . , . 124
1718. The Quadruple Alliance . . . . 125
1716-1717. Alberoni and the northern powers . . 126
1718. Alberoni attacks Sicily . . . .127
Aug. II „ Byng destroys the Spanish fleet at Passaro . 127
1720. The fall of Alberoni . . . .128
1717-1719. Walpole in opposition . . . .129
1719. Sunderland's Peerage Bill . . . 130
„ The South Sea Company . . . . 131
1720. The South Sea Bubble . . . .132
„ Fall of the ministry ; Walpole called to power . 133
1721-1730. II. THE MINISTRY OF TOWNSHEND AND WALPOLE
Review of Anglo-French relations . . 134
Leading figures in England . . 135
France, Spain, and Austria . . . 135
1726. Treaty of Hanover . . . . 137
1727. A general peace . . . . 137
Townshend and Walpole . . . .138
June 1727. Accession of George II. . . . . 138
Walpole and Queen Caroline . . . 139
Cardinal Fleury . . . . .139
1729. Treaty of Seville . . . . .140
Jacobitism . . . . . .141
Walpole's commercial policy . . . 142
Scotland . . . . . .143
Ireland ...... 143
Synopsis and Contents ix
PAGE
1729. Wood's half-pence, and Drapie^s Letters . 144
1730. Townshend's retirement . . . .145
1731-1739. III. THE SUPREMACY OF WALPOLE
Walpole and the Opposition . .146
Corruption under Walpole . .146
Walpole and the Dissenters . 14?
1733. Walpole's Excise Bill ... 148
Frederick, Prince of Wales, and the ' Patriots ' . 1 50
1 736. The Porteous riots . . . 1 5 l
1737. Death of the queen . . . • IS1
1731. The European situation . . . IS2
1733. War of the Polish Succession . . 153
„ The Bourbon Family Compact . 153
1733-1738. Walpole and the Polish war . . 154
Walpole and the Family Compact . . 155
1738. Spain and England . . . 156
Story of Jenkins's ear . .157
Jan. 1739. Convention of Pardo . . . • 157
Oct. Declaration of war . . . . .157
CHAPTER IV. THE INDECISIVE STRUGGLE
1739-1754
I. THE COMING CONFLICT
The issues, apparent and latent . . . 159
The Pragmatic Sanction .... 161
The rise of Prussia . . . . . 161
Three deaths in 1740 . . . .163
French and British in America . . . 163
India : its peoples and past history . . 165
The Mogul empire and the rise of the Mahrattas 167
The European traders . . . .169
The French, the British, and sea-power . . 169
x England and the British Empire
1739-1745. II. THE WAR OPENS
PAGE
1 739. Walpole and the war . . . .170
1740. First successes . . . . . 171
1741. Cartagena and Santiago . . . . 171
1740. Frederick n. occupies Silesia . . . 172
1741. Marshal Belleisle's projects . . . 173
„ Treaty of Klein-Schnellendorf . . . 174
„ Attitude of Great Britain and Hanover . . 174
Jan. 1742. Resignation of Walpole ; Carteret minister . 175
Aug. „ Commodore Martin at Naples . . . 176
June „ Treaty of Breslau . . . . .176
Nov. „ Treaty of Westminster . . . .177
1743. Lord Stair on the Maine . . . . 177
June „ Battle of Dettingen . . . .178
Sept. „ Treaty of Worms . . . . .179
1744. France becomes a belligerent . . . 179
„ Failure of Matthews in the Mediterranean . 179
„ Collapse of a Jacobite invasion . . . 180
Dec. „ Formation of the broad-bottomed administration 181
1745. The Fontenoy campaign . . . . 181
June „ Capture of Louisbourg . . . 182
Treaty of Dresden . . . . .182
1745-1746. III. THE FORTY-FIVE
1744-1745. The Jacobite position in Great Britain . . 183
July 1745. The landing in Moidart . . . .184
„ The march on Perth and Edinburgh . . 185
Sept. 22 „ Prestonpans . . . . .186
Nov. „ The march to Derby . . . .187
Dec. „ The retreat to Glasgow . . . .188
Jan. 1746. Falkirk . . . . . .189
April 17 „ Culloden . . . . . .190
„ After Culloden ... . .191
Break up of the clan system . . . 192
Raising of Highland regiments . . . 193
Synopsis and Contents xi
PAGE
1746-1754. IV. HENRY PELHAM
1746. The Pelhams ..... 194
The war : French progress in the Netherlands . 194
1747. Europe growing weary of the war . . 195
1748. Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle . . . .196
1746. India-, schemes of Dupleix . . . 197
„ French capture of Madras ; sepoys . . 198
1748. End of the first stage of the Anglo-French
struggle in India . . . .199
1749. New schemes of Dupleix .... 200
„ Rival candidates for the Carnatic and Haidarabad 201
„ French and British take sides as auxiliaries . 202
1751. Clive at Arcot : the turn of the tide . . 202
1754. Recall of Dupleix ..... 203
1748-1754. French and British colonies in America . . 204
1746. Strength of the Pelham ministry . . . 205
1751. Creation of * Consols ' .... 205
„ Death of the Prince of Wales ... 206
1752. Reform of the calendar : * New Style ' adopted . 206
1753. Hardwicke's Marriage Act . . . 207
1754. Death of Pelham ..... 207
CHAPTER V. THE DECISIVE STRUGGLE
1754-1763
1754-1757. I. DRIFT
1754. The Newcastle administration . . . 208
1749-1756. The diplomatic revolution . . . 209
Designs of the Austrian minister Kaunitz . 209
The beguiling of France . . . .210
Position of Frederick of Prussia . . . 21 1
1756. Convention of Westminster and Treaty of
Versailles . . . . . 212
„ Anglo-Prussian relations . . , . 212
1755. America : Braddock's disaster . . . 213
1756. A French invasion expected . » . 214
xii England and the British Empire
PACK
May 1756. Byng's failure at Minorca . . . .214
„ Failures in America . . . . 215
Nov. „ The Devonshire administration formed . . 215
„ „ Frederick invades Saxony . . . 216
1757. France committed to the war in Europe . '. 217
Jan. „ Execution of Admiral Byng . . . 218
March „ Pitt dismissed : three months of chaos . . 219
June 29 „ Coalition of Pitt and Newcastle . . . 219
1757-1760. II. WILLIAM PITT
May 1757. The position of the powers . . . 220
June „ Frederick's victory at Prague and defeat at Kolin 221
„ News of the Black Hole of Calcutta . . 222
„ Pitt's war policy .... 222
Sept. „ Cumberland's Convention of Klosterseven . 223
„ Failure at Rochefort .... 224
Nov. „ Prussian victories of Rossbach and Leuthen (Dec.) 224
1758. Ferdinand of Brunswick ; Crefeld . . 225
„ Policy of naval descents on French coast . 226
„ Progress and checks in America and at sea ;
news of Plassey .... 227
„ Varying fortunes of Frederick . . . 227
July 1759. The Minden campaign .... 228
Aug. „ Boscawen at Lagos . . . .229
Nov. 20 „ The triumph of Quiberon .... 229
„ Wolfe and Amherst : plan of campaign . . 231
June „ Wolfe before Quebec .... 232
Sept. 1 3 „ Wolfe's victory and death . . . 234
„ Frederick's bad year .... 235
1760. Designs of Choiseul .... 236
„ The war in Germany .... 237
„ Conquest of Canada completed . . . 237
Oct. „ Death of George 11. 238
1755-1760. III. CLIVE
1755. The situation in India . 239
1756. Clive's return to India .... 239
Synopsis and Contents xiii
PAGE
1756. The country powers . . . 239
June 1756. The Black Hole of Calcutta . 240
1757. Clive and Watson in Bengal . . .241
„ The forged treaty . . 242
June „ The advance to Plassey . 243
June 23 „ Plassey and its consequences . 244
1758. Lally in the Carnatic . 245
April 1759. Forde captures Masulipatam . 246
„ Clive's relief of Patna ... 246
Oct. „ The Dutch episode . 247
Feb. 1760. Clive leaves India . . . , . 247
„ „ Eyre Coote's victory at Wandewash . . 248
1761. Fall of Pondichery and successes in Bengal . 248
1761-1763. IV. BUTE
1760. George in. and Lord Bute . . . 248
1761. The king, Pitt, and the war . . . 250
„ Pitt demands war against Spain . . . 251
Oct. „ Pitt resigns . . . . . 251
1762. Position of Frederick II. .... 252
Newcastle resigns . . . . .252
Naval successes . . . . . 253
Bute's management . . . 253
Feb. 1763. Peace of Paris . . 254
„ Peace of Hubertsburg . . . .255
CHAPTER VI. THE ERA, 1689-1760
I. THE TIME-SPIRIT
The Restoration era . . . . 256
The new century ..... 257
The literary kings ..... 257
Limitations of the Augustan poetry . . 258
Characteristics of the Augustan age . . 258
xiv England and the British Empire
PAGE
Restoration and Augustan morals . 259
Prose : Addison, Swift, and Defoe . . 260
Rise of the novel : Richardson and Fielding . 261
Hints of Romanticism .... 262
The Church ..... 262
The Wesleys and Wesleyanism . . . 263
Rationalism in religion .... 264
Science and philosophy . . . 264
Histories and memoirs .... 266
.'
II. TRADE, INDUSTRY, AND AGRICULTURE
Material prosperity .... 266
Manufacture ..... 267
Spinning and weaving as domestic industries . 268
The open field ..... 269
Enterprise and enclosure .... 270
Iron and coke . . . . .271
The fly-shuttle and the spinning-jenny . . 271
Town, country, and poor-law . . . 272
CHAPTER VII. GEORGE III. AND THE WHIGS
1763-1770.
1763. I. THE SITUATION IN 1763
The king's aims ..... 273
George, Pitt, and the Whig connection . . 274
Claims of the House of Commons . . . 275
Problems outside Great Britain . . . 276
The thirteen colonies and the mother-country . 276
The regulation of colonial trade . . . 278
Changed relations resulting from the war . . 279
1763-1766. II. THE GRENVILLE AND ROCKINGHAM
MINISTRIES
1763. Bute's ascendency and retirement . . . 280
April „ Grenville's ministry formed . . . 280
Synopsis and Contents xv
PAGE
1763. John Wilkes and Number Forty-five . 281
„ Reconstruction of the ministry . . . 282
Jan. 1764. Outlawry of Wilkes .... 283
1 763. Steps for recovering revenue from America . 284
„ Justification of the end, unwisdom of the method 285
1764. Grenville resolves to impose taxes for revenue . 286
1765. The Stamp Act . . . . . 287
„ The cry of ' No taxation without representation ' 288
„ Inadequacy of communication . . . 288
1765. American resentment at the tax . . . 289
Nov. ,, A colonial congress ; non-importation agreements 290
„ George, Bedford, and Grenville . . . 291
May „ The Regency Bill ; Pitt refuses office . . 291
July „ The Rockingham administration formed . 292
1766. Repeal of the Stamp Act ; the Declaratory Act 292
„ Difficulties practical and theoretical . . 293
July „ Fall of the Rockinghams : Pitt takes office . 294
1766-1770. III. THE GRAFTON MINISTRY
1766. The new ministers .... 295
„ Pitt accepts the earldom of Chatham . . 295
„ Chatham's projects .... 296
„ Failure of the plan for a northern league . 297
Sept. „ The Corn Order in Council . . . 298
1767. Chatham becomes incapacitated . . 299
„ Charles Townshend's taxes at American ports . 299
„ Mutual British and American irritation . . 300
Nov. „ North succeeds Townshend at the exchequer . 301
1768. Feeling in America .... 301
„ A general election ; cabinet changes . . . 302
1769. Repeal of the taxes, excepting the tea tax . 302
„ Re-appearance of Chatham . . . 303
1770. Ministerial resignations ; formation of North's
ministry ..... 304
1769. French annexation of Corsica . . . 305
1768. Return of Wilkes ; his election for Middlesex . 305
1769. The struggle : technical victory of the Commons 306
rmes's Eng. Hist.— Vol. HI. b
xvi England and the British Empire
1760-1770. IV. INDIAN AFFAIRS
PAGE
The position after the Peace of Paris . . 307
1761. The Mahrattas checked by Ahmed Shah . 308
1760-1770. Rise of Haidar Ali in Mysore . . . 309
„ Progress of the Mahratta power . . . 310
1761-1763. The British in Bengal • . . . . 311
1763. Mir Cassim . . . . .311
Oct. 1764. The decisive battle of Buxar . . . 312
May 1765. Clive returns to India . . . . 312
1765-1766. His administrative reforms . . . 313
„ The Mogul and the Diwanl . . . 313
„ His policy in relation to the country powers . 314
1767. Relapse after Clive's departure . . . 315
1760-1772. V. IRELAND
Survey of Irish political conditions . . 316
Industry and the land . . . . 317
The Whiteboys ..... 318
The Undertakers . . . . . 319
Claims of the Irish parliament . . . 320
1767. Lord Townshend becomes viceroy . . 320
1768. The Octennial Act . . . .321
1772. Close of Townshend's administration . . 322
CHAPTER VIII. THE KING AND LORD NORTH
1770-1784.
1770-1775. I. BEFORE THE STORM
1779. The Boston Massacre .... 323
1769-1771. Spain and the Falkland Islands . . . 323
1772. First Partition of Poland . . . 324
1770. The House of Commons and election petitions . 325
„ The city and the government . . . 325
„ Juries and libels ..... 326
„ Publication of debates .... 326
Synopsis and Contents xvii
PAGE
1771. Crosby and Oliver .... 327
1772. Royal Marriages Act .... 327
„ Government and the East India Company . 328
„ America : the Gaspce incident . . . 328
1773. The Hutchinson letters . .328
Dec. „ The Boston tea-party .... 329
1774. The Penal Acts ../... 330
„ Canada and the Quebec Act . . . 331
„ American preparations for war . . . 332
Sept. „ The * Continental Congress ' 332
„ Activity of Massachusetts . . . 333
„ Great Britain determined on coercion . . 333
„ North's Conciliation Bill .... 334
1775-1778. WAR WITH THE AMERICANS
April 1775. Battle of Lexington begins the war . . 334
June 15 „ Battle of Bunker Hill 335
„ The Olive Branch petition . . . 336
„ The American invasion of Canada . . 336
1776. The evacuation of Boston . . . 337
July 4 „ Declaration of Independence . . . 338
June „ The Hc'.ves before New York . . . 338
„ British successes in the autumn . . . 339
„ Inaction at the close of the year . . 340
1777. Advance of Washington .... 340
„ The Philadelphia campaign : July-November . 341
Oct. 1 7 „ The surrender at Saratoga . . . 342
„ French sympathy with the Americans . . 342
Feb. 1778. Franco-American treaty .... 343
„ Chatham, North, and King George . . 344
April „ Chatham's last effort .... 345
May „ His death and its effect .... 345
1778-1783. III. AT BAY
1778. Change in the character of the war . . 346
„ Operations of the year ; Cornwallis in the south 347
xviii England and the British Empire
PACK
1779 Indecisive naval movements . 348
„ Spain declares war : siege of Gibraltar . 348
1780. Continued indecisive operations . 349
„ Benedict Arnold and Major Andre 349
., The Armed Neutrality : war with Holland 350
1781. Capture of St. Eustatius . . 35°
„ The fleets in European waters . 35 J
„ Cornwallis ordered to Yorktown . 352
Oct. „ Surrender of Yorktown . . 352
1782. Fall of North's ministry ... 353
April „ Rodney's victory of the Saints . . . 354
Oct. „ Siege of Gibraltar raised . . . 355
Nov. „ Peace with America . -355
Feb. 1783. Preliminaries of peace with France and Spain . 356
1770-1785. IV. INDIA
1770. The position in 1770 .... 357
1772. Warren Hastings sent to Bengal . . 357
„ Parliamentary inquiry .... 357
1773. North's Regulating Acts . . . . 358
„ Conflict of authorities under the Acts . . 359
„ Hastings as governor of Bengal . . . 360
1775. Hastings and the Triumvirate : the Oudh treasure 361
„ The Nuncomar affair . . . .361
1775-1777. Contest of Hastings and the Council . . 362
1777. Hastings predominant .... 362
1776-1780. Contest between the judges and the executive . 362
1780. The Sadr Adalat ..... 363
1771-1781. Hastings and Cheyt Singh of Benares . . 363
1782. The affair of the Oudh Begums . . . 364
Foreign policy of Hastings : the Mahrattas,
Oudh, and the Rohillas . . .365
1773. The Rohilla War ..... 365
How Hastings saved India . . . 367
1774. Bombay and Ragoba .... 367
1775. Treaty of Surat « . 367
Synopsis and Contents xix
PAGE
March 1778. Treaty of Purandar .... 367
Jan. 1779. Convention of Wargam . . . 368
„ Energetic action of Captain Goddard . 368
„ Haidar Ali, the Nizam, and the French . 369
July 1780. Haidar Ali invades the Carnatic . * 369
„ Popham captures Gwalior . . . 370
1781. Eyre Coote in the Carnatic . . . 370
1782. Naval contests of Suffren and Hughes . 371
„ Tippu Sahib succeeds Haidar Ali . . 371
1783. General peace ... 371
1785. Hastings leaves India . . . 372
1770-1784. V. GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND
1772. Ireland: Viceroyalty of Lord Harcourt . 373
1773. The proposal of an absentee tax , . 373
Influence of the American quarrel . . • 375
1778. Commercial relaxations and Catholic relief _••., 375
1780. England'. The Gordon riots , --.-.. 376
„ ' Economic Reform ' .... 376
„ Dunning's resolution ; the general election :377
March 1782. Fall of North : second Rockingham ministry 377
July „ Death of Rockingham ; Shelburne's ministry 378
1778. Ireland: the volunteers . . . 379
1779. Commercial and other concessions . . 379
1780. The Irish Mutiny Bill . . . 380
1781. Loyalty of the Irish in the crisis of the war . 380
1782. The volunteers at Dungannon . . 381
„ Concession of an independent parliament . 381
Feb. 1783. England: Shelburne's difficulties : his fall . 382
„ Coalition ministry of Fox and North . 382
Nov. „ Fox's India Bill .... 383
Dec. 1783. Defeat of the bill through George's intervention 384
„ The coalition dismissed ; Pitt takes office . 385
Dec-March 1784. Pitt's battle with the coalition . • . 385
March „ Dissolution ; triumph of Pitt , ' . 386
Innes's Eng. Hist.— Vol. in. b 2
xx England and the British Empire
CHAPTER IX. THE YEARS OF PEACE
1784-1792
1784-1792. I. AT HOME
PAGE
The Crown and public opinion . . . 387
King George, Pitt, and the public . . 388
Pitt's position ; its paradoxes . . . 389
1784. The Westminster election . . . . 391
1785. Defeat of parliamentary reform in England . 391
1784. And in Ireland ..... 393
Grattan's parliament .... 393
1785. Pitt's plan for an Anglo-Irish treaty of
commerce ..... 394
„ The plan rejected when modified . . . 395
1788. Position of the Prince of Wales . . . 396
Nov. „ The Regency Bill ..... 397
Feb. 1789. End of the Regency Bill . . . . 398
1789-1792. The last years of peace .... 398
1784-1792. II. PITT'S FINANCE
Adam Smith and mercantilism . . . 399
The Walpole precedents .... 400
The new view ..... 400
1784. The state of the national finances . . 401
„ Pitt's first budget ..... 402
1785. Pitt's second budget .... 403
1786. Pitt's Sinking Fund .... 403
1786-1787. Treaty of commerce with France. . . 404
1787. Simplification of the Customs . . . 405
1785-1793. III. THE EMPIRE
1784. Pitt's India Act . . . . .406
The Board of Control .... 407
1786. Cornwallis governor-general . . . 407
Synopsis and Contents xxi
PACK
1786. Impeachment of Warren Hastings . , 407
1795. The verdict . . . . 409
„ Tippu, Sindhia, and the Nizam . . . 409
1787-1792. Administrative reforms of Cornwallis . . 409
The ' Permanent Settlement ' . . . 410
1789. An embarrassing treaty revived . . . 411
1789-1792. The Mysore campaigns and annexations . 411
1793. Shore succeeds to the governor-generalship . 412
1791. Canada separated into two provinces . . 413
1770. Australia visited by Captain Cook . . 413
Jan. 1788. Formal annexation . . . . 413
1784-1793. IV. GREAT BRITAIN AND EUROPE
The European powers .... 414
1785. Austria, Holland, and the Netherlands . . 415
1788. The Triple Alliance . . . . 416
1789-1790. The Nootka Sound affair . . . . 416
1788-1790. Great Britain and Prussia . . . . 417
1790-1791. Pitt, Prussia, and Russia . . . . 418
1792. The Peace of Jassy . . . . 418
The French Revolution
Comparison of social conditions in England and
France ...... 419
Effect of the American War in France . . 420
1789. The States-General and the Bastille . . 421
1789-1791. The Constituent Assembly . . . 421
1791. The Declaration of Pilnitz . . .422
„ The Legislative Assembly . . . 423
March 1792. France declares war on Austria . . . 423
British opinion ..... 423
1790. Burke's Reflections . .... 423
Change of public opinion in England . . 424
1792. France at war with Austria and Prussia . . 425
Sept. „ The September Massacres . . . 425
„ The Republic proclaimed .... 426
„ The tide of opinion sets against France , . 426
xxii England and the British Empire
PAGE
1792. The Convention tears up the Fontainebleau
treaty ...... 427
Jan. 1793. Louis xvi. beheaded .... 427
Feb. I „ War declared upon Great Britain . . 427
CHAPTER X. THE WAR WITH THE FRENCH
REPUBLIC, 1793-1802
1793-1802. I. FEATURES OF THE WAR
Two diverse wars . . . . .428
The immediate causes .... 428
Popular opinion and the Opposition . . 429
Victory of France in the first war . . 430
Its two phases . . . . .431
Unsuspected strength of France . . . 432
Weakness of the allies .... 432
Pitt as a war minister .... 433
The British navy and army . . . 434
1793-1797. II. THE FIRST COALITION
Summary of events in France . . . 435
1793. The first coalition formed . . . . 436
„ Spring and Summer : progress of the allies . 436
„ Autumn ; progress of the French ; capture of
Toulon ...... 437
1794. Immobility of the allies; continued progress of
the French ..... 437
June i „ Howe's naval victory .... 438
„ The Portland Whigs join the government . 439
1794-1795. The French in Holland and Spain . . 439
1795. The British occupy Cape Colony . . . 440
Dissolution of the coalition ; deserted by
Holland, Spain, and Prussia . . . 440
General ill-success . . . . ,441
1796. Bonaparte in Italy . .... 441
Synopsis and Contents xxiii
PACK
1796. The fleet evacuates the Mediterranean . . 442
„ Failure of peace overtures . . . 442
Feb. 14, 1797. Battle of Cape St. Vincent . . . 443
„ French expedition to Ireland . . . 444
April „ The mutiny at Spithead .... 444
May „ The mutiny at the Nore .... 445
Oct. „ Duncan's victory of Camperdown . . 446
„ Great Britain isolated by the Treaty of Campo
Formio ...... 446
1797-1802. III. PITT, BONAPARTE, AND WELLESLEY
Success of the French Republic . . . 447
1797. Schemes for invading England . . . 447
1 798. Bonaparte's real designs upon Egypt . . 448
May „ Bonaparte leaves Toulon .... 448
„ Nelson's pursuit . ... . . 449
Aug. i „ Decisive battle of Aboukir Bay, or the Nile . 449
„ Uneasiness in Europe . . . .451
„ Ferdinand II. driven from Naples . . 451
1799. Tsar Paul and the second coalition . . 452
„ French reverses . . . . .452
„ Dissensions in the coalition . . . 452
„ Bonaparte in the East : St. Jean d'Acre . . 453
Nov. „ Bonaparte returns to France ; ' First Consul ' . 453
1800. Failure of peace overtures . . . 454
May ,, Bonaparte's Italian campaign . . . 454
„ Failure of fresh negotiations . . . 454
Dec. 3 „ Battle of Hohenlinden .... 455
Feb. 1801. Treaty of Luneville ; second coalition ended . 455
„ Tsar Paul revives the Armed Neutrality . . 455
April 2 „ Battle of the Baltic .... 455
„ Alexander I. succeeds Paul . . . 455
March „ Sir Ralph Abercromby in Egypt . . . 456
May „ The French driven out of Egypt . . . 456
March „ Resignation of Pitt ; Addington prime minister 457
India
1 793- i 79& Sir John Shore's governor-generalship . . 457
xxiv England and the British Empire
TA.GK
May 1798. Mornington (afterwards Wellesley) governor- 458
general ... 458
„ The native powers . . . . . 459
„ The Nizam secured .... 459
1799. The conquest of Mysore ; annexations . . 460
„ Wellesley's theory of policy . . . 461
1 80 1. The Carnatic annexed . . . .461
„ Wellesley and the Oudh nawab . . . 462
„ Wellesley wishes to seize the Mauritius . . 463
„ Europe ; peace in sight . . . . 463
March 1802. Treaty of Amiens ..... 464
1793-1802. IV. THE BRITISH ISLES AND THE UNION
1793. Change of Pitt's attitude and that of the British
public to France and the Revolution . . 465
1793-1796. Repressive measures from fear of Jacobinism . 466
Scotland; Braxfield .... 467
1795-1800. Repressive measures continued . . . 468
Ireland : Presbyterians and Roman Catholics . 469
Failure of ' Grattan's parliament ' . . . 470
Wolfe Tone; the 'United Irishmen5 . . 471
The Roman Catholics and the French Revolution 471
Increase of disaffection .... 471
* 1793. Pitt's Catholic Relief Act .... 472
1795. Fitzwilliam lord-lieutenant . . . 472
Defenders and ' Peep o' Day boys ' . . 473
1796. Camden lord-lieutenant : the Insurrection Act . 473
England : the Sinking Fund maintained . 474
Suspension of cash payments . . . 474
March 1798. Ireland : Repressive measures . . . 475
„ The Insurrection ..... 476
„ Cornwallis lord-lieutenant . . . . 476
„ Pitt's problem . . . . .477
„ His plan of union plus emancipation . . 478
„ Hopes held out to the Catholics . . . 478
1799. The persuasion of parliament • . . 479
Synopsis and Contents xxv
PAGE
1800. The Act of Union ..... 480
The unions with Scotland and Ireland compared 480
Catholic emancipation refused by the king . 481
1 80 1. Resignation of Pitt . . . .481
CHAPTER XI. IN THE REIGN OF GEORGE III.
I. LETTERS
Change in the spirit .... 482
Chatterton, Blake, Goldsmith . . . 483
Cowper, Crabbe, Johnson, Bos well . . 484
The novelists ..... 485
The stage ...... 486
Revived interest in medievalism . . . 486
Scotland : Robert Burns .... 487
The lyrical ballads 488
Gibbon and Burke ..... 489
Adam Smith and Jeremy Bentham . . 491
II. THE INDUSTRIAL AND RURAL REVOLUTIONS
The change between 1 760 and 1800 . . 492
Causes of the revolution ; its immensity . . 493
Manufacture : Power machinery . . . 494
Arkwright and Cartwright . . . 494
Effect of the new machinery . . . 495
Coal defeats charcoal .... 495
Iron, steel, and steam : James Watt . . 496
Cotton ...... 497
Capital and labour ..... 497
Suppression of workmen's combinations . . 498
Traffic : roads and canals ; James Brindley . 499
The Rural Revolution .... 500
The doom of the old order ; enclosure . . 501
Landlords and the process of enclosure . . 502
Effects of the war ..... 504
1782. Poor Law. Gilbert's Acts . . .504
1795. The Speenhamland blunder . . . 504
xxvi England and the British Empire
GENEALOGICAL TABLES
PAGB
I. The British succession : Stuarts and Hanoverians . . 506
II. The House of Hanover : George I. to Victoria . . 507
in. Hapsburg and Bourbon intermarriages : the Spanish
succession ....... 508
IV. The Austrian succession ..... 509
v. The Bourbon Monarchies : descendants of Louis xin. . 510
NOTES
I. Concerning the Army and Navy . . . . 511
II. Lord Peterborough in Spain . . . . .514
in. On some offices of state . . . . . 515
IV. The Armed Neutrality . . . . 516
MAPS AND PLANS
In Text
The Blenheim campaign ...... 70
Quebec ........ 232
Battle of the Nile ....... 450
At end of Volume
I. The Netherlands War Area.
II. The Central European War Area.
ill. India.
IV. North America \ inset^ from New York to Yorktown.
v. The West Indies.
CORRIGENDUM
Page 245, line 3 : for Safdat Ali read Shuja Daulah.
CHAPTER I. WILLIAM III.
I. THE REVOLUTION IN ENGLAND,
DECEMBER 1688 -MARCH 1690
THE second flight of James u. left England without any legal
government whatever. There was no parliament ; there was
no ministry. The nearest analogy was the position 1688
which had arisen when Cromwell and his soldiers The position
turned out the Rump Parliament. On that occasion in December-
the officers of the army had acted as the supreme authority, and
created the Protectorate, which provided a powerful govern-
ment, simply because the one organised military force in the
country was behind the Protector. At the crisis of 1688 it
would have been impossible for any military committee to play
the part of Cromwell's army officers, or for William to play the
part of Cromwell. But if there was no legal authority, nor any
unauthorised Caesar, there were at least on the one hand a general
desire to reach a peaceful solution of the crisis, and on the other
the Prince of Orange with an army ; and there were the peers
who had already been acting practically as a provisional govern-
ment.
The king's flight had stopped the summoning of a parliament
in legal form. William, however, immediately invited what may
be called an emergency parliament, an irregular but
fairly representative gathering, to assemble on 26th A Convention
December, at which every one who had sat in any summoned,
of the parliaments of Charles n. was called to attend ;
on the hypothesis that they had been in their time freely elected
members, whereas since the cancellation of the town charters
the elections had not been free. To this body was added the Cor-
poration of London. The peers assembled on 24th December,
Innes's Eng. Hist. — Vol. in. A
2 William III.
and passed a resolution inviting William to issue writs for a
Convention on the analogy of that which had recalled Charles n.
in 1660, and to take over the executive control until the Conven-
tion could assume direction. The resolution was endorsed by
the second chamber on the 26th ; on the 28th, William accepted
the invitation, and the Convention was summoned to meet on
22nd January. The elections were to be carried out under the
conditions prevalent before the alteration of the borough charters.
Whigs and Tories were alike aware that in some form or other
it was necessary that a government should be established with
The offer of William at the head of it. But as to the form itself,
the crown. ft was no easv matter to reconcile the different solu-
tions that were offered. The Commons showed a preponderance
of Whig sentiment. They passed resolutions, one declaring that
the throne had been vacated by James's flight, which was an act
of abdication, while the second pronounced that it was contrary
to public policy that the throne so vacated should be occupied
by a Papist. The resolution of the Lords implied on the other
hand that the act of abdication had not vacated the throne, but
had already made some one or other, not James II., the monarch
de jure. The majority of the Tories held the view that James
was still king, and that the proper course was to appoint a regency
— one of the plans which had been put forward in the days of
the Exclusion Bill. Another Tory group, led by Danby and
supported by many of the Whigs, claimed that the exclusion of
James and his son made his daughter Mary the heir apparent ;
William might receive the crown jointly with her, but as her
consort. It was, in fact, indisputable that Mary stood next
after her father and brother in the succession to the throne, after
her any heirs of her body, after them her sister Anne and the
heirs of her body, and after them William as the grandson of
Charles i. But to this direct rule of succession there was one
insuperable objection : William did not claim the crown for him-
self as of right, but he declined to accept any position except
that of king. If the country did not choose to make him king
he would go back to Holland. The country could not afford
to let him go back to Holland. Mary took the same line ; she
The Revolution in England 3
would not accept the crown for herself unless her husband
were recognised as king. Anne, perhaps through the Churchill
influence, was induced to postpone her claim to that of William
himself ; it was not reasonable to invite William to accept a
crown which would have to be resigned if his consort died
before him. William himself made no unreasonable William ill.
claims. He had his work to do in Holland ; it was and Mary n.
not worth while for him to burden himself with the administra-
tion of England except as king ; but it was quite right that Anne
and her children should succeed in priority to children of his
own by another wife than Mary. The agreement between
William, Mary, and Anne was decisive. Parliament, in fact,
had no option but to accept the principle that William and Mary
should be made joint sovereigns, the crown continuing to the
survivor, passing on the survivor's death to Mary's children if
she should leave any, then to Anne and to her children if she
should leave any, and then to William's children if he should
survive his wife and leave children of the second marriage — not
because he had been king, but because he personally stood next
in succession to his wife and his sister-in-law. It was superfluous
to do more towards the further fixing of the succession than
to make a declaration that after all these it should go to the next
Protestant heir.
It was clear, however, that if William was to be offered the
crown it must be upon explicit conditions which would ensure
the attainment of the objects for which the Revolu- The Declara-
tion had been initiated. Yet delays were dangerous. tion of Ri&fct.
However desirable it might be to draw up a written constitution
defining the position of the Crown, present necessities forbade
the delay which would be involved. So a Declaration of Right
was drawn up setting forth the acts of James which were con-
demned as contrary to the law ; subject to the acceptance thereof,
the succession was to be fixed in the order stated, while under the
joint sovereignty of William and Mary the administration was
to be vested in William. On I3th February, William and Mary,
having accepted the Declaration, were proclaimed king and queen.
Since the legal year at this time still began not upon ist January,
4 William IIL
but at Lady Day, the Revolution was completed in 1688, Old
Style, and bears the name of that year ; although according to
the New Style reckoning it took place not in the closing months
of 1688, but in the opening months of 1689.
The necessities of the situation and the attitude of William
had forced the reluctant Tories to forgo the principle of in-
Pariiament defeasible hereditary right. Sheer impracticability
and heredi- had forced the regency scheme, which alone was
tary right. compatible with the highest Tory doctrines, out of
court. Danby and his school had found an excuse for the ex-
clusion of the infant Prince of Wales in their profession of belief
that the child was supposititious ; but there was no evading the
fact that it was only by parliamentary title that William could
occupy the throne, except as the consort of Mary. It was only
by admitting the right of parliament to set aside the unqualified
rule of legitimism that the exclusion of Papists from the suc-
cession could be maintained. To that doctrine the country was
committed by the Revolution Settlement. At the same time
a number of Tories, headed by the earl of Nottingham, claimed
that, while their principles required them to resist the settlement,
they were free after the settlement had been made to act as
the loyal servants of the de facto government. And on the other
hand, there remained a not inconsiderable number of high Tories,
and especially of high Anglicans among the clergy, who would
not acknowledge that the king by hereditary right could cease
to be king. Of the seven bishops who had made the immortal
protest against the Declaration of Indulgence, six found that
their consciences would not permit them to take the new oath
of allegiance to the new king in contravention of the oath of
allegiance which they had taken to the old king. Four hundred
of the clergy, who came in consequence to be known as non-
jurors, followed the example of the bishops, though all but a very
few of the laymen to whom the oath was tendered accepted -it as a
practical duty, even though they might demur to it in theory.
The Declaration of Right had not in fact disposed of all the
constitutional questions of the two last reigns; but it finally
disposed of every claim of the Crown to impose taxes without
The Revolution in England 5
parliamentary authority. It abolished the suspensory power,
that is the power claimed under the Declaration of Indulgence
to suspend the operation of the laws. It denounced ,
Provisions of
the recent uses or abuses of the dispensing power by the Deciara-
which individuals had been relieved from the opera- tion and BUI
tion of the law in particular cases ; but it did not
deny the existence of a dispensing power. It declared that a
standing army might not be maintained in time of peace without
parliamentary sanction. It forbade the institution of arbitrary
courts, such as that of Ecclesiastical Commission ; but it did
not touch the law under which the judges were removable at
the king's pleasure. It affirmed the right of petition, of free
election to parliament, of free discussion in parliament, of frequent
assembly of parliament ; but it did not regulate the duration
of parliament. Before the end of the year the Declaration of
Right was given statutory form in the Bill of Rights. The
proposal to embody in it the recognition of Sophia, the sister
of Prince Rupert — her husband presently acquired a new dignity
as elector of Hanover — as the next Protestant heir after William
and his offspring was still rejected ; but in other respects some
points in the Declaration were made more definite. The king
was in future to be required to make the same declaration which
had been adopted in 1678 for the exclusion of Catholic peers
from the House of Lords, denying Transubstantiation and other
specified Romish doctrines. Marriage to a Roman Catholic was
made an additional bar. The dispensing power was made applic-
able only to such Acts as might contain a permissory clause.
But even then the questions of the judges and of the duration of
parliament were left to be dealt with by later legislation. Still the
Bill of Rights stands as the final charter of parliamentary rights.
The Bill of Rights set the seal upon the Revolution ; but much
that was of importance took place between the proclamation of
the new sovereigns and the passing of that statute. The new
Manifestly the religious question demanded settle- government
ment. James had ruined himself by his attempt Noncon-
to set public opinion at naught by advancing formists.
Romanists to every kind of office from which English Protest-
6 William III.
antism had deliberately excluded them. He had tried to
win over Protestant Nonconformists by extending to them
in theory at least a like relief from penal and disabling
statutes. The Nonconformists after some hesitation had re-
jected his overtures and played an active part in bringing about
his downfall. It was impossible entirely to refuse them their
reward ; but it was equally impossible to wipe out the hostility
between Puritanism and High Anglicanism. A proposal for a
Comprehension Act which would have admitted many Noncon-
formists within the pale was received without enthusiasm by
anybody, and was presently dropped. Its place was taken by
The Toiera- & Toleration Act, which in effect cancelled the
tionAct. Conventicle and Five Mile Acts of the Clarendon
Code, and conceded freedom of public worship. That freedom,
however, was extended neither to Papists nor to sectaries who
denied the doctrine of the Trinity. Nor were the Test Act and
the Corporation Act repealed, so that it was chiefly by the method
known as Occasional Conformity, attendance at church rites
specifically required under the Acts and on the occasions pre-
scribed, that Protestant Nonconformists in general were able to
hold municipal or public offices. The Test and Corporation
Acts still barred them from public service, shut them out of the
universities, and forbade them to hold commissions in the army
and navy. The letter of the law, however, was not strictly
observed, and some time later it became the practice to pass an
annual Act of Indemnity for the relief of Nonconformists who
had held office without obeying the injunctions of the Act.
The disabilities, in short, remained, without being very rigidly
enforced, while the positive penalties for nonconformity were
virtually abolished.
It was almost by an accident that about the same time the
annual meeting of parliament was secured by a measure which
The Mutiny was not primarily intended to gain that particular
Act- object. Charles and James had practically main-
tained their standing armies by subjecting the troops to martial
law under ' articles of war/ in defiance of the common law ; in
fact, no statutory provision had been made for the preservation
The Revolution in England 7
of discipline. On the accession of William and Mary the position
of the regiments was extremely uneasy. They had not kept
William out, and they had not brought him in. Their loyalty
to the new regime was even more uncertain than their loyalty
to King James. The order was given that some of them should
be dispatched to the Low Countries. One regiment, Dumbar-
ton's, composed almost entirely of Scots, mutinied and started
to march for the north ; the men grumbled that they were Scots
who ought not to be at the orders of the English government.
They were overtaken and forced to surrender by a superior force ;
but though they were hardly penalised, the parliament realised
the necessity of enforcing discipline, and a Mutiny Act was
passed authorising the subjection of the soldiery to martial law
for a period of six months, afterwards extended to twelve. But
the authorisation carried with it the implication that after the
twelve months the employment of martial law would be illegal.
By the simple process of re-enacting the Mutiny Act annually
for twelve months only, it was rendered imperative that parlia-
ment should meet at least once in the twelve months for the
renewal of the Act, without which the officers would be left to
enforce discipline by the methods of the common law which would
be wholly inadequate to that purpose.
We have seen that Whigs and Tories both took their share
in bringing William over to England and in establishing him
upon the throne. It was clear enough, however, whig
that Tory principles had to be strained to the expectations,
uttermost, in a process which presented no difficulties to the
Whigs. As a natural result, the Whigs were disposed to regard
the Revolution as a Whig victory. They were on fairly equal
terms with the Tories in the Upper House, and they were in a
majority in the Lower. Generally their hostility to France was
more pronounced than that of the Tories ; therefore they were
prima facie the more useful allies for William in that policy of
antagonism to Louis xiv. to which his desire for the control of
England was quite subsidiary. Consequently, the Whigs ex-
pected to obtain a definite ascendency, which they intended
to use with some vindictiveness. The Tories in the past had
8 William TIL
displayed no qualms in acting on the principle ' spoils to the
victors, and woe to the vanquished/ The Whigs reckoned that
their turn had come.
They reckoned without their host, for William had no in-
tention of becoming the puppet or the figurehead of a party.
William and If he had placed himself in the hands of the Whigs,
the Parties, the Tories would have been turned into a solid body
of Jacobites in less than six months, and it was of first-rate im-
portance to William that the whole country, and not merely a
section of it, should feel its need of him. It was only on those
terms that he could bring it effectively into his European com-
binations. Jacobitism at its lowest power was still certain to
remain a disintegrating and a trouble-begetting force ; if he
provoked the antagonism of the Tories a.t large, Jacobitism
would be raised to its highest power. Active Jacobitism was
hardly to be feared from the Whigs as a party. Policy, there-
fore, demanded that the Tories should be conciliated.
And so the Whigs found, to their extreme displeasure, that
they were not to have matters all their own way. Two of the
highest offices were bestowed upon Danby, the High Tory min-
ister of Charles II. who had signed the famous letter inviting
William's intervention, and upon Nottingham, who had opposed
the deposition of James while acknowledging the duty of obedi-
ence to the de facto government. A third went to Halifax, who
had led the Whigs or fought the Whigs with a total disregard of
party ties, and was perhaps more acceptable to the Tories than
to the Whigs. The fourth person in the leading quartette was
the Whig Shrewsbury. Churchill, now for his services made
earl of Marlborough, who through his wife's influence over the
Princess Anne might be regarded as her representative, was, on
the whole, of the Tory connection. Therefore among the Whigs
reigned discontent ; and yet the Tories could not be satisfied ;
for if William adopted a policy which really accorded with their
views, half the country would have felt that the Revolution had
failed of its purpose. All that William would do was to give
both sides fair play, and so to preserve both from active hostility.
The Whigs at least could not turn actively Jacobite without some
The Revolution in Scotland 9
better reason than that William refused to sanction vindictive
treatment of the Tories.
And so it fell out that when the Bill of Rights had been passed
the Whigs played their trump card. They proposed a measure
of simple retaliation which was to disfranchise all .
1690.
the Tories who had had a hand in the disfranchise- Dissolution
ment of the Whigs in Charles n.'s reign by the
upsetting of the town charters. William met the
proposal by a dissolution and an appeal to the electorate, which
returned a Tory majority to the House of Commons. That
election ensured that William should not be made into a puppet
of the Whigs.
So ended the career of the assembly which had begun as a
Convention during the interregnum, and had been transmuted
into a parliament when the throne was filled again. This is
perhaps the point at which we may regard the Revolution
Settlement as having been completed, so far as England was
concerned. William could at last hope to concentrate upon the
foreign policy which was the subject he had most at heart ;
although the settlement of Scotland, and still more definitely
of Ireland, was still far from complete. In Ireland indeed all
the work was still to do. The sister kingdoms will now demand
our attention.
II. THE REVOLUTION IN SCOTLAND AND IRELAND,
1688-1696
In Scotland there existed no organised body with legal
authority which, like the parliament in England, could offer
a strictly constitutional opposition to arbitrary 1688
government by the Crown. It had as a rule been The position
difficult to deny that resistance was technically re- in Scotland-
bellion. More emphatically than ever, in the reigns of Charles n.
and James vn., the administration had been completely in the
hands of the Privy Council, while the Lords of the Articles, the
committee which directed legislation, were necessarily king's men.
The rebellious Covenanters were dragooned into a sort of sub-
10 William II 7.
mission till Scotland was quiescent under the tyranny. James,
however, with his infallible determination to do the wrong thing,
did not, when he found his throne in England threatened, take
his measures to make himself secure in Scotland. That country
was only held down by the presence of the troops. James elected
to bring the troops over the border into England, with John
Graham of Claverhouse in command. But even then, instead
of entrusting operations to Claverhouse, he left the troops inactive
and called Claverhouse away.
The council in Scotland was quite powerless without the troops.
In December, while Claverhouse, who had just been made Vis-
count Dundee, was in the south trying to persuade
Offer of James to let him strike a blow for the crown, the
the crown, councillors in Scotland were running away, the
January.
Edinburgh mob was rioting in Holyrood, and all
over the country the Covenanters were up in anticipation of the
fall of James's government. There was a general exodus to
London of the nobles and gentry, who were alive to the fact
that the course of events in Scotland would be determined by
that in England. They followed the English example, and in
January invited William to take over the administration until
a National Assembly should meet for the settlement of affairs.
As in England William accepted the suggestion, and recommended
that a Convention should meet.
It was Dundee's intention, with James's sanction, to attend
the Convention, and if that proved unmanageable to repudiate
Dundee ^s authority and summon a rival Convention at
and the Stirling. When the Scottish Convention met in
Convention. March, James ruined his chances by addressing to
it not the conciliatory letter which Dundee had recommended,
but one carefully calculated to drive every waverer to the other
side. Dundee, seeing that the case was hopeless, withdrew from
Edinburgh, leaving behind him the conviction that he would
take arms. Immediate measures were taken for defence, and
on the arrival of General Mackay with Scottish regiments from
Holland, dispatched north by William, the Convention at once
appointed him commander-in-chief.
The Revolution in Scotland 1 1
The Jacobites were now unrepresented. A commission was
appointed of nobles, barons (that is landed gentry), and borough
commissioners, which proceeded to draw up a Scottish Claim of
Rights on the analogy of the English Declaration, which in its
main lines it followed, but with variations. It was declared
not that James had abdicated, but that he had The Claim
' forfeited ' the crown ; also that Prelacy ought to of Rights,
be abolished, as being opposed to the will of the people. But
whereas the English Declaration confined itself to certain rights,
all of which had been claimed for more than half a century as his-
torically inherent in parliament, the Scots claimed corresponding
rights for the Scottish parliament, for which there was certainly no
historical warrant. Roughly speaking, the Convention intended
to claim approximately the same rights of self-government for
Scotland which had been recognised in England. William was
reluctant to commit himself to a suppression of Prelacy, his own
views being entirely in favour of toleration ; but there was no
doubt as to the nature of popular sentiment in Scotland, and he
accepted the Claim and the form of coronation oath which was
tendered. Even before he had done so, the Convention pro-
claimed William and Mary ; and immediately afterwards they
obtained from William the ratification of their conversion into
a legal parliament.
Dundee, without being in open rebellion, was procuring from
James authority to act. Letters were intercepted, and an
attempt was made to arrest him ; but he escaped DUn<iee
to the north and set about the active organisation in the
of an insurrection for which he had been preparing g an 8*
by communicating with sundry Highland chiefs. He knew from
the precedent of Montrose that forces exceedingly formidable
in the field could be raised in the Highlands ; like his prede-
cessor he counted upon the hostility of half the clans to the
Argyll or Campbell ascendency which the new order was
evidently in a fair way to re-establish. He was under no
illusion that he could effect a conquest by means of his
clansmen — that had been sufficiently proved by the career
of Montrose ; but what he did hope to do was to harry and
12 William III.
embarrass the government and to keep its forces tied up until
he could get from James the reinforcements needed for a
campaign of conquest.
From the middle of April till midsummer Dundee was gather-
ing the clansmen, raiding, and evading battle with any superior
Kiliiecrankie, body of troops. James was now in Ireland, pro-
27th July. mising reinforcements ; but all that arrived, in the
middle of July, was a troop of three hundred badly armed and
badly disciplined Irish under Colonel Cannon. Dundee felt that
if his Highlanders were to be kept together at all, a blow must
be struck. Mackay wished to recover the castle of Blair Atholl
in Perthshire. As Mackay advanced Dundee found his oppor-
tunity at the pass of Kiliiecrankie (27th July). The battle was
short. The Highlanders, holding the higher ground on the hill-
side, burst upon Mackay's regulars with one irresistible charge
and scattered them in total rout ; but a bullet killed Dundee
as he was dashing forward at the head of the small troop of
Jacobite cavalry. The victory itself was complete, but Dundee's
fall made it entirely useless. The incompetent Colonel Cannon
was no leader for the Highlanders. One after another, dis-
End of gusted chiefs went home with their clansmen ;
the rising. Mackay, who was a capable officer, was left free
to reorganise his troops at Stirling. Thence he marched upon
Aberdeen, leaving the Cameronian regiment of west country
Covenanters to hold Dunkeld. There they were attacked by the
clansmen who remained with Cannon, but they offered so stout
a resistance that the badly led Highlanders were finally beaten
off. After that the clansmen lost heart and dispersed to their
homes. The military danger in Scotland was at an end. In fact,
even if Dundee had not been slain he could never have done much
more than maintain a state of alarm and unrest, without receiv-
ing efficient reinforcements which would never have been forth-
coming. Like Montrose, he would have found, as he himself
very well knew, that the Highlanders, fighting under the clan
system, might perform astonishing achievements, but could never
be held together for the prolonged campaigning necessary to a
conquest of the Lowlands.
The Revolution in Scotland 13
The military danger had, in fact, been the least thorny of the
principal problems with which William's government had to deal,
two of which in particular were occupying the Scots William and
parliament. William was by no means inclined to the Scots
surrender what had been unquestionably royal rights Parliament-
before his accession. The establishment of Presbyterianism
would deprive the Crown of the ecclesiastical control which it
retained under the Episcopal system. The * Articles of Griev-
ance ' which had accompanied the Claim of Right called for the
abolition of the Committee of Articles, to concede which would
deprive the Crown of its former control over legislation. When
the parliament met in June, some weeks before Killiecrankie, it
found that the king's commissioner, the duke of Hamilton, was
authorised to sanction changes in the structure of the committee,
but not its abolition. The king's ministers were still to form one
of the groups of which it was composed. The Opposition, con-
sisting of discontented placemen and extremists, carried a bill
for the abolition of the articles. Then they went on with bills
directed against the two Dalrymples, father and son, who had
secured William's confidence. Hamilton refused assent to the
bills, since they went quite outside his instructions. Anxious
to avoid a decisive step without further orders from the king,
the commissioner diverted attention to the ecclesiastical question,
and gave his assent to an Act for the abolition of Episcopacy,
but again found himself obliged to refuse it to measures proposed
and carried by the extremists. At the beginning of August he
adjourned the parliament.
The parliament did not meet again till April of the next year,
1690. Meanwhile, William was persuaded by the judicious and
honest Carstares, who won and always preserved his igeo.
confidence, that however convenient Episcopacy Agreement,
might be to a monarchy, the Scottish Episcopalians were for the
most part Jacobites. Consequently, a new commissioner, Lord
Melville, was now prepared to confirm the previously rejected
bills for the restoration of ejected Presbyterian ministers and
the repeal of the Act of Supremacy. Even more decisive was the
acceptance of an Act which substituted for the Committee of the
i4 William III.
Articles committees with an equal number of representatives from
each of the three estates, lords, barons, and burgesses. For it
was no longer to be necessary for legislation to be initiated
through these committees ; and ministers, though they had the
right to attend the sittings, were not to vote. Thus the Revolu-
tion gave to Scotland what it had never had before, an unfettered
parliament, and what it had only enjoyed for a short period
during the last hundred years, a Presbyterian establishment.
There still remained the serious question of the settlement of
the Highlands. William combined the two policies of coercion
•me an(i conciliation. On the one hand, forts were
Highlands. planted at Fort William and elsewhere ; on the other,
some of the chiefs were bought over, and in the summer of 1691,
when their last hopes of foreign support had vanished, an in-
demnity was proclaimed for all who would take the oath of
allegiance before a sheriff by 1st January. It was indeed ex-
pected and in some quarters hoped that some of the chiefs would
refuse to come in and that condign vengeance would then be
taken on the recalcitrants ; but, in fact, before the appointed day,
all the chiefs had duly taken the oath of allegiance except one
— Maclan, the chief of the Macdonalds of Glencoe.
Maclan in a spirit of bravado had waited to the last moment
and then presented himself before the commandant at Fort
1692 William ; who, not being authorised to administer
The Glencoe the oath, sent him off to the sheriff of Argyll at
Massacre. Inveraray. Heavy snowfalls prevented him from
reaching Inveraray till 7th January, when the sheriff accepted
his oath of allegiance. Now, Sir John Dalrymple, the Master of
Stair — his father, James Dalrymple, had been made Viscount
Stair, and the heir to the peerage bore the courtesy title of Master
— had a grudge against Maclan of Glencoe. Also, he stood high
in the confidence of King William. Maclan's oath had been
tendered after the appointed day ; it had not therefore been
formally accepted by the authorities at Edinburgh. Dalrymple
procured from the king an authorisation to proceed against
Maclan as a recalcitrant. The orders were given for the ' ex-
tirpation of that set of thieves.' There followed an act of the
The Revolution in Scotland 15
most repulsive treachery. Captain Campbell of Glenlyon who
had married the niece of the unsuspecting Maclan, who had no
warning that his oath had not been accepted, arrived at Glencoe,
apparently in all friendliness, with 120 soldiers. For twelve
days they were hospitably entertained as guests. On the early
morning of the thirteenth day, the soldiers fell upon their hosts
and slaughtered them indiscriminately, including women and
children, though a few managed to escape across the hills.
The official extirpation of a nest of caterans by government
troops would in ordinary circumstances have created no general
resentment. Atrocious as the particular circum- j^gs.
stances were, they would probably never have been The inquiry.
brought to light if they had not provided a useful weapon in
party warfare. But both William and Dalrymple had enemies
enough to ensure that the affair should not be kept dark, and
when once the public had an inkling of what had taken place,
conscience as well as party spirit was aroused. It was not from
one side only that demands came for an inquiry. The attempts
to stifle them failed, and three years after the event a royal com-
mission was appointed to investigate the matter. The destruc-
tion of Macdonald after the oath of allegiance had actually been
taken, on the technical ground that the terms of the indemnity
had not been exactly observed, would have been difficult to
excuse in any case ; the atrocity of the method by which that
destruction had been effected was repulsive. The commission
evidently sought to exonerate William, and, as an inevitable
result, concentrated the blame upon the Master of Stair, who may
or may not have known that the oath of allegiance had actually
been taken. Neither he nor William had gone beyond ordering
the extirpation of the Macdonalds ; the method was left to the
military authorities. But in spite of the report of the commission
nobody was punished. Stair indeed was obliged to resign his
secretaryship, but not without receiving other compensations
from the king. It is palpable that William ought never to have
signed the order without a thorough investigation William
into the case of the Macdonalds. It is palpable that and s*air-
Stair, seeing an opportunity for destroying the Macdonalds, was
1 6 William III.
satisfied the moment he had his technical plea. It is palpable
that the military subordinates felt sure that their methods would
not be called in question by the superior authorities. As a
matter of policy, it is quite certain that if William had given
the matter the attention which it demanded, the massacre of
Glencoe would never have taken place ; for he was far too shrewd
not to have foreseen the actual event, which was to intensify to
the utmost the hostility of the Highlands to the government,
and to make ardent Jacobites of clansmen who had hitherto
felt no particular loyalty to the Stuarts. For once, he was care-
less. Thus it was that a prince who was pre-eminently dis-
tinguished for a lenience to his personal enemies which was a
frequent source of anxiety to his closest adherents, a prince
who was always ready to strain toleration to its furthest limits,
suffered this indelible blot to fall upon his name.
But it was entirely consistent with William's character that
when the thing had been done he refused to call the more active
William's perpetrators to account. William was not, as he is
character sometimes called, cruel. He took no pleasure in the
illustrated. infliction of pain. The course which he chose was
habitually the course which his reason judged to be just ; but
if it was attended by injustice he was quite unmoved. So, long
before, when the murder of the De Witts had secured his position
as stadtholder, he had taken the profit which it brought him
and refused to punish the murderers. So, now, he refused to
punish the men who had massacred the Macdonalds with what
they took to be his sanction. He was not cruel, but he was re-
morseless. Indifference rather than magnanimity made him
lenient to hostility, and even to perfidy directed against himself.
Indifference, not cruelty, made him lenient to hostility and per-
fidy directed against others. His passions and emotions were
absorbed in the one intense passion of patriotism ; he had no
emotion to spare for anything or any one else unless it was for
his wife. Perhaps the story of Glencoe, instead of being the most
puzzling incident in his career is the most illuminating as regards
his personal character.
The Revolution in Ireland 17
In England, the Revolution was effected without any civil
bloodshed ; it established all the liberties which English parlia-
ments had ever claimed under a monarchy. In Ireland:
Scotland it was effected after one brief campaign, a contrast,
and had there been no Dundee there would have been no cam-
paign. It gave to Scotland the religious system which the mass
of the population demanded, and parliamentary liberties more
extensive than had ever before been enjoyed or claimed. Very
different was the fate of Ireland. For two years that country
was the arena of civil war ; and when the Revolution was com-
pleted the religion of the great majority of the population was
penalised as it had never been penalised before ; the domination
of one section of the people over the rest was acutely emphasised ;
and the subjection of the Irish to the English parliament was
in no way diminished. In the larger island the Revolution meant
the confirmation and extension of liberties ; in the smaller it in-
tensified the disabilities of the large majority and emphasised the
privileges of the minority without extending the liberties of either.
The Restoration Settlement had been a reasonably honest
attempt to deal fairly with the conflicting claims which had been
created by wholly abnormal conditions ; but it per-
petuated what was necessarily in the eyes of the Irish religion,
the injustice which had vested the ownership of half and
the Irish land in alien proprietors, the followers of
an alien religion. It had perpetuated the Protestant ascendency.
James, during his brief reign, had done his best to overturn the
Protestant ascendency, under the deputyship of the Papist
Tyrconnel. The Revolution in England, of which the primary
motive which secured to it a general support was hostility to
Romanism, could not fail if applied to Ireland to strengthen the
Protestant ascendency there. There was in Ireland no loyalty
to the person of a Stuart king ; but as matters stood the hopes
of every Romanist centred in the failure of the Revolution.
Ireland was Jacobite because Jacobitism offered the only pro-
spect of overthrowing the Protestant ascendency and changing
the land settlement in favour of the heirs of the dispossessed
owners. Before William and Mary were proclaimed king and
Xnnes's Eng. Hist. — Vol. in. B
1 8 William III.
queen of England half the adult male population of Ireland was
up in arms of a sort, and the Protestants were swept up into the
fortified towns of Londonderry and Enniskillen, in Ulster.
To James, Ireland appeared of primary importance. Tyr-
connel, a Strafford of shreds and patches, was to play the part
1689 James wmch Strafford would have played ; Ireland was
in Ireland, to be the base from which the crown of England
March. wag ^Q ^e recovere(j Three months after his flight
from England James was in Dublin. In Ireland he was king
de facto and de jure both, and the Protestants who repudiated his
authority were rebels.
The English Convention urged upon William the necessity for
immediate action in Ireland, even as James made corresponding
Failure of protestations to Louis. But in the eyes of both
negotiations. William and Louis, Ireland was secondary. For
both of them the real battleground was on the Continent ;
neither of them was willing to divert troops to Ireland. Louis
gave James money and supplies and half a dozen French officers
to help him in the organisation of the army ; William left
a garrison at Derry, and sent an envoy to make terms with
Tyrconnel, who seemed to be wavering. The envoy joined
Tyrconnel, whose apparent willingness to negotiate had merely
been a mask, assumed in order to gain time, and promptly thrown
off. William sent a couple of regiments to Derry, but the com-
mandant, Lundy, rejected their aid, on the ground that the
place was untenable. It was his intention to surrender ; but
the inhabitants were resolved to resist to the last gasp. They
dismissed Lundy and entrusted the defence to men of their own
choosing, a soldier named Baker and a clergyman named Walker.
When James's troops appeared at the gates and called upon them
to surrender, the summons was met with defiance.
Deny was blockaded and a boom was thrown across the river
Foyle to prevent supplies coming in by water. The garrison
siege of beat back every attack, but as the weeks passed the
Derry. supplies ran short. William sent a relief expedition
commanded by Colonel Kirke, who had won an evil notoriety in
the time of Monmouth's rebellion ; but when Kirke arrived on
The Revolution in Ireland 19
the Foyle he declared his inability to break through the boom.
The garrison was reduced to the last straits, but still held out
grimly. At last, at the end of July, Kirke received orders so
imperative that he dared not disobey them. The boom was
broken, supplies were carried in to the starving garrison, and
Derry was saved ; for nothing but sheer starvation could have
reduced it to surrender. On 3ist July the blockade was raised ;
and on the same day the Enniskilleners had marched out and
totally routed at Newton Butler a force which had been dis-
patched against them.
Meanwhile, James had summoned a parliament in Dublin.
The disabilities of Catholics being suspended, the Assembly was
overwhelmingly Catholic. An English parliament The Dublin
assembled in such circumstances would have realised parliament,
the wisdom of compromise. The Irish parliament was uncom-
promising. It declared as a matter of course for King James
and for religious toleration ; even James himself could not have
dared to sanction a reversal of the relations between Catholics
and Protestants as such. The next step was to repudiate the
whole theory of the ascendency of the English over the Irish
parliament. The principle of toleration carried with it the
principle that the landowners should pay their tithes to their
own church, whatever that church might be, since Catholics
and Protestants were to be on an equality. But to all intents
and purposes, that meant that the Church of Rome was to be
re-endowed at the expense of the Established Church, since,
by the fresh land settlement promulgated, nearly the whole of
the land would be returned to Catholic proprietors.
For all the forfeitures and settlements since 1641 were to be
cancelled. The only compensation was that offered to actual
purchasers of land since the Restoration Settlement, Its
and that compensation was to be provided by the extravagant
confiscation of the land of persons who had joined enactments<
in the rebellion against King James. Since practically all such
persons would be in any case deprived of their land by its restitu-
tion to the representatives of proprietors in 1641, it was not easy
to see what estates would be left to confiscate ; even though all
20 William III.
absentees who had given support to William were to be included
in the category of rebels. These sweeping enactments were
accompanied by an Act of Attainder, covering some 2500 persons
in every rank of life. The attainted persons, however, were
given the chance of returning to stand their trial. The violence
of these proceedings bore its fruit in the vindictiveness of the
Protestant parliament which assembled after the Irish resistance
to King William had been crushed.
The indignation of the English parliament forced William to
yield to the pressure of public opinion, and to dispatch to Ireland
an armament which he would have much preferred
Schomberg .
sent to to retain for use on the Continent. The command
Ireland, was entrusted to the old marshal Schomberg, a
August. , ,. . , . -, i • ,
soldier of long experience and high reputation, in
whom William had much more confidence than in any English-
man. A fortnight after the relief of Derry, Schomberg and his
troops had landed on Belfast Lough ; but when he started on
his southward march for Dublin he found his route blocked by
a larger force under Tyrconnel at Drogheda. At first an ex-
cessive caution, and then the outbreak of disease among his
troops, prevented him from attacking the enemy, while he made
his own position too strong for a counter attack. Nothing,
therefore, was done through the winter.
In the spring of 1690, William was forced to the conclusion that
the Irish trouble must be definitely settled before he could obtain
1690. freedom of action on the Continent. He resolved
William goes to carry a strong force with him to Ireland, and to
reiand. conduct the campaign in person. Before he could
do so, the dissolution and the general election in March had
converted the majority in the Commons from Wliig to Tory.
Though Whig leaders, discontented and alarmed, had already
opened correspondence with James by way of an insurance
against accidents — a fact of which William was himself probably
aware — Whig disaffection was less dangerous than the active Tory
hostility which would have resulted if William had placed himself
unreservedly in the hands of the Whigs. William was able to
leave the administration in charge of his wife and of ministers
The Revolution in Ireland 21
mainly Tory, with reasonable security, when he sailed for Ireland
in June.
For reasons to which we shall presently revert, the French
fleet was at this moment actually superior to the English fleet.
To us it must appear somewhat extraordinary that VhQ Boyne
Louis did not make use of this advantage to sweep campaign,
the Irish Channel and prevent William's landing. Juiie*
William, however, himself showed the same defective apprecia-
tion of the naval situation, and took no precautions to secure his
passage. As matters turned out, his neglect had no evil results.
The forces were landed at Carrickfergus, all the troops in the north
were collected, and William marched southward — his supplies
maintained by the transports, against which no attack was aimed.
On 30th June he found himself faced at the Boyne Water by
James, whose troops were under the command of the French
general Lauzun. On the next day William, for once setting
aside the counsels of extreme caution to which Schomberg would
have adhered, forced the passage of the river in the face of the
enemy and routed them. The battle reflected no great credit
on the generalship of either side. But the victory proved de-
cisive, although the enemy were able to draw off without ex-
cessive losses, because James lost heart and himself hurried back
to Dublin, from Dublin to Waterford, and from Waterford to
Kinsale, whence he took ship for France. The battle of the
Boyne secured Ulster and Leinster ; but Munster and Connaught
were held by the Jacobites ; and Munster and Connaught pro-
vided four ports, Galway and Limerick on the west, and Cork
and Kinsale on the south, which were open doors for French
reinforcements.
Earlier in the spring, French ships had defeated an English squad-
ron off Bantry Bay ; and the day before the battle of the Boyne
the French admiral Tourville had inflicted upon the Bantry Bay
English fleet off Beachy Head the most complete andBeachy
defeat which it ever suffered. But still the French Head'
fleet failed to make any effective use of its mastery of the Channel,
beyond making the flight of James secure. There was, however,
something like a panic in England, not unjustifiable, since very
22 William III.
few troops had been left there, and the shores were open to in-
vasion. William sent back some regiments from Ireland, and
their arrival, coupled with the news of the Boyne, allayed the
panic. The French contented themselves with a raid on the
coast of Devon, after which their fleet retired to Brest. William,
who had been on the point of returning, felt warranted in con-
The autumn ducting another campaign in the west, where the
campaign. French and the Irish Jacobites had thrown them-
selves into Galway and Limerick. From Galway most of the
French retired altogether ; but in Limerick the Irish, inspired by
the indomitable Patrick Sarsfield, defied William when he laid
siege to the town, cut off his convoys, captured his siege guns,
and beat off an attempt to storm the walls. William raised the
siege, and in September returned to England, leaving Solms and
Marlborough to complete the work — Schomberg had fallen at
the Boyne. Before the end of October Marlborough had cap-
tured both Cork and Kinsale.
Active operations were as usual suspended during the winter.
William considered that Ireland was sufficiently secure to enable
1691 him to devote himself vigorously to concerting
Athioneand operations in the Netherlands. He did not return
to Ireland, where, in the spring, the military com-
mand was bestowed upon the Dutch general Ginkel. A French
general, St. Ruth, was sent over by James to Galway to take
command of the Jacobites, to the annoyance of Tyrconnel.
In July Ginkel defeated St. Ruth at Athlone, and again at Aghrim,
where the French commander was killed. Then Ginkel turned
upon Limerick. It soon became evident that the place would be
untenable against his guns. Sarsfield and his French colleague
D'Usson saw that the best thing they could do was to capitulate,
if they could secure sufficiently favourable terms. Tyrconnel
v/as dead.
Ginkel, who wanted peace, was ready to make great concessions.
The terms procured by Sarsfield were that the Irish soldiery were
Capitulation to be at liberty either to remain under an amnesty
of Limerick. as \Q^ subjects of King William or to depart to
France and take service under the French king. Further, the
The Revolution in Ireland 23
promise was given that Irish Roman Catholics were to have the
same freedom of religious worship as in the reign of Charles n.
All persons who were resident in garrison towns and all officers
and soldiers in five specified counties were to enjoy full amnesty,
with the restoration of their estates as in the time of Charles n.
The amnesty was also made to cover all persons ' under the pro-
tection ' of the Jacobite forces in those counties, although in a
draft of the terms this last provision was accidentally omitted.
No one appears to have had any doubt that the terms of the
capitulation would be ratified in due course by the Irish parlia-
ment, should that be found technically necessary. It must also
be remarked that in no sense could it possibly be maintained
that the Irish Jacobites had hitherto been rebels. Until the
capitulation of Limerick, William was not even de facto king
of Ireland. The only pretence upon which he could have been
called king de jure was that the English parliament had acknow-
ledged him. Never was there a case in which it was more clear
that the government was under a moral obligation of the most
binding order to ratify to the full the terms upon which the
garrison of Limerick had agreed to capitulate.
Yet no sooner were the victory and its fruits secured than the
victors proceeded to tear up the Articles. First, the parliament
at Westminster passed an Act imposing upon all The
office-holders and members of parliament in Ireland Capitulation
not only the Oath of Allegiance, which was a matter torn up*
of course, but also the Oath of Supremacy and a declaration against
Transubstantiation, whereby Roman Catholics were for the first
time excluded from the Irish parliament which assembled a year
after the Limerick capitulation at the end of 1692. A dispute
with the lord- lieutenant led to its prorogation. The Irish
parliament did not meet again till 1695, but from 1695
that time onwards it devoted itself to passing a The Penal
series of enactments utterly destructive of the civil Laws'
liberties of tve whole Roman Catholic population. Papists
were forbidden to teach in schools or in private houses, and
children were nc only deprived of instruction by persons of
their parents' religion in Ireland — they might not even be sent
24 William III.
abroad to be educated as Papists. The penalty was the for-
feiture of goods and property, half of which might be claimed by
the informer. No Papist might carry arms, or own a horse
worth more than £5. All the Roman Catholic clergy were
banished. Protestants were forbidden to marry Papists. The
security of the restored estates was not allowed to hold good
against the claims of private suitors. The estates of rebels not
actually covered by the terms of the treaty were confiscated,
though Protestant heirs were allowed to succeed to them. If
a Protestant heiress married a Papist her estates passed to the
Protestant next of kin. The estates of Papists were not to pass
by primogeniture, but were to be divided among the children.
If any of the children were Protestants, or turned Protestants,
the whole of the estates went to them. Finally, the Restoration
Acts of Settlement were confirmed ; and, while titles might be
disputed by Protestant claimants, no claim put forward by a
Catholic could be heard.
Technically, the disabilities of Irish Catholics did not materially
differ from those of their co-religionists in England. But in
VaB Victis. England the penal laws, however unjust, were at
least imposed upon a small minority by an immense majority ;
in Ireland they were imposed upon an immense majority by a
small minority. For more than half a century the object aimed
at was achieved. The Roman Catholic population of Ireland
lay completely at the mercy of the Protestant minority. It had
neither the spirit nor the power to rebel. It took no share in
any of the Jacobite risings. It was deprived of every incentive
to industry, and to moral or intellectual progress. After two
centuries the evil then wrought is still bearing its poisonous
fruit. And William, champion of toleration though he was, was
content to let intolerance take its course, as he was content
to leave the massacre of Glencoe unpunished, since to have in-
sisted upon justice for the Irish would have alienated English
supporters.
The War of the League of Augsburg 25
III. THE KING, THE ENGLISH PARTIES,
AND THE \v AR OF THE LEAGUE OF AUGSBURG, 1688-1697
Like the English statesmen at the end of the seventeenth
century, we have given to the domestic affairs of the British
Isles precedence over the continental questions with Winiam
which they were entangled ; as William also gave and the
them a reluctant precedence, in action. At no time Contment-
of his life did England really hold the first place in the mind of
King William. Essentially he was a continental statesman.
For sixteen years he had been stadtholder in the Dutch Re-
public. During several of those years he had been absorbed in
the struggle to prevent the toils of King Louis from enfolding
his own small nation. Though Holland had held her own, and
had come out of the Treaty of Nimeguen successfully enough, the
Prince of Orange was under no illusion as to the ambitions of
the king of France, and knew that sooner or later the struggle
would be renewed. If he wanted the crown of England, to which
down to 1788 his wife was heir presumptive, it was because he
wished to unite the resources of England to the resources of
Holland in the battle with the Bourbon.
For the first time since the loss of Normandy by King John,
England was ruled by a prince whose primary interests lay on
the other side of the Channel. Like Henry n. he A far-off
had the instincts of a ruler ; he could not be a king precedent,
without playing the part of a king. As Henry saved England
from the disintegration threatened by the anarchy of Stephen,
William saved England from a repetition of the Great
Rebellion, or at least from becoming a cockpit of warring
factions. Both Henry and William strove to make the country
strong and united ; both succeeded. But both did it primarily
in order that a strong England might serve other aims in which
the people of England took no very enthusiastic interest.
Before Louis's invasion of the Palatinate in 1688, the Prince
of Orange had been weaving his diplomatic webs for curbing
the expected aggression of the king of France. He had
drawn together the League of Augsburg, at the moment
26 William III.
when France had seized upon William's tiny independent
principality of Orange which lay in Provence. The league
1688 had included among its signatories the emperor
The League and the kings of Sweden and Spain, besides a
of Augsburg. number of German princes ; theoretically it was
for purposes of mutual defence. In effect it was this league
which Louis challenged when his armies entered the Palatinate ;
though at that time it was by no means certain how far the
various states of the league would be drawn into the conflict.
Louis had not grasped the situation. The fact of his invasion
of the Palatinate relieved Holland from the danger of immediate
invasion, and enabled William to make his expedi-
Engiand tion to England in spite of Louis's threat that Dutch
joined to intervention in England would be treated as a casus
belli. War was at once declared between France
and Holland ; but Louis could not immediately fling his armies
on Holland. What he could have done was to take the seas with
his fleet, and prevent William landing in England. But James
to the last moment retained the conviction that his own fleet,
unaided by France, would prevent his son-in law's landing ; and
the opportunity was missed. The flight of James from England,
followed three months afterwards by the coronation of William
and Mary, turned England into an effective member of the League
of Augsburg, the ' grand alliance.'
Now, although England and Holland were still entitled ' the
maritime powers,' the French fleet was actually at the moment
The fleets. the strongest on the seas. Holland's fighting power
was becoming exhausted, for the simple reason that she was too
small to bear the endless strain of maintaining it. The English
navy, powerful in the reign of Charles n. whenever it was allowed
to take the seas in fighting trim, had fallen into bad hands in
the latter years of that monarch. Organisation and discipline
had both been deficient ; and though King James, whose heart
was very much in the navy, did a good deal to remedy the mis-
management of the seven years preceding his accession, the
English fleet was still very far below the standard which was
easily within its reach.
The War of the League of Augsburg 27
On the other hand, as long as Colbert lived that great minister
had devoted himself to maritime organisation, both naval and
commercial ; since he was one of the very few Frenchmen who
realised the extent to which England and Holland owed their
prosperity to commerce, and their commerce to strength on the
ocean. In the last contest with the Dutch there had been French
captains and French squadrons equal to the business of tackling
Dutch squadrons even under the command of De Ruyter. Col-
bert's system was still at work, and in 1688 the French fleet,
properly employed, could certainly have dominated the Channel.
But though Colbert's system had not been dropped, neither
Louis nor his war minister Louvois had sufficiently rid themselves
of the older French tradition which regarded navies Ne ^ .
as mere accessories to land forces, and looked upon of naval
the raiding of the enemy's commerce as the essential stratesy-
use to which the French marine should be put. It is more curious
that William, long at the head of one maritime state, now the
king of another, and destined presently to show a very unusual
insight into naval strategy, should still at this time have been
dominated by similar conceptions. The result of this predis-
position on the part of the two kings was manifested in Ireland.
The French were able to maintain their communications with
Ireland almost without trouble. Troops and supplies passed
backwards and forwards whenever Louis chose to send them,
which fortunately for William was not often. When an English
squadron did try to intercept the communications, it was beaten
off at Bantry Bay. And yet William was allowed, without the
slightest attempt at interference, to carry his troops across the
Irish Channel and march to his victory at Boyne Water, although
a fortnight after he had made the passage Tourville inflicted upon
Admiral Herbert, off Beachy Head, the most disastrous defeat
ever suffered by an English fleet, and held the command of the
Channel unchallenged.
We shall find that as the war went on, the English maritime
instinct showed itself in the persistent reorganisa- command
tion and development of the navy, which possessed of tae sea-
such recuperative power that even the battle of Beachy
28 William III.
Head before long came to be regarded merely as a * regrettable
incident ' ; whereas when the French fleet met with a corre-
sponding disaster scarcely in itself of greater magnitude, the re-
cuperative power was wanting. The country's energies were
concentrated on the army, not on the navy ; and when the war
came to an end with the Peace of Ryswick, the control of the sea
had long passed indisputably and permanently to the English ;
with decisive results in every war in which they were engaged
from that time forward. Thus although from 1688 till 1691 the
command of the seas was possessed by France, she made no
effective use of her advantage ; almost, she might as well not
have possessed it at all. Then came a brief period during which
the possession of that command was in doubt ; after that the
English obtained the command and used it. But the opening
stages of the war become intelligible only when we have realised
that in actual fact during those stages England was not in the
position which we are more or less unconsciously disposed to
take for granted, of holding the control of the seas.
If England was to be an efficient aid in war, it was necessary
for William to have adequate support from both parties in the
The king state. In the nature of the case the Whigs could
and the hardly afford to be Jacobites, since a Jacobite
parties. restoration could scarcely be effected except at the
cost of all their political principles. It was not possible for a
Whig to be at heart a Jacobite. On the other hand, at least
half the Tories were Jacobites at heart, and looked upon James
as the rightful king, though patriotism might require them in
the existing circumstances to maintain the de facto government.
William, therefore, could not afford to throw the Tories into
violent opposition, which would have been the inevitable result
of giving the WThigs a free hand. Moreover, while he was in
entire accord with the Whig doctrines of toleration, the Whig
political theory would have curtailed the royal prerogative, as in
fact it did subsequently become curtailed after the Hanoverian
succession. But William was not the man to accept the
position of a figurehead. If he could not carry out his own policy
it was not worth his while to be king of England. The strength
The War of the League of Augsburg 29
of his position lay in the fact that if he resigned the crown a
Stuart restoration would be inevitable. His weakness, on the
other hand, lay in the half-heartedness of his supporters. Dis-
contented Whigs might be capable of preferring no bread to the
half loaf. Discontented Tories might find their consciences
importunately urging doctrines of non-resistance and Divine
right. William could, in fact, do little more than hold the balance
so as to prevent the discontent in either party from developing
into violent hostility ; he could hope for enthusiasm from neither,
and his own coldness of demeanour, his conspicuous preference
for the Dutchmen whom he trusted over the Englishmen whom he
mistrusted, and his disregard for the popular ornamental aspect
of royalty, combined to prevent him from winning anything like
affection from his English subjects. What he could win by
steady justice, unfailing reasonableness, and entire freedom from
vindictiveness was a reluctant respect and a sense that he was
indispensable. But that did not prevent Whigs from endeavour-
ing to stand well at the court of St. Germain, or Tories from more
active intriguing to procure a Jacobite restoration upon terms.
In 1689 the war on the Continent was already in full swing.
The circle of the foes of France had been completed by the
adhesion of Savoy, on the Franco- Italian frontier, Ig90
to what was now known as the Grand Alliance, crown and
In 1690 William found that he must still deal with ministers.
Ireland before he could betake himself to the Continent. And
before he could go to Ireland his position in England had to be
defined by the new parliament which met in March. The Whigs
had been rebuffed, and the Tories proved ready to endorse the
revolution. Parliament voted the hereditary revenue for life to
William and Mary, and granted tonnage and poundage for four
years. They were rewarded by a formal Act of Grace proposed
by the king, which precluded further clamours from the Whigs
for vindictive measures by granting complete indemnity for the
past to all except a very few persons, among whom was included
Sunderland ; and it very soon became evident that there was
no intention of proceeding against the excepted persons without
fresh cause. When William departed to Ireland Mary was left
30 William ///.
in charge, with ministers mainly Tory to advise her. The ever
uncertain Shrewsbury having resigned his secretaryship of state,
Nottingham, with Dan by, whom we may continue to call by his
old title, though he was now marquis of Caermarthen, and was
afterwards to become duke of Leeds, were the leading members
of the council.
When William returned from Ireland in September, after the
victory of the Boyne, he found that the parliament which was
1691 summoned in October was still satisfactorily dis-
Preston's posed. It showed no hesitation in voting the large
plot' forces and supplies for which William asked. The
king was able to leave for Holland in January, although before
his departure the existence of a Jacobite plot had been discovered.
The investigation was left to Mary. The principal conspirator
was Lord Preston, by whose name the plot is known. It is
probable enough that in any case it would have come to nothing,
since Preston's scheme required a moderation on James's part
greater than either he or Louis would have been likely to sanction.
One of Preston's accomplices was executed. Preston and
Clarendon, the queen's uncle, who was involved in the affair,
were imprisoned in the Tower for some months, but were sub-
sequently released. No other proceedings were taken, since
William himself, returning to England for a few days, was
opposed to any severe measures.
The year's campaigning in the Netherlands was unproductive,
though the advantage on the whole lay with the French. But
when William met parliament in October Limerick had capitu-
lated and the war in Ireland was over. Consequently the
Commons were still amenable, and again voted the men and the
money asked for.
The war in 1692 was to be attended by events more notable
than those of the previous year. Although James's cause was
1692 lost in Ireland, the exiled king was under strange
James plans illusions as to the prospect of his return to England.
His imagination multiplied the number of non-jurors
among the clergy ; it invented Nonconformist hostility to
William because the Test Act had not been repealed. James
The War of the League of Augsburg 31
had not been able to escape from his rooted conviction that the
Nonconformists looked upon him and not upon William as the
champion of toleration. He always believed that the fleet was
devoted to him, its sometime admiral, because he was honestly
enough devoted to the fleet. Then, as it happened, the Princess
Anne had quarrelled with her sister the queen ; her ally Marl-
borough had just been disgraced and dismissed from his offices,
and Marlborough was encouraging Anne to make friends with
her father. So J ames counted upon the general who was reckoned
a Tory, and also upon Admiral Russell who was a fervent Whig,
but had opened correspondence with St. Germain because King
William was not sufficiently Whig for his views. .Therefore,
James thought the moment auspicious for a grand attack upon
England. Louis went so far with him that he was willing for
Tourville and the fleet to clear the seas for the passage of James
and a French army.
William left England for Holland in March. In April James
went to the Normandy coast with a view to the invasion, and
issued from thence a proclamation admirably cal- Before
culated to destroy his own hopes. It promised a LaHogue.
free pardon to all but a small number of persons specified. The
imputation, of course, was that those few — Marlborough had
taken care that his own name should be on the list — had sinned
past forgiveness ; but it also ensured that Danby and Nottingham
would use their influence against him rather than for him.
Sunderland also was on the list, even as he had been on the list
of exceptions to the Act of Grace. But if the list damaged his
cause by including and so alienating some who might have been
wellwishers, it did so still more by not naming others who at once
felt it incumbent upon them to give much more strenuous de-
monstrations of their loyalty to William than would otherwise
have seemed to them needful. Such were Halifax and Shrews-
bury, Godolphin who had reappeared in the ministerial circle,
and Admiral Russell. The proclamation was most useful to the
government, of which as usual Mary was left in control. They
published it broadcast with comments. As for Russell, however
he may have played with treason, he felt his professional reputa-
32 William III.
tion at stake and was quite determined to fight as vigorously
as if his loyalty had never been shaken. The naval situation,
too, had changed since the battle of Beachy Head. Popular
indignation had given to the naval administration the vigour
which was all that it needed to restore the fleet to full efficiency.
There had been no corresponding increase of activity in the
development of the French navy. When Tourville took the seas,
Russell was already in command of an Anglo-Dutch fleet very
much stronger than Tourville's Brest fleet which had not yet
been joined by the squadron from Toulon.
Tourville had positive orders to fight, and in spite of the odds
he engaged. Having fought creditably enough, though with no
The battle, chance of success, the French ships retreated during
Ma-y- the night with the British in pursuit. Half of them
escaped in safety to St. Malo. The rest were run ashore at Cap
La Hogue, where they were burnt to the water's edge, either by
their own crews or by a flotilla of boats commanded by Sir
George Rooke, under the eyes of James himself. Viewed by
itself the disaster of La Hogue was not of an altogether over-
whelming character. Fifteen ships of the line were lost, but the
English had probably lost at least a dozen at the battle of Beachy
Head two years before. La Hogue was actually decisive because
there was not on the part of the French any vigorous effort at
recuperation. The fleet was not destroyed, as it was to show
even during the next year. But it had become definitely the
inferior fleet, and it retrograded steadily while the English fleet
progressed steadily. Consequently the decisive supremacy of
British fleets dates legitimately from the victory of La Hogue.
The naval victory was not followed up at the time in any
effective manner, though it had entirely put an end to any chance
steinkirk. of an invasion. William's land campaign was again
of an indecisive character, though again the advantage lay with
the French. William was too late to save Namur from being
captured ; and not long afterwards he was outmanoeuvred and
suffered a defeat at the battle of Steinkirk, though his retreat
was so skilfully conducted that the French commander Luxem-
bourg practically gained nothing. In England there was much
The War of the League of Augsburg 33
annoyance because the English regiments at Steinkirk under a
Dutch commander had fought splendidly, but were held to have
been needlessly sacrificed. Also the failure to follow up La
Hogue by any striking achievement was a source of displeasure.
There was, therefore, a much greater display of ill-humour in
the session of parliament during the winter of 1692-3. Russell
and Nottingham were quarrelling, each blaming the 1692.3>
other for the misdirection of naval affairs. The Parliament
Commons very nearly succeeded in carrying a bill restlve-
for excluding office-holders from membership of the House.
The Lords rejected the bill by only three votes. Both Houses,
on the initiative of the Whigs, passed a bill limiting the dura-
tion of parliament to three years, though the king felt him-
self strong enough to veto it. For, in fact, both the Houses
were aware that there could be no relaxation in carrying on
the war, and so long as that was the case William could exer-
cise in security a prerogative which had never been questioned.
The session is, however, especially notable for the financial
measures adopted to meet the heavy strain ; measures to which
we shall revert in detail at a later stage. Here it will suffice to
say that one was a fresh assessment of the land tax which was
soon to be the principal source of revenue, and the second was
the beginning of that system of borrowing by the government
out of which developed the National Debt.
The quarrel between Nottingham and Russell reached such a
pitch that the retirement of one or the other became imperative ;
and William would not part with Nottingham. The 1693
Tory Killigrew took Russell's place at the head of Landen and
the navy. Again William's campaign was successful tne Smyrna
only in the sense that he was able to prevent it from
being actually disastrous. Although he was defeated in a hard-
fought battle at Neerwinden or Landen, he was again able to
prevent the French from gaining any material advantage. But
worse than the land campaign was a maritime disaster. A great
fleet of English and Dutch merchant ships sailed for the Levant,
under the convoy of a war fleet which accompanied them till
they were clear of Brest Assuming that Tourville's fleet was
Innes's Eng. Hist. — Vol. in. C
34 William III.
safe in Brest, Killigrew sent the merchantmen on, guarded only
by a small squadron under Rooke's command. Tourville, as a
matter of fact, and as Killigrew ought to have known, had left
Brest with a considerable fleet, sailed to the Mediterranean and
united with the Toulon fleet. Consequently, Rooke suddenly
found himself and his convoy face to face with the whole French
fleet. To fight was hopeless, and the squadron ran for Madeira,
leaving the merchant fleet to its fate. Most of the ships were
either captured or sunk. The French secured large spoils, and
a very heavy loss was inflicted upon the Dutch and English
commercial community. Nor did the English admirals make
any attempt to redeem the discredit which had fallen upon them.
So when William returned in the autumn he dismissed Killigrew
and reinstated Russell, in whom the country had confidence.
Beginning ^he reinstatement of Russell involved the resigna-
of party tion of Nottingham, whose place was taken by
aimstries. Shrewsbury, in spite of his more than dubious con-
duct in the past. William realised that in the critical state
of affairs it had become necessary to have a council who could
work harmoniously together, and little as he liked doing so
he now filled nearly all the ministerial posts with members
of the Whig party ; Danby and Godolphin alone of the Tories re-
maining. In so doing, he is said to have been guided by the
advice of Sunderland, who had returned to England and won the
king's personal favour, though his own past political record made
it impossible for him to occupy any prominent political position.
This was the initiation of party and cabinet government, the
placing of the administration in the hands of a group chosen
from the party dominant in parliament. There was no recog-
nition of a new principle ; the measure was simply one of con-
venience at the time, adopted to ensure harmonious working at
a moment when harmony in the administration was a necessity.
William always wished to choose his ministers independently of
party. When the crisis of the war was over he reverted to the
previous practice which custom preserved till some years after
Anne's accession. Nevertheless, scarcely a dozen years had
passed after the constitution of the first party cabinet at the end
The War of the League of Augsburg 35
of 1693 before Anne had a cabinet almost exclusively Whig,
and from that time forward cabinet and party government may
be said to have been permanently established.
The cabinet reconstruction effected its purpose. The Commons
allowed a Triennial Bill to be defeated, and only grumbled when
William himself vetoed another ' Place Bill.1 The 1694
Whigs created the Bank of England, a corporation The Place
which became of signal political service to them, and 3
though the Tories reduced the amount of the vote for the increase
of the army, the numbers voted were still respectable. The place
bills illustrate the difference in the position of ministers from that
to which we are accustomed. Government through a party
cabinet has automatically produced the feeling that ministers
are appointed by parliament to control the Crown and conduct
the administration in accordance with parliament's wishes. But
at the end of the seventeenth century the ministers were in fact
and in theory appointed to carry out the will of the Crown, by
the king's own free choice ; and parliament regarded them as the
king's representatives, whose presence in parliament tended to give
the Crown a direct influence in the assembly of which it was ex-
tremely jealous. Hence there were repeated attempts, steadily
resisted by William, to exclude ministers from the House of
Commons, for the same reason which led the Scots to fight against
the presence of a ministerial group in the Committee of Articles.
The land campaign of 1794 was uneventful. There was much
manoeuvring and not much fighting. The balance, in fact, was
turning against France, for the single reason that The War.
the strain upon her resources, great as they were, was more ex-
hausting than that upon the allies. It was beginning to be
apparent that the ultimate victory would rest with the treasuries
which could hold out longest.
The naval record, however, marks an epoch. It had become
a primary object with Louis to dominate Spain, the
enemy on his rear, by the capture of Barcelona, command
The French fleet, concentrated in the Mediterranean, of the Medi-
commanded the waterways and made the attack
upon Barcelona practicable. William had hitherto generally
36 William III.
acted on the idea that the main use of the fleet was to threaten
perpetual descents on the French sea-board, and so to keep large
numbers of French troops constantly locked up in guarding
various points on the coast — one of the uses of a fleet which we
shall again find in active operation during the Seven Years'
War. In pursuance of this plan, an attack upon Brest was de-
signed ; but in order to intercept the French operations in
Catalonia the main fleet was dispatched to the Mediterranean
under Russell. The attack upon Brest failed disastrously ;
there is little room to doubt that warnings from Marlborough
had enabled the French to anticipate the plan of assault. Talmash,
the commander, whose military reputation at the time rivalled
that of Marlborough, was killed. But the appearance of Russell's
fleet in the Mediterranean drove the French fleet back into
Toulon, since Tourville did not venture to engage him. The
intended operations in Catalonia were completely foiled ; William
at once realised the immense strategical value of an English con-
trol of the Mediterranean, and very much to the disgust of
Russell, the king, instead of withdrawing the fleet, insisted that
it was to remain at Cadiz for the winter. So long as the English
fleet controlled the Mediterranean it was evident that French
activity in Spain was paralysed ; and for the present it was
possible for English fleets to remain there because the Spanish
ports were open to them.
When parliament met in the autumn the prospects of the war
were better than they had ever been before, and William's
Harmony popularity was proportionately raised. The Ton-
with nage and Poundage Bill, originally granted for four
parliament. vearSj was renewed, although an interval of a day
was carefully interpolated between the operation of the old and
the new Acts, in order to emphasise the fact that the renewal was
not made as a matter of right. William marked the harmony
now prevailing by assenting to a Triennial Bill which required
the dissolution of a parliament at the end of three years, although
it did not interfere with the royal prerogative of an earlier dis-
solution at the king's pleasure ; and parliament responded to
the king's complaisance by itself rejecting a Place Bill. Later
The War oj the League of Augsburg 37
in the season an attack made upon Danby, now duke of Leeds,
for alleged corruption in connection with the East India Company,
caused his final retirement, although the case against him could
not be actually proved ; and for practical purposes the cabinet
was now exclusively Whig.
In the last days of December, however, the king and the country
suffered a very grave loss through the death of Queen Mary from
smallpox. She had not only been an admirable con- ^^^ of
sort, personally popular, but wise and tactful in the Mary,
conduct of administration during William's absences. Dec
While she was queen, with every apparent prospect of surviving
her husband, legitimists had found it comparatively easy to
reconcile their consciences to the Revolution. But when she
was dead, there was no longer any possibility of pretending that
the king was king by anything except parliamentary title.
Fortunately the Princess Anne was content to wait her turn ;
but by the death of Queen Mary a curb upon active Jacobitism
had been removed, and the effect was soon to be felt in the
multiplication of Jacobite conspiracies. Only in one way could
William have done something to provide against the dangers of
the new situation — by admitting Anne to some share of political
power ; but this William could not venture to do so long as she
was under the influence of Marlborough, in whom it was impossible
to trust. There was indeed a reconciliation between the king
and his sister-in-law, but no change was made in the political
position either of Anne or of Marlborough. From this time,
whenever William was out of England, the administration was
placed in the hands of a group of lords justices who were re-
quired to refer all questions of first-rate importance to the
king himself.
The war, however, in 1695 went well. In the south France
was paralysed by the English control of the Mediterranean ; in
the northern waters she had no fleet to act. On 1695
land the death of Luxembourg deprived her of her A successful
ablest commander, whose place was very inefficiently camPai^n<
taken by Villeroy. The great war minister, Louvois, was also
dead, and his place was even more inefficiently occupied by his
38 William IIL
son. William's campaign for the first time in his career was one
of actual triumph, since he succeeded in capturing Namur, which
was regarded as the key fortress of the Netherlands. He was
already bound to the Whigs more closely than before by the fact
that he was now reigning on the basis of a purely Whig theory
of the constitution. The capture of Namur gave him an un-
precedented popularity in the country at large.
On his return to England he seized the opportunity to dissolve
the parliament and summon a new one in which the Whigs had
A new Whig a considerably increased preponderance. Ample
parliament, supplies were voted, and the ministers ventured to
take up the extremely prickly question of currency reform which
involved the calling in of the entire currency and the issue of a
new coinage. National stability and the national prosperity
were emphatically demonstrated by the comparative ease with
which this great reform was carried through. Nevertheless the
Whigs now felt themselves in a position to demand a more marked
recognition of their principles than they had attempted since
their rebuff at the beginning of 1690. They compelled William
to revoke the large grant of Crown lands which he had made to
his favourite, the Dutchman Bentinck, whom he had made duke
of Portland, on the ground that the Crown could not afford to
curtail its private revenues. Their success encouraged them to
demand a Treasons Bill, to prevent such malversations of justice
as the condemnation of Algernon Sidney after the Rye House
Plot, by requiring positive evidence of two witnesses. In the
abstract, the justice of the bill was evident ; but at this particular
time, William had good enough reason for objecting to anything
which would weaken the power of the Crown in striking against
conspiracy. He could not, however, venture to refuse his assent ;
and the bill became law (January 1696).
Even at this moment the revival of Jacobite hopes was
signalised by what is known as Barclay's plot. What may be
1696< called a legitimate Jacobite design was formed, for
Barclay's an invasion of England by French troops, a plan
which seemed to be rendered practicable by the
absence of the main English fleet in the Mediterranean. The
Tke War of the League of Augsburg 39
young duke of Berwick, an illegitimate son of James by Arabella
Churchill, Marlborough's sister, was sent over secretly to con-
cert measures with the English Jacobites. The plot fell through,
because the French required an English rising as the first step,
preliminary to the actual invasion, whereas the English in-
sisted that the invasion was a necessary preliminary to the
rising.
But onto this scheme had been grafted an unauthorised plan
which recalls the plots of Queen Elizabeth's reign, for the assas-
sination of William when hunting at Richmond. This was the
device of one of the Jacobite agents, Sir George Barclay, who gave
a liberal interpretation to the instructions he had received from
James; who pretty certainly had not intended to authorise
assassination, though there is some presumption that he knew
of the scheme before it was intended to put it into execution,
and did not feel called upon to forbid it. Information of the
plot was carried to Portland, and some of the conspirators were
arrested. William, however, carefully abstained from pushing
inquiries. Only those who were palpably connected with the
plan of assassination were punished ; the mere fact that many
suspected persons were allowed to go free caused them to be
suspected in their turn by their fellow-conspirators. After the
detection of the plot neither a rising nor an invasion was possible.
The whole affair had the usual effect of such plots in England,
of arousing an intense popular resentment and a temporary
fervour of loyalty to William. As in Elizabeth's days, an
' association ' was formed for the protection of William's person
as the only lawful king, to which only the most extreme adherents
of Tory principles ventured to refuse their adhesion — thereby
precluding themselves from all civil and military offices, and from
the House of Commons.
The plot had one unfortunate effect upon the war. The threat
of invasion created a demand for the return of the fleet from the
Mediterranean. Its recall set free the French fleet ; An unlucky
the release of the French fleet not only reopened by-product.
the French attack in Spain but transferred the duke of Savoy
from the side of the allies to the side of the French king ; and
40 William III.
the adhesion of Savoy enabled Louis by the beginning of the
autumn to procure from the emperor and the king of Spain
a suspension of hostilities in Italy which set free a mass of
troops for operations in other quarters. In the Netherlands,
however, no progress was made by either side ; by the French
because of the actual exhaustion of the treasury, by William
because the operations in connection with the recoinage had
temporarily locked up the supply of ready cash which he
needed.
Meanwhile one of the Jacobite prisoners, Sir John Fenwick,
while waiting trial on the charge of treason, gave information
Fenwick's as to the past intrigues with St. Germain of sundry
attainder. notable persons including Shrewsbury, Russell,
Godolphin, and Marlborough. The information was no news to
William, who proposed simply to ignore it. Shrewsbury, how-
ever, was so ashamed of his position that he went into retire-
ment ; and Godolphin's resignation removed the last Tory ele-
ment from the administration. Both the Whigs and the king
were much incensed against Fenwick, and their indignation was
the greater when it was found that one of the two necessary
witnesses against him had disappeared after the finding of a true
bill by the Grand Jury. When it seemed certain that Fenwick
would escape, the Whigs took the indefensible step of intro-
ducing a Bill of Attainder, which was passed by the Houses and
sanctioned by the king. There was, in fact, no shadow of doubt
that Fenwick had been guilty of treason, but there was no ex-
cuse for overriding the law by a special Act. The Long Parlia-
ment in 1640 overrode the law and struck down Strafford ; but
it had at least the excuse that in its eyes Stafford's life was a
menace to the state. No one could pretend that Fenwick's life
was of any material public importance.
Fenwick was attainted in the 1696-7 session of parliament,
which showed itself as ready as any of its predecessors to pro-
1697 vide the means for carrying on war. It was gener-
Advance of ally known that all the combatants were eager for
the Whigs. peacej fout William emphasised the necessity for a
display of force to make peace negotiations effective. When the
The War of the League of Augsburg 41
session came to an end the Whig leaders had their reward.
Somers, their great lawyer, and Montague, the financier who
invented the National Debt and the Bank of England, were
definitely associated with Russell, who became earl of
Orford, as the Whig leaders. The fourth member of the
group was Wharton, but public opinion was very ill-satisfied
when Sunderland was at last publicly admitted to the
ministry.
Peace negotiations were, in fact, already progressing, but with-
out any formal suspension of hostilities. Since Savoy had
changed sides and the English fleet had been with- The Peace
drawn from the Mediterranean, France was em- ofRyswick,
phatically in a stronger position. The capture of Septe
Barcelona gave Louis a further advantage. But both William
and Louis were now personally eager for peace. The former did
not wish to see Louis driven to the wall, while the French king
was extremely anxious for a settlement with William on the
approaching question of the Spanish succession. It was prac-
tically between them that the terms were settled to which the
emperor and the king of Spain were obliged to accede. Nor
can it be said that in the circumstances too much was conceded
to France. The Treaty of Ryswick was signed by France on the
one side, and by England, Holland, and Spain on the other, in
September, and by the emperor six weeks later. In effect France
gave up everything that she had taken from Spain since the
Treaty of Nimeguen. Louis restored Orange to William, re-
cognised him as king of England, and undertook to give no
assistance to any one without exception who should make attempt
against his throne. The conspicuous conclusion was that the
adhesion of England to the Grand Alliance had turned the scale
against France — that France was rather more than a match for
the other powers without her, and rather less than a match for
them with her. It is also to be observed from the English point
of view that William conducted the negotiations and carried
them through on his own account without reference to his English
ministers.
42 William III.
IV. THE APPROACHING STRUGGLE, 1697-1702
The Peace of Ryswick was popular in England, but for reasons
v/hich did not commend themselves to William. While the war
was °*n on ^e kad received continuous and solid
1697
The king's support ; now that it was over, the country con-
position sidered that the time had come for retrenchment,
and the reduction of the standing army which it
abhorred ; whereas William was extremely well aware that a
European question of first-rate importance was coming to the
front, for dealing with which it remained as necessary as ever
that the maritime powers should be conspicuously prepared to
back their diplomacy by force. William had not taken his
English ministers into his confidence ; his real partner in these
affairs was Heinsius, the grand pensionary of Holland, and his
diplomatic agents were not Englishmen, but the foreign com-
panions whom he trusted, such as Bentinck, duke of Portland,
and Ruvigny, earl of Galway. The Englishmen consequently
had very little understanding of the situation. Both W^higs and
Tories, too, were annoyed by William's reliance upon Sunderland.
The result was that the popular hostility to the existence of
a standing army so reduced the vote for its maintenance that
1698. outside of Ireland and Scotland the military estab-
Growing lishment was brought down to 10,000 men. The
of the Whigs indeed showed that they were not disloyal ;
opposition. their attitude on this question merely sprang from
their ignorance of the king's motives. But when, after the
prorogation in 1698, William again hurried off to Holland,
although there was no campaign which required his presence,
popular irritation against him increased. During his absence
there was a general election, necessitated by the Triennial
Act, and it was evident that the opposition in the House
of Commons would be greatly strengthened thereby. The king
himself was engaged in negotiating with Louis a Partition Treaty
for the distribution of the Spanish dominion upon the death of
the reigning king, Charles n. When it was settled, the English
ministers were in effect called upon to authorise its signature
The Approaching Struggle 43
without being informed of more than a bare outline of its pro-
visions. They did so, but the proceedings did not tend to im-
prove relations between them and the king.
When the new parliament met, it did not know of the treaty,
but believed that another solution of the Spanish succession
question had been arrived at, very much more to A captured
its taste. It was not angry, therefore, but captious, new
and displayed its temper by a further reduction of Parliament'
the army to 7000 men, accompanied by the demand that officers
and soldiers should all be natural-born Englishmen ; which meant
that the king was to dismiss the Dutch Guards and the Dutch
generals and other officers whom he trusted. William was so
disgusted that he was on the verge of resigning the crown ; but
he could not afford a rupture with England, and submitted, on
procuring only a modification which permitted the services of
naturalised as well as natural-born Englishmen. The Commons
insisted on a commission to inquire into the grants made of
confiscated lands in Ireland ; the king, having in spite of a pro-
mise to the contrary, made large grants to his Dutch entourage
without making any reference to parliament. The Tory pre-
dominance was also displayed in attacks upon Russell and
Montague. When William, as usual, left England at the close
of the session, the obviously strained relations between Crown
and parliament greatly increased his diplomatic difficulties.
What those difficulties were we have now to examine. The
Spanish dominion included, besides Spain itself and the American
colonies, the Netherlands, Naples and Sicily, Milan, The Spanign
and other Italian territories. King Charles was Succession
childless, and his two sisters had married respec- pro
tively Louis xiv. and the Emperor Leopold. Who then was
to inherit the Spanish dominion ?
On the face of things Maria Theresa, the wife of Louis xiv.,
as the eldest sister, would hold the first claim on her brother
Charles's death, passing it on to her offspring. But Hapsburg
before she married Louis, there had been a formal and Bourbon
renunciation on her part, though a conditional one, claims-
of her rights in regard to the Spanish inheritance. Next to her,
44 William III.
a claim would lie through her sister Margaret who had married
the Emperor Leopold ; but in this case also a renunciation of a
kind had been made. If the claims through both these sisters,
claims which passed not to their husbands but to their own
offspring, were to be set aside, the next claim lay with the Emperor
Leopold himself, because his mother was the sister of the last
king of Spain, Philip iv., and she certainly had never made any
renunciation at all. To complicate further an affair already
complicated enough, Margaret had borne to Leopold no son but
a daughter, to whom her claim descended. On the marriage of
this daughter, Maria Antonia, to Max Emmanuel of Bavaria,
was made that ' renunciation of a kind ' referred to above. For,
after Margaret's death Leopold had married a second wife,
Eleanor of Neuburg, and by her he had two sons, Joseph and
Charles. Whatever rights Leopold possessed in his own person
descended to his son by Eleanor of Neuburg, not to his daughter
by Margaret of Spain. On the understanding that the Nether-
lands were in due course to come to her and her children, Maria
Antonia undertook to waive her claim to the Spanish inheritance
in favour of her half-brothers, the bargain being struck between
her husband and her father. If, then, Maria Theresa's renuncia-
tion was valid, the legal title to the Spanish inheritance lay either
with Leopold and after him with his sons, or with the children
of Maria Antonia. On the other hand, if Maria Theresa's re-
nunciation was not valid, the whole Spanish inheritance was
legally hers.
But, again, whatever the technical legal title might be,
wherever it might lie, Europe at large could not afford to let
Balance the whole Spanish dominion be appended either to
of power. France or to the dominion of Austria. There was
indeed one tolerably obvious solution. There was a child of the
Bavarian marriage, the electoral prince. The succession of the
electoral prince to the Spanish dominion would not attach it too
closely either to France or to Austria. That, on the other hand,
was a solution which was not likely to satisfy either Louis or
Leopold. Louis had a quite reasonable case for declaring that
his wife's renunciation was invalid, since it had been part of an
The Approaching Struggle 45
agreement in which the corresponding clause involving the pay-
ment by Spain of a substantial dowry had never been carried
out. Louis might be willing to compromise this claim, but he
could hardly be expected to withdraw empty-handed. The same
might be said for Leopold, who had assented to the Bavarian
marriage only in view of the undertaking that his daughter
would not maintain her claim to the whole inheritance. This,
then, was the position of affairs at the moment of the Treaty
of Ryswick. It was imperative, therefore, that the question
should be settled, and settled by agreement, before the death
of the king of Spain.
This, then, was the problem on which William was engaged
in the spring of 1698 when his parliament was occupied with the
reduction of the military establishment. It was First
Louis who had taken the first steps to promote a Partition
settlement. He approached William, knowing that
if he could come to an agreement with the king of England,
which would, as a matter of course, include Holland, the empire
was not likely to offer armed opposition. His proposals were
skilfully moderate. The electoral prince of Bavaria, as the
candidate whose selection would least disturb the balance of
power, was to be recognised as the inheritor of the lion's share ;
Leopold and Louis were each of them to receive a substantial
compensation for withdrawing their larger claims. The maritime
powers were to have security that they should not suffer by the
arrangement. William finally agreed that France should have
her compensation in Naples and Sicily with some Italian ports,
whilst the Archduke Charles, the second son of the emperor,
was to have Milan. The whole of the rest was to go to the
electoral prince. It was further agreed that the elector of
Bavaria should act as regent for his son, a child of five, and should
be his successor should the child die without growing up and
leaving offspring. It is true that the Spanish king and council
recognised the electoral prince as the heir to the whole ; but
it appeared to Louis and to William that both the elector and
the emperor would prefer to accede to the Partition Treaty ;
the emperor because he got something instead of nothing, the
46 William IIL
elector because, according to the Spanish pronouncement, he
would neither be the regent for nor successor to his son.
The Partition Treaty was known in England only to the king's
confidential ministers, and not even to them in its entirety. The
public at large took it as settled that the whole of
The second the Spanish succession was to go to the electoral
Partition prince, which seemed highly satisfactory. But
within a few months the death of the little electoral
prince in January 1699 destroyed the whole elaborate structure
of the Partition Treaty. A fresh partition must be settled
without delay. And William's personal difficulties in negotiating
were now very much increased by his obviously strained relations
with a parliament in which the Tories were predominant. Leo-
pold, on the other hand, was likely to prove less amenable, because
he had just brought a contest with the Turks to a successful
conclusion. The negotiations were renewed between William
and Louis. The latter promptly repudiated the suggestion of
the former that the elector of Bavaria should be recognised in
place of his son. Louis claimed that there could now only be
a simple partition between the Hapsburg and the Bourbon. If
either insisted on a title to the whole there must be war. The
disappointed elector of Bavaria might have the Netherlands,
and France would resign her claims on Spain and the Indies
if Milan as well as Sicily and the rest of the Italian possessions
were ceded to her. Spain and the Indies might go to the Arch-
duke Charles, since the Peninsula would be effectively severed
from Austria. Louis, if desired, would then exchange Milan for
Lorraine. William insisted that the Netherlands must go not
to Bavaria but to the archduke, on the ground that Bavaria
was not strong enough to protect them. Louis agreed, but
would make no further concession. It remained to approach the
emperor and persuade him to accept the scheme. Leopold,
however, refused his assent, and there was much indignation
in Spain at the proposal for partitioning the Spanish empire
without consulting Spain herself. The treaty, however, was
signed on behalf of France, Holland, and England in March
1700,
The Approaching Struggle 47
Meanwhile, relations in England were becoming more strained
than ever. When the parliament met in November 1699, it was
evident to Montague that the ministry would be The whig
unable to control the Houses. He resigned. Both ministry
Russell and Sunderland had been obliged to retire totterin&-
a year earlier ; the king distrusted \Vharton ; and the Tories
and the Commons made a wholly unwarrantable attack upon
Somers. Their confidence in their own strength was signalised
by an attack upon William's policy of toleration, though this
time they turned, not upon the Protestant Dissenters but upon
the Romanists, and in effect extended to them the penal laws
which by this time had been passed against their co-religionists
in Ireland.
More ominous for the king was the attack following upon the
report of the Commission of inquiry into the distribution of the
Irish forfeited estates. It was palpable that William 1700
had made large grants, contrary to his promise, to Attacks on
persons whose public services had given them no m&'
title to such favour. Bills were passed for the resumption of
the estates, which were to be vested in trustees who were to
sell them. The purchase money was to be appropriated to the
payment of public debts, and the balance, if any, was to go to
the English exchequer. By a process which came to be known
as ' tacking/ which had already been applied in the case of the
bill appointing the Commission of inquiry, the Resumption Bill
was made part of a money bill, which could only be accepted
without amendment or rejected in its entirety by the House of
Lords, in accordance with the principle laid down during the
reign of Charles n. Nevertheless, the Lords proposed amend-
ments. The Commons refused to consider them, as being uncon-
stitutional. To reject the money bill was impossible, and the
Lords gave way. The bill was passed. When the Commons,
after a proposal to impeach Somers had been rejected, proceeded
to vote an address that none but natural-born subjects of the
Crown should be admitted to the king's council, William pro-
rogued the parliament — within a month of the signing of the
Second Partition Treaty.
48 William III.
The lords justices whom William left behind on his departure
for Holland at midsummer were a dangerously weak body, among
whom Marlborough was the only prominent man. Since the
death of Queen Mary, the earl had come to the conclusion that
Anne was certain of the succession and could bide her time ; and
when he was no longer suspected of dangerous intrigues, he was
re-admitted to William's favour, though he hardly commanded
public confidence. The situation, too, became more complicated
when the young duke of Gloucester, the only one of Anne's many
children who had survived infancy, died in July. Anne was
already recognised by statute as William's successor, but nothing
had been done to fix the succession after her.
Abroad, Leopold still refused his adhesion to the Partition
Treaty. He hoped that the king of Spain, whose death was
Leopold and evidently near at hand, and who was vehemently
the treaty. opposed, as was the whole of Spain, to any par-
tition whatever, would recognise the Hapsburg succession ; and
that in that event he could at any rate get better terms than
those offered by the Partition Treaty. If, on the other hand,
Charles should recognise the Bourbon succession, Louis was, in
the first place, pledged not to accept it, and, in the second place,
Leopold counted that the maritime powers would still support
him substantially. But anti-Hapsburg influences prevailed
with King Charles. The Spaniards were equally determined
that the empire should not be divided, and that it
the death of should remain separate from both the Spanish and
Charles II. the Austrian monarchies. Charles made a will in
which he had declared that the heir of Spain was
not the Dauphin, nor his eldest son Louis of Burgundy, but his
second son Philip, duke of Anjou. Philip was to inherit the
whole. If it should so befall that he ultimately inherited the
crown of France, the Spanish crown was to pass to his younger
brother the duke of Berri. If the crown of France should pass
to him, then the crown of Spain was to go to the Archduke
Charles, and, failing the Archduke Charles, to the duke of Savoy.
If the Bourbon princes should refuse the complete inheritance,
then the complete inheritance was to go to the Hapsburg prince.
The Approaching Struggle 49
Having signed the will, King Charles died, and the will was made
public at the beginning of November*
William assumed that Louis would keep faith and stand by
the Partition Treaty ; Leopold could hardly stand out against
him in the face of the combination of France with
the maritime powers. But William was wrong. The up the
prize was too tempting for Louis, who tore up the Partition
Partition Treaty and announced his acceptance of
the will on behalf of his grandson Philip. It is extremely unlikely
that this was the consummation to which his previous policy
had been directed. Almost to the last moment the presumption
was that if Charles made a will he would name the Hapsburg
rather than the Bourbon his heir. Also until the last moment
the presumption had been that all Europe would unite in arms
to forbid the passing of the entire Spanish empire to a Bourbon.
We may acquit Louis of having entered upon the Second Par-
tition Treaty with the deliberate intention of tearing it up. But
as matters stood in November the temptation was too strong
for him. William, he thought, was paralysed by dissensions with
his parliament ; it seemed quite likely that the English would
acquiesce in the terms of the will, and would not be drawn into
a war for the benefit of the Hapsburg. He was under no obli-
gation to Leopold, since Leopold himself rejected the Partition
Treaty. Spain would be solidly on his side ; and as it happened,
he could with tolerable certainty rely on Savoy and on the elector
of Bavaria, who was the Dauphin's brother-in-law and was on
bad terms with the emperor.
For a time it seemed as if Louis's stroke would be successful.
The proclamation of Philip v. was received without opposition
throughout the Spanish dominions. William saw his The Bourbon
life's work of resistance to French aggression tottering, menace.
Even if the crowns of France and Spain were never to be united,
the fact remained that two Bourbon princes would share between
them all Western Europe, nearly all Italy, and the command
of the Western Mediterranean. Possessed of the whole sea-
board from the Scheldt to the Adriatic, they would be stronger
at sea than the maritime powers, and would dominate the ocean
Innes's Eng. Hist. — Vol. in. D
$6 William III.
as well as Europe. The absorption of Holland would be merely
a matter of time. And yet not only were the English blind to
the situation, but half the Dutch as well. William found him-
self faced with the gigantic task of overcoming English and
Dutch opposition and persuading the emperor to agree upon
a solution which would unite the powers in opposition to
France.
It is clear that at the moment William hardly hoped for more
than that Austria might win the adhesion of Naples, Sicily, and
William and Milan, and, thus strengthened, might assert her
the Tories. claim in the Netherlands. But also at the moment
it was impossible to go to war, and neither England nor Holland
in the circumstances had any alternative but to recognise Philip
as king of Spain. If the Whigs had been dominant in England
William might have hoped to carry them with him at once ;
but the Tories were dominant, and it was imperative that they
should be brought over. Godolphin and other Tories were re-
called to office. Parliament was dissolved, perhaps on the chance
that there might be some signs of a reaction in his favour, but
the new parliament was as Tory as the last. The most that
William could do was to conciliate that party in regard to
home affairs, and in foreign affairs to avoid all appearance
of dictation.
The king met his new parliament in February 1701 with an
invitation to devote their attention to the two urgent questions
1701. °* providing for the succession after Anne, and of
A new Tory providing against the dangers that might arise from
parliament. ^ Bourbon succession in Spain. The question
of the succession gave little trouble. The nearest Protes-
tant heir was quite evidently Sophia, widow of the first and
mother of the second elector of Hanover, and granddaughter
The Act of of James i. ; for there were no Protestant descend-
settiement. ants of Charles i. except William and Anne. The
Tories, however, in fixing the succession on a foreigner, attached
thereto the completion of those curtailments of the royal pre-
rogative which found favour with the Whigs, but which they
themselves would not have been willing to impose upon a king
The Approaching Struggle 51
ruling by right divine. The judges were thenceforth to be re-
movable only on an address from both Houses of parliament
instead of at the king's pleasure. Acceptance of office or emolu-
ments under the Crown was to cancel membership of the House
of Commons, though it was not to be a bar to re-election. Then
came a series of provisions which were in effect condemnations
of William's habitual practice. The sovereign was to be a member
of the Church of England. He was not to leave the country
without consent of parliament. He was not to go to war for
the defence of territories which did not belong to the Crown of
England. No foreigners, even if naturalised, were to be admitted
to office, to the Privy Council, or to parliament, or to receive
grants of lands. The provisions, however, did not apply to
William himself, but only to Anne's successors ; and he assented
without demur to the Act of Settlement.
The Act itself served as a partial safety-valve for Tory spite.
The king's attitude of moderation and self-restraint had a
markedly conciliatory effect ; and the Tories were The turning
forced to recognise that a reaction of popular senti- tide-
ment was in progress. From the county of Kent came the Kentish
petition, urging the Commons to vote supplies which would en-
able the king to show his allies that they could count on effective
support. The angry Commons declared that the petition was a
breach of privilege, and ordered the arrest of the persons who
had been commissioned to present it. By so doing they only
produced a fresh crop of petitions in a similar sense. The Tories
renewed their attacks on Somers, Orford (Russell) , and Montague
who had now become Viscount Halifax, on account of their share
in the Second Partition Treaty. In the form of the impeachment
which they brought forward, their virulence overreached itself ;
the managers of the impeachment, to which the Lords showed
themselves hostile, did not appear on the appointed day. The
Lords promptly dismissed the charges. A prorogation at mid-
summer suspended the quarrel between the Houses, but by this
time it was quite evident that public opinion had veered round,
and become definitely hostile to the factious attitude of the Tory
majority. The tide was setting in William's favour.
52 William III.
With a strange infatuation, Louis had in the meantime been
doing his best to strengthen William's hand. He had announced
The blunders that Philip's acceptance of the Spanish crown did
of Louis. not exclude him from the French succession. On
Philip's behalf, French troops occupied the barrier fortresses
in the Netherlands, turning out the Dutch garrisons, a proceed-
ing which united the Dutch in antagonism to him. He set about
arranging for a French monopoly of the Spanish trade, to the
exclusion of Dutch and English. He refused to consider the
concession of any compensation whatever to the Hapsburg.
Though William had not yet by any means carried England
completely with him, it was not very difficult in these circum-
stances to arrange the terms of a Grand Alliance. England and
Holland were not going to war, as Leopold would have liked
them to do, in order to give Austria the whole Spanish inheritance.
They proposed to demand adequate security for Holland in the
barrier fortresses, adequate commercial concessions for the
maritime powers, and only adequate compensation for the Haps-
burg. Since it was unsafe, as Marlborough pointed out, to leave
the Bourbons in Naples and Sicily, making them overwhelmingly
predominant in the Mediterranean, the Austrian compensation
should include Italy as well as the Netherlands. William had
realised that in the circumstances Marlborough was entirely to
be trusted, and had chosen him both to command the English
troops and to conduct negotiations ; a particularly wise measure,
since the earl was at this time looked upon as attached to the
Tory party and was intimately connected with Godolphin, whose
son had married one of his daughters.
At home the balance was beginning to lean in William's favour ;
but more than that could not be said. It was still extremely
The decisive doubtful whether he would get that whole-hearted
blunder. support which would be needful for carrying the
war to a decisive conclusion. Once more Louis came to the
rescue. In September, when the powers were signing the Grand
Alliance, James n. lay dying at St. Germain. By his deathbed,
Louis gave him the fateful promise that he would recognise
young James as king of England. The pledges of Ryswick were
The Approaching Struggle 53
forgotten in the impulse to a lordly act of generosity extremely
characteristic of the Grand Monarque. The effect was instan-
taneous. Whigs and Tories alike were fired with wrath at the
insolence of the French king who dared to dictate to England
on a question which England had decided for herself. Whigs
and Tories alike burned to avenge the insult to the national
honour. Louis's announcement was to all intents and purposes
a declaration of war ; he knew it, and followed it up by a move-
ment of troops, threatening the Dutch frontier. The proposals
of the Grand Alliance were not even submitted to him.
In November William was back in England, to be greeted by
a series of enthusiastically loyal addresses. Without hesitation
he dissolved parliament. The Whigs came back William's
with a smaller accession of strength than had been victory,
anticipated ; the Tories had an actual majority of four, but it
was only because they had transformed themselves into a war
party hardly less unanimous than the Whigs themselves. William
could appeal to both parties to lay aside party differences and
show a united front to the world. The Commons responded
loyally. They attainted the ' so-called Prince of Wales ' for
assuming the royal title ; they pronounced it treason to take
service under him. They imposed a new oath upon members
of parliament, office-holders, and others, abjuring ' James m.'
They voted supplies, 40,000 men for the army, and the same
number for the navy. They resolved that the allies should
be called upon to maintain the war until England should
receive satisfaction for the insult offered. William's triumph
was complete.
He had but a short time left to enjoy it. On 2ist February
his horse stumbled with him and he was thrown. The injury
seemed slight, and it was thought that he would soon
recover. But his health was of the feeblest. On the William's
ninth day there were feverish symptoms. On 7th death»
March he knew that he was dying. On the morning
of the gth he died. But he left behind him in John Churchill,
earl of Marlborough, the man whom he had chosen at the last
for the carrying out of his task, a diplomatist who was his equal,
54 William III.
and a soldier whose genius far transcended his own ; a man both
able and willing to do all and more than all that William could
have done to shatter the might of Louis of France.
V. COMMERCE AND THE NEW FINANCE
The reign of William in. is a landmark in our history for more
reasons than one. First, and most obviously, the Revolution
established permanently the principle of a con-
character- fl stitutional monarchy, although it was very far from
istics of making the Crown a mere figurehead. William was
not one of the kings who ' reign but do not govern.'
It was not till the accession of the house of Hanover that the
principal direction of affairs passed from the king to ministers
who were in actual fact responsible not to the Crown but to
parliament. In the second place, it was in William's reign that
England was definitely drawn into the vortex of European
politics. The accession of the Dutch stadtholder to the throne
of England involved the country definitely in that struggle with
France which was not terminated until Waterloo, although there
were suspensions of hostilities of longer or shorter duration.
-From 1689 to 1815, England was at war with France for more
than sixty-two years out of the hundred and twenty-seven. In
the third place, it was during William's reign that England
definitely took the place of the First Sea Power, finally dis-
tancing both France and Holland. That naval supremacy was
to be a decisive factor in the whole series of subsequent wars.
Fourthly, the mercantile ascendency became as pronounced
as the naval ascendency. France remained behind ; Holland
was overtaken and passed. How far this was due to the Naviga-
its influence ^on Acts of the Commonwealth and the Restoration
on commerce is a matter of dispute ; it is equally possible to find
Lce* the explanation in the free hand which English trad-
ing companies were allowed as compared with those which were
under the artificial control of the French and Dutch governments.
The fact remains that the English mercantile marine developed
Commerce and the Neiv Finance 55
tremendously during William's war in spite of the enormous
amount of damage wrought by the privateers which issued in
numbers from the French ports even while the English navies
kept the French navy inactive. Thanks to this development, the
English treasury was able to bear the drain of the war very
much better than that of any continental power, and even to
carry through the troublesome and costly business of recoinage
while the war was in progress. And this brings us to the fifth
notable characteristic of the reign, the reorganisation of National
Finance upon a new system of credit.
On the three first heads enough has already been said in the
course of the narrative. It remains to deal with the other two
which are intimately connected with each other.
Commerce :
As to commerce, the period is particularly significant the East
in the development of the East India Company. India
Incidentally, it is to be noted that the establishment
of Calcutta as the third and ultimately the greatest of the English
trading centres or factories dates from this reign. While James II.
was still king, the old factory at Hugli came to an end. The
company quarrelled with the powerful Mogul Aurangzib ; the
English were compelled to evacuate Hugli, and assuredly at that
time no one was dreaming of sending to India armies and fleets
to attempt the conquest of an empire apparently in India,
so mighty as that of the Mogul. Nevertheless, the English
envoys succeeded in impressing upon Aurangzib that the Eng-
lish traders were a source of wealth to his empire, and that if
he pursued the quarrel English ships of war would quite certainly
make it impossible for faithful Moslems to make the pilgrimage
to Mecca — a practice on which Aurangzib, himself a fanatical
Moslem, set great store. Aurangzib was convinced, and in 1690
permitted the company to set up a new factory where Calcutta
now stands, some way further down the river than the old factory.
In 1695 the company was allowed to place the factory in a state
of defence. To this fortified position the name was given of
Fort William, in honour of the king of England.
In other respects, too, the company was passing through a
serious crisis. We related in an earlier chapter how the inter-
56 William III.
lopers, the ' free-traders/ who wished to trade for themselves,
not as the members of a joint stock company, attempted in the
Economic ^me of the Commonwealth to procure the aboli-
attacka on tion of the company's monopoly, though without
ompany. success When William was king, the company
was vehemently assailed by interlopers who wished to share
or to capture the trade, and by theorists who denounced
the trade itself as contrary to the public advantage. As it
happened, the company was very much in Tory hands and was
a valuable asset for the Tory party. Therefore, the Whigs were
the friends of the enemies of the company, and at the same time
were much more closely wedded to the economic theory upon
which the trade itself was condemned. The orthodox economy
of the day held that that trade was bad for the country which
carried bullion out of it in exchange for goods. India did not
want English products, therefore Indian goods were bought
with English bullion. The precious metals were carried out of
the country in exchange for goods, whereas what the country
wanted was more of the precious metals, more currency for pay-
ing its expenses. The apologists of the company, notably
Charles Devenant, answered that while it was true that gold and
silver went to India in exchange for the goods, the goods them-
selves were brought to England largely for re-export. From Eng-
land they went to other countries, where they were exchanged for
much more gold and silver than had been paid for them in India.
Consequently the Indian trade did, in fact, increase instead of
diminishing the supply of the precious metals in England.
The economists of the company defeated their rivals ; but the
company itself could not defeat its own trade rivals. During
The crisis : their period of ascendency the Whigs succeeded in
1697-1701. procuring a charter for a rival company of inter-
lopers, who were prepared to pay a larger price than the old
company for the privileges of a monopoly. But the effect was
that while the new company was ruining the trade of the old,
it could not step into the other's shoes, and was very soon in
danger of itself becoming bankrupt. Fortunately, both sides
realised the destructive character of the struggle on which they
Commerce and the New Finance 57
were engaged, and at the close of 1701 the two companies were
amalgamated under a fresh charter as the Honourable East
India Company which, under the conditions of its institution,
presently came to be regarded as a Whig rather than a Tory
asset. But no later attempt was made to wreck it.
The wealth and strength of the English mercantile community,
always convinced that its interests lay in the suppression of com-
petition, enabled it completely to destroy all pros- Scotland,
pects of commercial progress in Ireland, and very Ireland,
seriously to check that of Scotland. The Naviga- English
tion Acts closed the English market to goods carried commerce,
in Scottish or Irish bottoms ; English tariffs shut out Scottish
and Irish goods which competed with home produce. Irish
manufactures or products which might otherwise have competed
with the English in foreign markets were suppressed or their
export was prohibited ; though similar measures could not be
taken against the Scots, Scotland' being an independent state.
The Union of the Crowns had finally cut Scotland off from the
privileges of French trade which she enjoyed in the ancient
days of the French alliance. The quarrels of the English and
Dutch had gone far to spoil her trade with Holland. The only
effective form of retaliation in which the Scots could indulge
was by means of a very extensive smuggling traffic with the
English colonies in North America.
Scotland, in short, felt that the union with England, as matters
stood, was extremely detrimental to her commercial interests ;
and that feeling was intensified by the disastrous TheDarien
story of the Darien Scheme. A plan was formed, Scheme,
originating with some Scots in London, notably 1695>
William Paterson, the real originator of the Bank of England,
for the formation of a great company trading to Africa, the
Indies, and America, which was to rival the East India Company.
Very large privileges were included in the charter, and half the
stock was to be appropriated exclusively to residents in Scotland.
The Act conveying the charter was sanctioned by the commis-
sioner Tweeddale, without being referred to the king himself,
who, at the time, the summer of 1695, was in Flanders. As
58 William III.
soon as subscriptions were invited in England the unreserved
half of the stock was promptly taken up as well as the Scottish
half. But the English parliament had hardly met in November
before both Houses were clamouring against the disturbance to
English trade which would be effected by the Scottish company.
Addresses were presented to William, whose reply manifestly
expressed displeasure at the company's proceedings ; Tweeddale
was deprived of his office as commissioner. The governors of
the English colonies were in effect warned to place every possible
obstacle in the way of the Scots. The English subscribers took
alarm and withdrew ; the Scots responded by sinking every
penny they could raise in the speculation.
In an evil hour Paterson's plan was adopted for planting a
colony on the Isthmus of Darien, in the belief that by holding
Ruin of that position the company would practically com-
the scheme. mand the world's trade ; regardless of the fact that
the Spaniards looked upon Darien as their property. The scheme
was, in fact, doomed to failure ; no supplies could be obtained
from the English colonies ; the Spaniards came down on the
settlement ; and the whole business ended in a total collapse
which had cost Scotland many hundreds of lives and more than
a quarter of a million of money — a loss far more serious and
inflicting far more suffering than would have been entailed in
England by a loss ten times as great. All Scotland attributed
the disaster to the hostile action of England, and saw in it a
further proof that a king of England and Scotland would in-
evitably allow the interests of the smaller and poorer kingdom
to be completely overridden when they infringed upon those of
the larger and richer. The collapse of the Darien Scheme im-
pressed upon nearly all Scots the conviction that the Union under
existing conditions was intolerable. William himself was con-
scious of the reality of the grievance, and was anxious to bring
about an incorporating union which would remove it ; but it was
not till the following reign that, in the face of the pressing danger
of a separation of the crowns after the death of Queen Anne, the
legislative Union of the countries became an accomplished fact.
The prolonged wars of King William's reign involved a per-
Commerce and the New Finance 59
petually increasing national expenditure which the increasing
wealth of the country was well able to meet, but not by the
old methods. The old taxes upon land and personal The land
property, expressed in the form of ' subsidies/ had tax» 1692>
been based upon an assessment which was entirely out of date.
The subsidy was, so to speak, a unit of taxation drawn from
this source. The yield of one subsidy was £70,000, of which the
districts and localities into which the country was mapped out
each provided its fixed quota. The amount of personal property
and the value of land in each district had changed entirely ;
some were very much poorer than at the time of the original
assessment, others were very much richer. Consequently, the
taxable capacity of the former reached its limit when the burden
was hardly felt in the latter. In 1792 a fresh assessment was
made so that the burden might be distributed equally, with the
result that a much larger amount could be raised without ex-
cessive pressure upon any one. The vanished subsidy was re-
placed by a land tax of so many shillings in the pound, which
became the main source of revenue, the assessment of personal
property proving a task too difficult for effective utility. At four
shillings in the pound the land tax produced about £2,000,000.
This, however, was not sufficient to meet the new demands of
national expenditure.
Hitherto the year's expenditure had been met out of the year's
revenue ; that is, the amount intended to be expended in the
year had been voted for the year, money being Government
borrowed pending the collection of the taxes, to be borrowing,
repaid when the taxes came in. The Crown had got itself! into
debt at various times by borrowing more than the returns would
meet, and additional taxation was then required for paying off
arrears. But it was already being found in the second half of
the seventeenth century that war was a much more costly affair
than it had been in the past. The expense of a year or two of
war might perhaps be borne with difficulty by spreading the
taxation which was to pay for it over a slightly longer period.
Charles n. on one occasion cut the knot, disastrously enough,
by the Stop of the Exchequer, which had amounted almost to
6o William III.
a repudiation of the government's debt to the goldsmiths. But
a government which could play tricks of that kind would soon
find itself unable to borrow at all ; and when wars went on year
after year the annual taxation could by no means meet the
annual expenditure.
The method devised by Charles Montague in 1692 to meet this
difficulty was the creation of the National Debt. When pro-
The National visi°n nad been made by taxation for so much as
Debt, created was practicable of the anticipated expenditure, the
1692p balance was borrowed ; but not on a short loan to
be repaid out of the next year's taxes. By the first plan adopted
in 1692, the lenders were to receive a life annuity in return for
a loan, £10 a year for every £100 lent, reduced after a few years
to £7. The amount asked for and raised in this year was
£1,000,000. Instead of paying back the lump, the government
incurred a charge of £100,000 per annum, diminishing with the
death of each subscriber to the loan, until it disappeared alto-
gether with the death of the last subscriber. Certain duties
were earmarked, and their produce was set aside annually for
the payment of the annuities.
The next stage was arrived at when, instead of undertaking
to pay annuities in return for the loan, the government did not
Its pledge itself to repayment of the principal, but
extension, guaranteed a substantial rate of interest, secured
1694' upon earmarked taxes. So long as the government
was stable the interest was secure, and the loan was a safe in-
vestment. Any one who had acquired government stock, but
wished to recover his capital, would readily find purchasers for
a stock which brought good interest and could be reckoned
absolutely secure. Thus whenever a government should want
money to meet an abnormal expenditure, it became possible,
within limits, to obtain the amount not by additional taxation
but by borrowing ; although whenever money was borrowed it
involved a permanent charge upon the revenue for interest,
except in so far as it might be found practicable to pay off some
of the debt out of surplus revenue. The soundness of the security
made it increasingly easy to borrow upon terms less favourable
Commerce and the New Finance 61
to the lender ; so that in the course of a couple of centuries the
interest came down from 8 per cent, to 2i per cent., and for the
greater part of the period stood at 3 per cent. The government
never has, in fact, had difficulty in providing for the interest,
in spite of the huge increase of the debt itself, incurred partly
through the powerful temptation to every government to meet
exceptional outlay by borrowing instead of from revenue, and
thus to throw the burden of additional taxation upon future
generations, and its unpopularity upon future ministries.
The development which provided annual interest in place of
annuities took place in 1694. It was accompanied by the crea-
tion of the Bank of England, a scheme suggested
by William Paterson. On this occasion the amount Of England,
of the loan required was £1,200,000. The sub- created
scribers of the loan were formed into a banking cor-
poration, whose business was not trading but dealing in bullion
and bills of exchange, in lending and borrowing. The bank
was debarred from lending money to the Crown except under
parliamentary sanction. As the annuities had been secured
upon an increase in the beer duties, so the interest of 8 per cent,
was now secured upon increased customs duties. Loans made
to the government on this system were the ' Funded Debt,' but
in addition to these there was soon a very large unsecured or
floating debt, which, unlike the funded debt, commanded a very
low price in the market.
The wealth of the Bank of England made it a formidably
powerful corporation. The circumstances of its creation not
only placed it in Whig hands, but bound it over its political
completely to the Whig party, or at least to anti- importance.
Jacobitism. Indeed, the whole system of the government loans
tended to guarantee the solid support of the moneyed interests
to the Protestant succession, because it was the general belief
that if the Stuarts were restored they would repudiate debts
incurred by government largely with the object of preventing
their return. The Tories, among whom there was always at
least an element favourable to a Stuart restoration, were pro-
portionately antagonistic to the bank ; so also were the gold-
62 William III.
smiths, who had hitherto been the principal lenders, and saw that
the new institution would deprive them of that function ; so
that on more than one occasion the wrecking of the bank was
attempted, though the attempts were successfully foiled.
The establishment of the bank introduced paper money ; that
is to say, the directors were authorised to issue bank-notes or
Papermoney. promises to pay cash on demand which passed into
ready circulation as a medium of exchange. A piece of paper
which could be exchanged for gold on presentation at the bank
was of the same use to its possessor as its equivalent in coins
of the realm, so long at least as the bank's promise to pay could
be relied upon. At the same time it was sufficient for the bank
to have in its cellars gold enough to maintain an adequate
margin in excess of the amount of notes that were reasonably
likely to be presented at one. time.
The bank had hardly been established when two attacks were
made upon it. The first was the Tory invention of a rival Land
Bank, which found supporters among all the opponents of the
The Land Bank of England, and especially among landholders
Bank fiasco. wno resented the financial power of the commercial
community. The basis of this amazing scheme was the assump-
tion that land worth £100 a year was worth a hundred years'
purchase, or £10,000, and could be transmuted into £10,000 in
cash. On the security of land whose value was calculated on
this basis, the Land Bank was prepared to lend £2,500,000 to
the government at 7 per cent. The Bank of England, whose
directors knew something about business, were not prepared to
outbid the projectors. The formation of the bank was authorised,
but the scheme was so palpably absurd that the subscription
produced only a few thousands instead of two and a half millions,
and the whole thing collapsed.
More dangerous was the move of the goldsmiths. In 1695
the government determined upon the issue of a new currency.
The new Since the restoration of the coinage by Elizabeth,
coinage, no debased coin had been issued from the mint ;
1696' but the coin in circulation was liable not only to
wear and tear in the course of years, but to actual clipping. It
Commerce and the New Finance 63
had not been called in, and the result was that there was now in
circulation a vast amount of coin worth infinitely less than its
face value. The sound coins were hoarded or went out of the
country, since within the country the purchasing power of the
inferior coins was the same. In effect the purchasing power of
a good shilling was no more than the purchasing power of a
shilling which had only sixpennyworth of silver in it. When
a nominal shilling was only worth sixpence, a shilling had to be
paid for an amount of bread which was worth only sixpennyworth
of silver. The cost of living rose in proportion ; the money wage
consequently rose also, so that the cost of production was further
increased ; but it did not rise in proportion to the diminished
purchasing power of the coin, so that the wage-earner was poorer
than before, less able to meet the cost of living. Every one
suffered, but the poor most of all.
Montague was bold enough to advocate and carry through a
scheme for recalling the whole of the coinage and issuing an en-
tirely new currency, the State paying the cost. Defeatoftiie
When the new unclippable coins were issued the goldsmiths'
beneficial results were immediately felt. But during consPirac3r-
the interval in 1696, while the mint was at work on the new
coins, and the old coins had ceased to be legal tender, bullion
was locked up. The goldsmiths seized their opportunity, bought
up all the bank paper they could lay their hands on, and pre-
sented the ' promises to pay at sight ' at the bank when there
was no bullion to pay with. The bank declined to meet the
demand, which it treated as a conspiracy ; it would only under-
take to pay as fast as the mint provided it with the new coin.
Supported by the government, the bank weathered the storm ;
in three months it had in effect cleared its obligations. The re-
coinage cost the country nearly three millions, but it would have
been worth doing at almost any price. The bank was saved,
and was permanently established as a solid and invaluable
national institution.
CHAPTER II. QUEEN ANNE
I. BLENHEIM, GIBRALTAR, AND RAMILLIES
THE same parliament, in accordance with a provision made at
an earlier date in the late king's reign, was authorised to continue
1702 lor six months of the new reign. The parties in the
The country Commons were evenly balanced, and they continued
to show the same loyalty, and readiness to work
in concert, as in the hour of William's triumph and death. The
alarm caused among the members of the Grand Alliance by the
possibility of a change in the English policy, and the satisfaction
which Louis must have felt at the removal of his most relentless
opponent, were qualified if not altogether removed when it was
found that no change of policy was contemplated. There was
no thought in any quarter of disturbing Anne's succession ; Anne
was almost wholly under the influence of the countess of Marl-
borough ; and Maryborough's policy was the policy of William.
The formal declaration of war was hardly postponed by the
king's death, and the earl was very soon back in Holland to take
up the command as captain-general of the forces
a Tory in the northern area. At home the influence of
parliament Rochester, the queen's uncle, gave a considerable
and council. . . , . .
majority of the seats in the council to Tones, and
the Whigs were but slightly represented ; a dissolution of parlia-
ment gave the Tories a solid majority in the Commons when the
Houses again assembled. Marlborough, however, was the real
head of the government ; Godolphin, whose son was married
to one of his daughters, was his ally, and if it may be so expressed,
his minister. The association of Marlborough and Godolphin
with the Tories was accidental ; they stood before everything
else for the war-party. Rochester and Nottingham were at
04
Blenheim, Gibraltar, and Ramillies 65
best reluctant supporters of the war, and therein they differed
from the bulk of the Tories ; there was no corresponding division
in the Whig ranks ; and it followed that the tendency was for
Marlborough and Godolphin to rely increasingly upon the party
from which they got a warm and not a lukewarm support.
Marlborough had inherited the main features of his war policy
from William, though they were modified on the one hand by
his own superb genius, and on the other by the fact Mariborough.
that he was neither king of England nor stadtholder of Holland.
William could conduct a campaign without risk of impeachment
in England, or of direct interference from the States-General
of the United Provinces. If Marlborough disregarded public
opinion in England, he might be attacked and recalled ; and
in the field, his command of the Dutch armies was subject to
the control of a council of Dutch civilians called field deputies.
Hence, in carrying out a far-reaching programme, he was much
more hampered than William had been.
At the moment when what we may call Marlborough's war
opened, the battle between Austria and France was already in
progress. Louis, as we have seen, had captured the 1701
very uncertain support of Victor Amadeus, duke Eugene
of Savoy, whose two daughters were married or y*
betrothed to his own two elder grandsons. Savoy gave
him the entry into Italy ; and by the end of 1701 Prince
Eugene of Savoy, the Austrian commander, with a rela-
tively small Austrian force, was in North Italy, more than
holding his own against the French marshal Villeroy, but
in constant danger of being overwhelmed by large French re-
inforcements. Leopold was half paralysed, partly by the ex-
tremely defective military organisation of Austria at the time,
and partly by the revolt of Hungary on his rear. 1702< Marl.
North Italy was one of the. four war areas, which borough's
were : first, the Spanish Netherlands with the dis- plans*
tricts lying between the Lower Rhine and the Meuse ; second,
the Upper Rhine, where the French held Strasburg ; third,
North Italy ; and fourth, Spain, though here as yet the allies
had no effective foothold. Between Austria and the French on
Innes's Eng. Hist. — Vol. in. E
66 Queen Anne
the Upper Rhine lay minor German principalities, who were
attached to the Grand Alliance ; and, much more important than
any of the others, Bavaria, which was on the point of openly
joining Louis. Marlborough's immediate object was to secure
the line of the Meuse, shutting the northern French army into
the Spanish Netherlands, and preventing them from making a
flank attack upon Holland ma Cologne ; cutting them off from
co-operation with the French army on the Upper Rhine, and
at the same time opening the way for co-operation between his
own army and the Austrians on the Danube. This was the
programme on land ; but Marlborough had also grasped, as no
one else had done, the naval policy of establishing the English
supremacy in the Mediterranean, which would cut off France
from maritime communication with either Spain or Italy.
By the autumn of 1702 the superior numbers of the French,
reinforced by the able general Vendome, had driven Eugene in
His success- North Italy back into a defensive position behind
fulcampaign. the river Adige. Jn the north Marlborough had
still to prove his rank as a great commander ; his position had
been secured more by William's choice and his wife's influence
with Anne than by his own achievements. Hampered by the
Dutch field deputies, who had no idea beyond the protection
of the Dutch frontier, and were mortally afraid of risking pitched
battles, Marlborough nevertheless succeeded by masterly man-
oeuvring, which quite misled the French marshal Boufflers as to
his real objective, in capturing the forts on the Meuse from Venloo
to Liege. His reputation was enormously raised, and his success
was rewarded with a dukedom.
A naval expedition was dispatched to the coast of Spain,
having as its primary object the capture of Cadiz, or, failing Cadiz,
Rooke, Cadiz, of some other port such as Gibraltar. Cadiz had
andVigo. almost certainly been fixed upon by William, as
being the position securing the entry to the Mediterranean, and
menacing the French fleet at Toulon ; the capacities of Gibraltar
as a port were not yet fully known. The commander of the ex-
pedition was Sir George Rooke, who never appreciated the root
idea of Mediterranean strategy. He neither liked nor under-
Blenheim, Gibraltar, and Ramillies 67
stood his job. He would not work in harmony with the military
commander who accompanied him, the duke of Ormonde, and
the attack upon Cadiz was a fiasco. He refused to attempt
Gibraltar, and was on the point of making his way home again,
when the news came that a Spanish treasure fleet had slipped
past him to Vigo. Rooke turned upon Vigo ; the boom which
defended the harbour was broken through, and in a brilliantly
fought engagement the escort of warships was destroyed, and
the treasure fleet was burnt or sunk ; though not till treasure
to the value of about a million had been secured. Not much
credit attached to Rooke personally for the success, as he was
incapacitated by gout when the action took place. Still, in
spite of the fiasco at Cadiz, the English had ample reason to con-
gratulate themselves on the results both of the military and of
the naval campaign.
The success at Vigo had the further effect of transforming
Portugal from a neutral into an ally of the Grand Alliance. And
this in its turn was perhaps the deciding factor in 1703.
a change of the policy of the Alliance, which was ' cuariea III.'
adopted in 1703. The allies had entered upon the war with no
intention of depriving the Bourbon prince of the crown of Spain ;
but they now resolved to establish the Archduke Charles as
King Charles in.
In 1703 Marlborough's schemes for capturing Antwerp, push-
ing the French further back, securing the Lower Rhine, and
opening communications with the emperor, were ITOS.
to a great extent foiled by the blunders of Dutch JJjJ^ h,g
generals and the obstinacy of the Dutch field de- fetters,
puties. He secured the Lower Rhine as far south as Bonn, but
in the Netherlands themselves the Dutch took alarm, and vetoed
the operations he had planned. Eugene was being pushed out
of Italy by the superior force of Vendome. The Bavarian elector
definitely joined Louis, and a grand converging attack was
planned by the French directed upon Vienna. The French under
Villars were to advance from Strasburg and effect a junction with
the elector. Vendome was to clear Eugene out of Italy, and was
then to effect a junction with the elector and Villars. The march
68 Queen Anne
to Vienna would be practically open, and its capture would bring
the emperor to his knees. The scheme broke down. Villars
Max advanced, but the elector turned aside in order to
Emmanuel secure for himself the Tyrol which Louis had pro-
in the Tyrol. mjsec[ hjm . the Tyrolese proved loyal to the em-
peror, and drove Max Emmanuel out ignominiously. Vendome
did not come, because the duke of Savoy changed sides at the
critical moment and rose in his rear, compelling him to return
to Italy instead of pursuing Eugene's retreat. Vienna was safe
for the time being, happily, since Marlborough could have made
no move for its defence.
It is clear that the duke's desire was to send a powerful fleet
into the Mediterranean, with, in his own mind, the ultimate
The fleet and intention of striking at Toulon itself. But Marl-
the Mediter- borough had not the direction of naval affairs. The
ranean. fleets were not ready to sail till long after the
intended date. The force ultimately dispatched to the Medi-
terranean was really insufficient to carry out any very great
stroke ; there was no one ready to co-operate with it ; and, in
fact, it did little beyond preventing the French fleet from emerg-
ing out of Toulon to operate on the Spanish coast. In the course
of the summer the allies, in accordance with the terms made with
the king of Portugal, declared the Archduke Charles king of
Spain. Arrangements were made for Rooke to convoy him to
Portugal, which was to be the base of this ' Carlist ' campaign,
early in the next year.
In 1704 the crisis arrived. The French plan of campaign in
1703 had revealed the conspicuous danger. That plan, with
modifications which rendered it much less complex
1704. .
French plan and more apparently certain of success, was now
of a Vienna to be put into operation. The elector of Bavaria
with the French troops under Marsin, who had taken
the place of Villars, lay at Ulm on the Upper Danube with the road
to Vienna open. On the Upper Rhine about Strasburg lay Tallard
with 35,000 men. Prince Lewis of Baden was posted on the
German side of the Rhine at Stolhofen. According to the plan
Tallard was to cover the advance of the army upon Vienna
Blenheim, Gibraltar, and Ramillies 69
against any flank attack. Eugene's force which Vendome had
pushed out of Italy was far from being strong enough to prevent
the movement. The French army on the Meuse, reinforced by
Villeroy, was to give Marlborough and the Dutch sufficient
occupation. The Hungarians were to attack Leopold in the
rear. Failure seemed almost impossible.
Nevertheless, Marlborough and Eugene, generals who never
failed to work in perfect harmony, had devised their counter-
stroke. They were to join hands and crush the
Franco-Bavarian army. According to Maryborough's borough's
scheme there was to be a simultaneous attack upon copter-
Toulon by land and sea, by Rooke's fleet and Savoy's
army. This diversion, in fact, came to nothing ; but the move-
ment of Marlborough and Eugene developed as the Blenheim
campaign.
Secrecy was of the essence of the plan. It was absolutely
certain that neither the Dutch nor the parliament in England
would permit, if they could possibly prevent, the The
departure of Marlborough from the Netherlands with B1^he?1^ .
his main force. It was necessary for him to make Donau-worth,
his move before the government suspected what June-
he was doing. His ostensible design was to operate upon the
Moselle, on the flank of the French army in the Netherlands.
This could be understood by Dutch and English and French
as designed for the protection of the United Provinces. Marl-
borough could work up the Rhine as far as Coblenz without
arousing suspicions of his further designs. He had attached to
his force sundry German regiments ; but the bulk were British.
The Dutch themselves were not to take part in the operations
on the Moselle, but were to attend to their own frontiers. It was
only at the end of May that the fact became suddenly apparent
that the duke was advancing by forced marches from Coblenz
in the direction of the Danube. At Mondelsheim he met Eugene
and Lewis of Baden, the imperial commander. It was arranged
that Eugene should remain at Stolhofen to hold it and keep watch
over Tallard. On nth June (O.S.) Marlborough and the main
army of Lewis effected a junction and threatened Ulm, from
Blenheim, Gibraltar, and Ramillies 71
which the French and Bavarians fell back to Augsburg. Marl-
borough's objective was Donauworth. on the Danube, by seizing
which he could interpose between the French and Vienna.
Although he was much hampered by the stolidity of his fellow
commander Lewis, Marlborough succeeded in forcing the Schel-
lenberg lines which covered Donauworth after some very hard
fighting on 2ist June. The elector entrenched himself at
Augsburg, awaiting reinforcements, while Marlborough ravaged
Bavaria and prepared to besiege Ingolstadt.
The news of Schellenberg set Tallard in motion to join the
elector, marching by the south bank of the Danube, while
Eugene made a parallel movement from Stolhofen
on the north side. At the moment when Tallard Marlborough
effected his junction at Augsburg on 26th July, and Eugene,
Eugene reached Hochstadt. Marlborough and
Eugene then succeeded in getting rid of Lewis by dispatching
him with a detachment to the siege of Ingolstadt. On ist August
Eugene and the duke had concentrated close to Donauworth,
while the French advancing from Augsburg also crossed to the
north side of the Danube, and took up a position on the west
of the marshy stream called the Nebel, between the villages of
Lutzingen and Blenheim, with Oberglau in the centre, intending
not to give battle but to cut off Marlborough's supplies.
Marlborough and Eugene, however, resolved to force an en-
gagement. vStarting before dawn the allies moved forwards ;
by eight o'clock the French discovered that the
allied forces were facing them with the Nebel be- Blenheim,
tween. Tallard with the French right held the ground
from Blenheim to Oberglau. Marsin in the centre
and the elector of Bavaria on the left stretched from Oberglau to
Lutzingen. Eugene took the command of the allied right, who
were to hold the French left in play. Contrary to custom the
cavalry of both armies was massed in the centre. Midday,
however, was passed before the armies were ready to engage.
The elector succeeded in holding back Eugene's attack on the
French left ; on their right Marlborough's infantry made a
series of furious attacks on the strong position at Blenheim under
72 Queen Anne
the command of ' Salamander ' Cutts, while Marlborough was
performing the difficult operation of carrying his cavalry, with
some infantry to cover them, across the Nebel on the centre.
Then by fierce cavalry charges he shattered the French centre,
while Eugene pressed his attack on their left ; and Marlborough
was able to sweep up the French right. Vast numbers were
driven into the Danube, cut to pieces, or taken prisoners ; only
a few escaped. The elector retreated or fled to the Rhine.
The grand army which was to have marched to Vienna was
virtually annihilated. Bavaria was lost, and for the rest of the
war the French were shut behind the Rhine. In a few weeks
the triumphant Marlborough was back in the Netherlands, leav-
ing Eugene to take up the extremely difficult task of reorganis-
ing the Austrian army. The victory of Blenheim had entirely
altered the character of the war (2nd August, O.S. ; I3th August,
N.S.).
Rooke, after taking the Archduke Charles, or King Charles in.
as he was called, to Lisbon in February, received his open and
his secret instructions. His business was to main-
1704.
The fleet in tain a strong fleet in the Mediterranean, to prevent
the Mediter- the French from capturing Nice, the port of Savoy,
to engage and destroy the French fleet if opportunity
offered, and incidentally to operate on the Spanish coast within
the Straits, in the interests of the land campaigning, which would
develop from the arrival of Charles in the Peninsula. The secret
instructions gave him Toulon as the real objective. Sir Cloudesley
Shovell, the commander of the Channel Fleet, was, if in time,
to prevent the Brest fleet from getting to sea and joining the
Toulon fleet ; and, if it had already put out, was to pursue it.
The Toulon scheme was made abortive, because the duke of
Savoy refused to move, choosing to remain on the defensive
against the French army in North Italy. When Shovell ap-
proached Brest he found that the French fleet already had a
long start of him. They got into the Mediterranean, and by
faster sailing escaped Rooke, who vainly attempted to engage
them, and made their way to Toulon. Rooke and Shovell,
however, effected a junction at Cape St. Mary, after which they
Blenheim, Gibraltar, and R ami Hies 73
proposed entering the Straits and seeking an opportunity for
bringing the whole French fleet to action. In accordance with
their instructions, however, they were prepared to Capture of
operate on the Spanish coast on behalf of the Gibraltar,
allied kings of Spain and Portugal. They would 21stjuly-
not attack Cadiz, as was suggested, because the king could not
give them the necessary co-operation by land ; but the oppor-
tunity for seizing Gibraltar presented itself. The place was
weakly garrisoned and weakly fortified. Rooke prepared to
overwhelm it, summoned it to surrender in the name of King
Charles on 2ist July, and, being defied, bombarded it for six
hours on the following day, and captured it. Only a small
garrison could be left to make the best of the position whose
inadequate fortifications had already suffered severely by the
bombardment. The French fleet came out from Toulon under
Admiral Toulouse, hoping to recover it. On I3th August the
two fleets met and fought each other off Malaga. Both were
badly battered and both claimed the victory, but Toulouse went
back to Toulon.
From that moment the effective command of the Mediterranean
lay with the allies. But if Gibraltar had been won by the English
for King Charles, it is tolerably clear that from the England and
time of its capture England intended to retain it for Gibraltar,
herself. From that day to this Gibraltar has remained in British
hands ; and though during the autumn and winter great efforts
were made to dispossess the English garrison which was com-
manded by the gallant and able prince Henry of Hesse-Darmstadt,
the most dangerous of them was foiled by the timely arrival of
Admiral Leake's squadron. A key to the Mediterranean was
secured ; and the abandonment of Tangier by Charles n. was
remedied, though it was still necessary to obtain a port with
larger capacities for the permanent maintenance of a strong
fleet in the Mediterranean all the year round.
Overwhelming as the victory at Blenheim had been, the next
year, 1705, was almost a blank. Every move in the Netherlands
designed or attempted by Marlborough was frustrated by the
deliberate misconduct of the Dutch generals, which ultimately
74 Queen Anne
brought its own nemesis, since they disgusted the Dutch as well
as the English ; the worst of them were dismissed, and, com-
1705 paratively speaking, Marlborough in 1706 had a free
Peterborough hand. The allies, however, gained some advantage
in the Peninsula, where the eccentric Lord Peter-
borough was sent to take command of the small English con-
tingent. Peterborough succeeded in capturing Barcelona ; and
before the end of the year Catalonia, which was generally hostile
to Castile, had attached itself to the cause of Charles in.
In Italy matters went badly for the allies in 1705, in which
year Leopold of Austria died and was succeeded by his elder
1706 son Joseph. But in 1706 the Italian command was
Eugene again assigned to Eugene. The French had no
111 ^' general worthy to be named in the same breath with
either Eugene or Marlborough, each of whom knew that he could
rely absolutely on the other to work with him in harmony and
loyalty. Marlborough conceived the design of making North
Italy the main field of battle for 1706, and of joining Eugene there
himself with 20,000 British troops, sweeping the French out
of the country, and, in concert with the fleet, seizing Toulon.
Audacious as the plan was, he had almost succeeded in persuad-
ing the States-General to accede to it, when the Dutch were
seized with a panic lest Lewis of Baden should fail to cover the
southern frontier, and the whole scheme had to be given up.
Marlborough remained in the Netherlands ; but Eugene, single-
handed, conducted in Italy a compaign so brilliant that in
September he had relieved Turin, and as far as Italy itself was
concerned, the object of Marlborough's proposed campaign was
practically accomplished.
In the Netherlands the duke's freedom of action was not
fettered as it had been in the previous campaign. Villeroy was
enticed from his entrenchments, and Marlborough
campaign found his opportunity to engage him at the battle
of Ramiiiies, of Ramillies. While apparently developing his
attack upon the French left and centre, to support
which the French right was weakened, he transferred a mass
of troops from his own centre to his own left — a movement
Blenheim, Gibraltar, and Ramillies 75
concealed from the enemy by rising ground — and was thus
enabled to hurl an overwhelming force upon the French right,
which was totally shattered. The line was rolled up, broke, and
fled, the defeat became a rout, and the rout a sauve gui peut.
At Blenheim the heaviest fighting had fallen to the lot of the
British troops ; at Ramillies most of the English regiments did
not come into action till late in the day, the Dutch Results of
having to do most of the work. But the British tne campaign,
troops had already made their reputation ; Villeroy had
strengthened his own left at the expense of his right, because
the red-coats at the beginning of the action were conspicuous
upon the allied right. It is hardly true to say that the English
regiments had not hitherto made a name for themselves in
continental fighting ; the Ironsides had shown their quality in
1658, and the English troops had fought magnificently under
William. But it was Blenheim which made Europe in general
realise that no better troops could be raised anywhere than those
which came from across the Channel.
At Ramillies Marlborough had set Villeroy on the run ; the
next fortnight saw the French entirely cleared out of Brabant
and Flanders, with the allies in possession of all the towns and
forts with very few exceptions ; and those few fell before the end
of September. Brussels, Ghent, Bruges, Antwerp, Oudenarde,
and Ostend were among the captures which followed upon the
victory of Ramillies.
In Spain Peterborough had passed the winter in performing
a series of surprising exploits of no very great value. Charles
was in Barcelona, to which a strong French force The relief
laid siege. The Toulon fleet came out to support of Barcelona,
the besiegers, and Leake's winter squadron, till reinforced, was
not strong enough to challenge it. A fresh squadron, how-
ever, under Byng, arrived from England just in time. Peter-
borough, who was on the worst possible terms with Charles, at
first tried to divert the admirals from the vigorous relief of Bar-
celona, having a plan of his own for a march on Madrid. Leake
and Byng, however, having a more just appreciation of the im-
portance of Barcelona, ignored Peterborough's instructions, and
76 Queen Anne
made for the beleaguered city at full speed, being convinced that
not a moment ought to be lost. The moment the French fleet
knew that they were coming, it retired in all haste to Toulon.
The arrival of the English ships was decisive, the siege was raised,
and Barcelona was saved. Peterborough was ingenious enough
to pose as its saviour.
On the other side of the Peninsula Lord Galway with the
Portuguese pushed back a French force under Marshal Berwick,
The whom we met with before in connection with
campaign Barclay's plot. About midsummer Galway entered
Madrid and proclaimed King Charles. Then he
moved, with the intention of joining hands with King Charles.
He was, however, unable to act with any vigour, mainly on
account of the character of the troops under his command.
Charles and Peterborough were perpetually at cross purposes.
Berwick was reinforced, the Spaniards behind Galway rose for
King Philip, and when Charles and Galway at last effected a
junction, they found themselves cut off from Madrid and from
the Portuguese base of operations. They withdrew to Catalonia
and Valencia ; and both Charles and Galway were probably
infinitely relieved when Peterborough announced that he had
received instructions to leave Spain in order to consult with
Eugene, then on the point of relieving Turin, as to measures
in Northern Italy.
II. PARTIES IN ENGLAND, AND THE UNION WITH SCOTLAND
At the moment of Anne's accession, William's last parliament
was still in session. On the whole there was a very slight Tory
preponderance in the Commons, and a very slight
End of Whig preponderance in the Lords. The changes
William's made by Anne in her council were in favour of the
parliament. ™ . . . . ... . .
1 ones, mainly owing to the queen s predilection
for High Anglicanism. When the parliament had done its work,
and all doubts had been removed as to the vigour of the war-
policy which was to be followed, in spite of the reluctance of
Rochester and Nottingham, it was dissolved. As habitually
Parties in England, and Union with Scotland 77
happened during this reign, the general election endorsed the
remodelling of the council ; the Tories came back with a large
majority.
Although that party had as a whole endorsed the war, it had
done so in the first place in a moment of excitement which had
only masked its hostility to William, and its dis- AnewTor
trust of his policy as being dictated by Dutch rather House of
than English interests. Thus it contained an ele- commons,
Autumn.
ment which was at heart opposed to the war
altogether, and another element which, while in favour of the
war, took an extremely insular view of the objects and the
methods to be pursued. It disliked the army, which was
associated in its mind with the army of the Commonwealth
and a military dictatorship ; before long it began to brood
upon suspicions that Marlborough was dreaming of playing the
part of Cromwell. It held that the part of England was to con-
fine itself to naval operations, and its theory of naval operations
was that they could be directed to the destruction of French
commerce, the protection of English commerce, and the appro-
priation of West Indian colonies. It failed entirely to grasp
the conception common to William and to Marlborough of united
action on the part of the allies directed to their common good,
and of the co-operation of fleets and armies in the common design
of overwhelming the enemy. Consequently it was inevitable
that Marlborough and Godolphin, whose Toryism was at best of
a very dubious type, should find themselves relying more and
more on the Whigs.
At the outset, however, there was no breach. The country
was well satisfied with the outcome of the campaigning of 1702.
Marlborough's operations in the Netherlands had War honours.
fully justified his selection for the supreme command. The
success of the fleet at Vigo had more than obliterated the annoy-
ance caused by the failure at Cadiz. Parliament applauded,
though not without a side blow at the memory of King William,
when the Commons declared that Marlborough and Rooke had
' retrieved ' the honour of the British arms — in spite of the Whig
amendment which would have substituted ' maintained ' for
78 Queen Anne
r retrieved.' Still, the Tories were already suspicious of Marl-
borough ; and there were signs that they intended to magnify
the doings of their own admiral, Rooke, by way of a set-off to
the duke's laurels. The temporary abandonment of party spirit
Attack on which had been achieved in the last two months
the WMgs, of William's reign came to an end. The Tories
endeavoured to give a retrospective effect to the
clauses in the Act of Succession directed against the employment
of foreigners in high offices of state and the granting of lands
to them ; the attempt was foiled by a pronouncement of the
judges that the foreign peers, who were of course associated
with the Whigs, could not be deprived of their rights.
The next step of the Tories was an attack upon the Dissenters,
now warranted as a party move by the queen's ecclesiastical
proclivities. William's Toleration Act had enabled
Occasional Dissenters of an easy conscience to qualify for office
Conformity foy receiving the Holy Communion according to the
Anglican rite, n process which was called Occasional
Conformity (i.e. conformity for the occasion). There were, in
fact, great numbers of Dissenters who, while preferring the
services of the religious bodies to which they were attached,
felt themselves perfectly at liberty to attend Anglican services
if occasion arose, which was all that the law required of them.
The Occasional Conformity Bill now introduced proposed to
penalise any persons holding office who, during the term of office,
attended any other services than those of the established church.
At the same time the bill included in its provisions a host of
minor officials who had not been touched even by the original
Corporation Act. This bill was carried in the Commons in
December 1702. Anglican pulpits rang with denunciations of
the Dissenters and of the Latitudinarian bishops with whom
William had filled the sees. The queen was in favour of the
bill. It seemed likely that the Lords would give way and pass
it, when the tide was turned by the appearance of a pamphlet
Defoe. entitled The Shortest Way with the Dissenters. In
form it urged all loyal churchmen to push the Tory and High
Church arguments to their logical conclusion ; but in showing
Parties in England, and Union with Scotland 79
the logical conclusion, it very thoroughly exposed its grotesque-
ness. A reaction set in, and the Lords ventured to throw out
the bill. The enraged Tories succeeded in procuring the punish-
ment of the pamphleteer for having published a seditious libel.
Daniel Defoe was set in the pillory, but only to receive an ovation
from the very mob which just before had been engaged in wreck-
ing the meeting-houses of the Dissenters.
The year 1703 brought no military or naval triumphs, but the
ultra-Tories brought about a certain reaction by procuring the
dismissal of Whigs from minor posts. When parlia- 1703 The
ment met in the autumn, the Occasional Conformity BUI again
Bill was again introduced. But this time Prince defeated-
George of Denmark, the queen's husband, who was himself a
Lutheran, withdrew the support which he had previously given
to the bill. Anne's attitude was necessarily affected. Marl-
borough consequently ventured to use his influence, though
secretly, against the bill. The Tories proposed to secure the
bill in the Lords by tacking it to a money bill ; but when it was
made known that the queen was opposed to tacking, the plan
was dropped and the bill was defeated in the Peers. Maryborough
and Godolphin voted in support of it when they were quite sure
that it would be defeated. The personal antagonism between
Godolphin and Nottingham developed, and in the 1704
course of the year 1704 the Nottingham group dis- Harley and
appeared from the ministry, into which were drawn st' Jolm*
Robert Harley, the representative of the moderate Tories, and
his brilliant young friend Henry St. John ; the latter, not because
he was a moderate, but because he was too clever to be left out-
side to organise the enemies of the government. But Marl-
borough had not yet won. Politically his career depended upon
the summer campaign. If Blenheim had been a Effect of
defeat he would have been impeached and ruined. Blenheim.
But Blenhein assured him a victory which was made more rather
than less complete by the futile attempt of the Tories to elevate
Rooke's engagement at Malaga into a still more glorious achieve-
ment.
When the Tories introduced the Occasional Conformity Bill
8o Queen Anne
for the third time, they committed themselves to the tacking
plan, upon which they were beaten even in the Commons ; and
when the bill itself went up to the Lords it was rejected by a
more decisive majority than before. The conduct of the ex-
treme Tories had driven the moderates to the side of the govern-
ment. In the spring of 1705 the time had come for
Anewparlia- a dissolution and a general election ; and this time
merit, mainly the Tories were beaten at the polls. With a Whig
majority in the Commons the government was
secure ; nevertheless, the ministry was not as yet exclusively
Whig ; though it might perhaps have been foreseen that Harley
and St. John would presently find themselves compelled to sever
their connection either with the ministry or with the Tory party.
The war policy of Marlborough and Godolphin was confirmed.
But the great achievement of Anne's second parliament was the
Incorporating Union with Scotland.
The relations between England and Scotland under a single
crown had never been satisfactory. A certain sense of antagon-
ism, the result of long centuries of hostility, had
with Scot- remained rooted in the northern country, where it
land; earlier was necessarily much more active than in the south.
There had always been in Scotland statesmen who
believed that the true solution lay in incorporation. The ex-
periment had been tried for a time under the Commonwealth,
when the Scots were represented in the parliaments "at West-
minster instead of having a separate legislature of their own.
That arrangement had come to an end with the Restoration ;
but at the same time the Scots were excluded from the benefit
of the English Navigation Acts. The throttling of their commerce
emphasised the necessity for a readjustment, and proposals for
a union were submitted to a conference of commissioners from
both countries in 1670. No agreement was then arrived at, but
the question was again raised, on the accession of William in.
William himself was always anxious for a union, but it was
not easy to persuade the English of the material advantages
to England of such a measure. When Scotland had postponed
the question of union to the recognition of William's succession,
Parties in England, and Union with Scotland 8 1
the English parliament showed no inclination to regard the
matter as a pressing one. Their chilly attitude was resented
as insulting by the Scots ; the sentiment of hostility to England
was increased, and was still further intensified in the Highlands
by the affair of Glencoe and in the Lowlands by the Darien dis-
aster. The latter also emphasised once more the destructive
effects upon Scottish commerce of the existing relations.
There was a growing feeling that the alternatives were either
complete separation or a Legislative Union ; and while the
intelligence of the country favoured the latter, senti- 1702 .
ment undoubtedly favoured the former. William a Union
urged upon the English parliament the wisdom of
giving the most earnest consideration to a project of union ; but
the Tories were factiously predominant at that moment (1700),
and the proposal to appoint commissioners was thrown out in
the Commons. A week before William's death, when faction
was hushed, he again urged the consideration of union upon
the Commons ; and the parliament in the first months of Queen
Anne's reign passed an Act for the appointment of commis-
sioners to that end.
Now, the Convention in Scotland which had called William
to the throne continued to sit as a parliament undissolved
throughout his reign. It was authorised to sit for Tne gcota
another six months after his demise, but upon con- parliament
ditions which were not duly observed. Neverthe- n 70 "
less, the High Commissioner Queensberry, knowing that the
existing parliament was favourable to the Union, persuaded the
queen to assemble it instead of dissolving it and calling a new
parliament. The Opposition or Country party thereupon de-
clared its proceedings to be illegal, and withdrew from its con-
sultations. Two bills were introduced, one authorising the queen
to nominate commissioners to meet the English commissioners
for a union conference. The second required all office-holders
to abjure the ' pretended Prince of Wales ' who had taken the
title of James vin. But the Scots were now in the position in
which they had been when they had proposed the Union, before
accepting William as king. The acceptance of the second bill
Innes's Eng. Hist. — Vol. HI. F
8 2 Queen Anne
would preclude them from using in negotiations with England
the threat of acknowledging James as the successor of Anne.
The hostility to this measure was so strong that the parliament
was prorogued after it had barely passed its first reading.
The Act for appointing commissioners, however, had been
duly passed, and the conference was opened in November
Faiiureofthe 1702. The Scottish commissioners were willing to
conference. accept the Electress Sophia as Anne's successor,
but only on condition of a satisfactory agreement with regard
to trade and other matters ; and over the details of this
demand the conference broke down and came to an end in
February. Further irritation had been caused by the extreme
indifference which the Englishmen had shown to the importance
of the whole question, and both in England and in Scotland there
were grave doubts as to the legal authority of the parliament
which had sanctioned the conference. And in the meantime,
the new parliament just summoned in England was preponder-
antly Tory, and a new parliament summoned in Scotland put
the party of the government in an actual minority, owing
to the return of a considerable number of more or less open
Jacobites who called themselves Cavaliers.
There were then three parties in the new Scottish parliament
which met in May, after a reconstruction of the ministry which
displaced a number of the old Whigs. Those who
Parties in the were called the Court party were the old Whigs who
new scots hacl held most closely to William. The Cavaliers
parliament
were that Jacobite or semi- Jacobite element which
had excluded itself from the last parliament. They were mainly
Episcopalians with leanings to restoring the Stuart succes-
sion. The now greatly reduced Country party were the
members of the Opposition which had been formed in support
of national interests as opposed to English domination. There
was a natural antagonism between them and the Jacobites,
because they were Presbyterian as well as Nationalist ; hence
it did not seem impossible that the Cavaliers might coalesce
with the Whigs or Court party in preference to the Country
party ; and this was what the Whigs aimed at. But when
Parties in England, and Union with Scotland 83
there were three parties, no two of which were really in
agreement, the almost inevitable result was that two parties
combined in opposition ; and the Jacobites and Country party
had this in common, that to both of them the predominance of
England was extremely objectionable although for different
reasons. While the Court party was led by the duke of Queens-
berry, the other two in combination regarded the duke of Hamilton
as their head ; while they coalesced only to a limited degree,
not because they shared a common aim but because both
wanted to defeat the Court party.
Broadly speaking, the Whigs were in favour of the Incorpora-
ting Union with due safeguards for Scottish national institutions
and Scottish commerce. The Nationalists, headed by Fletcher
of Saltoun, did not want a union, but such a limitation of the
powers of the Crown in Scotland as would make it a mere figure-
head whose connection with England and with English interests
would virtually be of no effect in Scotland. Without that con-
dition, the Nationalists would insist on complete separation,
And the Cavaliers wanted complete separation because they did
not want to recognise the Hanoverian succession, which was
involved in any form of union with England whatever.
The practical outcome was that the Scottish parliament in
1703 passed a bill which ultimately became known as the Act
of Security. It provided that if before the queen's
death the Estates and the Crown had not fixed upon The Scottish
a successor, the Estates should nominate a successor Act °*
other than the successor to the crown of England.
It declared that no one person should be sovereign of both Eng-
land and Scotland unless the English parliament should first
have conceded to Scotland ' a free communication of trade, the
freedom of navigation, and the liberty of the plantations/ that
is, free trade in the colonies. It provided also for the arming
and drilling of the population. It further provided against the
continued union of the crowns unless the sovereignty of Scot-
land, her legislative power, and her religion, were secured." The
royal assent was at the time refused ; but in the next year the
bill was again passed with the omission of the clause regarding
84 Queen Anne
' free communication of trade/ at a time when it was uncertain
what would be the result of Marlborough's Blenheim campaign,
which was then in progress. The royal assent to the Act of
Security was given ; because, with the crisis on the Continent
undetermined, Anne dared not risk the refusal of supplies for
the army which would have followed upon the refusal of her
assent to the Act.
A very serious situation then had arisen. Scotland was an
independent state in no way subject to England, and only
1704 fortuitously bound to her by the fact that both
Theresuiting countries shared one sovereign. The succession to
that sovereign's throne in England was settled by
an Act of the English parliament with the assent of the Crown ;
but that Act could not touch Scotland. There was no means
of compelling Scotland to adopt the same successor as England,
there was nothing to prevent her from fixing the succession
where she chose, even if she chose to fix it upon James vm.
If she did so, the situation would be very much like that when
Scotland recognised Charles u., and the English Commonwealth
was obliged frankly to put on one side all questions of legality
and, for its own protection, to coerce Scotland. And now there
was the additional complication that England was engaged in
a great European war.
The extreme tension was removed by the victory of Blenheim
and the decisive ascendency of the Whigs in England which
1705 followed it. Unlike the Tories, the Whigs favoured
The English a union, as according with the policy of William in.
They had been prepared to give it serious attention
in any case, and it was now imperative for them to do so in order
to secure the Protestant succession in both countries. The first
step, however, was to repudiate the idea that they were influenced
by coercion, by fear of what Scotland might do. The government
therefore began by retaliatory measures. They stiffened the
trade barriers and took measures to place the border in a state
of defence. They declared that all Scots should be reckoned
as aliens until Scotland accepted the line of the succession laid
down in England. But they renewed the proposal for a meeting
Parties in England, and Union with Scotland 85
of commissioners to agree upon the terms of a treaty of
Union.
During the twelve months which followed the passing of the
Act of Security, it had been found necessary to set Tweeddale,
an old leader of the Country party, at the head of 1705
the Scottish administration in place of Queensberry. A commission
Tweeddale, however, had proved a failure ; various aPPointed'
circumstances had combined to raise Scottish animosity towards
England, English intervention, and English influence, to a higher
pitch than ever. Consequently the commissionership was now
bestowed on the young duke of Argyll, a soldier with soldierly
qualities and little enough aptitude for intrigue. But he had
to help him the astute Queensberry. By this time the Scottish
parliament had fallen into the two main divisions of the Court
party who were identified with Unionism, and the Cavaliers who
were identified with opposition to the Union ; but between the
two the balance was held by what had once been the Country
party, a small clever group who now came to be generally known
as the Squadrone Volante, who were on the whole rather favour-
able to the Union than otherwise. In these circumstances, a
last attempt by Fletcher of Saltoun to substitute for a union
his plan for limiting the powers of the Crown was rejected, and
the parliament resolved to empower the Crown to name com-
missioners to meet those appointed for England. Excited
patriots were more or less soothed by the voting of an address
praying for the repeal of the English Alien Act, as a condition
without which the conference would be doomed to failure. It
is clear that in both countries the consciousness had gained
ground that the Union was really necessary to the welfare of
each ; but in Scotland the antagonistic sentiment was still so
strong that observers in general rather expected that the pro-
posal would be defeated. Men might see that the arguments
for union were stronger than the arguments for separation, as
a question of material prosperity ; but the knowledge gave no
security that the slightest wound to the national suscepti-
bilities would not suffice to obliterate the material argument
altogether.
86 Queen Anne
The carrying through of a treaty of Union, therefore, was an
extremely delicate matter. Fortunately, in the autumn of 1705
the English Whigs were secure of their majority
The ' in both Houses ; and no better pilot could have
commission been found than Somers ; who took the lead in
meets, April. .
procuring the repeal of the Alien Act, as he had
previously taken the lead in procuring its passage. The two
bodies of commissioners, thirty-one English and thirty-one Scots,
were appointed in the spring of 1706 with extreme care, and a
wisdom which was demonstrated by the event.
In April 1706 the commission was assembled in London. It
differed from all the previous commissions in the fundamental
Terms of a ^ac^- ^na^ ^ meant business. After settling the pro-
Treaty of cedure, the English put forward as the groundwork
of the proposed treaty, the union of the two king-
doms with a single parliament under the name of Great Britain,
with the succession to the Crown settled upon the House of
Hanover. The Scots made one bid for popularity in the north
by the counter proposal of a federal union with separate legisla-
tures. This was at once emphatically negatived by the English ;
there must be an Incorporating Union or none at all. With
those alternatives before them, the Scots accepted the English
principle ; probably the majority were really in favour of it,
and they only made the federal proposal to mollify their con-
stituents. The next Scottish demand was for complete freedom
of trade ; the demand was accepted without demur. The Eng-
lish proposal that taxes and trade regulations should be uniform
required modification. The amount of the Scottish National
Debt was only equal to that of the Scottish revenue. The
English revenue was thirty-five times as great as that of Scot-
land, and the English Debt was thrice the English revenue ;
it was necessary that Scotland should not be called upon to
share the English Debt. It was recognised also as reasonable
that Scotland should be exempted from sundry taxes which were
imposed in England, and that the land tax of Scotland should be
reckoned at something less than one-fortieth of that of England.
Finally, the Scots were to receive very nearly £400,000 as the
Parties in England, and Union witk Scotland 87
' equivalent ' for losses sustained at the hands of English trad-
ing companies. On the question of representation, the original
proposal of the English that there should be thirty-eight Scots
in the new House of Commons was modified, and the Scots were
allowed forty-five members. In the Upper House it was im-
possible to admit more than sixteen out of the very much larger
number of Scottish peers. Scotland was to retain her own courts
of law, and the privileges and jurisdictions of the Scottish royal
boroughs and of the barons (that is the landed gentry) were to
be continued intact.
It remained to procure the acceptance of the treaty by the
parliaments of the two kingdoms, the Scots taking precedence
in point of time. The extremely delicate busi- The position
ness of piloting the treaty through the Scottish in Scotland,
parliament was virtually entrusted to Queensberry Autumn-
by his appointment as commissioner. No man knew what the
Scottish parliament would do, though it was generally appre-
hended that the Union would not be passed without bloodshed.
Besides the Nationalists and the Jacobites in parliament, the
whole body of the clergy were in opposition, because of the fear
that the parliament of Great Britain, in which the enormous
majority would be Episcopalians, would insist on imposing
Prelacy throughout the United Kingdom. To the whole body
of the Cameronians, assent to the Union appeared to be an
enormous betrayal of the Covenant and the National religion.
The veteran Carstares, however, the trusted counsellor of
William in., exerted all his influence to moderate clerical fana-
ticism. The Cavaliers were divided by dissensions and jealousies
between their two leaders, Hamilton and Atholl. Everything,
in fact, turned upon the action of the Squadrone Volante ; and,
as matters turned out, that group gave its support to the Union.
The articles of the treaty were voted upon one by one, though
the approval of each individually was to be conditional upon
the final approval of all. When the first article, The principle
enacting a union of the two kingdoms, was passed carried,
by a majority of thirty- three, the government November-
began to feel that the chances were in their favour. The
88 Queen Anne
Hanoverian succession and the single parliament were approved
by increased majorities. The hostility of the Church was
Act for the t^ien allaYe(i by the passing of a special Act which
security of so far as any Act could do, guaranteed the per-
the Church. manency of the National Church as established at
the Revolution.
Finding themselves likely to be steadily outvoted in parliament,
the Opposition brought outside pressure to bear. Petitions
Popular against the Union poured in from every quarter,
hostility. jhe government made no attempt to procure
counter-petitions, of which only one was received ; they con-
tented themselves with the argument that if the petitions had
represented a real national feeling, they would have been much
more extensively signed than was actually the case. The senti-
ment of the mob, both in Glasgow and in Edinburgh, was ex-
pressed in an unmistakable manner ; but the government refused
to be intimidated. Then the Jacobites prepared an address
demanding that the parliament should be dissolved, as having
had no mandate to deal with so vast a constitutional question,
but Hamilton refused to support it unless it included approval
of the Hanoverian succession ; consequently the address was
dropped. Still, the fear of armed insurrection was so great that
the government procured an Act suspending that clause in the
Act of Security which had sanctioned arming and drilling.
The fiscal clauses were carried with slight modifications.
With the clauses providing for the representation of Scotland
in the parliament of Great Britain, the Opposition
clauses came to the last line of defence. It was determined
carried, that at this point the Opposition should offer once
more the substitution of an acknowledgment of the
Hanoverian succession for the treaty, and on its inevitable re-
jection should retire in a body. That retirement might be the
signal for civil war. But at the last moment Hamilton, with
whom the plan had originated, refused to move the protest. The
clause was carried, and a week later, on i6th January 1707, the Act
confirming the treaty received the royal assent from Queensberry
as commissioner, along with the Act for the Security of the Church.
Parties in England^ and Union with Scotland 89
It remained for the parliament to deal with the distribution
of that sum of money which was called the ' equivalent,' and
then with the problem of representation in the 170?
parliament of Great Britain. As to the Peers, it Scottish
was resolved that in the first instance they should be arrange-
rn.6GtrS for tn.6
nominated by the Crown, and that in the future the parliament
whole body of the Peers should elect their sixteen of Great
Britain,
representatives. For the Commons, the shires were
to have thirty members and the boroughs fifteen, Edinburgh
having one representative while the other boroughs were asso-
ciated in fourteen groups, who should in the first instance choose
their representatives from the members of the existing parlia-
ment.
When the Scottish Act was passed, it became the turn of Eng-
land. The treaty was carried through both Houses, practically
without amendment, though it was coupled with an
Act of Security for the Church of England ; un- The final
favourably distinguished from that in Scotland, in- Act of Union,
asmuch as the latter had imposed no religious tests
disqualifying Episcopalians from office, whereas the English Act
excluded Presbyterians from holding office in England. The
Act received the royal assent on 6th April. As in Scotland, it
was resolved that no new election was necessary. The first
parliament of Great Britain contained the same English members
of the House of Commons as the last parliament of England.
It is not to be denied that bribery and corruption played a
part in procuring the acceptance of the treaty in Scotland ; but
equally there is no doubt that all or very nearly Continued
all of the politicians by whose aid the treaty was unpopularity
carried were really convinced that the Union was m co n *
necessary. The fact remained, however, that it was not popular
in Scotland. The benefits of the commercial clauses were not
immediately felt ; the introduction into Scotland of new duties,
discharged by an extremely objectionable class of revenue
officers brought in from England, excited popular wrath. The
Cameronians still regarded a pact with a prelatical nation as an
unholy alliance. The J acobites, of whom there was a far larger
90 Queen Anne
proportion than in England, hated the Union as a guarantee of
the Hanoverian succession. It was always easy to discover that
Scottish interests were overridden in favour of England by the
parliament of Great Britain. For a long time to come, the popular
aversion from the ' sad and sorrowful ' Union, and the desire to
see it brought to an end, were among the most effective assets
of Jacobitism. It was not till Jacobitism itself had received its
death-blow forty years afterwards that Scotland really made up
her mind that the Union was irrevocable.
III. THE WHIGS IN POWER, 1706-1710
At the end of 1706 Louis, alarmed by the effects of Ramillies,
endeavoured to make a separate treaty with the Dutch by offer-
1706. After ing them the barrier fortresses which their souls
Ramillies. desired. The allies were pledged not to make
separate treaties ; the Whigs had now committed themselves to
the principle that there was to be ' no peace without Spain,'
and Louis's attempt was foiled. But the loss of Ramillies had
been followed by Eugene's relief of Turin and an almost com-
plete exodus of French armies from North Italy.
It was Marlborough's grand scheme for this the new year, 1707,
that the Austrian armies, with the duke of Savoy, should, in
1707. Marl- co-operation with the British fleet under Sir Cloudes-
borough's ley Shovell, invade the south-east of France from
Italy and seize Toulon. For it had been the duke's
idea from the beginning that the war was to give England Toulon
as her naval base in the Mediterranean. It was his first intention
himself to join with Eugene ; but he soon found that he would
not be allowed to leave the Netherlands. Consequently, he
intended to make a diversion in the north by threatening an
invasion of France in that quarter, and thereby making Eugene's
task in the south easier.
Matters, however, did not go well. In the first place, the
duke found himself called upon temporarily to desert arms for
diplomacy. The young king of Sweden, Charles xn., had shortly
before blazed upon the world, a sudden meteoric portent. His
The Whigs in Poiver 91
startling victories in Russia, Denmark, and Poland were in all
men's mouths ; and — he had a quarrel with the Austrian em-
peror. If this northern thunderbolt were launched Charles xn.
against Joseph, the Grand Alliance would be in very evil case.
Marlborough's blandishments were successful, Joseph was per-
suaded, though not without troublesome delays, to conciliate
his alarming enemy, and the Swede was induced to leave Austria
alone and plunge into the Russian campaign, in which his am-
bitions were for the time being shattered by the disaster of
Pultawa.
But this did not end Marlborough's difficulties. The emperor,
regardless of his obligations, made a private agreement with
Louis for the suspension of hostilities in Northern The emperor.
Italy, because he wanted Naples. Nor was he at all anxious,
in fact, for the British to acquire such a prize as Toulon, although
the capture of Toulon would have secured Naples and Sicily for
him without any difficulty.
In the meantime things were also going badly for the allies in
Spain. Galway from Catalonia marched upon Madrid. Only a
third of his force were British troops, and a greater Spaln .
proportion were Portuguese. Intercepted by a Aimanza,
larger Franco-Spanish army under Berwick, he gave AprU-
battle. The British and German troops fought manfully ; but
Galway was incapacitated for a time at a critical stage of the
battle by a sabre cut, the Portuguese ran away, and the remainder
of the army were overwhelmed by double their numbers ; though
Galway succeeded in withdrawing less than half the British in
good order. The disaster of Aimanza was really the wreck of
the Austrian cause in Spain ; although it cannot be doubted
that that cause never would have been successful, in face of the
fierce hostility of the whole Spanish people with the exception
of the Catalans.
Marlborough's grand design was destined to failure, through
no fault of his, of Sir Cloudesley Shovell's, of or Eugene's, who
did his best to give effect to his great colleague's scheme. With
hardly any support from Austria, he had to rely upon the shifty
Victor Amadeus of Savoy, who was in no haste to attend to any
92 Queen Anne
one's interests but his own. Nevertheless, Eugene almost suc-
ceeded. By deceiving Tesse, the French commander in the
The Toulon south, as to his objective, he was able to make a
scheme dash for Toulon ; but delays, for which Savoy was
,ed, July, responsible, enabled Tesse to get back just in time
to prevent a simultaneous attack by land and sea on the great
arsenal. Shovell bombarded the place, and the French actually
sunk a number of their battleships in order to avoid their capture ;
but Eugene was forced to retreat, and Toulon was saved. Marl-
borough knew that the chance would not occur again, and made
up his mind that not Toulon, but Port Mahon in Minorca was
the permanent naval station which must be secured for the
British fleet in the Mediterranean. The duke's own intended
operations in the north had been frustrated by the precarious
state of affairs on the Upper Rhine, where the death of the in-
competent Lewis of Baden had placed the still more incompetent
Christian of Baireuth in command ; and Marlborough's own time
was much taken up in getting Christian replaced by George, the
elector of Hanover and the destined successor to the throne of
Great Britain.
The compact between Joseph and Louis released Eugene from
Italy, but the jealousy of the elector of Hanover prevented the
1708 Eevoit supreme command on the Rhine from being handed
of Flemish over to Eugene, who, it was agreed, should, in 1708,
towns, June. ^^ ^^ commanci of a third army on the Moselle.
The French army in Flanders was now under the joint command
of Louis's elder grandson the duke of Burgundy and of Vendome,
between whom there was little agreement. Marlborough planned
a rapid junction of his own army with that of Eugene, and
a combined attack upon the French. But before Eugene
could effect a junction a number of the captured cities in the
Netherlands revolted against the Dutch domination, which
was not at all to their liking. Eugene had already started to
join Marlborough, but his troops were still many marches
away. He himself hurried in advance to consult with the
duke. Vend6me was moving upon Oudenarde, one of the
towns which had fallen into the hands of the Dutch after
The Whigs in Power 93
Ramillies ; its capture would open the way for the French
into Brabant.
Marlborough and Eugene decided that although they had the
inferior numbers they could not afford to wait for Eugene's army.
By forced marches they succeeded in reaching oudenarde,
Oudenarde before their movement was detected by July-
the French, who were still a few miles away. It was already
late in the day when they became suddenly aware of Marl-
borough's approach. The ground, cut up by hedges, ditches,
and brushwood, was ill suited to cavalry movements, whereby
the French, who were strong in that arm, were placed at a dis-
advantage. Before they had time to arrange their dispositions
for a pitched battle, Marlborough's van was upon them, and
opened an attack on their left when half the allied army had
not yet crossed the Scheldt. The French might still have drawn
off ; but Burgundy, without consulting Venddme, ordered an
advance, and the engagement became general. But a turning
movement on the French right was decisive. Under cover of
the gathering darkness, the French beat a retreat, having lost,
in killed, wounded and prisoners, some 15,000 men, a number
considerably increased in the course of the flight. The loss of
the allies was only 3000.
The victory was decisive ; but for the fall of night it would
have been overwhelming. The battle derives an additional
personal interest from the fact that the Chevalier A curious
or Pretender, as James Stuart was called by his feature.
friends or his enemies, was fighting bravely on the French side,
while the Electoral Prince of Hanover, the future George IL,
displayed distinguished valour on the side of the allies. Still
more curious, it may be noted in passing, had been one of the
features of the battle of Almanza, where the French were com-
manded by the duke of Berwick, son of James n. and Marl-
borough's sister, while the English troops were commanded by
the Huguenot Ruvigny, earl of Galway.
Vendome fell back to an entrenched position covering Bruges,
which had handed itself over to the French. Marlborough con-
ceived the daring design of leaving a body of troops to cover the
94 Queen Anne
fortress of Lille, and marching with the main army straight upon
Paris ; but even Eugene's audacity was staggered, and the two
Wynendaei generals agreed to besiege Lille, the capture of
(Sept.) and which would greatly increase the practicability of
an invasion. Vendome, reinforced by Berwick,
still ventured only to attack Marlborough's communications with
Ostend, whence his supplies were derived. Towards the end of
September General Webb, escorting supplies, the loss of which
would have necessitated raising the siege of Lille, fought a
brilliant action at Wynendaei, beating off the attack of a French
force twice as large as his own. Early in December Lille sur-
rendered, and Marlborough was completely master of Brabant.
Even more important from the purely British point of view
was the British success on the Mediterranean. WThile nothing
Capture of °^ importance was going on in the Spanish Penin-
Port Mahon, sula, Admiral Leake carried over General Stanhope
with a small force to the island of Minorca. Port
Mahon was captured, the whole island was easily reduced, and
a British garrison was placed in Port Mahon, which, with its
admirable harbour, remained the British base in the Mediterranean
until its loss in 1756. Hitherto, in spite of the capture of Gib-
raltar, the British had been obliged to use Lisbon as the nearest
available equivalent. In seizing Port Mahon Stanhope had acted
on the urgent advice of Marlborough, who until this year had
fixed more ambitious hopes upon Toulon, though for some time
past Port Mahon had been attracting the attention of naval
strategists.
Thus at the beginning of 1709, Louis found himself almost
with his back to the wail. His treasury was exhausted, his
ships could not put to sea, his generals could not stand against
Position Marlborough and Eugene. Only in Spain his grand-
of Louis, son's cause was holding its own. After Ramillies,
>ec. 1708. ke ka(j £ejj. jj-g pOSjtjon |0 kg so precarious that he
made peace overtures upon terms which would have conceded
much of the allies' demands. After the campaigns of 1708 he
was ready to go much further. We must turn back to trace the
course of events in England to see why peace was not made in 1709.
The Whigs in Power 95
The general election of 1705 had been preceded by a ministerial
reconstruction, in which Harley and St. John had displaced the
Tories who were directly hostile to Marlborough and I706_g
Godolphin. The reconstruction was endorsed by The Whigs
the electorate, which gave the Commons a min- and the
isterial majority who were preponderantly Whig ;
although in that majority there remained a large element
who could not be definitely classed either with the Whigs or
with the Tories. The Whigs were dissatisfied with the share of
offices which fell to them. Their chiefs, known as the Junto —
Somers, Halifax, Orford, Wharton, and Marlborough's son-in-
law, Sunderland, the son of the old minister of James II., were
not yet admitted to office. So, on the one hand, during the years
from 1706 to 1708 the Whigs were pushing their men into office
while on the other Harley was intriguing against them, employ-
ing as his instrument a lady-in-waiting, Abigail Hill or Mrs.
Masham, who claimed cousinship both with him and with the
duchess of Marlborough.
The Marlboroughs, conscious of their dependence on the
Whigs, with difficulty induced the queen in the last months of
1706 to make Sunderland secretary of state, and 1707
to remove the extreme Tories, Nottingham and Cross
Rochester, as well as Rooke, whom the party had '
been in the habit of playing off against Marlborough, from the
Privy Council. During 1707 Marlborough and Godolphin were
realising that something like a purely Whig ministry was be-
coming inevitable. Their suspicions of Harley's loyalty were
increasing, and the duchess was becoming unpleasantly con-
scious of the growing influence of Mrs. Masham. The meeting
of the first parliament of Great Britain in the autumn showed
that the new Scottish members were for practical purposes to
be reckoned as forty-five more Whigs in the Commons. Both
Whigs and Tories were attacking the mismanagement at the
Admiralty, where the Whigs wanted to see Orford reinstated
in place of the queen's husband, Prince George of Denmark,
who was Lord High Admiral, and who was not kept in the way
he should go by Admiral George Churchill, Marlborough's brother,
g6 Q^leen Anne
himself a Tory. The latter fact did not restrain the Tories,
since their object was simply the wreck of the ministry. And
there were good enough grounds in the failure of the Admiralty
to protect British commerce from French privateers.
Then the Tories endeavoured with little success to champion
Peterborough as another set-off to Marlborough ; and they pro-
1708 posed to withdraw troops from Marlborough's corn-
Dismissal mand, to be employed in Catalonia. The Whigs
Hariey. capped this Tory enthusiasm for the war in the
Peninsula by preparing a joint address to the queen from both
Houses, declaring that no peace could be honourable or safe
which left Spain or the West Indies in Bourbon hands. The
discovery that a private secretary or agent of Harley's had been
using his opportunities to sell information to the French
strengthened the case against Hariey. Admiral Churchill worked
upon Prince George to use his influence with the queen against
that minister. Hariey was obliged to resign, and went into
opposition along with St. John, whose place as secretary at war
was taken by Robert Walpole.
Another circumstance which strengthened the Whigs in 1708
was an abortive attempt at an invasion of Scotland on the part
1708 An °f the Chevalier. There was to be a Jacobite rising
attempted in the north, supported by 6000 French troops,
invasion. jne gOvernment had ample information of what was
going on. Anne was more than suspected of sentimental leanings
towards the Stuart succession ; but the Chevalier damaged his
own cause with his sister by claiming the throne during her
lifetime, and by issuing a proclamation in which he described her
as a ' usurper.' In March James and his French forces put to
sea ; a large English squadron was immediately in pursuit.
James was probably saved from capture only by storms.
After three weeks at sea he got back to Dunkirk, having lost
sundry ships and 4000 men. The government followed the
example of William in making no endeavour to search out and
punish the conspirators. The Whig position was very much
strengthened. Backed by the Marlboroughs, the Junto insisted
upon more Whig appointments and the admission of Somers to
The Whigs in Power 97
the ministry. Anne's power of resistance broke down with
the death of her husband in the autumn ; Somers became
president of the council, and the Whigs emphasised The WMgs
their ascendency by repeating their resolution that in control,
there could be no safe peace until the whole of the Spanish
dominion should be restored to the house of Austria. In
the spring of 1709 the ascendency of Godolphin and Marl-
borough depended upon the goodwill of the Whigs who were,
in fact, supreme in parliament. And the Whigs had entirely
committed themselves to the doctrine of ' no peace without
Spain.'
It was obvious then that France at this stage would gladly
accept peace on any reasonable terms. Conspicuously, what
Holland would want would be full possession of the I7og
barrier fortresses. Marlborough, as commander of peace
both the British and the Dutch forces, saw difficulties negotiations,
in the way of his action if he were the sole British re-
presentative in negotiations with Holland and France for mutually
satisfactory terms ; and he procured the appointment of young
Lord Townshend as his diplomatic colleague. But the terms
upon which the allies agreed as conditions to be offered to Louis
were in fact impossible. Marlborough knew it, and wished them
to be modified, but he would not insist upon his own view in
opposition to Whig pressure. The fatal clause was one which
demanded not only that France was to withdraw her support
from Philip in Spain, but that if Philip himself proved obdurate
she was herself to take part in the work of ejecting him. Against
that clause both Marlborough and Eugene protested ; but the
only modification that the instructions from England would per-
mit was the substitution of a clause requiring the surrender of
sundry Spanish fortresses which would make the further resistance
of Philip impossible. Townshend persuaded the Dutch also to
insist on this demand, and upon that rock the negotiations went
to pieces.
The actual outcome was an Anglo-Dutch compact known as
the Barrier Treaty, under which the two powers pledged them-
selves to insist upon the establishment of the Dutch in a score
Innes's Bag. Hist. — Vol. in. G
98 Queen Anne
or so of fortified towns within the Spanish Netherlands, involving
rights detrimental to English trade, and exceedingly advan-
The Barrier tageous to Holland. All that was secured to Great
Treaty. Britain was insistence on the recognition of the
Hanoverian succession, and of the British claim to the island of
Minorca. There were other clauses irritating both to Prussia
and to Austria, which resented the demand for Minorca ; and
the Barrier Treaty was vigorously utilised by the Tories as
demonstrating the futility of a government which insisted on
prolonging the war for the benefit not of Great Britain, but of
Holland. The treaty was signed by Townshend, but not by
Marlborough, who had left the diplomatic business to his
colleague, while he himself was engaged on the campaign.
Louis had met the preposterous demands of the allies by re-
marking that, in the first place, he could not compel Philip to
1709 The withdraw from Spain, and in the second, if he was
campaign, to be compelled to fight some one, it should be not
his own son but his enemies. Exhausted as France
was she responded enthusiastically to a fresh call to arms. The
command in the Netherlands was given to Villars, the one French
general who was as yet undefeated. His force was drawn up
within the impregnably entrenched lines of La Bassee, stretching
from Douai on the south-east to the river Lys on the north-west.
In June Marlborough and Eugene, having made a feint upon
Villars 's lines which caused him to withdraw a part of the garrison
of Tournay, turned upon Tournay itself, a very strong fortress.
The town was forced to surrender in three weeks, but it was not
till 23rd August (O.S.) that the citadel yielded.
The operation was hardly completed when the allied army
suddenly swooped south-east upon Mons. Villars at once moved
Maipiaquet, out of his lines and occupied a position a short dis-
sist August, tance away from Mons, resting on Maipiaquet,
strongly entrenched and well covered by natural obstacles ;
the attack of the allies having been delayed, contrary to Marl-
borough's wish, to await reinforcements, while Villars took
advantage of every hour to strengthen his entrenchments. The
two armies were about equal in numbers. On 3ist August,
The Whigs in Power 99
however, the allies attacked. The battle was desperately fought.
There was a frightful slaughter on the allied left, where the
Prince of Orange led a furious attack which had not been in the
least intended by Marlborough himself. The destruction fell
mainly upon the Dutch troops and two regiments of Scottish
Highlanders who were in the Dutch service. Orange's attack
was repulsed ; but a detachment sent by a route concealed from
the enemy to turn the French left drove in upon the flank at
a critical moment ; and the French were finally driven from their
position whence they were able to retire in good order and un-
pursued to the lines of La Bassee, having lost little more than
half as many men as the allies. The victory was dearly bought,
but it ensured the capture of Mons, which fell within a month.
It must be observed that, bloody as the engagement was, it
would have been very much less so but for the over-courageous
blunder of the Prince of Orange, for which Marlborough was in
no way responsible. The duke himself would seem to have
over-rated the value of the battle, and to have believed that
after it the allies could dictate their own terms ; but as a matter
of fact the French almost regarded it as a victory for themselves,
and were encouraged instead of disheartened by it.
Malplaquet was the last of the great battles. Marlborough
found himself reviled for the loss of life which had attended a
victory followed by no startling results. Exhaus- mo.
tion was telling upon the allies as well as upon the French, and in
the campaigns of 1710 the duke confined himself to the reduction
of more fortresses in Flanders. In Spain the fortunes of war went
in favour of Philip, and in no other region were any successes
accomplished. Negotiations for peace were again on foot, but
again the conferences at Gertruydenberg broke down over the
persistent demand for the evacuation of Spain — a point which
Philip was now less likely than ever to yield. And before the
end of the year the Whigs had fallen and the Tories were in
power in England.
ioo Queen Anne
IV. THE FALL OF THE WHIGS, 1710-1712
Marlborough and Godolphin had broken irrevocably with the
Tories, but they had never come into perfect accord with the
Whigs, with whom they were in agreement chiefly
situation on the main question of the war ; and even on that
Mai^a uet Point Marlborough was readier for peace than the
Whig ministers, although the suspicion was sedu-
lously fostered that he was using his influence to prolong the
war for the sake of the prestige and authority which his victories
brought him. Anne was listening to the insidiously respectful
voice of Mrs. Masham, a soothing antidote to the tempestuous
duchess against whom she was learning, if she had not already
learnt, rebellion. Marlborough himself gave a handle to the
enemy by endeavouring to obtain appointment as captain-
general for life, a proposal in which there were many who scented
the scheme of a military dictatorship. Tory pamphleteers
clamoured that the war was being run by Marlborough for his
own glorification, and the benefit of the Dutch or the Austrians.
Why, they asked, were Britons shedding their blood like water
on battlefields in the Netherlands and in capturing fortresses for
the Dutch, instead of sweeping the seas, annihilating French
commerce, appropriating West Indian islands, and generally
using maritime power for the benefit of their own country ? It
was all for the glorification of one too powerful citizen ! The
war fever had died down and was rather quenched than rekindled
by Malplaquet. And the Whigs on their side were annoyed at
the slowness of Marlborough and Godolphin in giving the re-
cognition which they considered due to their chiefs. They were
at the same time alienating popular support by the extravagance
of their peace conditions ; and much displeasure had been
aroused by the hospitality which they had extended to large
numbers of Protestant refugees from the Palatinate and else-
where by an Act to encourage their naturalisation in England.
The definite refusal of the queen to grant Marlborough the
appointment for which he had asked was followed after a brief
interval (in April 1710) by a scene between Anne and the
The Fall of the Whigs 101
duchess which finally destroyed the last prospect of the restora-
tion of the Marlborough influence. Anne never again spoke
with the favourite who had tyrannised over her 1710
for so many years. But Godolphin and the Whigs The duchess
had already ensured their own destruction through diM
the most dangerous and illogical of all political agencies, re-
ligious fanaticism, or, more accurately, the passion of sectarian
partisanship.
We have seen that earlier in the reign the Whigs had much
ado to maintain the principle of toleration and to prevent the
Occasional Conformity Bill from becoming law. 1709>
Dissent was no more popular with the mob than SachevereU's
with Tory squires. William had kept the Church f
under reasonable control by the persistent appointment of
bishops who were called Low Churchmen, not in the modern sense
of the term, but in contradistinction to the High Churchmen
in whose eyes dissent was the sin of schism. Anne's personal
sympathies had always been with the High Churchmen, who
had produced the non- jurors and were ever the champions of
royal prerogative and of the doctrine of non-resistance. The
pulpits of the clergy of this school were freely employed for de-
nunciations of a Whig government which pandered to schismatics,
and the climax was reached with a sermon preached by Dr.
Henry Sacheverell in St. Paul's Cathedral in November 1709,
and immediately afterwards published under the title of Perils
from False Brethren.
Nothing, probably, would have resulted if the preacher had
not made an obvious personal allusion to Godolphin as ' Volpone,'
a nickname taken from Ben Jonson's play, by which Afaisemove.
the minister was popularly known. The sermon was itself a
violent attack upon the principle of toleration, and upon all per-
sons in authority, civil or ecclesiastical, who supported ' schism '
on the plea, covert or avowed, of political expediency. Godolphin
was exceedingly angry. Sunderland and other members of the
Junto conceived that this kind of talk from the pulpit was
dangerous, and that the doctor's sermon provided a convenient
opportunity for suppressing it. The time, they thought, had
IO2 Queen Anne
arrived for forcing the issue that the High Church doctrine
logically involved Jacobitism, treason to the principles of the
Revolution, to the authority of parliament, to the Hanoverian
succession. It was resolved that the eloquent divine should be
impeached.
The impeachment was a blunder, because it at once enabled
Sacheverell to pose as a martyr, the victim of a monstrous
tyranny which sought to silence freedom of speech,
1710. The ,v v • i_ • r i_i A J-.L i_ • i
impeach- the heroic champion of a holy cause. After brief
ment, hesitation, Harley and the Tory leaders resolved
to make the doctor's cause their own. The mob was
readily aroused. The ladies were unanimous in their enthusiasm
on behalf of the popular preacher. The impeachment opened at
the end of February 1710. The queen herself came down to
Westminster ; when the doctor defended himself, the charms
of his delivery brought tears to every female eye. Still, it was
the plain fact that if the theories of the Revolution were true,
if James was not lawful king and Anne was not a usurper, the
sermon was treason. The peers by a majority of seventeen
pronounced him guilty. But the government were afraid to
punish him after the ebullition of popular sentiment ; it was
known that the queen favoured the defendant, and the sentence
pronounced was the trivial one of suspension from preaching
for three years. It was a penalty fairly proportionate to the
unimportance of the offence, but ministers had chosen in the
first instance to magnify the affair by treating it as worthy of
all the pomp and circumstance of impeachment. In fact, they
had made themselves ridiculous, which is perhaps the most
fatal thing for itself that any ministry can do. The public at
large regarded the sentence as being for practical purposes a
triumphant acquittal. Church bells were rung, bonfires blazed,
as on the acquittal of the Seven Bishops. The sentence on
Dr. Sacheverell was the knell of the Whig ministry.
Harley always preferred to work underground and by back-
stairs influences. He managed the queen through Mrs. Masham.
Parliament was prorogued in April, three weeks after the sentence
upon Sacheverell. On the night of the prorogation the queen
The Fall of the Whigs 103
dismissed her Whig chamberlain, the marquis of Kent, who
was consoled with a dukedom, and gave the office to Shrews-
bury, who for many years had retired from active
politics, and though supposed to be a Whig had dismissals
no connection with the Junto. Among the Whigs tions, Aprii-
the duke of Somerset had a small following of September.
his own, and dreamt of displacing the Junto by a ministry
of moderates. Shrewsbury's attitude was uncertain. In June
the next blow was struck by the dismissal of Sunderland and
the appointment of Dartmouth, a * Hanover Tory/ to his secre-
taryship. In August Godolphin followed Sunderland. The
treasury was put in commission, and Harley entered the ministry
as chancellor of the exchequer. He was still engaged in per-
suading the Whigs that ' a Whig game was intended at bottom/
He wanted to keep their support at least in part. But the dis-
trust of him grew ; one after another they resigned. If Harley
really wanted a coalition he had overreached himself. By the
end of September scarcely a Whig remained in the ministry ;
all their places had been taken by Tories. And yet the House
of Commons was still the Whig House which had been elected
in 1708. A dissolution was obviously necessary, and the general
election returned a large majority of Tories.
But it was not yet time to remove Marlborough. The duke
had never been a party politician ; had he been so, had he been
the' acknowledged leader of the Whigs, he could Harley and
have carried them with him in 1709 in his personal st* Jolm»
opposition to the Spanish monarchy clause and the April,
Barrier Treaty. As matters stood, since the breach I7io-ii.
between the queen and his wife, it is improbable that he could
have turned the course of events by threatening resignation.
And as yet, Harley did not want to be rid of him, since, even
as matters stood, the allies abroad and the bank and the moneyed
interests at home were taking alarm, and his dismissal might
have caused a panic and a reaction. But Harley was not the
master of the Tory party. The wilder spirits were thirsting
for vindictive treatment of the Whigs, with whom it appeared
that Harley was dallying. St. John was aspiring to the leader's
IO4 Queen Anne
place himself. Hoping to procure overwhelming proofs of pecula-
tion on the part of the late ministry, they forced upon the govern-
ment a commission to inquire into the public accounts. They
overshot their mark, as Walpole, in a couple of very able
pamphlets, shattered the accusations which had been brought
forward, and thereby incidentally established his own reputa-
tion as the greatest living master of figures. On the other
hand, a foolish attempt upon Harley's life brought to that
minister a great access of popularity. St. John saw that it
was not yet time to break with his leader, who was created
earl of Oxford.
Just at this time a material change in the European situation
was created by the unlooked-for death of the Emperor Joseph.
ITU. Though he had daughters, he left no male offspring ;
with the result that the Austrian succession, and,
Joseph I.,
April as a matter of course, the Imperial crown, went to
his brother the Archduke Charles, the titular Charles in. of Spain.
The war of the Spanish Succession and the organisation of the
Grand Alliance by William in. had been undertaken to preserve
the balance of power by a partition of the Spanish dominion
between the Bourbon and the Hapsburg claimants. In 1703,
the scheme of partition had been dropped, and the Hapsburg
candidate had been adopted by the allies, but with the expecta-
tion that there would be two separate Hapsburg dominions,
a Hapsburg dynasty in the Spanish empire and a Hapsburg
dynasty in Austria — as there had been for the last century and
a half. But this was quite a different thing from a single Haps-
burg dominion including both the Austrian and the Spanish
empires, a scheme which had never been countenanced by
William in.
The Tories could not as yet openly avow a desire for peace
upon the terms that Philip should be acknowledged as king of
Secret Spain conditionally upon security that the crowns
negotiations of France and Spain should never be joined. Ox-
with Louis, forcl^ according to his custom, preferred working
under cover. Although all the members of the Grand Alliance
were pledged not to enter upon negotiations privately, overtures
The Fall of the Whigs 105
were made to the French government, and secret negotiations
were conducted through the year 1711. It might perhaps be
argued fairly enough that in view of the conflicting interests of
the allies, the only hope of peace lay in one or another of them
coming to a preliminary agreement with France, and then
bringing the utmost pressure upon the rest of the allies to adopt
its provisions. That course would doubtless have brought
charges of a technical breach of faith, but it had been followed
with justification by William in the case of the Peace of Ryswick.
In this matter it does not appear that the British ministry can
justly be blamed.
In the year's campaigning no notable success attended either
side. Eugene was sent to the Rhine, and Marlborough, out-
numbered by the army of Villars, outmanoeuvred peace
his opponent and captured Bouchain. But this nminaries
was all; and still the road was not yet clear to submitted,
. ' . September.
Paris. In September, conventions were signed in
London between the French and the British, a part of which
were then submitted to the allies as preliminaries of peace. The
special terms, however, which Great Britain claimed for herself
were still unpublished.
It seemed probable in England that Oxford would aim at a
combination with Marlborough. That prospect determined St.
John that Marlborough must fall. On the other
hand, the Whigs made overtures to Nottingham, a and the
High Tory and a High Churchman, but one who w^ss.
was determined in favour of the Protestant succession — a reason
perhaps for his having been neglected by Harley. The Whig
predominance in the Upper House remained unchanged and, in
fact, a struggle between the Houses was anticipated. A bargain
was struck. Nottingham opened an attack upon the peace
preliminaries, which were known to be unpleasing to the elector
of Hanover. He repeated the old claim that neither Spain nor
the West Indies should go to a Bourbon. He was supported
by Marlborough and by the WThigs ; the quid, pro quo had been
the promise by the Whigs that they would themselves pass a mild
bill to check occasional conformity. Nottingham's resolution
io6 Queen Anne
was carried in the Lords, but it was defeated in the Commons
by more than two to one.
The rest of the Tories united in the determination to destroy
Marlborough and to clear the way by an attack upon Walpole,
Attack on whom no offers had successfully tempted to seces-
Waipoie sjon from the Whigs. He was charged with pecula-
and Marl- .. TT. . ,. ,.
borough, tion as secretary at war. His vindication was so
December. successful that the Tories could only muster a
majority of fifty-seven to pronounce him guilty of corruption.
When it was moved that he should be expelled the House, the
majority was halved. In the final majority which ordered that
he should be sent to the Tower there were only twelve.
The attack upon Walpole was followed up by corresponding
attacks upon Marlborough. He was charged with receiving
commissions upon the bread contracts for the army amounting
to over £60,000, and with appropriating four times as much out
of the sums provided for the payment of foreign troops. The
duke showed that in the latter case he had acted upon a perfectly
definite arrangement made with him by William and the allies,
the money having been spent by him in accordance therewith
upon secret service. A similar defence applied to the bread
contracts. The system itself was manifestly a bad one, not
because it involved dishonesty, but because it opened the door
for peculation. The duke had no other allowance for secret
service, and there is no doubt at all, from the excellence of that
service, that his expenditure was ample and well applied. There
is, in short, no doubt that but for the exigencies of party spite
he would have been triumphantly acquitted. But as matters
stood he was disgraced and dismissed from all his offices. The
injustice turned the tide of popularity in the duke's favour,
and the ministers did not dare to proceed to an impeachment.
It was now certain that the peace proposals would be defeated
in the Lords, and that the result of a struggle between Lords
and Commons would be doubtful. The ministry took the un-
precedented step of creating twelve Tory peers to secure a
majority in the Upper House.
So matters stood at the beginning of 1712. Oxford and St.
The Fall of the Whigs 107
John were resolved upon the peace to which they had secretly
agreed, a peace in which British interests were very fully
guarded ; though with by no means equal con-
sideration for the allies. The chiefs had to antici- position of
pate that they would be charged with bad faith and
with playing for their own hand. Therefore they
made it their business to fortify themselves as against the allies
by procuring a series of resolutions complaining of the failure of
the allies to fulfil their own obligations in the course of the war,
backed by a vote of censure on the ministers and the pleni-
potentiary who had negotiated and ratified the Barrier Treaty.
Before the end of January the peace conferences began at Utrecht ;
but while they were going on the British ministers were carrying
on their own private negotiations with a fully justified confidence
in the procrastinating capacities of a gathering such as that of
Utrecht.
The situation, in fact, became further complicated in February
by the death of Louis's grandson and heir, Louis of Burgundy,
and of the elder of his two children. Only a sickly £ff
baby of two stood between Philip of Spain and the death of
succession to the French throne. Nobody expected Burgundy,
the baby Louis to live. Nobody could admit the
possibility of allowing Philip to hold the throne of Spain and
succeed to the throne of France. Any mere renunciation of the
French succession on his part would be hopelessly discounted
by previous announcements that even if made they would never
be valid. The English ministers were confident that Philip
would accept the proposal they now made, that he should resign
the Spanish crown in favour of the duke of Savoy, and should
receive some compensation in Italy. Even that would be de-
manding a good deal of Austria ; but in England the Tories
would at any rate be able to say that they had prevented the
Bourbon succession in Spain. Their confidence was increased
by the assent of Louis, though that of Philip was still neces-
sary. At the end of May, ministers ventured to announce
that peace conditions would very shortly be laid before the
parliament.
io8 Queen Anne
They had indeed felt so secure that they had already been
guilty of a portentous breach of faith with the allies. The duke
Desertion of °^ Ormonde, a well-meaning person but easily to be
the allies, managed by more astute politicians, had been sent
May* to the Netherlands to take the command in the place
of Marlborough. The States-General had been formally advised
that her Britannic Majesty intended to carry on the war as
vigorously as ever until satisfactory terms of peace should be
arrived at. But early in May Ormonde, who had joined Eugene,
now in supreme command, received private instructions from
St. John that he was to join in no siege and to fight no battle
without further orders ; that Marshal Villars had been notified
of these instructions, and that Ormonde was to act accordingly ;
in other words, he was to desert the allies in the field. Ormonde
accepted the iniquitous task, but being quite unskilled in dis-
simulation, he could not prevent the allies from very soon dis-
covering the real position of affairs. A protest from the States-
General was met by the answer that, in effect, their own disregard
of their obligations had released Great Britain from the duty
of respecting her engagements to them. And almost at the same
moment ministers received from Spain the startling intelligence
that Philip quite refused to surrender the Spanish crown.
V. THE TREATY OF UTRECHT AND THE TORY DEBACLE,
1712-1714
For the Tories the first and imperative necessity was to pro-
cure a treaty so favourable to Great Britain that whatever was
1712 discreditable in their conduct would be condoned,
oxford and Otherwise, there was no clear vision among them
ke' of the policy to be pursued. Oxford, perfectly aware
that St. John, who, at the beginning of July, was created Vis-
count Bolingbroke, was aiming at taking his place as leader of
the party, was on the one side intriguing for Whig support and
on the other was encouraging James to believe that he might
pronounce against the Hanoverian succession. There was, in
fact, a very general impression that if James would but declare
The Treaty of Utrecht and the Tory Debacle 1 09
himself a Protestant the Stuart restoration would be assured.
Oxford was not in the least a Jacobite, but he wanted to be pre-
pared for emergencies. Bolingbroke, on the other hand, had
made up his mind that the game to play was that of aggressive
Toryism, of bidding for the enthusiastic support of the extremists,
not the qualified support of moderates. He had already attacked
the Whigs by a bill for investigating the grants of land made
in the reign of William in., though the proposal was defeated
through the rule that on an equal division ' the noes have it/
The Scots were punished for their Whiggery by the imposition
of the English tax upon malt which had been expressly debarred,
so long as the war should be going on, by the Treaty of Union.
So great was the irritation that a demand for the repeal of the
Union was barely defeated in the House of Lords. By the be-
ginning of 1713 the situation was so critical that the government
warned France that if there were further delay in acceding to
its explicit demands active hostilities would be renewed.
This put a prompt end to procrastination. On 3ist March
(O.S. ; nth April, N.S.) the Treaty of Utrecht was signed on
behalf of France, Great Britain, Holland, Portugal, 1713 ^^^
Savoy, and Prussia. The emperor still held out, of Utrecht,
along with the minor German states which would pn '
not separate themselves from him. It soon became obvious,
however, that nothing could come of continuing the duel, and
Charles vi. accepted at the Treaty of Rastadt, early in 1714, the
terms of the peace which the rest of the allies had made at
Utrecht.
The partition of the Spanish empire was accomplished. Spain
and the Indies went to the Bourbon candidate, whose succession
to the French throne France was most solemnly Terms of
pledged in no circumstances to recognise — however the treaty.
slight a value might be attached to such pledges. France re-
tained Alsace, including Strasburg ; the duke of Savoy got
Sicily. The Austrian share consisted of Naples and the Milanese,
Sardinia, and the Netherlands, except for the specified conces-
sions made to Holland in respect of Barrier towns. Holland
obtained military control of the line of fortified towns along the
1 10 Queen Anne
frontier between the French and the Austrian Netherlands —
Furnes, Ypres, Menin, Tournay, Mons, Charleroi, and Namur,
as well as Ghent. France's ally, the elector of Bavaria, was
restored to the dominions of which he had been bereft by the battle
of Blenheim. Setting aside Great Britain, the distribution of
territory at the end of the war was very much that which would
have fully satisfied William when the war began. That the
allies should have been dissatisfied at receiving no more after a
long and exhausting struggle, in which they had been quite em-
phatically the victors, was natural ; but the great gains of the
struggle went to Great Britain.
When William and Louis made their Second Partition Treaty
the crown of Spain itself was assigned to the Austrian candidate,
Gains of because, in effect, William's condition for giving
Great Britain, the Spanish share to the Bourbons was the acquisi-
tion by the British of a naval base in the Mediterranean. That
condition was now fulfilled ; Minorca and Gibraltar were ceded
to the maritime power. The Tory pamphleteers had clamoured
because naval supremacy was not used for the seizure of French
and Spanish colonies in America ; nevertheless that very end
was attained by the treaty ; for Britain acquired not only St.
Kitts in the West Indies, but that perpetual bone of contention
in North America, Acadia, or Nova Scotia ; as well as the Hudson
Bay territory, and Newfoundland, subject to the reservation of
certain fishing rights. But this was not all. William had sought
for his kingdom and for Holland trading concessions. Louis,
in 1701, had sought to appropriate for France the monopoly of
the trade with the Spanish colonies ; the exclusive possession
of the slave-trade had been at the outset conveyed to her under
a compact known as the Assiento. By the Treaty of Utrecht the
Assiento was transferred from France to Great Britain, and with
it rights of trading, though under strict limitations, in the South
Seas. Finally, France was not only pledged to acknowledge the
Hanoverian succession, but also undertook to remove the Pre-
tender from French territory ; while Dunkirk, a nest of French
privateers during the war, was to be dismantled. Great Britain
at least had no cause to complain of the harvest she had gathered.
The Treaty of Utrecht and the Tory Debacle 1 1 1
Nevertheless, she had won it at the price of national dishonour.
She had forced her allies to agree to the terms so profitable to
her by deserting them in the field. To this she The price,
could indeed pretend the excuse that they had played her false
by shirking their obligations and hampering her generals. But
upon no pretext whatever could she excuse her base desertion
of the Catalans or of the Protestants of the Cevennes, whom she
had during the course of the war deliberately incited to revolt
by promises of support. She was pledged up to the hilt to secure
for the Catalans the political privileges of which they had been
bereft. They had risen to arms and fought stubbornly through-
out the war on the side of the allies on the faith of British
pledges. The negotiators of the Treaty of Utrecht infamously
left them to the tender mercies of Philip, who took upon them
a ruthless revenge.
The Treaty of Utrecht is one of the great landmarks of inter-
national politics. It marked the final defeat of Louis's great
projects of French expansion. It marked also the The treaty
point at which Holland slipped finally back from her marks an
position in the front rank of the European powers. epoch-
During the war her navy had become no more than an auxiliary
of the British ; Great Britain, not Holland, secured by the peace
a naval base in the Mediterranean ; Great Britain, not Holland,
gained the commercial concessions which signalised the fact that
she had become a long way the first of the commercial nations.
Holland, in fact, had gained little by the war except security
against being eaten up by France ; while the drain upon her
resources had finally reduced her to the position of a minor
power. And here we must also remark upon the changes that
had been taking place in the north and east of Europe outside
the sphere of the war of the Spanish Succession. Hitherto
Russia had not counted as a power at all ; but during these years
Peter the Great had been organising a great empire which was
destined to play a leading part in the future. Sweden had blazed
into a sudden and portentous activity under Charles xn., whose
brilliant successes had been followed by scarcely less startling
disasters. His name was still one ' at which the world grew pale/
ii2 Queen Anne
but within a very few years his star was to set for ever, and
Sweden, like Holland, was to pass finally into the ranks of the
minor powers.
In England the treaty was at first received, naturally enough,
with popular satisfaction. It had, however, been accompanied
by a separate commercial treaty between France
concurrent and Great Britain which excited the extreme hos-
treaty of tility of the British commercial community. In
commerce. ,11 <• ,-, ^
the early stages of the war, when first Portugal
joined the allies, a commercial treaty had been arranged with
Portugal, known as the Methuen Treaty, under which Portuguese
wines were to be admitted to England subject to duties much
lower than the wines of France ; while there were to be corre-
spondingly low duties on English goods, especially English wool,
imported to Portugal. Great store was set by 'the Methuen
Treaty, because the Portuguese trade was regarded as particularly
profitable. The export of English goods to Portugal was con-
siderably greater than the import of Portuguese goods. It
followed that the balance was paid by Portugal in bullion.
Because the trade increased the amount of bullion, it was held
to be good for the country. Now the Tory commercial treaty
proposed to place France and England in the relation of the
' most favoured nation ' to each other ; that is to say, neither
country was to impose upon goods from the other duties higher
than it imposed upon similar imports from elsewhere. But the
expansion of commerce with France would be injurious, according
to the mercantile theory — the doctrine of the balance of trade. It
would mean that bullion would go out of England into France ;
therefore we should be injuring ourselves and benefiting France.
And at the same time we should injure our trade with Portugal,
through the loss of the preference on her wines, and so we should
be substituting an injurious for a beneficial trade. So strong
was the opposition to the commercial treaty that the Whigs
were able to defeat it in parliament.
Still, the Tories considered that the opportunity was favour-
able for securing their parliamentary predominance. There was
a dissolution, and a general election which returned a smaller
The Treaty of Utrecht and the Tory Debacle 113
but still a very substantial Tory majority ; a majority, more-
over, in which there was a much larger pro- Ageneral
portion than before of the extreme partisans upon election,
whom Bolingbroke relied to make himself leader Au£Uflt-
in place of Oxford.
Queen Anne's health was breaking down, and there was every
probability that her successor would soon be on the throne.
Parliament had settled who that successor was to t
The succes-
be, and the country had acquiesced. Whether Sion: the
the old electress, the granddaughter of a king of queen and
• j t. L •*. i j ^ u the Tories.
England, survived her cousin or not, it could not be
very long before her son George, the elector, would be on the
British throne should the Act of Succession take effect. Still,
there were large numbers of Tories who had given unquestioning
support to Mary and William and Anne, whose loyalist instincts
shrank from the accession of a German prince when there was
a grandson of the Royal Martyr to claim the throne. If James
could only have been persuaded of the converse of that pro-
position upon which Henry iv. of France had acted, that ' the
crown was worth a Mass,' the queen herself and the whole Tory
party would have declared against the Hanoverian succession.
But on that point James, a much maligned person, was obdurate.
He would not barter his faith even for the crown of Great Britain.
Nothing would induce him to do more than to promise British
Protestants their liberties. Common sense forbade a Stuart
restoration on those conditions, but sentiment has been known
to override common sense.
On the other hand, the Whigs did not want a Stuart restora-
tion at any price. The moneyed interests believed that it would
be followed by the repudiation of the National Debt. Tne succes-
The Dissenters believed that it would mean the tolera- sion : the
tion of Popery, and even at the very best the ascend- SB'
ency of a thoroughly intolerant Anglicanism. The politicians
foresaw in it the restoration of vanished prerogatives, the domina-
tion of the Crown over parliament, and the total ruin of their
own party. They made up their minds that it was their first
business to secure the Hanoverian succession, and to ensure for
Innes's Eng. Hist.— Vol. in. H
1 1 4 Queen Anne
themselves a monopoly of the favour of the house of Hanover,
a programme to which they devoted themselves with assiduity.
The Tories suffered from divided counsels ; Oxford gave no
lead. He was still facing both ways, still trying to attach
Boiingbroke. moderates from all parties to himself. There was
a solid group of Hanover Tories who were determined to main-
tain the Protestant succession. There were large numbers of
Tories whose Jacobitism was scarcely veiled. The bulk of the
party were fanatically Anglican and fanatically anti-Whig, but
otherwise without clear ideas. But there was one man among
them, Boiingbroke, who knew his own mind. He meant in the
first place to make a clean sweep of the Whigs, to oust Oxford
from the leadership of the Tories, to create among the Tories
themselves a solid phalanx which would obey the word of com-
mand without question, to dominate the queen. When that
was accomplished he meant to choose the queen's successor.
And he had very little doubt that the successor of his choice
would be James, though it was not safe to admit so much as yet.
He almost succeeded. He bought Lady Masham, whose
husband had been raised to the peerage, and who was angry at
1714. being in her own estimation insufficiently rewarded
Cross by Oxford. Harley's former tool was turned into an
instrument for displacing him in the queen's favour.
From top to bottom of the army Whigs were being displaced
by Tories ; Ormonde, its chief, was captured for Jacobitism. The
Hanover Tories were uneasy. Led by Nottingham they joined
the Whigs in attacking the ministry for the desertion of the
Catalans, and in declaring that the Hanoverian succession was
in danger. The Whigs offended the queen, but not the elector,
by recommending that he should come over himself to secure
his position. In the spring of 1714 Boiingbroke played his
trump card, and appealed to Anglican fanaticism. He intro-
duced the Schism Act to deprive Dissenters of the control of
their own children's education, clearly a step towards the revival
of the Clarendon Code. The bill was carried ; in the Commons
it rallied the Tories to Boiingbroke. Shortly afterwards parlia-
ment was prorogued. Boiingbroke had won the day with
the queen. On 27th July she dismissed Oxford at the council
The Treaty of Utrecht and the Tory Debacle 1 1 5
board. Before the council rose, some time after midnight, the
cabinet was reconstructed, and almost every position of import-
ance was given to some adherent of Bolingbroke who was more
than suspected of Jacobite leanings, though the inscrutable
Shrewsbury was still president of the council. At last Boling-
broke had a free hand.
But it was too late. In the winter Anne had suffered from a
very severe illness which had almost killed her. She had never
really recovered. The excitement of the scene at Lareineest
the council board when she dismissed Oxford was morte,
her death-blow. Bolingbroke had still all his work lst Au^U8t-
to do to secure the Jacobite restoration, in which was his sole
hope ; but the Whigs had already done their work for securing
the Hanoverian succession. They were already prepared for the
crisis. Scarcely forty-eight hours after the dismissal of Oxford
Anne had an apoplectic stroke. The council was summoned
and was sitting, when suddenly two of the privy councillors,
the Whigs Argyll and Somerset, entered to proffer their assist-
ance and advice in the crisis. Technically every member of the
Privy Council had a right to attend whether summoned or not.
Bolingbroke was helpless. Shrewsbury, the president of the
council, who had probably arranged the incident, welcomed the
newcomers. No successor to Oxford had been appointed as
lord treasurer ; failing some other appointment the death of
the queen would mean his resumption of office. All Bolingbroke
dared do was to propose that it should be given to Shrewsbury.
The report was brought in that the queen had recovered con-
sciousness. A deputation from the council went to her bed-
side ; she had enough vitality left in her to do as they desired,
and handed to Shrewsbury the treasurer's staff with the words,
' Use it for the good of my people.' The deputation returned,
and all the available members of the Privy Council, many of
them Whigs, were immediately summoned. It was this body,
not Bolingbroke's new cabinet, which took over the control.
There was no possibility of resistance. Two days later the queen
was dead, and George I. was proclaimed king, while none dared
to raise a dissenting voice. It was not Bolingbroke, but the
Whigs who had won the game by a successful coup de main.
CHAPTER III. THE HANOVERIAN SUCCESSION
I. GEORGE I. AND STANHOPE, 1714-1721
IN accordance with an earlier statute of Queen Anne's reign, the
government of the country upon her death, until the arrival of
1714 King George, was vested in a body of lords justices
Accession of nominated by the elector of Hanover. When the
lorgei. j^ was Opene(j ft was found to contain the name
of only one of the ministers, Shrewsbury. The other seventeen,
with few exceptions, were Whig peers, though the Hanover
Tories, Nottingham and Anglesey, were included. The most
notable omissions were Somers — probably on account of ill-
health — Marlborough, and Sunderland. Marlborough, since the
death of Godolphin in 1712, had resided abroad, but it can
hardly be doubted that his exclusion was due to distrust ;
although he was very shortly afterwards reinstated at the head
of the army. It is certain that he had been seeking to make
his peace with James in case of accidents, while still assuring
the elector of his loyalty to the Hanoverian succession. He
was, however, back as captain-general within a week of George's
accession. Before the end of August Bolingbroke and Ormonde
were both dismissed. On i8th September King George arrived
in England.
With the single exception of Nottingham, unless we add
Shrewsbury, all of the new ministry were Whigs. Townshend
The new and Stanhope were secretaries of state, the latter
T^S- being distinguished both as a soldier and as a diplo-
matist, with an exceptional knowledge of foreign affairs. In
Scotland Mar, who had been active for the Union, but had latterly
been associated with Bolingbroke, was displaced as secretary
of state by Montrose, and Argyll became commander-in-chief.
George himself was fifty-four years of age. He was an uncom-
116
George I. and Stanhope 1 1 7
promising German, with a singularly unhappy matrimonial record,
which was one cause of perpetual estrangement between him
and his son ; he was accompanied by extremely unattractive
German mistresses ; and he could not speak English, while
there was not one of his English ministers who could talk German.
The result was inevitable. He very soon ceased to attend the
meetings of the council or cabinet, the cabinet conducted the
affairs of the nation, and the way was prepared for a Prime
Minister to become the acting head of the state, a change which
was completed under Robert Walpole's long tenure of power.
King George had none of the attributes which tend to awaken
personal loyalty. From the English point of view he was merely
a figurehead, set upon the throne in order to prevent Jacobitism.
it from being occupied by a Roman Catholic. He was there
upon sufferance ; if he proved troublesome he would be no
better than a Stuart, and would be sent back to Hanover. Even
if he were not troublesome, his tenure of power depended upon
the stolid common sense of the nation ; everything in the nature
of sentiment was on the Jacobite side. To the Whigs, indeed,
and to the moneyed interest, it was a matter of first-rate import-
ance that the dynasty should be established ; that was the con-
dition of the victory of the principles of the Revolution and of
financial stability. The landed interest as such had no equiva-
lent inducements, and Toryism as such had no affection for the
principles of the Revolution. If the Jacobites had been in-
telligent, King George's position would have been extremely
precarious. Fortunately for the Hanoverian succession the
Jacobites were not intelligent. In a manner more creditable
to his heart than to his head J ames published declarations which
emphasised his own adherence to Catholicism, and implied that
the late Tory ministry had been in favour of his restoration.
The effect was shown when parliament was dissolved, and a new
one elected in J anuary . The Whigs were returned with a maj ority
of a hundred and fifty in the House of Commons. In the pro-
clamation of the dissolution the Whigs had driven home the
identification of Toryism with Jacobitism. The Tory party in
parliament was irretrievably ruined
1 1 8 The Hanoverian Succession
In March the Whigs opened the attack on the late ministers.
Bolingbroke took fright at the seizure of some papers, and fled
1715 to France in disguise. In June the impeachment
The Whig of Bolingbroke, Oxford, and Ormonde was voted,
victory. Oxford kept his head. He was confident that the
case against him rested upon nothing stronger than his responsi-
bility for the Treaty of Utrecht ; and to impeach a man for
proceedings which had twice been ratified by parliament was,
in his eyes, an empty threat ; but Ormonde followed Bolingbroke's
example and fled. The Whigs gained nothing by proceedings
which to the public appeared merely vindictive ; there was a
reaction, especially among the disorderly elements in the country,
and the Jacobites abroad developed an increasing conviction
that a blow for the restoration would be successful.
Now there were two conditions without which there could be
no hope of a Jacobite success: military help from abroad, and
Death of thorough organisation at home as well as in James's
Louis xiv., own immediate circle. That prince was now in
September. Lorraine> It was not unreasonable to hope for help
from France ; Louis's promise to recognise the Hanoverian
succession was of no great value, and at this juncture Great
Britain was secure of no allies. But Jacobite organisation
simply did not exist, and the government in England was much
better prepared for an insurrection than the Jacobites. On
ist September a fatal blow fell ; Louis died. His death, leaving
the infant Louis xv. king, threw the regency upon the next
prince of the blood, Philip, duke of Orleans, the nephew of Louis ;
the old king's third grandson, the duke of Berry, having died
very recently. Orleans knew that his own chances of the French
crown would be extremely doubtful if his cousin, Philip of Spain,
should assert his claim ; consequently, his interest centred in
the strict maintenance of the Treaty of Utrecht. The obvious
policy for him was to support the house of Hanover in return for
the British guarantee of his own rights of succession in France.
Consequently, the prospect of French intervention under the
regency in favour of a Jacobite restoration was exceedingly
remote.
George /. and Stanhope 119
Amongst all the inept insurrections recorded in history, the
palm for ineptitude must be awarded to ' The Fifteen.' Nothing
had been arranged except that it was intended that
Ormonde should head an invasion. The earl of Mar, Mar in the '
after blowing hot and cold for some time, had ended north, Sep-
by turning J acobite. He betook himself to the north,
having first procured from James a commission to act as com-
mander-in-chief of the royalist forces in Scotland ; on the pretext
of a great hunting-party, he collected a number of Jacobite nobles
to whom his plans, such as they were, were revealed, and proceeded
to proclaim James in. and vm. on 6th September. Some of the
clans came in zealously enough. A good many of the chiefs
adopted the device of dividing their families ; Atholl sent his eldest
son, the marquis of Tullibardine, to join Mar, while he stopped at
home himself, and sent such intelligence as he thought fit to the
government. Mar collected a respectable force and occupied
Perth, while the government occupied Stirling in force, and
dispatched Argyll to collect the Campbells and other Whig clans
and take the command. Mar was strong enough to have swooped
upon Edinburgh, but remained where he was in stupid inactivity.
In Scotland the government's position was weak, but in
England it was very well prepared. A few leading Jacobites
were arrested, and the rest were not slow to realise The rising on
that every isolated attempt at a rising would be tne border. _
nipped in the bud. Ormonde sailed to Tor Bay, but meeting
with no response sailed back again. In the north there was
more activity. In the Scottish Lowlands some of the Tory
peers got a force together at Kelso. In Northumberland what
can only be called a rabble of Tory squires collected under the
leadership of Thomas Forster and Lord Derwentwater. These
two parties got themselves together, and were reinforced by a
few troops under Brigadier M'Intosh, detached by Mar ; even
then they numbered only about two thousand men. They
marched up and down on the Border unable to make up their
minds what to do. The Englishmen would not march north to
help Mar in crushing Argyll ; the Highlanders objected to
marching into England. At last when the eastern route into
I2O The Hanoverian Succession
England was blocked by a few government troops they resolved
to follow an evil precedent and to march — without the High-
landers— by way of Carlisle and Preston, raising the Jacobites.
They raised no one, and when they got to Preston they omitted
the most ordinary military precautions and surrendered at dis-
cretion ; having apparently quite overrated the forces which
beset them there, and having also persuaded themselves that
the terms included what amounted to a promise of pardon.
On that same day, I3th November, Argyll and Mar met at
the battle of Sheriffmuir, in Perthshire, when
* We ran and they ran, and they ran and we ran,
And we ran and they ran awa', man.'
Both sides, in fact, did more running than fighting, and there
fell all told only a few hundreds. The main reason for treating
Sheriffmuir. the affair as a government victory was that Mar
chose to regard it in that light and beat a retreat. Such was the
decisive battle of a campaign on which depended the crown of
Great Britain. From the beginning there had never been any
heart in the futile conflict. There was no fuel for a conflagration.
When it was all over James himself appeared, to join the army
in Scotland ; but he was the last man to bring fresh heart to the
disheartened. Argyll, indeed, was in no hurry to push his
advantage ; but the disgusted clansmen were very soon drib-
bling away to their own glens after their usual fashion. The
Jacobite forces dwindled, and when at last after the turn of the
year Argyll began to press forward, they fell back to the coast,
where James was persuaded to take ship secretly and sail away
again. Thus dolefully smouldered out the melancholy ' Fifteen.*
There were a very few executions ; the Scots were justifiably
wrath because some of them were tried at Carlisle, a breach of
End of the the Act of Union. There were members of the
Fifteen. government, notably Walpole, who wished to strike
hard ; but, in fact, too many of the great families were playing for
safety, doubtful what the future might bring forth and anxious
to keep well with both sides, to be at all disposed to severity,
which might cost them dear if there happened to be a turn of
George I. and Stanhope 121
the wheel. Caution, not magnanimity, was the motive of
leniency. There was little enough in the way of ostensible
results, except the making of some military roads in the High-
lands, and a very ineffective measure of disarmament. But at
least it had become evident that the Jacobites would have a
very poor chance unless they improved their methods ; and
James, without further delay, showed the extreme improbability
of any such consummation by dismissing the most capable of
his adherents, Bolingbroke.
The rebellion was over. Two peers, Derwentwater and Ken-
mure, had been executed as well as between twenty and thirty
commoners. Very nearly every one concerned had made most
unedifying exhibitions of themselves. The judges had bullied
the prisoners ; the prisoners had been treated in an indecently
ignominious fashion ; the king's personal behaviour could hardly
have been less kingly. No one came out of the affair with
credit except a few of the rank and file, who had risked their
lives for a cause which they believed to be righteous, and who
had no responsibility for the blundering incapacity of their
leaders. There are but faint glimpses of that splendid devotion
which thirty years later was to shed an imperishable lustre upon
a ruined cause.
But out of the ' Fifteen,' and the general sense of insecurity
of which it was the symptom, there came one curious product.
It created a doubt as to the possible results of a Tne
parliamentary general election. The government Septennial
felt that a defeat at the polls might seriously en- Act' 1716'
danger the whole Revolution Settlement. In order to avoid the
risk a bill was introduced to extend the period of a parliament's
life to seven years instead of three. The House elected in J anuary
1715 claimed authority to prolong its own existence beyond the
term for which it had been elected. It was not moved by an
abstract conviction of the superior merits of a Septennial over
a Triennial parliament, but by the concrete danger of an im-
mediate accession of the J acobites to power. The only precedent
was in the action of the Long Parliament, which had passed
a statute prolonging its own existence till it should choose to
122 The Hanoverian Succession
vote its own dissolution. The Tories, however, could hardly
use the argument of unconstitutionalism with effect, since when
they were in power they had been contemplating a step of the
same kind themselves. The bill was passed, and its immediate
utility was felt through its effect on foreign governments ; since
it ensured that the conduct of foreign affairs would remain for
several years in the same hands instead of being subject to sharp
reversals at short intervals. The Septennial Act remained in
force until the changes introduced by the Parliament Act of
1911.
The accession of George i. placed upon the throne of Great
Britain a monarch who lacked knowledge of and interest in the
Tne domestic affairs of his new kingdom. William m.,
Hanoverian already a continental statesman of the first rank
connection. before he came to England at all> nevertheless
played a king's part in British affairs. George left British affairs
entirely to his ministers. But he had a personal interest in and
knowledge of foreign affairs, because although he was not a con-
tinental statesman of the first rank he was nevertheless a prince
of the German empire as well as king of Great Britain. Hanover
had interests of its own, and he naturally wanted to use his
new kingdom in support of those interests. His ministers,
therefore, had a difficult task. George's British subjects would
certainly be extremely jealous of anything which could be given
the colour of Hanoverianism, that is, of being dictated by the
interests of Hanover rather than of Great Britain. Even if the
interests of the two states happened to coincide, as on the whole
they did more often than not, the mere fact that a particular
policy would be productive of advantage to Hanover would lay
it open to suspicion, and would provide Jacobitism with an
opportunity of clamouring against the evil result of setting the
British crown upon the head of a German potentate. And yet
it was necessary to seek the advantage of Hanover, if it was only
to secure the right of claiming a quid, pro quo when occasion
should arise.
The treaties of Utrecht and Rastadt left the European situation
in an extremely complicated state. Neither Austria nor Spain
George I. and Stanhope 123
was in the least satisfied with the terms. The Emperor
Charles vi. still regarded the Spanish crown as being his of
right, while Philip v. still considered that the Italian The French
territories allotted to Austria belonged to Spain, succession.
Moreover, Philip, having two sons by his first wife, the daughter
of the duke of Savoy, had taken for his second wife Elizabeth
Farnese of Parma, a lady of vigorous temperament and strong
will, who was determined that her own children should not be
left out in the cold. It was certain that if Spain got an oppor-
tunity she would endeavour to recover her Italian dominions.
Then there was the question of the French succession. Assum-
ing the validity of Philip's renunciation, the next heir after the
infant heir apparent was the duke of Orleans, son of the brother
of Louis xiv. But it was the general opinion among French
lawyers that the French crown was indefeasible, and that Philip
had no power to renounce the title for himself or for his offspring.
Louis xiv. was seventy-five ; his sickly great-grandson was not
at all likely to survive him many years. There was therefore
every probability that in a very short time the question of the
French succession would become critical.
For Great Britain the question of first-rate importance was
the security of the Hanoverian succession. The Treaty of Utrecht
had broken the bond between her and her old allies Hanover and
Austria and Holland ; any power with whom she tne Baltic*
quarrelled would be ready to utilise the Stuart claim as a weapon
against her. Therefore, both for the Whigs and for George, it
was a matter of great importance to restore the old relations
with Austria and Holland — to make it in the interests of both
to guarantee George's throne. But the fact that George was
elector of Hanover introduced a further complication. The
Baltic powers, Russia, Prussia, and Denmark, were all interested
in completing the ejection of Sweden from the southern shores
of the Baltic. Hanover was joined with them in a league which
had all but accomplished this purpose ; and Hanover's share
of the spoils was to be Bremen and Verden, which would round
off the Hanoverian territory by giving to it the control of the
mouths of the \Veser and the Elbe. On the other hand, it was
124 The Hanoverian Succession
extremely doubtful whether Great Britain could be persuaded
to regard this question as one in which she had a direct interest.
Her relations with Sweden were friendly, and a quarrel with
Charles xn. might very easily make that erratic monarch an
active enemy, ready in his own interests, and for the punishment
of George and his British antagonists, to apply his brilliant
military talents to a Stuart restoration.
Turning once more to the south and the antagonism between
Austria and Spain : Spain had this present advantage that
Aiberoni. Austria would be hampered in the defence of her
territories by the war on which she was engaged with the Turks.
Cardinal Aiberoni, the clever statesman, who, subject to the
domination of Queen Elizabeth, controlled Spanish policy at this
time, was very well aware that the employment of British sea-
power in the Mediterranean would turn the scale decisively ;
consequently, it was his present desire to conciliate Great Britain
by commercial concessions which would prevent her interven-
tion.
The man who, for six years, was the real director of British
policy was Stanhope, who saw clearly that the first necessity
stanhope's was to re-establish those friendly relations with
policy. Holland and with the emperor which were tradi-
tional with the Whigs, and had only been broken off during the
Tory ascendency. In this he was seconded by George's Han-
overian ministers. The isolation of Great Britain was ended
in 1716 by two separate alliances with Austria and Holland.
On the other hand, the British ministry declined to join the
Anti-Swedish league ; but since Charles xii. had, from the
British point of view, transgressed the rights of neutrals by sea,
a British fleet was sent to the Baltic, not to open hostilities, but
to protect British shipping. The practical effect was the same.
The Swedish fleet was paralysed, the Swedes were driven out of
their last foothold on the south of the Baltic, and the possession
of the desired provinces was guaranteed to Hanover.
Early in 1716, before the completion of the Dutch and Austrian
treaties, George procured the repeal of the clause in the Act of
Settlement, which forbade the king to go abroad without express
George /. and Stanhope 125
parliamentary sanction. He went to Hanover, accompanied by
Stanhope, and was there joined by Sunderland ; while his son,
who had been created Prince of Wales, remained whig
in England as regent, with Townshend as acting differences,
chief minister. The outcome of this was presently to be a dis-
ruption among the Whigs. Now, Townshend found himself in
disagreement with Stanhope, and the king found it very easy
to believe that his son was forming, along with Townshend and
his brother-in-law, Walpole, a party of his own. The disagree-
ments reached such a pitch that early in 1717 Townshend was
dismissed, and his dismissal was followed by the resignation of
Walpole and several other leading Whigs. The idea of joint
responsibility of ministers was coming into being.
Meanwhile, Stanhope had negotiated a new departure in
alliances, with most important results. To the regent Orleans
it was a matter of first-rate consequence to secure The French
his own succession to Louis xv. ; that is to say, it aiuance.
was in his personal interest to prevent the union of the French
and Spanish crowns. The British alliance, on terms of a mutual
guarantee of the succession in both countries as laid down by
the Treaty of Utrecht, was extremely desirable from his point
of view. The direct result was the Triple Alliance between
France, Great Britain, and Holland, which completely disposed
of any present prospect of France giving aid to James ; and
further procured the dismantling of Dunkirk and Mardyke which
France had hitherto evaded. An indirect outcome was that
when the interests of the French and British governments had
become identified, and the two countries acted together by land
and sea to enforce a common policy, France left naval operations
entirely to the British ; and the result of this again was that
France made no attempt to reconstruct a powerful navy, while
the British navy became more and more decisively supreme
on the seas. It now became the leading object with Stanhope
to press Austria into the alliance, in which Great Britain would
be the controlling power. To this end Austria was finally to
resign her claims on the Spanish crown but was to be secured
in her possessions in Italy, while she was to transfer to Savoy
126 The Hanoverian Succession
Sardinia in exchange for Sicily ; and the duchies of Tuscany
and Parma were to be bestowed upon the sons of Elizabeth of
The Spain, but were to be separated in perpetuity from
Quadruple the Spanish crown. Meanwhile, the good offices
Alliance. Q£ Qrea^- Britain were to be employed in procur-
ing a satisfactory peace between Austria and Turkey. The
Quadruple Alliance, however, was not completed until the end
of August 1718.
When it was realised in Spain that no commercial treaties
would be allowed to detach Great Britain from her Austrian
Alberoni policy, and from maintaining the Orleans succession
and Gortz, in France, Alberoni's plans changed. While he was
working in France to build up a legitimist party
which should overthrow Orleans, he saw in the northern compli-
cations an opportunity for striking at Great Britain. Sweden had
been irritated in 1715 and 1716 by the action of the British fleet.
But in 1716 George took alarm at the proceedings of his anti-
Swedish ally the Tsar Peter the Great. Peter occupied Mecklen-
burg, and his doing so appeared to George to be a menace to
Hanover. Through the greater part of the year there was in
fact actual danger of direct hostilities being opened with Russia.
By the representations of Austria, Peter was induced to evacuate
Mecklenburg at the beginning of 1717 ; but he did so with an
abiding feeling of hostility to George. Meanwhile, the Swedish
minister Gortz had been at least playing with the idea of check-
mating Hanover, and recovering Bremen and Verden by effect-
ing a Jacobite restoration. The British government got wind
of the plot, and in January 1717 the Swedish ambassador,
Gyllenborg, was arrested in London in defiance of the recognised
law of nations, and Gortz himself was arrested in Holland by
the Dutch government at the instance of King George. The
correspondence seized disclosed the fact that a Jacobite insur-
rection supported by Swedish troops was being concerted ; and
these revelations were held to have justified the arrests, and
greatly strengthened the British government, since there was
nothing so certain to unite the country as threats of foreign
intervention.
George I. and Stanhope 127
Now Alberoni had been devoting his energies to creating a
new Spanish fleet. As matters stood in 1717 he perceived
possibilities of uniting those long-standing foes, Alberoni in
Charles xn. and Peter the Great, with Spain, for 1717-
a Jacobite restoration, which would sever Great Britain from
Hanover, and would, as a matter of course, unite the maritime
power with Spain and with the legitimist or anti-Orleanist party
in France. It is probable, however, that the queen was re-
sponsible for hurrying him into premature action, which set the
Triple Alliance on its guard. The Spaniards made a sudden
descent on Sardinia, and captured it in August. Austria, still
tied by her Turkish war, called upon Great Britain to act on her
behalf in accordance with the treaty of the previous year. But
the ministers did not want a war with Spain, which, owing to
the recent commercial treaties, would at this moment have been
unpopular. Also they wanted Austria to be free of her Turkish
war before the commencement of open hostilities.
The delay enabled Alberoni in the summer of 1718 to dis-
patch a fleet under sealed orders, which suddenly swooped upon
Sicily. Admiral Byng, however, had already sailed 1713.
for the Mediterranean with a fleet, and with instruc- Passaro.
tions to compel the Spaniards to cease hostilities. It is curious
to observe that even at this time Stanhope was hinting at the
restitution of Gibraltar as part of the price of the peace which
he wished to preserve. Spain, however, was too eagerly bent
on her Italian ambitions. Fortune favoured the combination.
Almost simultaneously Byng with his squadron entered the
Mediterranean, the Spaniards laid siege to Messina, and the
negotiations with the Turks were brought to a successful issue
by the Treaty of Passarowitch, which released Eugene and the
Austrian battalions for operations elsewhere. Ten days later,
on nth August, Byng came up with the Spanish fleet off Cape
Passaro. Spain and Great Britain were not at war, but the
British admiral succeeded in making the Spaniards fire the first
shot, which gave him his warrant. He fell upon the Spanish
fleet, which was shattered to pieces, with hardly any loss to the
victors. Tradition has attributed a mythical dispatch to Captain
128 The Hanoverian Succession
Walton, who was detached to account for the shattered remnants
of the Spanish navy. As a matter of fact, though his dispatch
was a short one there was nothing abnormal about it, though
until recent researches brought the truth to light, he was generally
credited with having confined himself to the laconic remark, ' Sir,
we have taken and destroyed all the Spanish ships which were
on the coast, the number as per margin/
The destruction of the fleet did not prevent the capture of
Messina ; but it entirely ruined Alberoni's designs, since com-
The end of munications between Spain and Sicily were totally
Aiberoni, severed. The Quadruple Alliance was brought to
1718-20. completion, and in December 1718 war was formally
declared against Spain by Great Britain. Three weeks later
France followed suit, a plot having just been discovered, insti-
gated by Aiberoni, for depriving Orleans of the regency and
proclaiming Philip the heir to Louis. Another blow had just
befallen Aiberoni. Whether Charles xu. would have actually
taken part in an attempted Jacobite restoration in any case is
doubtful ; but he was not to have the opportunity. At the
beginning of December he was killed by a bullet while engaged
on the siege of Frederikshalle in Norway. Nevertheless, the
energetic minister played a last stroke. The Spanish navy was
not yet annihilated, and an expedition was planned with Ormonde
at the head of it to invade England. The expedition set sail,
but before it met the British squadron which was awaiting it,
it encountered a storm which wrecked the greater part of it.
A small party succeeded in reaching the coast of Scotland and
collecting a few Highlanders, but they were easily dispersed
(5th June). The resistance of Spain to the combined forces of
the Quadruple Alliance was entirely futile. The allies demanded
the dismissal of Aiberoni from Spanish soil. In December the
cardinal was expelled, and in February 1720 Philip gave in his
adhesion to the Quadruple Alliance, and to the terms of settle-
ment upon which they had agreed. The duke of Savoy became
king of Sardinia, Sicily became an Austrian possession, and the
North Italian duchies were secured to Charles, the eldest son of
Philip and Elizabeth.
George I. and Stanhope 129
The Treaty of Nystad in 1721 put an end to the northern
complications for the time. It secured for Russia the pre-
dominance in the Baltic Sea, very much against Nystad, 1721.
the will of George ; but before this the two main points which
affected Great Britain and Hanover had been settled with Sweden.
Hanover got Bremen and Verden in undisputed possession, and
the freedom of the Baltic was secured to British shipping. But
before this also the Stanhope administration had fallen.
The split between the two sections of Whigs had by no means
wrecked the government, though it had created a powerful Whig
opposition, centring round the person of the Prince of waipole in
Wales, whose antagonism to his father was a source opposition,
of some public scandal. Toryism had become so completely
discredited that the opposition Whigs, led by Waipole, had no
qualms about fighting the government on any question which
offered a chance for defeating them. No opening at first pre-
sented itself when the long suspended impeachment of Oxford
was brought to a conclusion by the acquittal of the sometime
minister. The two sections had also combined, when Waipole,
after his retirement, piloted through the House the scheme
which he had prepared as minister to provide a sinking fund
for paying off the National Debt. This plan involved the reduc-
tion of the interest on the funded debt from an average of eight
per cent, to five per cent., the balance of the secured interest being
set aside as a sinking fund for paying off the capital debt. By
borrowing from the bank, and from the South Sea Company,
an association to which we shall very shortly revert, provision
was made for paying off those holders of government stock who
objected to the reduction of their interest.
In 1718, however, the antagonism between the government
Whigs and the opposition Whigs was growing hotter. It is
not a little surprising to find that when Stanhope introduced
bills for the repeal of the Occasional Conformity Act and the
Schism Act of 1714, Waipole himself was not ashamed to join
with the Tories in an unsuccessful attempt to defeat the govern-
ment. The repeal was carried in January 1719.
In that year, however, the Opposition won an important
Innes's Eng. Hist. — Vol. in. I
130 The Hanoverian Siiccession
victory. The cardinal tenet of the Whigs was the supremacy
of parliament, and their main object of jealousy the royal pre-
Sunderiand's r°gative. Nothing could have been further removed
Peerage Bill, from their minds than any idea of democracy. The
Tories in the last reign had shown how the Crown
could manipulate one of the Houses by the simple process
of manufacturing a majority by the creation of a batch of
peers. Moved by a fear that the younger George when he came
to the throne might adopt this method of giving a majority
in the Upper House to the opposition Whigs, Sunderland, with
the entire approval of the king, brought in a bill to limit any
increase in the number of peers. It provided that when the
existing number had been increased by six, the Crown should
have no power to create any more peerages except to take the
place of such as might be vacated by lapse or forfeiture. Opposi-
tion was anticipated from Scotland, since this would preclude
Scottish peers from becoming peers of Great Britain ; that
difficulty was to be met by raising the number of Scottish peers
to twenty-five, who were to sit by hereditary right in the Upper
House. The practical effect of the bill would have been to
make the peerage a permanent close corporation of hereditary
aristocrats, instead of a body admission to which was a natural
result of distinguished public service.
There appeared to be every prospect of the bill being carried ;
many of the opposition Whigs were less alive to its dangers than
Defeat of to its merits as limiting the powers of the Crown,
the bill. its defeat was due to the determination of Walpole,
who induced the leaders to agree with some reluctance that it
should be opposed in the Commons. There, his attack upon it
was decisive. He entirely convinced the House that the country
gentlemen, such as most of them were, would be for ever debarred
from entering the ranks of the hereditary aristocracy, an honour
which every one of them regarded as a legitimate object of am-
bition for himself, or his relations, or his descendants. The bill
was thrown out, and the Crown retained its power of unlimited
creation of peers. The bill was defeated by more than ninety
votes.
George I. and Stanhope 131
For a government in modern times such a defeat would have
involved resignation ; that it should do so was an idea which
never presented itself two hundred years ago. No ministry
which could count upon a general support of its measures dreamt
of being called upon to resign because one particular measure
had been rejected. The destruction of the Stanhope ministry
came from another quarter ; and it did not involve the destruc-
tion of the Whig party, since the opposition Whigs themselves
could provide not only an alternative government, but one which
could command the widest confidence.
In the year 1711 the Tories, who had just overthrown the
Whigs, were in serious financial straits. The bank was a Whig
corporation from the beginning ; the East India
Company since the reconstruction of 1702 had been south Sea
a Whig corporation. Harley and St. John were Company,
aiming at bringing the war to an early conclusion
by a treaty which was to secure to Great Britain the Assiento
and extensive trading rights with the Spanish colonies in America.
On the basis of those expectations a Tory commercial company
was formed, which was to be for that party very much what the
bank and the East India Company were to the Whigs. The
South Sea Company was constructed to acquire from the govern-
ment a monopoly of the anticipated commercial concessions, in
return for which it advanced money to the government, and took
over £9,000,000 of the floating or unfunded debt, the interest
thereon being secured to it by the appropriation of specified
taxes as in the case of the funded debt.
The actual commercial concessions obtained under the Treaty
of Utrecht were by no means so extensive as had been expected ;
nevertheless, the business acquired was lucrative
enough to justify the existence of the company, company's
But just at this time, not England only, but Europe proposals,
in general, was seized with a speculative mania.
France plunged wildly into the schemes, not always absurd
in themselves, of the ingenious Scot John Law, which were to
be rendered ruinous by the scale on which it was attempted to
carry them out. England plunged into the schemes of the South
132 The Hanoverian Succession
Sea Company. The company came forward with a plan for
taking over the National Debt, and amalgamating it with the
South Sea stock. Interest at five per cent, was to be secured
by government in the usual manner for seven years, after which
it was to be reduced to four per cent., allowing for the establish-
ment of a sinking fund. Again, the scheme was not on the face
of it absurd. An increased trade was expected, a reasonable
interest was guaranteed by government, and the company ex-
pected to reap its profits by selling its stock at a premium. To
secure its privileges it offered the government £3,500,000. The
bank itself was prepared to make a higher offer. The company
raised its bid to £7,500,000, and the Acts conferring the desired
privileges were passed. This price, £7,500,000, was certainly
excessive. Of itself, the effect of it should have been to bring
down the price of South Sea stock, which to this time had
stood at a premium. Still, the prospects were sufficiently good
to have made the investment under ordinary circumstances
passably sound.
But the circumstances were not ordinary. Extravagant
rumours were circulated of extraordinary discoveries and extra-
172o. ordinary concessions, of impossibly enormous pro-
The bubble, fits which were to accrue. Neither the government
nor the directors were officially responsible for those rumours.
Walpole from the Opposition raised a warning voice, but no one
listened to him. In the familiar language of the present day,
there was a frantic boom in South Sea stock. Just before the
Act of Parliament went through, the market price of £100 worth
of stock was £130. A week after the Act was passed considerably
over £2,000,000 had been taken up at £300. At midsummer it
had gone up to between £1000 and £1100. Right and left,
every one, man or woman, was scraping together every available
shilling to buy South Sea stock at any price.
Then came awakening and panic. The speculative fever had
given birth to an immense number of bogus companies ; no
The bubble scheme was too absurd to draw in a crowd of dupes,
bursts. One after another the bogus companies were ex-
ploded. The public began to realise the enormity of its folly,
George /. and Stanhope 133
though it was much more disposed to lay the blame upon the
wickedness of other people. At the end of September South
Sea stock had dropped again to £150 ; those who had been
scrambling to buy were scrambling to sell. But vast numbers
had already been ruined, and the ruin spread. People who had
had nothing to do whatever with the speculation were swept
away in the general crash, because their debtors were ruined
and could not pay. Wealthy men found themselves poor, poor
men found themselves destitute, and all alike laid the disaster
at the doors of the government and the directors who had duped
them. If the public had had its way, every one who had any-
thing whatever to do with the concern, innocent or guilty,
would have been stripped of everything he possessed and at
least sent to prison. There were Jacobites who hardly con-
cealed their glee over the complete ruin of the Whigs which they
anticipated, not without reason.
But the public did not turn to the Jacobites. The group of
opposition Whigs assuredly had nothing whatever to do with the
disaster. Walpole had denounced the whole affair Walpoie
from the beginning. Walpole had already the re- called to the
putation of being the ablest financier in public life ; :
Walpole was called to the rescue, to save what he could from the
wreck. He was not disqualified by the fact that he and Towns-
hend had after midsummer been persuaded to rejoin the ministry
when the government began to realise what was coming. Wal-
pole directed his efforts to providing a remedy, as a matter of
greater importance than seeking vengeance ; but the demand
for vengeance could not be suppressed. Inquiries were in-
stituted both by the Lords and by the Commons. Ministers
were furiously attacked. Stanhope triumphantly cleared him-
self of any suspicion of having made profit himself or of any re-
sponsibility for the misconceptions by which the public had been
deluded ; but the shock and the strain had been too great for
him and killed him. Sunderland proved that so far from making
profit he had all but ruined himself ; but the injustice of public
opinion drove him finally out of public life. Aislabie, the chan-
cellor of the exchequer, was with entire justice found guilty of
134 The Hanoverian Succession
infamous corruption. Another member of the ministry, Scraggs,
died, perhaps by his own hand, and his estates were sequestrated,
as were those of the directors of the company. The forfeitures
provided about £2,000,000 for the relief of sufferers from the
disaster. The government annuitants who had accepted South
1721 Sea stock were obliged to content themselves with
Waipoie's something less than half their promised annuities ;
ascendency. an(j ^ $outh gea Company was reconstructed with
its £100 shares reduced to £33. \Valpole became chancellor of
the exchequer, with Townshend as one of the secretaries of
state, and Carteret, a young man who had already achieved
high diplomatic distinction, as the other. So in 1721 began the
long supremacy of Robert Walpole, although for nine years it
was shared with his brother-in-law, Townshend.
II. THE MINISTRY OF TOWNSHEND AND WALPOLE, 1721-1730
The reconstruction of the ministry was contemporaneous with
the reluctant adhesion of Spain to the Quadruple Alliance. In
1721 1739 ^e years ^a^- f°ll°we(i, the salient feature was the
Anglo- ostensible continuity of the co-operation between
French Great Britain and France, based primarily upon the
relations. . , . '
necessity in both countries for mutual help in main-
taining the Hanoverian and the Orleanist successions. As the
years passed, the health of the young French king improved ;
he married, and the chance of a disputed succession became
increasingly remote. Consequently, from about 1730 onwards,
we shall find France and Spain drawing closer together, and form-
ing a secret agreement having as its object the achievement or
the restoration of that Bourbon supremacy in Europe which had
been the great aim of Louis xiv. But this secret change in
French policy, which was necessarily directed in part against
the British power, did not check the ostensible co-operation be-
tween France and Great Britain in relation to European affairs
until the explosion which robbed Walpole of the effective con-
trol in England in 1739. Throughout these years, the intricacies
The Ministry of Townshend and Walpole 135
of international politics are difficult to disentangle ; nevertheless
it is necessary to follow them out.
When the leadership of the Whig party passed to Walpole
and Townshend, all the prominent statesmen of Queen Anne's
reign of the older generation had disappeared. Political
Marlborough, indeed, survived for some months, personalities,
but he had been inactive throughout the reign of George i., and
had latterly been rendered helpless through ill-health. He had
already passed sixty at the time of his fall. Of the new men
who were at first associated with Walpole and Townshend, the
most prominent were Pulteney , who had left the Stanhope ministry
along with them in 1717, and Carteret, one of the few English
statesmen who have made foreign policy their first concern, and
have kept their eyes fixed upon Europe and the intricacies of
European politics. Antagonisms were certain to arise within
this group ; and outside parliament altogether, Bolingbroke
re-appeared on the scene to promote faction, and to use his best
efforts for the discrediting of the government. He had been
granted a personal pardon, but Walpole's determined opposition
prevented him from being restored to his place in the House of
Peers ; and Walpole was consequently the special object of his
animosity.
In the first years of the new administration Walpole left the
conduct of foreign affairs to Townshend and Carteret, who very
soon found themselves following opposing lines. Carteret was
readier to risk war than his colleague, and would have embroiled
the country with Russia, mainly in the interests of Hanover,
if the king had not proved wise enough to support Townshend
in rejecting a course which would certainly have caused extreme
irritation in England.
In 1723 Orleans died, and the leading position in France
passed for the moment not to his son but to Louis of Bourbon,
the lineal representative of the great Conde. Bour- prance,
bon was suspected of Spanish leanings, which may Spain, and
have had some influence upon Spanish policy. On Aui
the other hand, both Austria and Spain were beginning to take
new views. The emperor was already vexing his soul over the
136 The Hanoverian Succession
question of the Austrian succession after his own death, which
he wished to secure for his own daughter, Maria Theresa. On
the other hand, he himself had succeeded as the male heir of
his elder brother Joseph, and Joseph had left a daughter, Maria
Amelia. It was not easy, however, to maintain that the daughter
of the younger brother should succeed in priority to the daughter
of the elder brother. Hence it was the great desire of Charles
to procure European guarantees for the ' Pragmatic Sanction/
the instrument by which Maria Theresa was declared his suc-
cessor. Again, now that the Netherlands had become Austrian
instead of Spanish, they had lost those trade privileges with the
Spanish dominions which they had enjoyed when under the
Spanish Crown. The commercial consideration induced him at
the end of 1722 to establish the Ostend East India Company.
But by old treaties, the subjects of Spain, including the Nether-
landers, were debarred from the East India trade. The new
company, coming into competition with the Dutch and British
East India companies, caused great irritation, and was protested
against as a violation of the old treaties. There was, therefore,
a certain ill-feeling between Austria and the maritime powers.
In the third place, there were disagreements between Spain
and Austria as to the carrying out of obligations in Italy. France
The quarrel Great Britain offered their mediation at a con-
of France ference of the powers held at Cambrai, which con-
tain. tinued its inconclusive sittings for three years. In
the course of the negotiations Spain made a demand for the
restitution of Gibraltar which was promptly refused, whereby
Spain was irritated against Great Britain. Under the regency
of Orleans a project of marriage had been negotiated between
the young King Louis and the still younger Spanish Infanta.
Orleans had doubtless anticipated that Louis would be dead
before his bride was old enough to become his queen ; it was a
measure designed on his part to make the prospect of the Orleans
succession the more secure. But precisely for that reason it
was displeasing to Bourbon. In 1725 France broke off the
Spanish match ; and the young king was married to the daughter
of Stanislaus Lecszynski, who had for a short time been elective
The Ministry of Townshend and Walpole 137
king of Poland and hoped to be reinstated. This was a flagrant
insult in the eyes of the Spaniards, so that they were freshly
irritated against France.
The result was that the mediators at the conference were
ignored, and the two principals came to terms on their own ac-
count. Charles undertook to complete the investiture of the son
of Philip and Elizabeth, whom it may be convenient to call Don
Carlos instead of Charles, as successor to the duchy of Parma,
in return for which Spain guaranteed his Pragmatic Sanction.
Charles further promised to use his friendly offices to procure
the restitution of Gibraltar and Minorca, while Spain conceded
a commercial treaty which gave to the emperor's subjects pre-
ferential treatment as against Great Britain and Holland, and
opened the American trade to the Ostend Company. The Treaty
The reply of France and Great Britain was the of Hanover.
Treaty of Hanover, uniting those two powers in alliance with
Holland, Denmark, Sweden, and Prussia — which incidentally was
denounced as a Hanoverian measure though the advantages
which it secured to Great Britain were much less dubious than
those derived from it by Hanover. War seemed imminent.
British fleets put to sea, and the Spanish treasure fleet was
blockaded at Porto Bello. Plans for a Jacobite restoration were
included among the projects of Ripperda, the Spanish minister
who was at this time most prominent. There was general ex-
citement and uneasiness, accompanied by trade depression in
England. In February 1727 the Spaniards actually opened the
siege of Gibraltar by way of reprisal for the blockade at Porto
Bello, though war had not been declared. The siege was quite
useless, since the British had complete command of the seas,
and a British squadron occupied the harbour, securing ample
supplies. The emperor became convinced of the futility of war.
At the end of May 1727 he came to terms, agreeing 1727.
to a temporary suspension of the Ostend Company Peace terms-
and the confirmation of all treaties prior to that of Vienna ;
though Spain still declined to be a party to the agreement. When
she found herself isolated, however, she was obliged to give
way.
138 The Hanoverian Succession
During these years Walpole had been strengthening his
personal ascendency. Pulteney had soon gone into opposition
Townshend when he found himself excluded from the ministry.
and Walpole. Carteret's policy had been defeated in the cabinet ;
it was certain that he and the brilliant Philip Stanhope, better
known as Lord Chesterfield, could not long remain in one cabinet
with Walpole. Walpole and Townshend had remained in general
agreement ; but Townshend was disposed to a more active
foreign policy than his colleague, who had now begun to make
himself felt in that department as well as in home politics. The
settlement of 1727 was in the nature of a victory for Walpole
over Townshend, and from this time he dominated British policy
abroad as well as at home. Townshend soon found himself
unable to become the follower where he had been the leader,
1730 and in 1730 he withdrew. The two men were both
Townshend too masterful to work as colleagues. Townshend was
retires. no^ Disposed to split the party by fighting for his own
supremacy, and he chose the magnanimous alternative of leaving
the field clear to the rival with whose policy he was in substantial
agreement, although on personal grounds they were unable to
work together. But before this there had been a moment when
Walpole's ascendency appeared to be in extreme danger.
In June 1727 King George went to Hanover, accompanied by
Townshend. Within ten days of his departure he was carried
1727 off by a paralytic stroke, and George II. became king.
Death of He had at any rate served his purpose. He had
been wise enough to make no attempt at forcing
his English ministers to act upon his own personal views. He
had displayed no vindictiveness, though in his own domestic
relations he was vindictive. An absolute ruler in his own
Hanover, he accepted his constitutional limitations in England
in spite of their entire divergence from anything within
his own previous experience. More than once he had recognised
that the interests of his new kingdom and his old electorate were
divergent, and though his heart was in the latter much more
than in the former, he had given his new kingdom the precedence.
He was not a great man, but he was a sensible one. Another
The Ministry of Towns hend and Walpole 139
William of Orange would have checked the development of
ministerial control. A weaker or a worse man might easily
have made himself the occasion of a Jacobite restoration ; but
the very mediocrity and commonplaceness of George I. made him
precisely the man to give practical completeness to the principles
of the Revolution.
His son had at first been associated with Walpole and Towns-
hend, but when at last those two statesmen established them-
selves in the confidence of the father, the Prince
of Wales had drawn away from them. Carteret Queen
and others had sought his favour by the obvious Caroline and
method of courting his female favourites. The new
king was not too well disposed to the ministers. Townshend
was absent, and Walpole was received in an exceedingly chilly
fashion. It appeared that Sir Spenser Compton (who became
Lord Wilmington) would be the dispenser of his favours, and
that Carteret would become the leading minister. But Walpole
had been wiser in his generation than Carteret. He knew long
before the death of George I. that the Princess of Wales ignored
her husband's moral delinquencies, which were sufficiently
flagrant, because she knew perfectly well that she had more
influence with him than all his favourites put together. It
was to her that Walpole paid his court ; and he had his reward.
A fortnight after the old king's demise the minister's disappointed
rivals awoke to the fact that he was more firmly established
than ever ; the queen ruled the king, and Walpole ruled the queen
— not in any objection able sense, but simply because she was an
extremely clever woman, who was shrewd enough to know that
if she and Walpole differed the chances were that she would
find in the end that he was right and she was wrong.
The accession to power of the duke of Bourbon in France
had been a disturbing factor ; although it had not produced
any direct change in the relations between France cardinal
and Great Britain. The time, however, had now Fieury.
arrived for King Louis, who had reached the age of sixteen, to
declare himself of age. Bourbon was displaced, and the control
of French policy passed into the hands of the aged and pacific
140 The Hanoverian Succession
Cardinal Fleury, who although he was already seventy- three,
continued to rule with ability and success for more than a decade,
attaining his ninetieth year before he died. Fleury had no in-
tention of breaking the English alliance ; but the circumstances
had become favourable to a rapprochement between the two Bour-
bon powers. The Austro-Spanish combination was an unnatural
one, because, although the two powers might work together for
some specific end, nothing could really bring them into accord
with regard to Italy. Queen Elizabeth at last realised with
reluctance that, so long as France was not to be detached from
Great Britain, it was better for her to have the Anglo-French
alliance and the maritime powers favourably disposed to her in
her disputes with Austria, than to have Austria with her in her
disputes with Great Britain, which turned upon Gibraltar and
upon commercial questions. English ministers had indeed played
1729. with *he idea °f the restitution of Gibraltar, but
Treaty they had by this time become thoroughly aware
that the country would never tolerate such a pro-
posal. In 1729 the Treaty of Seville was concluded between the
three Western powers, afterwards supplemented by Holland.
The powers agreed that the Italian duchies should be occupied
by Spanish troops ; Austria's assent was to be obtained if
necessary by coercion. In return, the demand for Gibraltar
was in effect implicitly, though not explicitly, waived, while
French and British commercial concessions were secured, and
the preference granted to the Ostend Company was withdrawn.
Austria responded, upon the death of the duke of Parma which
vacated that duchy in favour of Don Carlos, by occupying the
1731 duchy with her own troops, ostensibly in order to
Waipoie's secure it for Don Carlos. But by this time Towns-
macy* hend had retired, and Walpole, supreme in England,
dexterously made his terms with Austria. In return for the
British guarantee of the Pragmatic Sanction, Don Carlos was
installed in his duchy, which was occupied by Spanish instead
of by imperial garrisons. The event signalised the fact that the
unqualified rule of Walpole had begun.
We turn now to the domestic events in the period covered by
The Ministry of Towns hend and Walpole 1 4 1
this section. Jacobitism was a recurrent cause of disturbance.
Jacobite hopes were revived by the public excitement over the
South Sea disaster, and were further encouraged by
the birth in December 1720 of the prince who was Of Charles
known to the Whigs as the ' Young Pretender.' Edward,
,. , • 11 i • December.
That term in fact was technically correct, being
appropriate to any claimant to the throne other than its de facto
occupant. It was, however, used with an implication that the
claim was fraudulent ; a theory resting upon the old myth that the
1 Old Pretender ' was a supposititious child ; a view which had been
officially preserved more in order to salve the consciences of Queen
Anne and the Tory party than to satisfy the Whigs, who adhered
to the principle that parliament had the right to change the
succession whether the prince were legitimate or not. As a
natural consequence, when the public at large ceased to believe
in the myth which the name of the Pretender was supposed to
perpetuate, its use became particularly offensive to the Legiti-
mists as carrying with it an unwarrantable imputation. The
Jacobites were the defeated party ; no one to-day would be found
to question that the ejection of the Stuarts was justifiable and
beneficial ; but it is equally impossible to question that the
Stuarts themselves and their supporters had legitimate ground
for maintaining that James had a right to the crown, and a
right to try to recover it if he could. The courtesies of de-
bate seem to require that the Jacobite terms, the ' Old and
Young Chevalier/ which beg no question, should be used in
preference.
The outcome of these revived hopes was a futile Jacobite plot
which was discovered, and resulted in the banishment of Bishop
Atterbury and two or three other persons. Prac- Decay of
tically, the affair showed not that any serious danger Jacobitism.
was to be apprehended, but the precise contrary. The unfor-
tunate dissensions between James and his wife, Clementina
Sobieski, whom he had married under romantic circumstances,
seriously injured the Stuart cause, and after the separation of
the royal couple, in 1725, a long time elapsed before Jacobitism
again appeared as a serious menace, though it was always in
142 The Hanoverian Succession
the background as a possible instrument to be employed by
foreign foes.
Walpole had come into power because of the public
confidence in his financial ability. At the very beginning of
waipole's *ne Townshend and Walpole regime he inaugurated
commercial that policy of commercial development which it was
always his primary object to promote. He adopted
the plan of reducing the duties upon exports and upon imports
of raw material, which had been imposed on the general principle
that imports should be discouraged as being paid for in bullion,
except from countries which took greater value of British goods in
exchange for what they imported. Waipole's argument was that
which had been urged successfully by Charles Davenant in respect
of the East India Company's trade. The importation of raw
material, even if it was paid for in bullion, made possible the
production in England of manufactured goods which were ex-
ported in exchange for bullion, so that in the long run the balance
was rectified. On the other hand, the revenue did not suffer
from the reduction of duties, because the volume both of im-
ports and of exports was more than proportionately increased.
If the duties were halved, but were paid upon thrice the quantity
of goods, the revenue gained fifty per cent. These, broadly
speaking, were the principles upon which Wralpole reversed the
Freeing time-honoured policy of maintaining high duties.
trade. NO one dreamed of such a thing as Free Trade in
the modern sense of the term ; when Walpole became chan-
cellor of the exchequer, Adam Smith was still unborn. Colonial
products were vigorously encouraged by bounties, in order to
diminish British dependence upon raw material imported from
the Baltic ; but the whole trend of Waipole's finance was to
reduce tariffs so far as that could be done without arousing
violent opposition — to increase wealth by increasing the volume
of trade. Already, in 1724, he was preparing the way for the excise
scheme which nine years later went near to causing his overthrow ;
but since he did not call his measure by the detested name of
excise, it was at this early stage cheerfully accepted on its merits.
Tea and coffee were allowed to be landed and warehoused and
The Ministry of Townshend and Walpole 143
kept in bond without paying duty, to which they became liable
only upon being withdrawn from bond for the home market. The
wealth and prosperity of the country advanced rapidly, and the
government credit stood so high that in 1727 it could borrow
at four per cent. Thirty years earlier the normal interest had
been eight or nine per cent.
Scotland as yet was only beginning to feel profit from the
removal of the English restrictions on her trade ; she was hardly
conscious of material gain. English statesmen were Scotiand
still inclined to pay little attention to Scottish and the
susceptibilities. The imposition of the malt tax malttax-
by the Tories in the previous reign in defiance of the Treaty of
Union had reawakened demands for the repeal of the Union.
The Tories had carried their bill, but, in fact, government had
not collected the tax ; although after the war of the Spanish
Succession was over it had become legitimate to do so. It was
now demanded in England that the northern country should no
longer be exempted. By way of a compromise Walpole pro-
posed to fix the duty at threepence instead of sixpence, but,
if the product fell short of £20,000, to lay a charge upon the
Scottish brewers to make up the balance. There was an im-
mediate explosion of wrath in Scotland, riots broke out in Edin-
burgh and Glasgow, and the brewers refused to brew. They
were, however, brought to reason, mainly by the management
of Argyll's brother Islay and Duncan Forbes of Culloden.
Still, the whole affair did a good deal to keep Scottish hostility
to the Union rankling — always a strong element among the
causes which fostered J acobitism in the north.
No less was the perturbation in Ireland, though there the
Hanoverian government could feel comfortably secure that
there was no danger from J acobitism. To all Irish Ireland.
Protestants the maintenance of the Hanoverian succession was
absolutely vital, while the Roman Catholic population was too
hopelessly prostrate, tied, and bound, to be a source of danger.
Protestants might kick against their subordination to the British
parliament, but they could not help themselves. At the first,
the Irish peers had to submit when the British House of Peers,
144 The Hanoverian Succession
claimed to be a higher Court of Appeal. In 1719, the British
parliament passed a Declaratory Act, claiming its own right to
legislate for Ireland without regard to the Irish legislature ;
whereas all that the Irish parliament itself could do was to reject
or to pass without amendment bills already approved by the
British Privy Council. In the next year the British parliament
passed an Act forbidding the wearing of printed and dyed calicoes,
with the simple object of protecting the woollen and silk trades
in England, which were not interested in the manufacture of
calico. But, as the manufacture of calicoes was one of the few
Irish industries which English jealousy permitted to exist,
Ireland suffered. Dean Swift, whose mordant pen had been
used with great effect by the Tories in Queen Anne's reign, took
up the cudgels as an Irish patriot in an anonymous pamphlet
which proposed retaliation for the English Act by a complete
boycott — to apply a modern phrase — of all wearing apparel
coming from England.
But it was in connection with another controversy that the
most terrific of that series of the dean's pamphlets, known as
wood's Drapier's Letters, were produced. Ireland had no
half-pence. mint of her own, and the export of coin from Eng-
land was prohibited. Ireland was in desperate need of a small
currency. A certain William Wood in England was authorised
to coin half-pence to an amount six or seven times as great as
was needed ; also, sixty of his half-pence went to the pound of
copper, whereas the English half-pence were only forty-six to the
pound. A storm of complaint arose in Ireland that the country
was being flooded with debased coinage which would drive all
the gold and silver out of it. As a matter of fact, no great harm
would have been done, since copper coinage was a token coinage
at the best. But the business provided a stick with which to
beat the government, though it was after all but a very minor
instance of the high-handed manner in which Irish interests were
treated in England. The excitement was so great that the British
government was obliged to compensate Wood and withdraw his
licence. Townshend would have enforced the acceptance of the
coinage, but Walpole did not like storms of popular indignation.
The Ministry of Townshend and Walpote 145
The attack on Wood's half-pence was trivial enough in its
origin, and was carried on with the most extravagant exaggera-
tion. It exemplified the insignificance of the matters Dean swift,
upon which the popular mind will occasionally seize when a
passionate sense of grievance is already in existence. It pro-
vided Swift with the opportunity of denouncing root and
branch the relations between the two countries, which had the
effect of transforming him from a free man in England into a
' slave ' in Ireland ; at so early a date he summed up the root
grievance of the Irish people, that ' government without consent
of the governed is slavery.' If the population of Ireland should
realise that that was the real principle at stake, the struggle
for independence might attain alarming proportions. That, in
Walpole's eyes, was a risk not worth running for the sake of a
mere punctilio.
From the time when Walpole began to claim an equal share
with Townshend in the control of foreign policy, an ultimate
rupture between the two statesmen became almost 1731
a certainty. The Treaty of Hanover belonged to Walpole
the earlier period. The treaty of 1727 was a victory suPreme-
for Walpole ; the Treaty of Seville was Townshend's. Walpole,
in distinction from his colleague, believed in the necessity for
friendly relations with Austria, anxious though he was to avoid
a breach with France. Townshend would have conceded more
to the Bourbon alliance at the cost of Austrian friendship.
Walpole, when Townshend retired in 1730, and his own ascend-
ency became complete, saved the Bourbon alliance for the time ;
but also he drew closer to Austria. When Townshend withdrew
to cultivate turnips and promote the new scientific farming, very
much to the benefit of the British agriculture, Walpole was left
without a rival in the cabinet. Its members were his henchmen.
His friendship with Queen Caroline ensured him the support of
the king. The Opposition consisted of disappointed politicians
and factions, with no common policy except the desire to over-
turn the ministry. Only one thing could effect his overthrow,
some torrential rush of popular sentiment which should find in
him an obstacle to its course, and it was a first principle with
Innes's Eng. Hist. — Vol. in. K
146 The Hanoverian Succession
Walpole to avoid any action which should render such a torrent
ungovernable. Nine years passed before the outburst came.
III. THE SUPREMACY OF WALPOLE, 1731-1739
More than any monarch or statesman who had preceded him,
Robert Walpole consciously made it the first object of his policy
Walpole *° Develop the material prosperity of Great Britain.
and the To that end it was essential to avoid war abroad
opposition. and commotion at home. It was also desirable to
reduce restrictions upon trade to a minimum ; while from the
minister's own personal point of view it was essential that he
should retain the control of affairs in his own hands. The
Opposition concentrated upon a single point, the effort to take
the control out of his hands. It had no common policy, except
to unite in attacking Walpole by any methods that could stir
up popular feeling against him. For nine years after the re-
tirement of Townshend Walpole held his own. By dint of very
careful steering he kept the country from going to war. Only
once in England did he propose a measure which aroused violent
opposition ; and on that occasion the hostility aroused was
itself irrational. The volume of British commerce was vastly
expanded under his regime, and the material wealth of the
community was greatly increased. His personal ascendency
was secured first by the establishment of his influence over King
George through the confidence of Queen Caroline, secondly by
the methods of corruption, and thirdly by the ejection from the
cabinet of all independent elements.
With regard to bribery and corruption, it was for a long time
regarded as one of the commonplaces of history that Walpole
Corruption was an abnormally corrupt minister ; a theory
under crystallised in the phrase attributed to him that
1 every man has his price.' Even in that phrase
he is misrepresented. ' All these men have their price,' was the
contemptuous generalisation which he applied to the ranks of
the Opposition in the House of Commons. Walpole was not
the inventor of parliamentary corruption. The first parliament
The Supremacy of Walpole 147
of Charles 11., known as the Cavalier Parliament, in the sixties, ac-
quired in the seventies the title of the Pension Parliament, because
so many of its members were in receipt of ' gratifications/ If
any one man could be called the originator of parliamentary corrup-
tion, it was Danby. Walpole carried the system little, if at all,
further than his predecessors. Innumerable places and pensions
were distributed in order to procure votes. The duke of New-
castle, who ultimately became prime minister, regarded politics
as primarily an affair of j obbery ; it was as a member of Walpole's
cabinet that he originally developed his mastery of the art,
but it was after Walpole's fall that he carried it to completion ;
and Newcastle himself was left far behind by the politicians in
the earlier half of the reign of George m. It is not, indeed, to
be disputed that Walpole employed corruption with a lavish
hand ; but he was neither its originator nor its grossest prac-
titioner. And if he corrupted others, he was himself incorrup-
tible. But the charge of corruption was one which could be
clamorously employed, not without justification, by an Opposi-
tion which was indignant at its own exclusion from participation.
The persistent charges of corruption year after year had the
usual effect of producing a gradual conviction of the extra-
ordinary guiltiness of the person who was so persistently accused.
Walpole's determination to avoid disturbing questions is
especially exemplified in his attitude towards Dissenters. He
remembered how the first Whig ministry of which waipoie
he had been a member had been brought to ruin and the
over the case of Dr. Sacheverell. Entirely con- :
vinced though he was of the injustice of imposing political dis-
abilities on dissent, he had opposed Stanhope's repeal of the
Schism Act, and when in power he steadily refused to raise the
question of the repeal of the Test Act. He did not deny that
the demand was in the abstract a just one ; he would not yield
to it, because to do so would have been to endanger the stability
of his administration. He answered the appeals of the Dissenters
by saying that the time was not yet ripe ; they asked him when
he expected that happier time to arrive, and he replied that in
his own candid opinion it never would. But what he could do
148 77ie Hanoverian Succession
for the Dissenters without troubling the waters he did, when in
1727 he introduced what became an annual Bill of Indemnity
for breaches of the Test Act.
The one serious commotion arose over the Excise Bill of 1733.
It has already been remarked that Walpole's grand object was
waipoie's to increase material wealth by the expansion of
Excise Bill. commerce. The old theory of the State regulation
of commerce had been that it was the business of the State to
direct commerce into the channels most productive of national
strength. Walpole saw that, broadly speaking, everything
which increased the material wealth of the country ipso facto
increased the national strength. The country which was richest
could buy what it did not produce ; if forced into war, the
ultimate victory would fall to the nation whose treasury could
longest endure the heaviest strain. Great Britain was to be
made strong by being made wealthy. Here as elsewhere it
was not Walpole's part to enforce schemes which would excite
the alarm of people less long-sighted than himself. He removed
burdens and fetters, but only when he could persuade the com-
mercial community that they were burdens and fetters ; but
this was what he failed to do in the famous case of the Excise
Bill.
Walpole wanted to draw commerce to England, to make London
the mart of the world. To this end he proposed to extend the
The battle principle which had already been applied with en-
of the bin. tire success in 1724 to tea and coffee, and to tax
tobacco and wine not when they entered the ports, but when they
were withdrawn from the ports for sale within the country ;
the goods being kept in bond at the ports, where they could
be re-embarked without paying duty, or withdrawn on payment
of duty. This method would dispose of various complications
in the form of drawbacks, rebates, and allowances which opened
the door to peculation and fabrication of accounts ; it would
diminish smuggling ; it would attract an increased trade and
would benefit the revenue so that the land tax could be reduced
to a shilling — an important point in Walpole's eyes, since it
would conciliate the landed gentry. But the name of ' excise '
The Supremacy of Walpole 1 49
was detested in the country. The Opposition saw their oppor-
tunity. They denounced the measure as ' a plan of arbitrary
power.' The country was about to be flooded with an army
of officials who would invade every household. Everything was
going to be taxed, bread and meat in particular. A complete
panic was worked up. It was in vain for the ministers to point
out that the proposed system was to be applied only to tobacco
in the first instance, and then, if it worked satisfactorily, to wine
and spirits ; in vain to insist that the whole great army of ex-
cisemen would number no more than 126. Chesterfield, as yet
a member of the cabinet, worked against the Excise Bill as
zealously as Pulteney, the leader of the Opposition. Walpole
was informed that the soldiers were on the verge of mutiny,
having become persuaded that the price of tobacco would rise.
Walpole bowed to the storm. He was as convinced as ever that
the measure would be entirely beneficial ; he was aware that
he could still command a parliamentary majority in its favour ;
but he was aware also that the bill could not become law without
bloodshed ; and he withdrew it. At a general election a year
afterwards his majority was hardly diminished ; but if he had
not withdrawn the Excise Bill he would have been turned out
of office, a fate which did not actually befall him till 1742.
Walpole took his revenge on the disloyal members of the
ministry. Chesterfield was dismissed, and a like fate befell
several of his allies who held other government Dismissal
posts, in particular a number of officers in the army. of ministers.
In modern times, no member of the cabinet could, like Chester-
field, set himself in opposition to a government measure. Chester-
field's dismissal is a landmark in the history of cabinet govern-
ment, of the principle of solidarity in the cabinet. It emphasised
the doctrine that publicly at least all the members of the cabinet
must be of one mind, though Walpole's action, then and long
afterwards, was commonly denounced as monstrously dictatorial
and vindictive.
If the general election of 1735 did not materially affect the
balance of parties in the House, it brought into the Opposition,
already reinforced by Chesterfield, recruits of whom the most
1 50 The Hanoverian Succession
notable were George Lyttleton and William Pitt, at this time
a cornet in Cobham's Horse, otherwise the King's Dragoon
William Pitt. Guards. As in the days of George I. the Whig
opposition had gathered round the pennon of the then Prince of
Wales, owing to the personal antagonism between father and son,
so now the enemies of the ministry made a figurehead of the
eminently unsatisfactory heir to the throne, Frederick, Prince
of Wales. That young man had been brought up in Germany
The Prince of by his grandfather's orders, and only appeared in
wales. England after the accession of George n. He was
on the worst terms both with his father and his mother. There
had at one time been a scheme of a double marriage with the
royal house of Prussia ; the Crown Prince, afterwards Frederick
the Great, was to have married the English princess Amelia,
while Frederick was to have married the Prussian princess
Wilhelmina. The intention had been in part to detach Prussia
from its adherence, which at that time was very close, to Austria,
and to draw it more closely to Hanover. The project, however,
broke down, and the fact of his remaining unmarried increased
the friction between the Prince of Wales and his parents. A
bride was at length found for him in the Princess Augusta of
Saxe-Gotha, whom he married in 1736 ; but the marriage itself
provided fresh causes of dissension, owing to the prince's dis-
satisfaction over the inadequate provision made for him. The
Opposition group, who called themselves ' Patriots,' took up the
cause of the prince in the House of Commons ; especially the
young men whom Walpole in contempt referred to as the ' boys.'
When the matter was on the point of coming before parliament,
the king, at Walpole's instigation, offered to secure him his
allowance of £50,000, and also to settle a jointure upon the
princess. The prince refused ; he wanted £100,000. The House,
The prince which before had been prepared to support the
and Ms Opposition motion for a grant, changed its mind,
and the prince had to content himself with his
£50,000 and the jointure, payable to the princess only on his
death. The zeal of Pitt in the prince's cause caused him to be
dismissed from his cornetcy, and twenty years passed before the
The Supremacy of Walpole 1 5 1
king forgave him — years during which, it must be admitted,
Pitt's conduct was scarcely calculated to win the royal favour.
The dissensions between the prince and his parents became only
the more acute when Frederick, at the eleventh hour, hurried
his wife away by night from Hampton Court to St. James's
Palace, just in time to prevent his eldest child from being born
under the same roof as her grandparents.
The year of the prince's marriage — 1736 — was signalised by
an event which showed the extreme unpopularity of the govern-
ment in Scotland. The Scots detested the whole The Porteous
' preventive ' system which had been introduced affair, me.
into that country after the Union. Two smugglers were caught
and condemned to death. One of them made his escape in
broad daylight. The second was duly hanged, amid demonstra-
tions from the populace of Edinburgh, which induced Porteous,
the officer in command of the town guard, to order his men
to fire on the crowd, some of whom were killed. Porteous was
thereupon himself tried and condemned to death, but was
reprieved for further inquiry. Thereupon an organised mob
stormed the prison, dragged Porteous out, and hanged him ;
after which they dispersed quietly to their homes. Walpole
and the queen, who had granted the reprieve as the king was
abroad, proposed to take very severe measures for the punish-
ment of the city of Edinburgh, where the authorities took no
active steps for penalising the rioters. Largely owing to the
efforts of Argyll, the penalties were modified, but the whole
affair was a symptom of the popular aversion from the Union,
and its conclusion only served to intensify that feeling.
Towards the end of 1737 a notable personality passed out
of British politics. Queen Caroline died. It was she who had
established Walpole in the confidence of the king ; vea>tn of
it was she who had taught him the art of managing Queen Caro-
the king by carefully beguiling him into a belief ne'
that he was himself the originator of schemes which he would
have denounced with indignation if they had been submitted
to him point blank as his minister's proposals. George was the
most loyal of men, and the queen's death did not sever him from
152 The Hanoverian Succession
Walpole ; but it did lay him open more than before to side
influences which had counted almost for nothing while Caroline
was alive. The strength of Walpole's position was materially
shaken by her death, because it became more difficult for him
to persuade the king to adopt his own views. For throughout
the years of Walpole's ascendency the king, if left to himself,
would have done precisely the things that Walpole did not wish
to be done ; and the queen had been the most effective agent
in making him believe that the things that Walpole wished were
the things that he wished also. And she had done so even when
her own instincts were on the king's side, not on Walpole's.
Now, in 1738, a crisis arrived in which Walpole had need of
every imaginable support if he was to carry his own wishes to
a successful issue. We must turn to foreign affairs during these
years in order to understand the character of the approaching
crisis.
In 1731 the ambitions of Elizabeth Farnese had been so far
satisfied through the intervention of France and Great Britain
1731 The that her son Don Carlos was established in the
European duchy of Parma and was guaranteed the succession
to the duchy of Tuscany ; Walpole having made it
his special object to remain in co-operation with France and to
preserve friendly relations both with Spain and with Austria. But
neither Austria nor Spain was happy. The emperor had by no
means completed the circle of guarantors for his Pragmatic
Sanction. France had not given the guarantee, and the attitude
of various states of the empire was dubious. The elector
Charles Albert of Bavaria was the son of Max Emmanuel by
a second marriage, and he had himself married Maria Amelia,
the daughter of the late Emperor Joseph. It was difficult to
assert that the claims of Maria Theresa, the emperor's own
daughter, were stronger than those of his elder brother's daughter
to the Hapsburg inheritance ; and the house of Bavaria also
had other claims to that inheritance in respect of its descent
from an earlier emperor, Ferdinand n. Thus one of the electoral
princes was himself the direct rival of Maria Theresa and her
future husband, Francis, duke of Lorraine, for the Hapsburg
The Supremacy of Walpole 153
inheritance and the imperial crown. Charles vi. had secured
the elector of Hanover and the king of Prussia, whose father
had blossomed into that dignity from being elector of Branden-
burg. But the electors of Saxony, Cologne, and the Palatinate
had not given in their adhesion. Elizabeth Farnese, on the
other hand, was still hankering for Naples and Sicily. There
had been no overt change in the policy of France, but she had,
as a matter of fact, been drawing steadily closer to Spain, as the
possibilities of a union of the French and Spanish crowns grew
more remote ; and she was even now contemplating a family
compact between the Bourbon princes which should create a
Bourbon supremacy in Europe, in the first instance at the ex-
pense of Austria and ultimately at that of Great Britain.
The flame which was to fire a European conflagration was
lighted in Poland. The throne of that elective monarchy was
occupied by Augustus the Strong, elector of Saxony, 1733 War of
who, largely through Russian support, had some the Polish
years before displaced Stanislaus Lecszynski, the Successlon-
father of the queen of France. The question was on the point
of arising, who should succeed Augustus the Strong. Augustus
wanted his son, another Augustus, to follow him on the Polish
throne. Stanislaus wanted to recover the throne from which he
had been ousted, and procured promises of aid from France.
The sudden death of the elder Augustus at the beginning of
1733 brought on a crisis. Stanislaus hurried to Poland and got
himself elected by the Polish diet ; but Russia regarded the
Saxon candidate as her own protege. Stanislaus did not suit
the emperor, because of his connection with France, and there
was no difficulty in getting another guarantee of the Pragmatic
Sanction from Augustus in return for Austrian support. Fleury,
not without reluctance, found himself compelled to give the
French king's father-in-law the support of the French arms,
while Austria was already in arms against him.
The declaration of war between France and Austria, in October
I733» was perhaps hardly required to bring to completion the
first family compact, the ' Compact of the Escurial,' between
the two Bourbon powers in November. The treaty was intended
154 The Hanoverian Succession
to be a secret one, but its terms were betrayed to the British
envoy at Madrid, and Walpole was forthwith placed in posses-
sion of them. The Bourbon scheme was to deprive
The Bourbon . Tx .
family Austria of her Italian possessions, sowing the seeds
compact, of discord between her and Great Britain ; since
Fleury reckoned, with justifiable confidence, that
Great Britain would not go to war on behalf of Austria. When
Austria should be partly disabled and wholly estranged from Great
Britain, the Bourbons were to turn upon the maritime power,
which, being isolated, and also controlled by the pacific Walpole,
could then be prevailed upon, perhaps without fighting at all,
to yield to the Bourbon demands. In the meantime, however,
there was to be no rupture with Great Britain.
Up to a certain point Fleury 's calculations were justified.
Charles Emmanuel of Savoy and Sardinia was drawn into the
Walpole Bourbon alliance. Spanish troops overran the south
keeps clear of Italy, where the Austrian domination was un-
popular, and Don Carlos was proclaimed king of
Naples and Sicily. The diet of the empire resolved to support
the emperor, and Hanover was required to supply its contingent
of the imperial armies. Nevertheless, Walpole refused to allow
Great Britain to be embroiled. The continental armies ex-
hausted the blood and the treasure of the continental powers,
while Great Britain was husbanding her resources in both kinds.
Both George and his queen would have plunged the country
into war in support of the empire and against the Bourbon
combination ; but the queen yielded to the minister, and the
king was taught to believe that the minister's policy was his
own suggestion. Walpole would only play the part of inter-
End of the mediary . The war of the Polish Succession was
•war, 1738. brought to an end by the Treaty of Vienna in 1738.
The outcome was that the Bourbon Don Carlos was acknowledged
as Charles II. of Naples and Sicily, and the duchy of Parma
was handed over to Austria. By an ingenious juggle the duke
of Lorraine gave up Lorraine and took Tuscany instead. Stanis-
laus gave up the claim to Poland, and took instead the duchy
of Lorraine. On his death Lorraine was to go to France, thus
The Supremacy of Walpole 1 5 5
rounding off her possessions in that quarter. The emperor got
his candidate on to the Polish throne ; and if he lost Naples,
he got the guarantee of the Pragmatic Sanction, which had
hitherto been refused by France ; he got Parma ; and he secured
Tuscany for his son-in-law, which in effect gave Austria a con-
solidated territory in the north of Italy.
It was only to a limited extent then that the Bourbon alliance
had achieved its object. Lorraine was a substantial gain for
France ; Naples and Sicily, in place of Parma and Tuscany,
were a substantial gain for Spain ; but Austria was very far
from being crippled. Moreover, if she was resentful of Great
Britain's abstention from supporting her actively in the war,
the resentment did not amount to a complete alienation, since
it was to the pressure from Great Britain that she owed the
recovery of Parma and Tuscany. And further, the financial
strain of the war had told upon both France and Spain, while Great
Britain had been expanding her commerce and piling up wealth,
and was certainly in no worse position for facing a struggle
than she had been before the war of the Polish Succession opened.
Now when the Family Compact was signed in 1733, hostility
to Great Britain held a very prominent place in it. Not only
was it a standing grievance with Spain that the Aim of the
maritime power was in possession of Minorca family
and Gibraltar, and that Elizabeth's Italian policy comPact-
was thwarted and hampered by the attitude of Great Britain to
Austria ; there were also perpetual causes of friction over the
abuse on the one side of the commercial privileges which Great
Britain had acquired from Spain, and the questionable legality
on the other of the high-handed methods by which the Spanish
authorities sought to counteract the proceedings of British sea-
men. But it would certainly appear that Fleury regarded
hostility to Great Britain as quite secondary; the Bourbon
ascendency on the Continent occupied the first place in his mind.
It is obvious that if there was to be a direct struggle between
the Bourbon powers and Great Britain that struggle would have
to take place on the sea ; yet no attempt whatever was made
to prepare for a maritime contest. France had deliberately
156 The Hanoverian Succession
neglected her navy when she had been working as the close ally
of Great Britain ; nothing was done to make up for that neglect.
Alberoni had sought to resuscitate the Spanish navy ; but his
efforts had been brought to nought and had not been renewed.
Walpole has been blamed for his peace policy on the ground
Walpole and that he ought to have supported Austria vigorously
the compact. jn order to prevent the development of the Bourbon
power ; but his peace policy in itself was entirely justified.
When war did come, Great Britain, owing to that policy, was
infinitely better able to bear the strain of a long war out of her
own resources than any continental power ; she was able to
subsidise her own allies, so that they also could endure the strain
of a war which but for her wealth would have exhausted their
resources and brought them to their knees. So far, the peace
policy was sound ; but it was incomplete. It required to be
supplemented by positive preparations for war, the organisation
of army and navy so as to be in immediate readiness for war.
It was here that Walpole failed. Both he and Fleury were
calculating on the other's predilection for peace. Each knew
that a contest was coming, but each hoped to accomplish his
ends by diplomacy ; and neither made the preparations which,
in the event of diplomacy failing, would bring an armed struggle
to a decisive issue. Diplomacy did, in fact, fail, and the struggle
was not brought to a decisive issue till twenty years had passed.
The end of the war of the Polish Succession had in effect been
a foregone conclusion some time before its formal termination
Spain and by the Treaty of Vienna in 1738. As the pressure
England. anci interest of the war grew less, Spain became
increasingly insistent upon her grievances against Great Britain.
Under cover of the commercial treaties, a vast amount of illicit
traffic was carried on with the Spanish colonies by British ship-
ping. The Spaniards claimed the right of searching British
ships on the high seas. The British denied that right, and
claimed also that the Spanish officials treated peaceful and harm-
leis merchantmen with an intolerable violence. In England the
Opposition fixed upon the friction with Spain as providing a
suitable opportunity for embarrassing the minister. Popular
The Supremacy of Walpole 157
indignation was already running high over the stories of out-
rages to British seamen. The Opposition called for a committee
to investigate the complaints. Some years before a certain
Captain Robert Jenkins had told how the Spanish Jenkins's ear.
preventive officers had boarded his ship and cut off his ear. He
was now brought before the committee to repeat his tale, which
was probably true. Asked what he had done when his ear was
cut off, he replied with dramatic effect that ' he had commended
his soul to God and his cause to his country/ The story of
Jenkins's ear was but one among many, but it took hold of the
popular imagination ; and the war which broke out eighteen
months afterwards is commonly known as ' the war of Jenkins's
Ear. ' Fiery resolutions were passed in condemnation especially
of the right of search. Walpole very properly sought for a
peaceful solution by an adjustment of claims and counter-claims.
There was at the same time a current dispute as to the boundaries
of the recently established British colony of Georgia and the
Spanish colony of Florida. In January 1739 the governments
agreed upon the convention of Pardo. The Spaniards were to
pay £95,000, and the question of right of search and of the
Georgian boundary were to be referred to a commission.
Then the Spaniards put in a demand for £68,000, which they
declared to be due to them from the South Sea Company under
the Assiento. The company repudiated the claim. 1739
The Opposition fell upon the convention ; Pitt Failure of
denounced it with vehemence ; Walpole's majority ne£otia ons-
in the Commons fell to twenty-eight. Walpole tendered his
resignation, but George refused to accept it, and the minister
remained at his post. Most of the Opposition adopted the futile
policy of seceding from the House to mark their indignation.
Popular opinion was with them. Spain, on the other hand,
reverted to a more uncompromising attitude and explicitly
insisted upon the right of search. War with Spain Declaration
had now become inevitable, and in October was of war,
formally declared ; but still Walpole did not resign. October-
His hand had been forced. He hated the war ; he believed
that it would result in disaster ; he believed that France would
158 The Hanoverian Succession
join with Spain, and that Great Britain was not strong enough
to fight them single-handed. But the king was vehemently
opposed to his retirement ; he, who had been so successful a
peace-minister, suffered from the not unusual conviction that
his own hand was the only one which could successfully steer
the ship of State. A master of navigation among shoals and
quicksands, he was not the helmsman for a storm ; nevertheless,
he remained at the helm.
CHAPTER IV. THE INDECISIVE STRUGGLE
I. THE COMING CONFLICT
WHEN war was declared between Great Britain and Spain in
October 1739, what had occurred ostensibly was merely that two
powers had lost their tempers, and had begun to Nature of
fight each other over trading questions which con- tne contest,
cerned no one but themselves, and, with a little common sense,
could have been settled without any fighting at all. Neverthe-
less, it was but the harbinger of a world- wide conflagration.
During sixteen out of the next twenty-four years the nations were
doing their best to tear each other to pieces. In the course
of the struggle the motives and the combinations of the various
powers changed very considerably. But two features persist
throughout. Prussia was fighting to establish her position per-
manently as one of the first-class European powers ; Great
Britain was fighting, at first unconsciously but afterwards con-
sciously, to secure, not her position in Europe, but her oceanic
and trans-oceanic empire. These two struggles are inextricably
mixed up with each other and with a renewed attempt to estab-
lish a Bourbon supremacy in Europe. It will be well, therefore,
to enter upon the story of the struggle with as clear a concep-
tion as possible of the real situation and of the issues which were
at stake.
Primarily, then, we have an Anglo-Spanish duel over the
Spanish right of search, which is on the face of it the last phase
of the ancient quarrel between Elizabeth's mariners England
and Philip of Spain. It is the old story of the and Spain,
determination of English traders to trade at their own will with
the Spanish possessions in America whether the Spaniards liked
it or not, and of the determination of the Spaniards to shut
the British out of that trade as much as they possibly could.
159
160 The Indecisive Struggle
But beyond that conflict lay its assured development into a
struggle with France, the other Bourbon power, for transmarine
dominion. No one, perhaps, grasped the fact at the time. It
is so easy to recognise it to-day, that some modern historians
have credited the British people of Walpole's day with an in-
stinctive perception that the time had arrived for the British
and the Bourbons to settle by the arbitration of the sword which
of the two was to be supreme in America and in India. It is
exceedingly improbable that either the Opposition politicians
who forced on the war or the public who urged on the politicians
were aware of so much as the existence of an Indian question.
It is most improbable that many, if any, of them realised that
there was a North American question of real significance. They
went to war with Spain over the right of search, and took their
chance of having France on their hands as well, not because
she was a colonial power, but because she was the head partner
The issues in the Bourbon firm. Colonists in America might
not realised. know that the delimitation of Georgia and Florida
was a very minor matter in comparison with French ambitions.
Servants of the East India Company might anticipate that
sooner or later there would be conflicts between French and
British as rivals in seeking favour and concessions from the
native princes. But the politicians in London, Paris, and Madrid
had their eyes fixed upon the West Indian and South Sea trade
and the European balance of power. The struggle with France
in America was inevitable, because the French in America were
planning to extend their southward course from the great lakes,
in the rear of the British colonies, to the mouth of the Mississippi,
which would have entirely cut off the British from any further
expansion. That a struggle in India was inevitable is much less
obvious. In the nature of things there was nothing to ensure
that either the British or French trading company in the Pen-
insula would find itself under the direction of a governor
whose ambitions soared to the acquisition of political power
instead of confining themselves to the immediate pursuit of
dividends. But for the personality of Fra^ois Dupleix the
struggle there might have been indefinitely postponed. Neither
The Coming Conflict 161
the politicians nor the public at large in Britain, in France,
or in Spain realised that a struggle was inevitable, or even that
it would be the outcome of the Anglo-Spanish war.
France was in no hurry to join with Spain in her war with
Great Britain. Fleury had contemplated no such sudden
assault ; the Spanish partner had broken away, France and
just as the British people had broken away from England.
Walpole's control. On the face of things it was possible that
Spain and Great Britain were to be left to fight out their quarrel,
France intervening for the protection of her Bourbon ally only
in the way of diplomatic pressure. The prolongation of the
duel would have forced her to arms ; but even so in a straight-
forward fight conducted by sea there was little probability that
the British would get much the worst of it.
But there was to be no such straightforward duel. France
and Spain were both too keenly interested in purely European
questions to concentrate exclusively on a maritime Tne
war ; and among continental questions, that of the Pragmatic
Austrian succession was imminent. It was true that Sanction-
all the great powers and half the electoral princes had guaranteed
the Pragmatic Sanction. But excuses, however meagre their
plausibility, are always forthcoming for invalidating such diplo-
matic pledges when national interests are affected. The dis-
memberment of Austria was so very much in the interest of the
Bourbon powers that they would have very strong inducements
to ignore their pledges, at least if the other guarantors did not
stand stoutly and uncompromisingly by the Pragmatic Sanction.
Within eighteen months of the outbreak of the Anglo-Spanish
war it had become a mere appendage to the war of the Austrian
Succession. The ball was set rolling by Prussia.
A hundred years earlier, in the days of the Thirty Years' War,
Brandenburg had been merely one, and not the first, among the
major German states. In the Thirty Years' War Prussia's
it had played no very distinguished part ; but the growth.
' Great Elector,' Frederick William, succeeded his father as
elector before the end of that war ; and his diplomacy increased
the territorial possessions of Brandenburg at the Treaty of
Jnnes's Eng. Hist. — Vol. in. L
1 62 The Indecisive Struggle
Westphalia. But the possessions of Brandenburg were scattered;
the margravate itself was completely separated from the duchy
of East Prussia which actually lay outside the borders of the
empire. It was the business of the Great Elector's life to gain
access to the Baltic, and to make his territories continuous.
He was not altogether successful, though he achieved much in
the desired direction. Brandenburg, when he died, was a much
more powerful and a much better organised state than it had
been in the first half of the seventeenth century.
The Great Elector had been succeeded by his son Frederick,
who followed his father's policy, though with less vigour. He,
however, succeeded in rising from the rank of an
and 61 elector to that of a king, a title granted to him by
Frederick the Emperor Leopold in order to secure his adherence
at the moment when the war of the Spanish Succes-
sion was imminent. He took his title from his Prussian duchy
instead of from Brandenburg, in order to avoid the elevation
of one of the states of the empire into a kingdom. Frederick i.,
king of Prussia, was succeeded by his son Frederick William i.
In Frederick William's policy there were two root ideas ; one,
loyalty to the emperor, the other the military organisation of
Prussia. His wife was the sister of George IL, and we have seen
that George attempted unsuccessfully, through the scheme of
a double royal marriage, to attach Prussia as a German state
more closely to Hanover, and to detach it from a too subservient
loyalty to Austria. In spite of extremely inconsiderate treat-
ment on the part of Charles vi., Frederick William was obstin-
ately loyal to the emperor to the end of his days. He had done
little towards the extension of his dominion ; the great gap still
remained between Prussia and Brandenburg. But he had
organised and drilled, drilled and organised, his army, without
using it to fight, until he had worked it up into a military machine
of extraordinary perfection.
Frederick William had guaranteed the Pragmatic Sanction,
and he would have held to his pledge. But he died on the last day
of May in 1740, and was succeeded on the Prussian throne by
Frederick n., a prince with much larger ambitions, of much
The Coming Conflict 16
higher and more varied ability, and of infinitely less scrupu-
losity. Within five months, in October, Charles vi. died, leaving
the Hapsburg succession, in accordance with the j)^^ of
Pragmatic Sanction, to his daughter, Maria Theresa, Charles VI.,
the wife of Francis, formerly of Lorraine, and now 174 '
duke of Tuscany. A week later died the Tsarina Anne of Russia,
leaving the throne to a minor ; an event which it was anticipated
would prevent Russia from active intervention as a guarantor
of the Pragmatic Sanction. That instrument applied only to the
Hapsburg inheritance itself, not to the imperial crown. Spain
and Sardinia might use the opportunity to assert once more
claims upon Austrian possessions in Northern Italy ; but the
one defensible claim, apart from that of Maria Theresa, to the
Hapsburg inheritance, was that of the elector of Bavaria,
Charles Albert, who was also a candidate for the imperial dignity
in opposition to Francis of Lorraine. A direct attack upon
Austria was in the circumstances feasible only if some of the
great powers repudiated their guarantee of the Pragmatic
Sanction ; indirectly, it might be made by supporting the
candidature of Charles Albert for the empire. This was the
European situation in the last days of October 1740.
From Europe, then, we turn to the other two fields which were
about to become the area of conflict between France and Great
Britain : North America and India. And first North America.
In the previous volume we followed the story of the planting
of English colonies along the whole eastern seaboard from the
river Kennebec on the north to the river Savanna The French
on the south, involving the absorption of the Dutch in America.
colony, which after the Treaty of Breda became the English
colony of New York. This range of colonies had Been com-
pleted in 1732 by the plantation of Georgia between South
Carolina and the Spanish colony of Florida ; the whole group
forming the ' thirteen colonies.' To these the Treaty of Utrecht
had added the districts hitherto disputed with the French,
Acadia or Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and the Hudson Bay
Territory. On the St. Lawrence, up to Lake Ontario, the French
had established their colony of New France or Canada. The
164 The Indecisive Struggle
Treaty of Utrecht had not laid down boundaries with definite-
ness, and a large portion of Acadia was still in dispute. The
British colonies had not pushed inland beyond the range of the
Alleghany mountains. Far to the westward French explorers
had struck the river Mississippi, and traced it down to its mouth
in the Gulf of Mexico, where they had established the colony of
Louisiana. Here they had done little enough in the way of
occupation. The colony centred round New Orleans in the
south. It was, however, the object of the French to connect
Louisiana with Canada by a chain of forts, to be established
along the basin of the Ohio, which, with the Mississippi, would
thus become a permanent limit to the westward expansion of
the British colonies. The basin of the Ohio was as yet un-
occupied, though the French claimed it by right of discovery.
At this time the Canadian outposts were at Fort Niagara
between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, and at Crown Point on
Lake Champlain. The outpost of Louisiana was at Fort Chartres,
some fifty miles below the confluence of the Mis-
The French .
and the sissippi and the Missouri, and a hundred miles above
British the confluence of the Mississippi and the Ohio. The
Colonies. _ ...
French population of the two colonies was very
much smaller than the British population of the thirteen colonies ;
but the French organisation was military, and the British
organisation was not. The thirteen colonies had no common
government, and each of them was much more intent upon its
own immediate interests as a self-governing state than upon
comparatively remote interests affecting the whole body — a
glance at the map will show that the prospect of a direct collision
between the French and the southern colonies was not imminent.
The general attitude of the colonies to each other bore some re-
semblance to that of the ancient states of Hellas. They required
the pressure of some common overwhelming danger to force
them into any common activity for the common good. In the
north the borderland between Canada and the New England
colonies was occupied by Indian tribes with whom in general
the French were on more friendly terms than the British, although
the Iroquois, ' the five nations/ counted as allies of the British.
The Coming Conflict 165
Lastly we turn to India, where an analysis of the conditions
requires a greater amount of retrospective detail.
Theoretically the whole Peninsula was under the dominion
of the Mughal emperor, the ' Great Mogul ' ; but we should
be under an entire misapprehension if we regarded India.
that empire as in any conceivable sense a homo- survey of
geneous state. Never at any period of its history tfcepast— the
was India a homogeneous state. In race, in lan-
guage, and in religion it was no less diverse than the continent
of Europe, even as its area is very much that of Europe
minus the Russian empire. Geographically it falls into two
divisions, the Northern and the Southern, broadly distinguished
as Hindustan and the Deccan ; the river Nerbudda serving
approximately as a dividing line between the two. The invasions
of the Aryans during a period vaguely extending from 3000 B.C.
to 1000 B.C. established in the north-west, as it would seem,
an almost exclusively Aryan population. The extension of the
Aryan conquests down the Ganges planted in the Ganges basin
a much more mixed population, where the Aryan element pre-
vailed in the upper classes and the pre- Aryan or Dravidian in
the lower, until we reach the Lower Ganges, where the pre-
dominant element becomes Mongolian, and the genuine Aryan
element is small. It was only to a very minor extent that the
Aryan element penetrated into the Deccan at all. Hinduism
But the Aryan religion, modified by the hereditary and caste-
priestly caste of Brahmins into what is called Brahminism or
Hinduism, became the dominant religion of the whole peninsula
—without expelling the primitive native cults which it absorbed,
and by which it was in its turn modified. The total result was
the development of the system of caste. Here we need not
attempt to discuss the historical development of caste ; but
according to Hindu theory it rests primarily upon the distinc-
tion between the three divisions of the pure-blooded or ' twice-
born ' — the Brahmins, the priestly or learned caste, the Kshat-
ryas or Rajputs, the royal and military caste, and the Vaisya
or agricultural caste ; and the altogether inferior caste called
sudras. The fundamental principle of caste is the prohibition
1 66 The Indecisive Struggle
of intermarriage. Within the great castes there arose infinite
subdivisions ; there are now innumerable castes which claim
to be Brahmin, and innumerable castes which claim to be
Rajput ; different degrees of rigidity apply to the prohibitions
of intermarriage ; but the fundamental fact remains that the
Hindu is determined above all things to do nothing which shall
degrade him from his caste, because caste is not merely a matter
of social position in this life but is essentially bound up with the
life to come.
Caste, resting upon a religious sanction of the most uncom-
promising type, was and is itself the basis of the Hindu social
system ; but apart from this the popular religion of the Hindus
is the most comprehensive system of polytheism that has ever
existed. Every kind of deity or daemon has found entry into
the Hindu pantheon, and the ordinary Hindu in the accepted
sense of the term is a worshipper of idols even while the re-
ligion of the higher grade devotees is the most remote from
materialism and idolatry that could well be conceived.
Then upon Hinduism entered Mohammedanism. First came
the Arabs who never accomplished more than the establishment
Moham- °^ border kingdoms in the Punjab, the north-
medan western corner of India, which is watered by the
conquests. Indus and ^ tributarjes About the year 1000 A.D.
Mahmud of Ghazni began a series of terrific incursions, sweeping
up vast treasures and destroying countless temples and idols,
insomuch that the ' image-breaker ' became one of his titles.
Mahmud himself did not organise a dominion, but after him
other Mohammedan conquerors came down through the passes
of Afghanistan, and presently established Mohammedan empires
which usually centred in Delhi, and extended with various
contractions and expansions from the mountains to the Lower
Ganges. The Hindu population of India was not converted,
save in a very small degree, to Mohammedanism. The empire
builders were chiefs of Turk or Afghan blood, whose followers
were for the most part Turks and Afghans, and who established
a military supremacy over the much larger Hindu population.
Thus Mohammedan dynasties established themselves, resting
The Coming" Conflict 167
upon Mohammedan armies, by degrees all over India, in the
Deccan as well as Afghanistan. Hindu and Mohammedan did
not combine, because to the Mohammedan the Hindu was an
idol-worshipping infidel, and to the Hindu the Moslem was a
sacrilegious outcaste. To the Hindu the Mohammedan was
always an alien conqueror.
While Henry vin. was reigning in England, the greatest and
the most attractive of the conquerors, Babar, flung himself
upon Hindustan from Afghanistan. On his father's The Mughais.
side Babar was a Turk, descended from the famous Timur or
Tamerlaine ; on the mother's side he was a Mongol, or Mughal,
descended from that other equally famous conqueror Genghis
Khan ; hence the name of the Mughal dynasty, anglicised as
the Moguls. Babar's life was too short for the real establish-
ment of his empire ; that was the work of his grandson Akbar,
whose reign coincided almost exactly with that of Queen Eliza-
beth in England. Akbar was the first great Mohammedan ruler
who endeavoured to fuse his subjects into one people ; the
first who made no distinction between Hindu and Moslem. In
his half century of rule he established his dominion over all
Hindustan, and over a small part of the Deccan, the greater
part of which was under the sway of Mohammedan dynasties.
During the first half of the seventeenth century Akbar's son
and grandson continued to act upon Akbar's lines.
But then came the fanatical Mussulman Aurangzib, who, on
the one hand, strove throughout his reign to extend his dominion,
so that before his death the greater part of the Aurangzib
Deccan owned his sway ; and, on the other hand, and the
revived in all its bitterness the feud between Hindu ra as"
and Mussulman. In two ways Aurangzib prepared the dis-
solution of the Mogul empire. By rousing Hindu hostility he
had given the Hindu chief Sivaji the opportunity of posing as
a champion of Hinduism, and of creating in that character the
practically independent ascendency of the Mahratta race, which,
issuing from its fastnesses in the Western Deccan, subjected a
great portion of the Deccan and of Central India to the domination
of a Mahratta confederacy. In the second place Aurangzib,
1 68 The Indecisive Struggle
again departing from the statesmanlike methods of his great-
grandfather, broke up the dominion, which had become alto-
gether too large and unwieldy, into satrapies or vice-royalties,
provinces so large that in the absence of a very strong central
government each governor was able to make himself to all in-
tents and purposes an independent prince. The sovereignty of
the successors of Aurangzib became more shadowy than the
sovereignty of the Austrian emperor in the rest of Germany.
Even in Aurangzib's own day the seeds of disintegration were
so obviously present that a European observer had remarked
that Turenne with 12,000 men could make himself master of
India.
Aurangzib died in 1707, and thirty years after his death the
Mogul empire was to all intents and purposes not an empire
The Mogul but a collection of great principalities, whose rulers
empire in professed to recognise the sovereignty of the Mogul
when it happened to suit them to appeal to law,
but who otherwise went their own independent way. None
of the ruling Mohammedan dynasties had existed for so much as
fifty years. The Ganges basin, below Agra on the Jumna, was
divided between the nawab wazir of Oudh and the nawab of
Bengal and Behar. A great prince, the Nizam ul Mulk, at
Haidarabad, was viceroy of the whole Deccan, of which the
eastern portion, called the Carnatic, was ruled by a nawab who
was his lieutenant-governor. At Puna was the peshwa, the
head of the Mahratta confederacy, nominally the minister of
Sivaji's descendant, actually the master ; as the mayors of the
palace had been in the later days of the Merovingians. Four other
great chiefs exercised a general control over the Mahratta con-
federacy, the Gaekwar in Gujerat, Holkar at Indur, Sindhia at
Gwalior, and the Bhonsla at Nagpur. The geographical position
of these several seats of authority sufficiently indicates the wide
extent of the Mahratta ascendency. The other princes men-
tioned above were all Mohammedans ; the Mahrattas were
Hindus, whose acknowledgment of the Mogul's sovereignty
was even more perfunctory than that of the Moslems. In
Rajputana a group of Rajput princes ruled each one over his
The Coming Conflict 169
own domain in virtual independence. As for the Mogul him-
self at Delhi, the last shattering blow was dealt to his power by
the devastating invasion of the Persian Nadir Shah, who, in 1739,
sacked Delhi, massacred half its inhabitants, and carried off the
world-famed peacock throne.
On the fringe of the great peninsula were the factories or
trading-stations of the commercial companies of four European
powers. The Portuguese had been first on the scene; The
at one time they had dominated the Indian seas, Europeans
but their power was departed, and in effect they mlndia-
held nothing but Goa on the west coast and a port on the Persian
Gulf. Next had come Dutch and English, but the Dutch
company had devoted its energies to the Spice islands; in
India itself it had little but the station of Chinsurah on the
Hugli and Negapatam in the south, though it held Trin-
comali and the island of Ceylon. The English had three
factories — at Bombay on the west coast, at Fort St. George
or Madras, and at Fort William or Calcutta on the Hugli.
The French also had three positions — at Mane on the south-west
coast, at Pondichery on the south-east coast a hundred miles
below Madras, and at Chandernagur on the Hugli close to
Calcutta. There was also another British military station at
Fort St. David, immediately to the south of Pondichery. French
and English alike were merely trading companies, not provided
with armies, but having a mere handful of soldiers to afford
them a sort of police protection. They had no territories. Their
base of supplies was in England or France, to be French
reached only by a voyage round the Cape which and British,
generally occupied some six months — it might be a little less
and it might be a great deal more. The French had the advan-
tage of a naval station at the Mauritius, the Isles of France
and Bourbon, between India and Africa ; the English had the
advantage of a much more extensive marine and a much larger
navy. The French were on a better footing with the natives.
The companies were commercial rivals, but neither of them had
hitherto bethought themselves of a dream so wild as that of
acquiring territorial dominion. It was an understood thing
170 The Indecisive Struggle
that if the governments at home fell out, and France and Great
Britain went to war with each other, the companies in India
would treat each other as being outside the quarrel, and would
continue the pursuit of dividends. British statesmen and French
statesmen at home had no more thought of trying to set up a
territorial dominion in India than the companies.
But there was one dominant fact in the situation. If the peace
should be broken, if an actual struggle should arise between
sea-power. French and British in India, the victory was abso-
lutely bound to go to the country which exerted its sea-power
most effectively. Should Great Britain so choose, and should
no unexpected disaster intervene, her navy would inevitably
secure her a victory in such a contest. If the French in India
challenged the contest it was incredible that the British navy
would not sooner or later intervene. But the Frenchman who
did, in fact, challenge the contest either omitted that fact from
his calculations, or reckoned on the chance of the naval inter-
vention coming too late ; which is very nearly what occurred.
But we must leave Dupleix, his schemes, and their outcome, to
a later section.
II. THE WAR OPENS, 1739-1745
Walpole was almost alone in his reluctance to engage upon
the war with Spain. Most of his colleagues as well as the king,
1739 the Opposition, and the country at large, plunged
Walpole into the conflict with light hearts, satisfied that
ar' the struggle with Spain would be merely a war of
plunder, a spoiling of the Egyptians. Walpole was convinced
in his own mind that war with Spain would mean war with
France as well ; but that possibility had been before him for
at least six years. During those six years it ought to have been
a serious part of the business of his government to place in a
state of thorough organisation the great navy, which ought to
have been ready not only to hold its own single-handed against
the fleets of France and Spain, but to sweep the seas irresistibly.
Under a minister who understood that side of his business, the
The War Opens 171
British fleet ought to have been able to bring Spain to her knees
before France could intervene, seeing that the latter country
was by no means in readiness to undertake a maritime war.
As a matter of fact, there was never from beginning to end
any doubt of British naval superiority ; but almost from be-
ginning to end mismanagement and lack of organisation pre-
vented that superiority from being given anything like full effect.
At the first moment, however, the cheerful anticipations of
the war party seemed likely to be fulfilled. By midsummer
1739 it was already certain that a declaration of 1740
war was imminent. Reinforcements were sent to Opening
Admiral Haddock's squadron in the Mediterranean, succ*
a Channel fleet was made ready, and Admiral Vernon, one of
the Whig Opposition, was dispatched with six ships of the line
to the West Indies. War was actually declared in London on
23rd October ; a week later, Haddock had captured a couple of
Spanish treasure ships, and on 2ist November Vernon captured
the West Indian port of Porto Bello on the Isthmus of Darien,
the news of which success was received in March with wild
acclamations of joy ; but Vernon did nothing more.
In the late summer, the ministers learnt that although there
had been no declaration of war between France and Great
Britain, a French fleet had been dispatched to the 1741
West Indies. A great effort was accordingly made, Cartagena
and a fleet was prepared which included thirty- and Santia£°-
three sail of the line and some eighty smaller vessels, carrying
10,000 soldiers under the command of General Wentworth.
The force joined Vernon at Jamaica in January 1741. Mean-
while, Commodore Anson had started with a small squadron
of six ships, on what was to be his voyage round the world,
but was at first simply a disappearance into the unknown.
The West India force employed itself upon an attempt to capture
Cartagena. Wentworth and Vernon mismanaged matters com-
pletely, each of them laying the blame on the other ; an assault
failed ; when a siege was attempted Wentworth's men died of
fever like flies. In a few weeks the siege was raised. In July,
Wentworth, with the remnant of his troops, made an equally
The Indecisive Struggle
ineffective attempt upon Santiago in Cuba. The great effort
had produced nothing but a shocking loss of life. Vernon had
not even attempted to bring the enemy's slightly inferior fleet
to an engagement, and there was nothing whatever to show for
it all except the quite unimportant capture of Porto Bello. The
French fleet, it should be remarked, had been acting under
explicit engagements to Spain ; but the French government
claimed that they were only ' auxiliaries/ and that the sending
of a contingent to the Spanish fleet did not provide a casus belli.
Nominally, Great Britain and France still remained at peace
with each other. The same curious doctrine was applied in the
continental war which began at the end of 1740, and in which
Dutch, French, and British all took part, the French on one
side and the Dutch and British on the other ; but only as
auxiliaries, and without being technically at war with each other.
The deaths of the Emperor Charles vi. and the Tsarina Anne
in October 1740 — at the moment when the great British expedi-
1740. tion was sailing to join Vernon — gave the young
Frederick king of Prussia his opportunity. Frederick William,
sia" at the very end of his life, had been tricked by the
emperor over his claim to the duchy of Berg. His son Frederick
had no compunction in taking advantage of the critical position
of Charles's young heiress. The possession of the province of
Silesia, bordering on Brandenburg, was of immense strategic
importance to Prussia, necessary to her, in fact, if she was to
attain to that supreme position among German states at which
she had been aiming ever since the days of the Great Elector.
A girl of twenty-three was on the Austrian throne, but her title
was challenged by the elector of Bavaria. If the powers who
had guaranteed the Pragmatic Sanction stood by her, the elector
would have no chance. But as matters stood, she would certainly
not be supported by Spain, probably not by Russia, and France
was more than likely to discover some pretext for supporting
Charles Albert, at least in his candidature for the imperial crown,
if not in his claim to the Hapsburg inheritance.
Frederick resolved to strike first and argue afterwards. In
December he suddenly marched his troops into Silesia and offered
The War Opens 173
Maria Theresa terms. If she would cede Silesia to him, he
would support her husband's candidature for the empire, and
would maintain her claims to the Hapsburg inherit- .
ance against the elector of Bavaria. Maria Theresa occupies
had no intention of purchasing his support at such Silesia,
, December,
a price. She refused to treat as long as there was
a Prussian soldier in Silesia. In the spring an Austrian army
marched into the province, but was completely defeated at the
battle of Mollwitz, which at once established the reputation of
the Prussian soldiery and of Frederick himself as a general.
As yet the only war actually in progress on the Continent was
that between Austria and Prussia, in Silesia. The high-spirited
queen had no thought of giving way to the entirely inexcusable
aggression of Prussia. But Mollwitz changed the situation.
No one had supposed for a moment that Frederick would be
able to make good his demands by force of arms ; Prussia in
the past had not distinguished herself from the military point
of view, and the value of Frederick William's 1741
organisation had not been revealed to the world Marshal
any more than the military genius of Frederick BeUeisle-
William's son. But now it was recognised on all sides that
Prussia was going to be a heavy weight in the scales. The anti-
Austrian party, wherever an anti-Austrian party existed, was
greatly encouraged. Fleury in France had been inclined to the
plan of supporting Charles Albert in his candidature for the
empire while maintaining the Pragmatic Sanction ; but now
that policy gave way to the schemes of BeUeisle, whose idea
was to dismember Austria and manipulate German territory so
that it should be distributed among several princes in mutual
rivalry, none of whom would be able to make head against France.
France herself was looking to the Netherlands as her reward.
Spain and Sardinia were both ready enough to snatch more
Italian territory from Austria. While Vernon and Wentworth
were wasting ships and lives in the West Indies and on the
Spanish Main, BeUeisle was negotiating with Frederick.
In June an agreement had been reached. Frederick should
be guaranteed his conquest in Silesia^ and his vote was to be
174 The Indecisive Struggle
given to Charles Albert. Sardinia and Spain would make their
attack in Italy, and France, acting as an auxiliary, would supply
France takes men anc^ money to the elector of Bavaria in support
the field, of both his claims, though no one intended him to
obtain the Hapsburg inheritance entire. In August
a French force had joined the elector ; in September another
French force was across the Lower Rhine to prevent any action
on the part of Hanover and Holland. Incidentally, French
diplomacy involved Sweden and Russia in a separate contest,
which kept the latter from intervening in the affairs of Western
Europe ; as otherwise she was likely to do, since the Austrian
party was for the moment in the ascendent. The capture of
Linz on the Danube by the Franco-Bavarian army opened the
way to Vienna, and induced Augustus of Saxony and Poland
to join the league. Only in one quarter was there encourage-
ment for Maria Theresa. She boldly appealed to her Hungarian
subjects, whose chivalrous sympathies were aroused for the
young queen, and who adopted her cause with enthusiasm, in
spite of their traditional hostility to the house of Hapsburg.
But at this stage there came temporary relief. Frederick
was playing for his own hand, as indeed were all the parties in
Kiein-schnei- that quarrel. He completely distrusted France,
lendorf. and he made a secret treaty with Austria, the Treaty
of Klein-Schnellendorf. In order to release the Austrian army,
Silesia was to be ceded to him, though there was still to be a
show of the conquest being effected by force of arms. Belleisle,
who was also playing a double game, diverted the Franco-
Bavarian attack from Vienna to Prague. Maria Theresa had
escaped the most serious danger, although immediately after-
wards Frederick repudiated the secret treaty, and made a fresh
private treaty with Bavaria and Saxony for the further dis-
memberment of Austria.
What had England and Hanover been doing during this year,
apart from those naval operations against Spain which have
already been described ? A fierce attack upon Walpole's con-
duct of affairs was made by the Opposition at the beginning of
1741. In both Houses the attack was completely defeated. In
The War Opens 175
the country there was a strong feeling of sympathy for Maria
Theresa ; but Walpole was intensely anxious to avoid an open
breach with France, and George, as elector of Attitude of
Hanover, was jealous of Hapsburg ascendency in George II.
Germany. Both the king and the minister were anxious to per-
suade the queen to secure her own position by conceding Fred-
erick's demands. In the summer George went to Hanover.
Alarmed by the presence of the French army in Westphalia,
he signed in September a treaty of neutrality for Hanover which
roused much indignation in England. The Treaty of Klein-
Schnellendorf, and Maria Theresa's assent to the cession of
Silesia, were largely due to the persuasions of the British envoy
and to the scotching of her hopes of Hanoverian support by
George's treaty of neutrality.
But in England these things told against the government
instead of for it. When parliament met, after a general election,
it was found that the ministerialists had only a
1742.
very slight majority. Matters had been made worse Resignation
by the news of failure in the West Indies, and by of Walpole,
the loss of many merchant vessels. The Mediter-
ranean fleet appeared not to be strong enough to face the French
and Spaniards in that sea. When the ministers met the House,
the first business was to deal with election petitions which were
habitually treated simply as questions of party. Four min-
isterialists were immediately unseated. In January a direct
attack upon Walpole was defeated by only three votes. A week
later ministers were beaten by one vote on another election
petition question. Walpole accepted a peerage — the earldom
of Orford — and resigned ; though he still retained the ear of
the king.
The formation of the new ministry was entrusted to Pulteney
by Walpole 's advice. The reconstruction was very limited.
Carteret became ' secretary for the northern depart- carteret's
ment/ which meant virtually that he was foreign ministry,
secretary. Two prominent members of the Whig Opposition,
Wilmington and Sandys, joined the cabinet ; the ' Boys ' re-
mained outside ; so for the present did Chesterfield. It was
176 The Indecisive Struggle
not a case of the transfer of power from one party to another ;
the new earl of Orford did not go into Opposition ; his personal
supporters still generally supported the new ministry ; but a
considerable contingent of those who had hitherto been in Opposi-
tion now gave their votes for ministers. The point of primary
importance was that Carteret, whose foreign policy appealed
strongly to the king, became for the time dictator in foreign
affairs.
While Walpole was making his last stand in the British parlia-
ment, affairs had been going not unfavourably for Maria Theresa.
The war The Austrian forces recaptured Linz, and though
on the Charles Albert was duly elected as the Emperor
Charles VIL, he found himself driven out of Bavaria.
Frederick conducted a brief and futile campaign in Moravia ;
and while Spanish troops were landed in Italy the effect was
to force over to the other side the king of Sardinia, whose ambi-
tions in Northern Italy clashed with those of Spain. In 1742
the junction of the Sardinian and Austrian forces in Lombardy
swept the Spaniards back.
The vigour of Carteret's administration was promptly felt in
England ; the Mediterranean fleet was reinforced, and block-
Martin aded Toulon ; and in August, Commodore Martin
at Naples. appeared in the bay of Naples with three ships.
That force proved sufficient to prevail upon Don Carlos, king
of Naples, to pledge himself to neutrality. The commodore
gave him half an hour by the watch, or according to another
account, two hours, to sign, on pain of a bombardment ; and he
signed — though he nourished in his heart a lasting resentment
against the power which had compelled him to do so.
On the demand of Maria Theresa, British and Hanoverian
troops were assembled in Flanders to protect the Spanish Nether-
Carteret's lands against a possible attack by France ; though
diplomatic it became necessary for Great Britain to pay the
Hanoverian troops in order to prevent George from
disbanding them — much to the wrath of the Opposition. Car-
teret's diplomacy, however, was strikingly successful. In June
he negotiated the Treaty of Breslau between Frederick and Maria
The War Opens 177
Theresa, by which the queen definitely ceded the greater part
of Silesia, and Frederick undertook forthwith to withdraw all his
troops from Bohemia ; and in October he succeeded, after Lord
Stair had failed, in inducing the Dutch to assist in subsidising the
queen, and to furnish a contingent of 20,000 men to the army
of defence in Flanders. In November the Treaty of Westminster
arranged that George and Frederick should mutually guarantee
each other's territories. Immediately after the Treaty of Breslau,
Saxony followed suit and signed a treaty with Austria. Before
the end of the year the French had been compelled to evacuate
Prague, which they had captured in the previous November ;
and Austria was once more in complete possession of Bohemia.
The command of the assorted troops of auxiliaries in Flanders
had been entrusted to Lord Stair, who, if he had had his own
way, would have used them for a direct invasion 1743
of France. George, however, held fast by the theory The army in
that the countries were not at war — the British and Flanders-
Hanoverians were only auxiliaries who could only act in defence
of their ally. Stair was not allowed to move. In the spring
of 1743 French forces were collecting on the Meuse and the
Moselle, with Bavaria as their objective. Whatever Stair might
plan, he was as completely tied and bound by his instructions
from England as Marlborough in the past had been by Dutch
control. George himself intended to take the command, and
in the meantime Stair was required to take up his position at
Aschaffenburg on the Maine, while the French general Noailles
was concentrating at Speier on the Upper Rhine. The responsi-
bility for the situation when George actually arrived to take over
the command from Stair in the middle of June was not Stair's
but the king's. But for his orders, repeated and positive, Stair
would not have been at Aschaffenburg at all. While he was
there the French were able to cut off his supplies ; and after
a brief delay George found he had no choice but to fall back to
Hanau, passing through Dettingen.
Noailles made his dispositions in such a manner that the allies
ought to have been caught in a trap at Dettingen and annihilated
or forced to surrender. But his scheme was foiled by a false
Innes's Eng. Hist. — Vol. in. M
178 The Indecisive Struggle
move of Grammont, who had been placed in an impregnable
position blocking the march of the allies. Instead of remaining
Dettingen. there, he advanced to the attack. By the desperate
valour of the British regiments, what ought to have been a
crushing defeat was turned into a definite victory. Both the
king and his second son William, duke of Cumberland, distin-
guished themselves by the valour they displayed. Grammont's
forces were completely routed ; and the ' Pragmatic army/
as it was called, successfully made its way to Hanau. Luck
and pluck, with no generalship at all, had saved it from
annihilation, and had paralysed the French army for further
operations. Dettingen is notable as being the last fight in which
a king of England took a personal part. Stair, whose own plans
had been overruled beforehand, who had not commanded on the
withdrawal to Hanau, who had again been overruled when he
urged the pursuit of the routed French, and whose proposals
now for an active campaign were once more overruled, resigned
in disgust and went home. There was no braver soldier in the
army than King George, but as a strategist he was wholly devoid
of audacity. Stair's place was taken by the old and now in-
competent General Wade.
It was now the object of Carteret and George to reconcile
Maria Theresa with the emperor, who, so far from having any
The Treaty reasonable prospect of acquiring Hapsburg ter-
of worms. ritories, had now very little hold even upon his
own Bavarian dominion. The plan of the ' project of Hanau '
was the withdrawal of Charles's claims to the Hapsburg inherit-
ance, his restoration in the electorate of Bavaria which was to
be erected into a kingdom, his recognition as emperor, and the
provision by Great Britain of subsidies which should enable him
to maintain that dignity ; in return for which he was to sever
himself from France. But in England these proposals smacked
of Hanoverianism. Carteret's position was weakened by the
death of his ally, Lord Wilmington, the nominal head of the
government, whose place in the cabinet was taken by Henry
Pelham, the brother of Newcastle and the nominee of Newcastle
and Walpole. If the Hanau plan had been carried through,
The War Opens 179
George would, in effect, have taken the leading place among the
princes of Germany But Carteret found the opposition in the
cabinet too strong. The Treaty of Worms in September was
instead directed to the close alliance of Sardinia and Austria,
partly at the expense of Austria, and the expulsion of the
Bourbons from Italy. Maria Theresa's assent was only obtained
with considerable difficulty. But the treaty had the further
effect of causing the Bourbons to renew the Family Compact
in a more aggressive form. Moreover, Frederick of Prussia took
alarm when he saw that the Treaty of Worms did not include
any guarantee of the maintenance of the Treaty of 1744 prance
Breslau. For the moment he did not show his declares
hand. But in the spring of 1744, the old fiction, war<
under which half the troops engaged in the war hitherto had
posed as auxiliaries, was finally abandoned, and war was declared
by France and Spain against the allies. Before midsummer a
new treaty of alliance was made between France, Prussia, and
the emperor. In the early autumn Frederick was again attack-
ing Bohemia.
Before the actual declaration of war, a naval action had been
fought in the Mediterranean which showed the disastrous extent
to which the British navy had fallen a prey to in- Matthews
discipline. Although the British fleet was slightly in the Medi-
superior to the combined French and Spanish fleets terranean-
which it engaged, the practical effect was that the British re-
treated. The admiral, Matthews, was cashiered, and no less than
eleven of the captains were court-mart i ailed. The story is
significant of the reasons which prevented the British naval
ascendency from having that decisive effect which it ought to
have ensured.
Also before the declaration of war, the fact that there was to
be a direct struggle between France and Great Britain was demon-
strated by the reappearance of a scheme for a French An abortiye
invasion with a Stuart restoration as its object. Jacobite
Charles Edward, the eldest son of the soi-disant ™™sion-
James in., had just completed his twenty-third year. In him
the Jacobites were concentrating the hopes which had been so
180 The Indecisive Struggle
persistently chilled by the uninspiring character of his depressed
and depressing parent. Jacobite agents had collected the most
promising if delusive reports as to the attitude of the people of
Great Britain towards the idea of a restoration. The stock
clamours of the Opposition against Hanoverianism, the popular
grumblings against the government, gave rise to the mistaken
idea that the clamourers and the grumblers would accept a
Stuart restoration at least with equanimity if not with enthusiasm.
These legends took effect at the French court, and an expedition
was planned which was to be headed by the ablest general in
the French armies, Maurice of Saxony (an illegitimate son of
the old Augustus the Strong of Saxony and Poland), commonly
known as Marshal Saxe. While Saxe was waiting with the trans-
ports a fleet sailed from Brest, but it would assuredly have fallen
a prey to Admiral Norris with the Channel fleet if it had not
been dispersed by a storm, which also sunk several of the trans-
ports at their anchors. This was the last move which finally
destroyed every shred of pretence that the French and British
governments were not at war.
The operations of the year were singularly futile. The French
under Marshal Saxe strengthened their position on the border
1744-5. °f the Netherlands ; elsewhere such advantages as
indecisive were gained by either side in one field were corn-
campaign g. pensated by iosses jn another. Frederick's campaign
in Bohemia was unproductive, and he discovered that the French
had no intention of giving him active assistance. In January
1745, the Emperor Charles Albert died, whereby both France
and Prussia were deprived of the pretence that they were fight-
ing on his behalf. Maria Theresa seized the opportunity to
force a reconciliation upon the young elector of Bavaria, a lad
of eighteen who was in no position to attempt the enforcement
of his dead father's claims. He recognised the Pragmatic
Sanction, and promised his support to Francis of Lorraine in
his candidature for the imperial crown.
Meanwhile, at the end of 1744, Carteret's position had become
untenable. The Pelham section practically forced him to
resignation ; Walpole, for whom the king sent, recommended
The War Opens 181
that course. Carteret retired just after succeeding to the
earldom of Granville, and the Pelhams proceeded to reconstruct
the ministry on the ' broad-bottom ' basis. Several 1744.
of the ' patriots ' were admitted to office, though Pitt
still remained outside for two reasons, one being ministry,
the king's antipathy to him, and the other his December,
own determination to accept no minor posts. The Pelham or
' broad-bottomed ' ministry succeeded Carteret's in the last
month of 1744. But having ousted Carteret, instead of adopt-
ing a new line" of policy it went on as before ; and the men who
in Opposition had thundered against Hanoverian measures, found
themselves subsidising foreign princes and working for the
benefit of Hanover as inevitably as Carteret himself. Hanover
itself, however, was compelled to abandon the theory that it
was still neutral, and to join in the war as a principal, because
until it did so it was useless to urge that course upon Holland
which had remained professedly neutral, while supplying its
contingent of ' auxiliaries.'
The practical transfer of Bavaria to the Austrian side was
promptly followed by the adhesion of Saxony to the Hapsburg
cause. Saxony and Austria were agreed in their 1745
determination to break up the power of Frederick The Fontenoy
of Prussia, to whom the French would render no camp sn*
assistance, since they in their turn were bent on the conquest
of the Netherlands for themselves. For the first half of the year
(1745), our own interests centre in the campaign of Fontenoy.
The duke of Cumberland, though he was only four- and- twenty,
was nominated captain-general of the British forces at home and
abroad. With him was associated the old Austrian general
Konigsegg. Marshal Saxe, the French commander, laid siege
to Tournay ; Cumberland made a bold attempt to relieve it.
The French force considerably outnumbered that of the allies,
and Saxe was an incomparably superior general to Cumberland.
Nevertheless, the indomitable courage of the British regiments
enabled them to carry the French position, though only to be
forced to retire again -because the Dutch troops failed to support
them. The allies were obliged to beat a steady and thoroughly
1 82 The Indecisive Struggle
well-ordered retreat ; the losses on the two sides had been about
equal. But Cumberland failed to relieve Tournay; Saxe re-
ceived large reinforcements, Tournay itself was surrendered in
June, and the fall of Ghent, Oudenarde, Ostend, and other places
followed soon after. The allies received no reinforcements ; on
the contrary, several British regiments and Cumberland himself
were very soon required on the other side of the Channel to deal
with a sudden danger, more imminent than the aggression of
France in the Netherlands.
A few days after the French victory at Fontenoy, Frederick
defeated an Austrian army at Hohenfriedberg. Again the British
Treaty of government turned to the idea which had dominated
Dresden. ministers since the very outset of the war, of bring-
ing Frederick into the alliance by a guarantee of his position
in Silesia. Frederick, who was already hard put to it from want
of funds, was very well inclined to peace since the French
operations were in no way calculated to help him. Neverthe-
less, it was only by a threat of the withdrawal of British sub-
sidies, on which Maria Theresa was largely dependent, that the
queen was driven to a reluctant acquiescence before the end of
the year. Silesia was guaranteed to Frederick, and he on the
other hand recognised the election of Francis of Lorraine as
emperor, which had taken place in September. The Treaty of
Dresden once more withdrew Prussia from the alliance with
France.
Meanwhile, the British fleet had done something to redeem
its character in the Mediterranean, where it was again dominant.
capture of But ^e on^y substantial success of the year was
Louisbourg achieved on the other side of the Atlantic, where
a British squadron commanded by Commodore
Warren, and accompanied by 4000 troops, not regulars, but raised
in the colonies, captured the French fortress of Louisbourg.
Louisbourg stood on the island of Cape Breton, and guarded
the entry to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Much care and money
had been spent by the French on the fortifications, and the
capture was hailed with acclamations. Great Britain, in spite
of her absorption on the Continent, was beginning to wake up
The Forty -Five 183
to the fact that there were other continents where great issues
were at stake. But five days before the capture of Louisbourg
the Young Chevalier had started upon his great adventure.
III. THE FORTY-FIVE, 1745-1746
The high-water mark of the chances of a Stuart restoration
had been reached at the beginning of 1744 ; for the single reason
that then and then only was France prepared to The
initiate a Jacobite insurrection. Always the Hano- Jacobite
verian government had the supreme advantage of P°sltion-
controlling the regular military forces in Great Britain. An
armed rebellion in which volunteer Jacobite levies could make
head against the government forces could never have had any
chance of success without a remarkably thorough organisation
supported by an outburst of enthusiasm for the cause. Jaco-
bites in England never suffered from the illusion that a successful
revolt could be accomplished without very material aid in troops,
military supplies, and cash from France. English Jacobites,
with very few exceptions, were not ready to rebel without a
reasonable prospect of success ; and they saw no reasonable
prospect of success without the support of French troops. The
attempt of 1744 was really conclusive. It showed how infini-
tesimally small was the chance of a French force successfully
effecting a landing in England. James himself, never sanguine,
abandoned all hope, even as the French abandoned all intention
of employing French troops to do anything more than secure
the triumph of an already victorious cause.
In 1745 the position of the house of Hanover in England was
infinitely stronger than it had been in 1715. The dynasty had
been established for thirty years, and under it the The
country had attained to a material prosperity with- Hanoverian
out parallel. The interests not only of the com- dynasty-
mercial community, but of nearly all the great families were
engaged on the Hanoverian side. Except the Roman Catholics,
no religious body had reason to expect that it would gain any-
thing from a restoration. The old doctrines of passive obedience
184 The Indecisive Struggle
and non-resistance had sunk into being mere pious opinions, not
inspiring forces. English Jacobitism had nothing to fall back
upon, except the tradition of personal loyalty to the legitimate
line.
In Scotland the position was somewhat different. Popular
dislike of the Union was very far from being dead, though it was
Jacobitism much less keen than had been the case thirty years
in Scotland, before. In the Highlands the old hostility to the
Campbell ascendency, the old royalist traditions connected with
Montrose and Dundee, were still active. Half the clans had only
submitted first to King William and then to King George because
the government forces were too strong for them ; and the High-
land chiefs could raise levies much more formidable than any
bands which English Jacobites could hope to muster among
their tenants and personal retainers. The disarmament after
the ' Fifteen ' had been anything but thorough, and had affected
the Whig clans who had obeyed the regulations a good deal more
than the Jacobite clans which had strenuously evaded them.
In the Lowlands, dislike of the Union counted for almost as
much as dislike of a Romanist king. The prevalent sentiment
was anti- Jacobite, but was tempered almost to the point oi
indifference by the feeling that a Stuart restoration would put
an end to the Legislative Union. Nevertheless, in Scotland as
in England, the leading Jacobites were convinced that no in-
surrection could be successful unless supported by French troops.
But there was one man who was resolved to attempt the im-
possible at all hazards, and whose daring almost achieved
1745. success. Charles Edward Stuart was endowed with
hin°r d a^ ^at personal magnetism which distinguished so
in Scotland, many members of his family, and the lack of which
June- July. had been so fatal to his father. In defiance of all the
dictates of prudence, in defiance of all warnings that the Jacobites
would not rise, he resolved to make his venture, to throw himself
upon the loyalty of the clansmen, and to raise the Stuart banner
in Scotland while the military forces of the Crown were engaged
in the Netherlands campaign. Secretly he borrowed money and
purchased arms — troops were not available. These were em-
Tke Forty- Five 185
barked upon two ships, the Doutelle and the Elizabeth. On 22nd
June he went aboard the Doutelle at Nantes with the comrades
who were afterwards known as the ' Seven men of Moidart.'
On 5th July the Doutelle and her consort set sail. Off Ushant
they met a British ship of war with which the Elizabeth had an
engagement so fierce that both vessels were crippled. The Eliza-
beth, which carried most of the supplies, had to make her way
back to France, but the Doutelle escaped, and on 25th July the
prince landed in Moidart on the west coast of Inverness-shire,
where the Jacobite Macdonalds and Camerons were predominant.
His immediate reception was discouraging. The chiefs were
Jacobites, but they were not disposed simply to run their heads
into a noose. Macleod of Macleod and Macdonald The standard
of Sleat refused to move, and wrote urging him to raised,
withdraw. Other chiefs came to dissuade him from August-
the enterprise by word of mouth, among them Donald Cameron
of Locheil and Macdonald of Clanranald ; but those two were not
proof against the personal fascination of the prince who declared
that he would go on by himself, even if all those failed him in
whose loyalty he had placed his trust. Both the chiefs declared
that the adventure was doomed to disaster ; but that if he was
bent on going forward they would follow him. Locheil's adhesion
turned the scale. One after another chiefs came in. There was
not one of them all who had been prepared to rise under such
conditions, but they could not resist the appeal to their loyalty
and generosity. Even as it was there were few enough, for the
northern clans would not stir. On iQth August the prince raised
his standard at Glenfinnan ; but it was with not much more than
1000 men at his back that Charles started on his adventure.
The government had had warning of Charles's intentions, but
made light of it ; which, considering the apparent hopelessness
of the project, is scarcely surprising. Sir John Cope The march to
was lying at Edinburgh with 1500 men when the Edinburgh,
news reached him of Charles's presence in Moidart. On the day
when Charles raised his standard, Cope started on a march for
the north, intending to cut him off from the northern clans.
Charles marched to intercept him, but Cope, fearing the clansmen
1 86 The Indecisive Struggle
in their own glens, evaded him and marched to Inverness. The
Jacobites left Cope to his own devices, and marched through
Perthshire to Perth, which was reached in the first week of
September. Here King James viu. was proclaimed, and several
new adherents joined the standard, including the duke of Perth
and Lord George Murray, the most capable commander in the
prince's train. He was one of the Atholl family, and must not
be confused with the prince's secretary, James Murray of Brough-
ton. At Perth the army was organised, the chief command
being given to Lord George Murray and Perth. On I3th Sep-
tember Charles had crossed the Forth. On the i6th he was
close to Edinburgh, and a party of dragoons which had been
sent out to Coltbridge to check the advance was seized with a
panic at the appearance of the Highlanders, and galloped to
Dunbar, thirty miles off, at the top of their speed ; whence the
inglorious encounter was nicknamed ' the canter of Colt Brig.'
Edinburgh Castle was sufficiently garrisoned, but the town was
in two minds. The gates were closed, and a deputation was sent
Charles in to ParleY with Charles. A party of Locheil's men
Edinburgh, who had gone out to see if there was a chance of
>er* capturing the gates saw the deputation returning in
a carriage a long time after midnight, and when the gates were
opened to admit the city fathers the Highlanders dashed in,
overpowered the guard, and proceeded to take possession of all
the city gates. A few hours later Charles entered the city and
took up his quarters at Holyrood, after formally proclaiming
James vm. at the town cross.
Meanwhile, Cope had done his best to get back by sea from
Inverness, and though too late to intercept the advance in Edin-
Prestonpans, burgh, he was disembarking at Dunbar while King
2ist sep- James was being proclaimed. On the 2Oth he had
pushed up to Prestonpans, close to the city, while
Charles had marched out to meet him, each of the forces number-
ing about 2000 men. A bog lay between the two armies, but, in the
early morning of the 2ist, a guide conducted the J acobite troops by
a path over the marsh. The movement was concealed by a heavy
mist, and the Highlanders were able to form up on firm ground
The Forty- Five 187
undiscovered. Then they fell upon Cope's camp, and in less
than ten minutes the whole of the government forces were in
headlong flight. Such was the victory of Prestonpans to which
the Highlanders gave the name of Gladsmuir. Apart from
the garrisons in Edinburgh and Stirling castles practically no
Hanoverian troops were left in Scotland.
For nearly six weeks Charles remained at Holyrood, holding
his court, winning the hearts of the ladies who were much more
Jacobite than their menkind, endeavouring to raise money and
troops, and hoping for some signs of a general rising. No signs
were forthcoming. By the end of October, the government had
got back some regiments from Flanders, and old General Wade
had a force of several thousand men at Newcastle. In was only
with great reluctance that the Highland chiefs were persuaded
to consent to an invasion of England, on the chance that a march
through the west would raise the English Jacobites in that
country.
Charles was now at the head of a force of not quite 6000 men,
half of them clansmen fighting under the personal command of
their chiefs. On 3rd November the march began. The march
Wade was tricked into a belief that the invasion to Derby,
was to be made by way of Newcastle ; in fact, the November'
old route of Scottish royalists and Jacobites was followed, and
Carlisle was captured before Wade appreciated the situation.
Although a considerable number of Highlanders had already
gone home, the council of officers reluctantly yielded to the
prince's urgency and agreed to continue the march. It must be
remembered that they had one and all regarded the insurrection
which they had joined as a forlorn hope, very unlikely to succeed.
But sheer audacity was the only conceivable road to success.
Sheer audacity had up to the present point been successful.
Unless they advanced there would be no glimmer of a chance of
any rising on the part of the English Jacobites. Sheer audacity
carried the day ; if the prince went forward the chiefs would
go with him, and most of the clansmen would at any rate go with
the chiefs. The army marched through the western counties,
preserving an admirable discipline ; but virtually no English
1 88 The Indecisive Striiggle
Jacobites joined it. Wade was still in the north; an army was
being formed at Finchley Common to cover London ; Cumber-
land had returned and was taking up the command of a third
force in the western Midlands to cut off the invaders from Wales,
where there were many Jacobite gentry. He was evaded as
Wade had been, and on 4th December the force reached Derby.
When the news reached London two days later there was a
general panic in the capital ; there was a run on the bank which
Retreat *s sa^ ^o nave saved itself from closing its doors
decided on, only by adopting the dilatory plan of counting out
>th December. sjxpences jn payment of the demands. The day of
panic was known as Black Friday ; but the alarm was super-
fluous. The council of officers at Derby had faced the situation,
and informed Charles point blank that to go further would be
sheer madness. So, upon any rational method of calculating
chances, it would most certainly have been. Here was a force
of less than 5000 men in the heart of a country which had shown
no disposition whatever, to give it support. On its rear and its
flank were two armies composed of regular troops, each of them
twice its size. In front, 130 miles off, was the capital, and be-
tween the prince and the capital there was still another force
much more than sufficient to give battle to the irregular Jacobite
levies. Nevertheless, there did remain the possibility that sheer
audacity would triumph, that the army at Finchley would break
up in panic, that London would declare for the prince. Charles
was right in the conviction that to march on London offered him
a chance and the only chance. Every man in his army who
knew anything about war was equally convinced that the chance,
if it existed at all, was infinitesimal, and that practically to march
on London would be to court annihilation. On Black Friday,
6th December, the army started on its march, not to London,
but to the north. Yet even at this stage there were numbers
of the clansmen who would have infinitely preferred advancing
to annihilation to a retreat, and who were only mollified, when
bidden to retrace their steps, by being told that they were march-
ing to fight the enemy.
When Cumberland, who was at Coventry, learnt that the
The Forty -Five 189
Scots were retreating instead of advancing he started in pursuit ;
but Lord George Murray, fighting a rear-guard action, beat
off the pursuers at Clifton, near Penrith. On 20th The march
December Charles was over the border again. On to Glasgow,
the 26th he was at Glasgow, and here reinforcements joined him,
including some hundreds of Scottish and Irish soldiery from the
exiled regiments in the French service, so that the actual force
under his command was considerably larger than it had ever
been before. Cumberland's pursuit had been delayed, partly by
the check at Clifton, partly by contradictory instructions re-
ceived from the government ; and when once the retreating force
had a fair start of him his chance of overtaking them was small.
Then he received a summons south, due to rumours of an in-
tended French invasion. Wade resigned, as he should have done
long before, and the command of the northern army was entrusted
by Cumberland to the fire-eating General Hawley.
Depression had been increasing among the Jacobite forces
ever since the retreat began. It was perhaps lightened by the
fresh accessions of strength at the end of December. 1746
Charles determined to attack Stirling Castle, which Faikirk,
he proceeded to blockade, till he learnt that Hawley anuary.
was approaching with some 8000 men. On iyth January there
was a sharp engagement at Faikirk, in which Hawley was
defeated and was forced to fall back to Edinburgh.
The rumour of a French invasion proved to be a false alarm,
and on 3oth January Cumberland arrived in Edinburgh to take
up the command again. On ist February Charles once more
yielded to pressure from his officers, raised the siege of Stirling,
and retreated into the Highlands, where he occupied Inverness
and captured Fort Augustus, which lies half way between the
capital of the Highlands and Fort William. Fort William itself,
however, repulsed the attack of Locheil. Cumberland did not
attempt to follow, but directed his march to Aberdeen — a
good base for further operations in the Highlands, because
supplies could be brought thither by sea. By the end of March
he had a well-provided force of nearly 10,000 men, while, as soon
as he could advance on Inverness, a naval force was ready to
The Indecisive Struggle
keep in touch with him along the coast ; and in the meanwhile
the prince's army, living in a barren country, was very short
of supplies which there was no money to buy, and dissensions
were rife among the leaders.
On 8th April Cumberland began his march ; on the i5th the
prince's force of perhaps 5000 men was lying at Culloden Moor
Cuiioden, when news was brought that Cumberland was only
17th April. some twelve miles off at Nairn. A night attack
was attempted, but delays occurred, and it was broad daylight
when the Highlanders were still a couple of miles away from
Cumberland's camp. There was nothing to be done but to fall
back to Culloden again. Thither Cumberland followed them.
Half-starved and worn out by their long futile march the High-
landers were roused in the early morning of the I7th with the
announcement that Cumberland was almost upon them. After
some exchange of cannon shot, in which the enormous advantage
lay with Cumberland, the centre and right of the Highlanders
charged their opponents with the claymore. They shattered the
first line and rushed on against the second ; but Cumberland
had anticipated and prepared for this method of attack. The
second line was drawn up three deep and met the charge with a
terrific fire, which broke the rush. The English infantry charged
in turn, sweeping their opponents back. On the Highland left,
the Macdonalds, who had not charged, fell back. But the duke
was able to bring his cavalry into play, turning both flanks of
the Highlanders. The second line of the prince's army, con-
sisting chiefly of the Lowland regiments, broke without actually
coming into action. The prince was forced from the field, but
though he escaped with his life the Stuart cause was irrevocably
lost on the fatal field of Culloden. A thousand of his followers
lay dead on the field, as many more were taken prisoners, all the
cannon and the whole of the baggage were captured.
A savage slaughter was ordered by Cumberland. Young
James Wolfe, who thirteen years later was destined to win im-
Cumberiand. perishable fame on ^the Heights of Abraham, re-
ceived instructions which caused him to return the audacious
reply that he was ' a soldier not a butcher,' a name which for
The Forty -Five 191
ever after clung to the duke. The savagery with which Cumber-
land pursued his business of reducing the Highlands to order
is an indelible blot on the fair fame of a man whose career was
in all other respects honourable.
For five months Charles remained a fugitive in the Highlands
and islands, sheltered in secret caves and humble cottages for
the most part, shielded by the splendid loyalty of The fugitive.
wild Highlanders, men and women, to any one of whom his
betrayal would have brought a fortune. At last, in September,
he succeeded in reaching a small French vessel which landed him
in safety on the coast of Brittany. But the star of the Stuarts
had set for ever. A passionate tradition of fervent loyalty has
preserved the name of ' Bonny Prince Charlie ' in the Highlands ;
the annals of the White Cockade have a pathetic fascination
which, almost alone, redeems the dreary materialism of the first
half of the eighteenth century.
Four Scottish peers who had taken an active part in the in-
surrection were captured. Tullibardine, whose earlier attainder
had transferred his dukedom of Atholl to his brother, The penalty,
died in the Tower. Cromartie was ultimately pardoned ; Kil-
marnock and Balmerino were beheaded, the latter stoutly adher-
ing to the Jacobite cause even to the last. Simon Fraser, Lord
Lovat, had not taken the field, but he had spent his life in crafty
betrayals of both sides, and means were found to bring him to
the block by an impeachment. Murray of Broughton, who till
his capture had served Charles well enough, saved his own life
by turning informer ; but for which Lovat would have escaped
his well-deserved death. Of the prisoners taken in arms, one
in every twenty was executed, to the number of about eighty ;
the rest were transported. In the Highlands, Cumberland con-
tinued his ugly work for some three months, despite the protests
of the Lord President Duncan Forbes, to whom he referred con-
temptuously as ' that old woman who talked to me of humanity/
As a matter of fact, the government owed an enormous debt to
Forbes, whose influence had been the prime factor in keeping
the northern clans from joining the insurrection. It would have
been well now for the credit of both Cumberland and the govern-
192 The Indecisive Struggle
ment if they had taken the advice of the shrewdest statesman
in Scotland, who understood both Highlanders and Lowlanders
better than any other living man. Unhappily, his counsel was
followed only to a very limited extent, with the result that the
Highlands were not really pacified for a long time to come.
Still, the government measures were effective in destroying the
capacity of the Highlands for again supplying a base for armed
Measures in insurrection. The military danger in the Highlands
Scotland. arose from the clan system, and the passionate de-
votion of the clansmen to their chiefs. They were now crippled
by a new disarming Act, stringently enforced with heavy penalties.
The outward and visible sign of clanship and of the opposition
between Highlander and Lowlander, the wearing of the clan
tartan and the kilt, was destroyed by an accompanying Act
prohibiting its use. To English statesmen it appeared that the
Scottish rising had been made possible by the ' heritable juris-
dictions/ the survival north of the border of the feudal powers
of local magnates, overriding the ordinary law, which had long
disappeared in England. Although their preservation had been
guaranteed by the Act of Union, an Act was now passed which
abolished them. But as a matter of fact, they had already very
nearly fallen into desuetude in the Lowlands, and it was only
to a very limited extent that they were the basis of the power
of Highland chiefs, whose jurisdiction and influence rested upon
immemorial custom and sentiment dating from a time long
before the introduction of Norman feudalism into the kingdom
of Scotland.
Of much more real importance than the feudal abolition of
heritable jurisdictions were two other factors. A number of the
Effects on the chiefs who had escaped abroad were attainted and
clan system, their estates forfeited. The new tenants holding
from the government were not the chiefs of the clans. For a
long time the clansmen, with an amazing loyalty, struggled to
pay the rents which they regarded as still due to their exiled
chiefs, even while they were forced to pay them also to their
new landlords. Other chiefs were forced by impoverishment to
sell their lands, and their former dependents also found new
The Forty -Five 193
landlords. In course of time loyalty to the absentees broke
down under the tremendous strain. At the same time, the
ordinary machinery of law was extended over the Highlands as
it never had been before, and the population slowly learnt to
look to the law for protection, when it was no longer possible to
appeal to the chief of the clan. The new landlords, too, planted
new tenants on the soil who had nothing to do with the clan
tradition, and thus by degrees the entire clan system was broken
up and vanished.
It was only at a later date that a plan was adopted which
perhaps did more than anything else to reconcile the Highlanders.
This was the raising of kilted regiments, which were Highland
embodied in the British army, and, fighting side by regiments,
side with Englishmen and Lowlanders, not only satisfied the
martial ardour which found no scope under the new conditions,
but created a new sense of common nationality quite compatible
with the old sense of separate nationality ; not a unification,
but a simultaneous sense of unity and duality, a sense that duality
did not preclude unity. Some time before one such regiment
had been raised among the Whig clans, the regiment known as
the Black Watch, which rendered magnificent service at Fontenoy.
Duncan Forbes, before his death in 1747, urged the wisdom of
extending that very successful experiment ; but some years
were to pass before the British government dared to act upon
his advice.
The ' Forty-five ' was the last throw of the Jacobites. The
gallant lad who had led the forlorn hope degenerated into a
drunken debauchee. With the disappearance of the The end of
last prospect of a Stuart restoration disappeared Jacobitism.
also the last prospect of a revocation of the Union. Scotland
settled down into acceptance of the Union as an accomplished
and permanent fact, and from that time the development of
her material progress became extraordinarily rapid.
Innes's Eng. Hist. — Vol. in.
194 The Indecisive Struggle
IV. HENRY PELHAM, 1746-1754
Since the end of 1744 the Pelham group — Henry Pelham and
his brother the duke of Newcastle, with their personal allies —
1746t had dominated the ministry. They had not, how-
The Peibams. ever, succeeded in bringing into it all the men whose
support was desired. In February 1746 they proposed altera-
tions which would have admitted Pitt. The king refused, and
there was a short trial of strength. George invited Pulteney,
who had practically committed political suicide by accepting
the earldom of Bath, to form a ministry, with Granville as
secretary of state. The whole Pelham group resigned; Bath
and Granville found their task a hopeless one, and the Pelhams
returned to office on their own terms ; Pitt consenting to
facilitate the arrangements by accepting a minor office. Three
months later the death of the paymaster of the forces made it
impossible for George to refuse him the succession to that office.
His advancement was signalised by his lending immediate and
vigorous support to the concession of large subsidies for Austria,
Sardinia, and Hanover, though hitherto his fiercest rhetoric had
been directed to the denunciation of the Hanoverian character
of such measures.
The critical position of the Austrians in Italy in the winter of
1745 had been one of the contributory causes to the unexpected
The war in acquiescence of Maria Theresa in the treaty with
1746. Frederick by which he was once more withdrawn
from the number of the combatants. The termination of the
war between Austria and Prussia released Austrian troops for
the Italian campaign in 1746. The Bourbon progress in Italy
was immediately checked. The death of Philip V. of Spain soon
after midsummer set on the throne his elder son, Ferdinand vi.v
the son of his first wife. The power which his second wife,
Elizabeth Farnese, wielded, at once disappeared. Ferdinand
was extremely anxious for peace and domestic reforms, and he
had no enthusiasm for his stepmother's ambitions on behalf of
her own sons, his stepbrothers. Spain at once withdrew from
the war in Italy, the object of. which had been to provide a
Henry Pelham 195
dominion for the younger of Elizabeth's sons, Don Philip. In
the Netherlands, on the other hand, Great Britain, still engaged
in the Jacobite contest, could play no effective part till after
midsummer. In the meanwhile, Saxe had captured Brussels,
Antwerp, and Mons. A strong naval expedition was planned
for the St. Lawrence, to be supported by a great force of colonial
levies ; but the preparations were delayed till too late in the
year. The fleet having been equipped, it was decided that it
must do something ; so it was dispatched, taking 5000 troops
with it, to attack L'Orient in Brittany. Nothing was gained
by the attempt, since the British general came to the conclusion
that the place was impregnable, and the expedition returned
home ignominiously. Meanwhile, the forces which had been sent
to Flanders proved insufficient to turn the scale in the fighting ;
Saxe continued to absorb the Netherlands, and inflicted a sharp
defeat on the allies at the battle of Raucoux. In India, where
fighting had been taking place, to which we shall presently
return, Madras was captured by the French in the same year.
In 1747 Cumberland returned to take up the command in
the Netherlands. Another battle was fought against the superior
forces of Saxe at Lauffeldt ; like Fontenoy, it operations
resulted in a defeat, but also like Fontenoy, it in 1747-
reflected infinite credit upon the courage and discipline of the
British troops, though very little on the military capacity of
the duke. Once more the campaign was entirely favourable
to the French, who by the end of the year were in all but com-
plete possession of the Austrian Netherlands. On the other
hand, the British navy was in a fair way to recover from the
demoralisation which had made it so much less effective than
it ought to have been in the earlier years of the war. In May,
Anson, the hero of the voyage round the world, and Warren,
the hero of Louisbourg, shattered a French squadron off Cape
Finisterre ; and in October, Hawke, who as a captain had dis-
tinguished himself by his conduct in the battle which had led
to the cashiering of Admiral Matthews, broke up another French
fleet off Belleisle. The squadron which was destroyed by
Anson had been on its way to carry reinforcements to India,
196 The Indecisive Stmggle
whither a much needed British squadron was dispatched at
the end of the year under Admiral Boscawen.
All the European powers, however, with the exception of
Austria, were by this time weary of the war. Maria Theresa,
if she could have had her will, would not have made peace
without getting at least some compensation for the cession of
Silesia ; but she could not fight without allies, and all her allies
were now bent on peace. It is true that George, Cumberland,
and Newcastle, who was exceedingly jealous of his brother,
were still hopeful of military glory. George was always inclined
to bellicosity ; but nearly all the ministers and most of the
country were disposed towards peace. When Cumberland
arrived in Holland, in February 1748, he found there was no
reasonable prospect of the allied forces being approximately
sufficient in number to deal effectively with the great army still
commanded by Saxe. France was ready for peace, but Saxe
did not delay his operations on that account. Cumberland changed
his view. A congress of the powers had already been convened
to meet at Aix la-Chapelle ; French and British rapidly agreed
upon terms. So far as those two powers were concerned, all
conquests were to be restored, and there was to be a return to
the status quo ante bellum. Don Philip was to have Parma and
Piacenza, which was displeasing to Austria and Sardinia.
Prussia was to be confirmed in the possession of Silesia, which
was extremely displeasing to Austria. On the other hand,
France, though she had in effect conquered the Austrian Nether-
lands, gained nothing at all.
The king of Sardinia might grumble, but he would not support
Austria in carrying on a contest in which, without British
support, she was certain to be defeated — both in
3.T48 JTJT
The Peace the Netherlands and in the Mediterranean the
of Aix-ia- heip of the maritime powers was a necessity to
her. Austria and Sardinia had no choice but to
accept the arrangement. The one power which had definitely
gained by the war was Prussia ; Frederick had secured the
province for the sake of which he had started the conflagration ;
but even this was at the expense of the ineradicable hostility
Henry Pelham 197
of Maria Theresa, who also felt herself bitterly aggrieved by
the action of Great Britain. Great Britain had gained nothing
and lost nothing ; the exchange of Madras for Louisbourg left
her in the same position in relation to France as before. The
question for the sake of which she had first plunged into the
war, the Spanish right of search, was entirely ignored. The
supremacy of her navy had been confirmed, but not very sub-
stantially increased. Practically, it might be said, that all the
blood and treasure expended in eight years of fighting had
resulted in nothing but the acquisition of Silesia by Prussia.
And it was certain that the acquiescence of Austria and the
satisfaction of France were merely temporary. Frederick was
certain to find himself forced sooner or later into a desperate
struggle to preserve what he had won ; and France and Great
Britain had not yet come to grips over the real issue between
them. There had only been a foretaste of the coming struggle
in India and America. During the eight years of peace which
followed the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle that contest was advanced
a stage further both in the East and in the West.
We must now turn back to see what had actually been taking
place in India. In 1741 Francois Dupleix had been transferred
from Chandernagur to the governorship at Pondi- India.
chery, the headquarters of the French company in Francois
India, as Madras was the headquarters of the :
British company. French and British were jealous of each
other, and the governors would have been not unwilling to come
to blows when a declaration of war should give them the oppor-
tunity, if they had not received very positive instructions to
maintain the peace from their directors at home. But Dupleix
went a great deal further. He was a man of imagination and
ideals. He saw that Europeans, if they used their opportunities,
could at least acquire great influence with the country powers,
but that the first condition of an effective French ascendency
was to get rid of European rivals. He was determined to drive
the British out of India. While the British sat still he laid his
plans. He cultivated the friendship of the powerful nawab
of the Carnatic, Anwar ud-Din. He concerted a scheme with
198 The Indecisive Struggle
La Bourdonnais, the French commandant at Mauritius. Nothing
overt could be done in any case until a definite declaration of
war between Great Britain and France.
When that declaration came there was no available squadron
at Mauritius to help him, and he wanted that squadron. So,
Fall of a^ *ne instigation of Dupleix, who anticipated an
Madras, attack from Governor Morse, Anwar ud-Din sent
1746' a warning to Madras that no hostilities would be
permitted. In 1746 a small British squadron under Commodore
Peyton appeared off the coast of Coromandel and threatened
Pondichery. Intervention by the British navy was a very
different thing from a mere collision between the traders in
India. But in the meantime La Bourdonnais had succeeded
in getting a squadron together ; he also appeared and challenged
Peyton, who, after an engagement in itself indecisive, retired to
Ceylon. La Bourdonnais proceeded to Madras. Morse invited
Anwar ud-Din to forbid an attack upon Madras as he had
forbidden an attack upon Pondichery. Anwar ud-Din ignored
the request ; La Bourdonnais attacked Madras, which sur-
rendered, but upon condition that the place should be ransomed
for a substantial sum. Dupleix, however, claimed that La
Bourdonnais had exceeded his powers, and, asserting his own
superior authority, proceeded to occupy Madras in defiance of
the terms of the capitulation ; La Bourdonnais who felt that
his own honour was implicated could only withdraw. The
British from Madras were held in Pondichery as prisoners of
war.
Anwar ud-Din expected Madras to be handed over to him ;
to his surprise, Dupleix showed no inclination to fulfil his ex-
Dupieix's pectations. He sent an army to eject the audacious
sepoys. Frenchman. The Portuguese in the past had made
use of native soldiers commanded by European officers. Dupleix
also had drilled companies of natives after the European fashion,
with French officers to command them. Whether he in-
vented the ' sepoy ' or not, he gave the first unmistakable
demonstration that sepoys with a stiffening of Europeans were
a match for very much larger bodies of native levies. A force
Henry Pelham 199
of less than a thousand men, three-fourths of whom were sepoys,
put the nawab's army of ten thousand utterly to rout. Dupleix
had revealed the instrument by which the Europeans were to
make themselves masters of India.
The French prestige was immensely raised ; Dupleix had
signally defeated the English, whose credit was at a correspond-
ingly low ebb. The nawab did not want to see operations
all his enemies gathered against him in alliance with in 1747 and
the Frenchman, whom he made no attempt to over- 1748'
whelm. In 1747 the British garrison in Fort St. David defied the
French attack, which was renewed in 1748. Now, however, Bos-
cawen, who had sailed from England in the previous November,
appeared on the scene ; the French had to abandon their attack
on Fort St. David, and to devote all their energies to holding
Madras — where they had been improving the fortifications in
the interval — to which Boscawen proceeded to lay siege. The
operations, however, were badly managed ; the time of the
periodical tempests called the ' monsoon ' was arriving, and the
Coromandel coast provided no adequate harbourage for a fleet.
Boscawen was obliged to withdraw his ships. Had the war con-
tinued there can be no doubt that he would have returned to
the attack after the monsoon, and that he could hardly have
failed to be successful. But the necessity was removed by the
news of the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, accompanied Peace, 1749.
by the orders for the restitution of Madras to the British. To
the native mind, which naturally could not appreciate the real
causes of the restitution, something at least of the enormous and
extremely valuable prestige which Dupleix had acquired was
lost, though it still stood considerably higher than that of the
British. And prestige was all that Dupleix had so far gained.
Open hostilities were precluded by the peace between Great
Britain and France. But it appeared to Dupleix that the cir-
cumstance was favourable to aggression by indirect Dupieix's
methods, since so long as there was peace between new Plans-
the European states the British navy would not come into play.
Dupleix in the first instance had calculated, not without justifica-
tion, upon a superiority of the French ships in Indian waters.
2OO The Indecisive Struggle
He does not seem to have realised that the superior power of
the British navy was certain to make itself felt in Indian waters
in the course of time, and that when it did so it would be able
to counteract any successes which he might have achieved ;
nor does he seem to have realised that no European power could
establish a lasting ascendency in India without possessing the
command of the sea. All that appeared to him to be requisite
was that the British should not have an actual preponderance
while fighting was going on. So he set about fresh schemes for
establishing a French ascendency while the British fleet was out
of action. The first plan had been to begin by clearing the
British out of the way, and to go on by establishing French
influence with the native powers. Now the plan was to establish
that influence on the basis of the prestige already won, and then
to make it the instrument for the ejection of the British rival.
The apparent feasibility of the scheme was due to the dis-
organised condition of the Mogul empire. Dupleix had not to
HiS deal with long established states, dynasties which
calculation, commanded the traditional loyalty of their subjects,
kingdoms with definite boundaries, but with provincial governors,
who at the best were trying to establish dynasties where there
was no legally recognised right of succession. Wherever succes-
sion should be in dispute, the French might intervene on one
side or other, and by establishing their own candidate could
secure a permanent influence at his court. If the British also
should choose to intervene, that would give the opportunity
for fighting and beating them indirectly. If they should not
intervene they would cease to count altogether. Either way,
the experience of the last contest justified Dupleix's anticipa-
tions of a decisive French predominance being acquired. If
those anticipations had been fulfilled at the time, it may still
be doubted whether Great Britain would have acquiesced in the
repression of the East India Company ; if she brought her
naval power into play she would be able to recover her position,
its defect. Dupleix's plan was vitiated by his failure to recog-
nise that whatever temporary success might attend his efforts,
the ultimately decisive factor would be sea-power. Isolated
Henry Pelham 20 1
from the European base, the handful of Frenchmen could not
maintain a lasting ascendency. With free access from the Western
base, the handful of Englishmen would receive the reinforce-
ments and supplies which would enable them to retrieve their
position. As a matter of fact, even before sea-power was
brought into play, Dupleix's anticipations were not destined
to be realised, though at the outset it seemed likely that they
would be.
Dupleix found his opportunity in the position of the nawab
of the Carnatic, and in the extreme old age of the most powerful
prince in India, the Nizam at Haidarabad. From Thenawab-
1710 to 1740 three generations of one family had ship in the
been nawabs of the Carnatic. They had been able arna 1C'
and popular rulers. But in the third generation there had been
strife between the young nawab and his brothers-in-law. One
of these brothers-in-law, Chanda Sahib, had been captured and
held to ransom by the Mahrattas. Then the nawab had been
killed by the other brother-in-law, the Nizam thought the time
had come to interfere, and by him the old general Anwar ud-Din
had been appointed to the nawabship. Chanda Sahib and his
kinsfolk had always been on particularly good terms with the
French. On the other hand, in 1748, the relations between
Dupleix and Anwar ud-Din had been more than strained by
the Madras affair. Chanda Sahib was still a prisoner with the
Mahrattas ; he and others were of opinion that he had a right
to the nawabship to which, but for his captivity, he would
doubtless have been appointed. Dupleix set him at liberty by
paying the ransom, with intent to setting him on the throne
of the Carnatic in the place of Anwar ud-Din.
Precisely at this moment the old Nizam died. A son, Nasir
Jang, who was on the spot, promptly proclaimed himself Nizam ;
but a grandson, Muzaffar Jang, announced that the The
succession was his by appointment of the suzerain Nizamship.
at Delhi. The two pretenders, Chanda Sahib and Muzaffar Jang,
supported by Dupleix, made common cause for the ejection of
the two de facto rulers. Dupleix found warrant for espousing
their cause in the Mogul's authority. In July 1749 a contingent
2O2 The Indecisive Struggle
of French and sepoys under the French general Bussy defeated
and killed Anwar ud-Din at the battle of Ambur. His son,
1749< Mohammed Ali, escaped south to Trichinopoli and
The contest proclaimed himself nawab of the Carnatic. Then
»-opened. Nasir Jang, who knew that he would be the next
object of attack, took the field and entered the Carnatic, and the
British authorities at Madras, waking up to the situation, sent
Major Stringer Lawrence with a small contingent to join him.
Lawrence had previously distinguished himself by the skill and
courage of his defence of Fort St. David in 1748.
Dupleix opened negotiations with Nasir Jang, who captured
the person of his rival and nephew. The assassination of Nasir
1750. Jan£ virtually made Chanda Sahib master of the
Successes Carnatic ; and though Muzaffar Jang was also
up eix. assassinated, the Nizamship was secured to a kins-
man, Salabat Jang, who was practically the nominee of Bussy.
Dupleix in the meantime procured for himself the Mogul's
nomination to the nawabship of the Carnatic, which was to be
transferred to Chanda Sahib as the Frenchman's faithful ally
and servant. The new Nizam withdrew to Haidarabad, attended
by Bussy, while Dupleix and Chanda Sahib turned their attention
to the destruction of Anwar ud-Din's son, Mohammed Ali, at
Trichinopoli, in the beginning of 1751. It seemed absolutely
certain that in a few months Dupleix would be supreme, both
at Haidarabad and in the Carnatic.
The whole situation was completely revolutionised by the
genius of Robert Clive, admirably supported by the courage
1751 and confidence of the recently appointed governor
dive of Madras, Saunders. Robert Clive had gonre to
Madras as a writer or junior clerk in the service
of the East India Company. He had shown exceptional courage
as a volunteer when Madras was besieged, and had been trans-
ferred to the military side at his own desire. He now conceived
the idea of seizing Arcot, the capital of the Carnatic. By so
doing a diversion was almost certain to be effected which would
relieve the pressure upon Trichinopoli. Saunders resolved to
take the risk, and dispatched Clive with every available man
Henry Pelham 203
upon his audacious expedition. With two hundred whites,
three hundred sepoys, and eight officers, of whom only two had
ever been in action, Clive made his dash upon Arcot. A panic
seized the troops which were in the place. They fled without
striking a blow, and Clive occupied the citadel, which he promptly
prepared as best he could for a siege. The effect produced was
precisely what he had anticipated. A large force was detached
from Trichinopoli, and 10,000 men proceeded to beleaguer the
little garrison of 500. For seven weeks Clive and his men held
the place with indomitable courage, though their rations were
running very low. Then the besiegers made a desperate assault
in force. After furious fighting they were beaten off. The
besiegers withdrew, and Clive sallying forth in pursuit scattered
them at Ami. The defence of Arcot had already created such
admiration among the natives that Clive was now joined by
some of the Mahrattas, and another defeat was inflicted upon the
enemy at Kaveripak.
Clive's brilliant exploit at Arcot marks the definite moment
of change. Stringer Lawrence, who had been sent home, re-
appeared in India, and in company with Clive 1754
marched to the relief of Trichinopoli. Not only The fate
was the relief effected, but the French and native of DuPleix-
troops were manoeuvred into a position where they were driven
to surrender. Then Chanda Sahib was murdered, and there was
no one to pose as a rival to Mohammed Ali, who was firmly
established on the throne of the Carnatic, where he was little
more than a puppet in the hands of the British (1752). Still
Bussy virtually controlled the Nizam at Haidarabad. For two
years Dupleix, defeated in the field, endeavoured to regain the
French ascendency chiefly by diplomacy ; but in 1754 the too
ambitious governor was recalled to France by directors who
did not like to see their profits swallowed up and converted into
war debts. A governor was appointed who could be relied upon
to give his attention strictly to business, eschewing politics ;
and the French and British East India Companies amicably
agreed to abstain from further intervention in the affairs of the
native powers. Nevertheless, there can have been no doubt
204 The Indecisive Struggle
in any mind that a fresh outbreak of war between France and
Great Britain would certainly be followed by a renewal of the
struggle in the Indian arena.
In America no effective stroke had been dealt after the capture
of Louisbourg until the end of the war, when that fortress was
America : restored to France. There, as in the East, the con-
1748-54. trolling factor was naval ascendency. In spite of
the dissensions between the British colonies, it was not to be
believed that they with their two millions of inhabitants would
permit themselves to be cooped up and cut off from expansion
to the west by the infinitely smaller number of Frenchmen in
Canada and Louisiana. Still, for military purposes, the French
organisation was very much the better ; it was at any rate
necessary for the British to cut Canada off from substantial
aid from France. The French continued their programme of
planting forts so as to connect the Mississippi with the great
lakes and to hold the basin of the Ohio, a process which would
confer upon the French the actual claim of occupation. In
1753, a British party was sent with young George Washington,
afterwards the leader in the War of Independence, to plant a
fort on the Upper Ohio. The French expelled the British from
a position which they claimed as their own property and turned
into Fort Duquesne. Washington, through no fault of his own,
had to capitulate at Great Meadows. At the same time, it was
manifest that the Canadian French were stirring up the French
of Acadia, who were now British subjects, to revolt, or at least
to be prepared for revolt. The position was so threatening that
in 1754 Benjamin Franklin was urging a scheme for the federation
of the colonies, whereby they should be enabled to act as a single
force for the common defence. The spirit of particularism pre-
vailed ; each colony was too jealous of the idea of surrendering
any fragment of its own separate independence. But what
followed belongs to the period after the death of Henry Pelham,
the period when France and Great Britain were once more
driving in the direction of a desperate conflict. In the present
chapter we must confine ourselves to the period of Henry
Pelham's life.
Henry Pelham 205
In England the Pelham administration was completely estab-
lished after the crisis at the beginning of 1746. The action of
ministers at that moment had been another long .
England ;
step in the direction of establishing the principle of effect of
cabinet solidarity. By standing together, the group tne crisis
had been enabled to compel the king to accede to
their demands, and to admit to office ministers to whom he had a
strong personal obj ection. The Pelhams had now united a body of
men who left the Opposition devoid of men of first-rate or even
second-rate ability, and secured an unfailing majority in the
Commons, as well as in the Lords, in support of the cabinet.
It must be remarked, however, that it was still quite possible
for individual ministers to denounce cabinet measures, though
hardly to set themselves in opposition to ministerial policy.
Thus, in 1751, Pitt opposed a reduction of the navy from 10,000
to 8000 men, which was proposed and carried by Pelham mainly
to gratify the king and the duke of Cumberland ; though in this
case it should rather be said that the ostensible object of diminish-
ing the numbers of the navy was to enable the numbers of the
army to be increased.
The period of Pelham 's administration from the Peace of Aix-
la-Chapelle to his death was not distinguished by domestic
legislation of an exciting character. In fact, it Henry
might be said that the prime minister's one object Pelham.
was to keep the machine running with as little friction as possible,
but also with the minimum of effort to keep the machine itself
in repair. Pelham had considerable skill in the art of harmonis-
ing the differences among his colleagues. He managed to keep
a very mixed team together, with a success which abler men
might have envied ; but it was chiefly because he was a timid
follower of the cautious Walpole, and was above all things
anxious to avoid the stirring up of trouble.
The two or three measures which stand out during the era
of the ' broad-bottom ' administration were, from a party point
of view, of an uncontroversial character. The first consols,
of these was the successful establishment of the 1751-
consolidated government stock, ever since familiarly known as
206 The Indecisive Struggle
' consols.' The interest in respect of £50,000,000 of the National
Debt was reduced in 1751 to 3!, and then to 3 per cent., and
in the next year a group of several separate loans was also con-
solidated into 3 per cent, stock — a notable proof of the financial
prosperity of the country, since even with the reduced interest
the government stock stood at a premium.
A different interest attaches to another measure for which
Lord Chesterfield was responsible. This was the adoption of
Reform of ^Q Gregorian Calendar, which was already in use in
the Calendar, most of the countries in Europe. The system which
1752* Julius Caesar had established was so far inaccurate
that in the course of the centuries a rectification of eleven days
became necessary. Hitherto, also, the official year had begun
with Lady Day, instead of on the ist January. Much confusion
had been caused for a long time by the fact that the practice
varied, the months of January, February, and March being
sometimes recorded as if they were the first three months of the
year beginning on ist January, and sometimes as if they were
the last three months of the year which on that basis had ended
on 3ist December. Also, those who followed the authorised
calendar in England counted as the first of each month the day
which their continental neighbours were calling the I2th ; so
that for more than half a century we have to be careful in noting
whether any given date is O.S. or N.S. (Old Style or New Style).
In 1751, therefore, a bill was passed adopting the New Style as
from 2nd September 1752. Eleven days were dropped out of
the reckoning, so that that day became I3th September ; and
thenceforth the official year began on ist January. The pre-
servation of the correct relations between the official year and
the solar year is now practically preserved by striking each
century year out of the number of leap years.
The only other measure which calls for notice is Lord Hard-
wicke's Marriage Act. Hitherto it had been possible for runaway
couples to get themselves united by marriage in the precincts
of the Fleet prison, and by other devices, a system which had
not infrequently been used by adventurers to entrap unsuspicious
young women into surreptitious marriages. After Lord Hard-
Henry Pelham 207
wicke's Act, any clergyman who performed the marriage cere-
mony without either previous publication of banns or the
production of a marriage licence was heavily Hardwicke's
penalised in England. The runaway couples had Marriage
to post to the Scottish border ; once in Scotland, Act> 1753'
where the penalties did not apply, they could get themselves
married under Scottish law ; and the blacksmith at Gretna
Green was the usual agent whose good offices were sought by
eloping couples.
Finally, we have to note the disappearance from the scene
of the Prince of Wales, who had ceased to be a 1751 Death
factor of any importance in politics as soon as the of the Prince
Pelhams succeeded in absorbing into their ministry of Wales-
whatever talent had hitherto associated itself with Leicester
House.
* Since it 's only Fred,
Who was alive and is dead,
There's no more to be said,'
was the conclusion of the rhyme which immortalised the popular
appreciation of his personal insignificance. Frederick's young
son George, afterwards George in., became the heir apparent;
but the political importance of the duke of Cumberland was
somewhat increased by his own nearer proximity to the throne.
In 1754 Henry Pelham died, and his brother Newcastle
became the head of the ministry.
CHAPTER V. THE DECISIVE STRUGGLE,
1754-1763
I. DRIFT, 1754-1757
HENRY PELHAM'S abilities had been by no means of a first-rate
order, but he had possessed the art of managing the House
1754. of Commons and his colleagues. Newcastle's per-
Newcastie. sonality was much less adaptable ; he was more
self-asserting, and was at the same time palpably less competent.
By his whole-hearted cultivation of the methods of jobbery and
corruption he had made it impossible for any one to manage
parliament in antagonism to himself ; but he commanded neither
the respect nor the confidence of colleagues who were attached
to him mainly because they could not afford to break with him,
such as Henry Fox. The duke, in fact, chose to keep the con-
trol in his own hands ; although he had no clear conception of
policy or of the methods by which any particular policy should
be given effect. The leadership of the House of Commons was
entrusted to Sir Thomas Robinson, one of the negotiators of the
Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, chiefly because he was not a man of
ability. From the government benches Pitt and Fox criticised
the government ; Fox was presently quieted by offices of more
emolument than power, and Pitt once more went into Opposition.
Practically, the government drifted towards that war with France
which could not long be avoided, but without making any
effective effort to control the circumstances in which the war
should take place, or any adequate preparations for the conflict
when it should come. Happily for Great Britain, statesmanship
was as conspicuously lacking in the counsels of Versailles as in
the counsels of Westminster.
When war did come a complete revolution had taken place
in the combinations of the powers. The traditions of almost
208
Drift 209
three-quarters of a century had united the maritime powers with
the Hapsburg in hostility to Bourbon aggression, except during
the period when Bourbon aggression was held in
check by the mutual antagonism of the Bourbon Diplomatic
powers. Ever since the Revolution the one per- Revolution,
1749-56
sistent fact in foreign politics had been the alliance
of Great Britain and Austria. Since 1740 the hostility between
Austria and her new German enemy Prussia had made France
and Prussia natural if also distrustful allies. Between Prussia
and Great Britain there had been no positive hostility ; but there
was an obvious presumption that if there were a renewal of the
conflicts between France and Great Britain and between Austria
and Prussia, Austria and Great Britain would be combined on
one side, France and Prussia on the other, unless each pair of
combatants fought out its own duel, irrespective of the other
pair. Even from the day when the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle
was signed, there could have been no doubt in any man's mind
that before very many years were passed Great Britain and
France, Austria and Prussia, would be righting. But no one
could have anticipated at that date that France would be in
alliance with Austria, and Great Britain with Prussia.
No one, that is, except the exceedingly able statesman who was
mainly responsible for bringing about the diplomatic revolution,
Kaunitz, the Austrian minister. Kaunitz was bent, The schemes
like Maria Theresa herself, upon recovering Silesia of Kaunitz.
for Austria, restoring the Hapsburg hegemony in Germany, and
reducing Prussia from the position which she had just won at
Austria's expense. Russia also was hostile to Prussia, partly on
account of her aspirations on the Baltic, but still more effectively
because of the bitter personal animosity towards Frederick of
the Tsarina Elizabeth, whom he had annoyed by sarcastic re-
flections on her character. Saxony also would view the suppres-
sion and partition of Prussia with unqualified satisfaction. But
to Kaunitz it appeared that the alliance of France would be
more useful than the alliance of Great Britain in a conflict with
Prussia. Hanover was attached to Great Britain, and George
was certain to be very much afraid of the consequences to
Innes's Eng. Hist.— Vol. in. O
2io The Decisive Struggle
Hanover of an attack upon Prussia. Moreover, throughout the
last war, George, in his double capacity as king of Great Britain
and elector of Hanover, had persistently urged upon Austria the
cession of Silesia to Frederick. There was certainly no pro-
bability that his British ministers would be readily drawn into
taking an energetic part in the suppression of Prussia. On the
other hand, if France could be persuaded to attach herself to
the circle of Prussia's enemies, her military assistance would
obviously be very much more useful than that of Great
Britain. Whereas, if France maintained her alliance with
Prussia and used her armies against Austria, her hostility would
be more dangerous than that of Great Britain. In short, for
the purposes at least of a war with Prussia, for which the British
fleet would be out of action, France would be a more useful
ally and a more dangerous foe than the maritime power. Kaunitz
devoted his energies to procuring the alliance of France ; and
his success in doing so was a triumph of diplomacy.
French tradition was entirely opposed to the alliance, entirely
opposed to the Austrian supremacy in Germany, and bound up
France. with the idea of the absorption by France of the
Austrian Netherlands. And yet this complete reversal of French
policy was effected by the skill of Kaunitz. There was a very
common dissatisfaction in France with the policy which had
issued in the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle ; a disposition to hold
the policy itself to blame, instead of the inefficient diplomacy
which had done so little for France in spite of her military
successes. As for the Prussian alliance, both countries during
the war had worked for their own separate ends with very little
consideration for the advantage of the other. At critical
moments Prussia had deserted France, and France had left
Prussia in the lurch. The connection was one of pure expediency,
in which sentiment played no part. It was not difficult
perhaps to make even the expediency of the alliance appear
doubtful in France.
Still, it is more than possible that Kaunitz would have failed
to achieve his end if he had had only men to deal with. But very
conveniently for him, the king had fallen entirely under the
Drift 2ii
influence of the lady who bore the title of Madame de Pom-
padour. At the best of times, personal intrigues had more than
enough to do with keeping French politics in a state The begun-
of unsettlement ; with the Pompadour's caprices in- in£ of Louis.
terfering in every department of state, a settled and intelligent
policy was further out of reach than ever. Kaunitz as Austrian
ambassador at Paris secured the influence of the favourite, who
was extremely angry with Frederick, for reasons of a kind similar
to those which actuated the Tsarina. Not all at once, but by
degrees, Louis was enfolded in the meshes which the Austrian
was spreading for him. Nor can we altogether leave out of
count one other purely personal factor, the superstitious imagina-
tion of King Louis, which taught him to believe that he could
make his peace with Heaven and square the account of his
private immoralities by uniting with the Roman Catholic power
for the destruction of Protestant Prussia. His attitude indeed was
not without its odd counterpart in that of the people of England,
who presently succeeded in developing an enthusiasm for
Frederick as the ' Protestant hero/ which the patron of Voltaire
must have found highly entertaining.
But the Protestant hero himself was extremely uneasy. He
was very well aware that Austria and Russia were planning his
destruction. He wanted to have France on his side, Frederick
and to keep alive the hostility between her and of Prussia.
Austria. He did not want to be drawn into the coming contest
between France and Great Britain, because he wished to reserve
his energies for his own defence against the Eastern powers.
He was not much afraid of being attacked by Great Britain,
which had taken no part against him in the war of the Austrian
Succession ; but it became gradually clear to him that France
was leaning towards Austria, that he would find in her at best a
half-hearted ally, and that she would expect him to dissipate the
energies which would require concentration by attacking Hanover
in her interests. France and Great Britain were certainly going
to fight, and on the seas France was certainly not going to get
the best of it. In the circumstances he decided that alliance with
Great Britain would serve him better than alliance with France.
212 The Decisive Struggle
In January 1756 the Convention of Westminster was signed,
under which Prussia and Great Britain guaranteed the ' neu-
1756 trality of Germany.' No foreign troops were to be
Two treaties, allowed to enter Germany ; which meant in effect
January-May. ^hat each power would support the other against a
French or Russian invader of Prussia or Hanover. On ist May
France and Austria signed the first Treaty of Versailles, ostensibly
a defensive agreement, by which each of the powers undertook
to support the other if attacked, but which implied no open
breach between Austria and Great Britain. The colonial and
maritime quarrel was expressly outside the terms of the contract.
Both Great Britain and France had drifted into the position
in which they now stood. Until the last moment the Newcastle
ministry had not contemplated a breach with
Great* Austria. Though not disposed to a direct attack
Britain and upon Prussia, they wanted to preserve the Austrian
alliance, while George was particularly anxious for
the security of Hanover against a Prussian attack in alliance
with France. That is to say, in 1755 it was still anticipated
that the old alliances of France and Prussia, Austria and Great
Britain, would hold good. But George tried in vain to persuade
Austria to send 25,000 men to the Austrian Netherlands, while
he actually concluded a bargain with Hesse for the supply of
12,000 troops for the defence of Hanover. The reply of Kaunitz
clearly meant that Austria had no intention of taking a friendly
part in the direct quarrel between France and Great Britain
which was rapidly drawing to a head. Nevertheless, still with
the protection of Hanover in view, Great Britain concluded with
Russia a treaty by which she took into her pay 50,000 Russian
troops, who were to march to the defence of Hanover in case it
should be attacked — a very convenient subsidy for Russia,
which intended in any case to join Austria in attacking Prussia.
But when George found Frederick ready not to attack, but to
protect Hanover on the terms of the Treaty of Westminster,
the Russian alliance at once became meaningless. The Tsarina's
wrath was aroused, she was transformed into an enemy, and gave
a ready assent to the Treaty of Versailles.
Drift 2 1 3
Meanwhile, the Anglo-French quarrel had been drawing to a
head in America. When Franklin's proposal for a federation of
the colonies in 1754 had been negatived, the governor 1755.
of Virginia, Dinwiddie, considered that it was time America,
to appeal to the Home government for support against the French
aggression which had been so sharply emphasised by the establish-
ment of Fort Duquesne. In response to the appeal, General
Braddock was dispatched to Virginia with two regiments of
regulars. Theoretically, these movements in the colonies did
not involve a declaration of war between the mother countries ;
they affected only a local dispute as to the ownership of a de-
batable territory. Four months after Braddock sailed, 3000
French troops were dispatched to Canada. Admiral Boscawen
was sent off in pursuit, but the French reached the St.
Lawrence first, and the English squadron succeeded only in
capturing two out of the eighteen French ships which had sailed.
Before the end of the year letters of marque had been issued
to numerous privateers which swept up a number of French
merchantmen.
Braddock's operations were disastrous. He marched with his
regulars against Fort Duquesne in July ; but though he under-
stood something of the tactics of European fighting, Braddock's
he knew nothing whatever about fighting in the disaster,
backwoods. His troops were ambushed by a smaller July'
force of French and Indians, and were cut to pieces ; the
general himself, whose courage was unimpeachable, was mortally
wounded. Although a body of colonial troops, commanded by
William Johnson, defeated a French force and secured the fort
of Oswego, the whole position on the American continent at the
end of the year was exceedingly ominous.
Between the signing of the Treaty of Westminster in January,
and that of the Treaty of Versailles in May, events of importance
had taken place. There had been a disposition at 1756
the French court to decline the Austrian overtures, Alarm in
to leave Prussia alone, and to fight the British on Englandt
the sea and in North America. A very heavy naval expenditure
was designed, and vigorous naval preparations were in progress.
214 The Decisive Struggle
The British government had information in January and Feb-
ruary that an invasion was being designed, and that the Toulon
fleet was being made ready for an attack upon Minorca. The
efforts of France to secure the support of Spain were futile.
King Ferdinand had no intention whatever of being dragged into
a war. In March other reports of the same nature were received.
By way of preparation for the impending war the government
had arranged for the importation of Hessian troops. When in
March Pitt brought in a Militia Bill, which would have provided
for the training of an army of reserves, 60,000 strong, and got it
passed by the Commons, Newcastle procured its rejection in
the other House. Both Houses, however, addressed the king to
procure Hanoverian troops to resist invasion.
In April, a squadron, under Admiral Sir J ohn Byng, a younger
son of George Byng who had destroyed the Spanish fleet
Byng at a* Passaro, was dispatched to the Mediterranean
Minorca, for the defence of Minorca; both Gibraltar and
Minorca were still very inadequately garrisoned.
Before Byng reached Gibraltar the French fleet had sailed from
Toulon for Port Mahon. On igth May the British admiral found
the place already invested. With thirteen sail of the line and
five frigates, he fell in with the French squadron of twelve sail
of the line, heavier ships than the British, and five frigates.
Byng's leading ships, under Admiral West, engaged the French
van in a running fight ; but the rest of the fleets hardly came
to close quarters ; Byng gave up the idea of attempting to destroy
the enemy's naval force, and retired to Gibraltar. He had come
to the conclusion that he was not strong enough to raise the
siege of Port Mahon, and that it was better to secure Gibraltar
than to risk an engagement which in his judgment was likely
to be followed by the capture not only of Port Mahon, but of
Gibraltar as well. A month later Port Mahon capitulated.
Now there is no doubt that the government ought to have been
able to send a fleet larger and better manned than that which was
Byng and the commanded by Byng, though they had acted under
ministry. a reasonable belief that they had to guard against
a descent upon England itself. There is also no doubt that
Drift 2 1 5
almost any other British admiral than Byng would have fought
the French fleet. Lord Anson certainly had no doubt that
Byng's squadron was competent to beat the French fleet. The
news from the Mediterranean filled the ministry with alarm
lest Gibraltar should follow Minorca, and the populace with
fury at a naval failure so humiliating. There was, in fact,
every probability that the popular rage would vent itself on
ministers. Newcastle was terrified, and determined that the
general indignation should be concentrated upon the admiral.
Byng and West were both brought home under arrest. It was
at once made clear, however, that West had done his duty, and
he was released ; Byng was reserved for trial. From America
there came in September the unwelcome news that the French
under their brilliant leader Montcalm had captured the forts
of Oswego and Ontario.
These disasters were in themselves almost sufficient to destroy
the ministry. Matters were made worse for Newcastle, because
his most brilliant supporter in the House of Commons,
William Murray, insisted on being appointed Lord Newcastle
Chief- Justice, and retiring to the Upper House as ministry,
T j TV/T c. ij TI. • r\ ± u TT T- xi- November.
Lord Mansfield. Then, in October, Henry Fox, the
ally of the duke of Cumberland, declared his intention of resign-
ing. Newcastle suggested to the king that Pitt should take
Fox's place. George did not want Pitt, to whom he had never
been reconciled, and who, he thought, would ignore the interests
of Hanover. Pitt had led every attack on the mismanagement
of ministers ; the country was beginning to turn to him as the
one man who could save it — a truth of which he was himself
thoroughly convinced. But he also knew that he could only
save it in effect as dictator, and he flatly refused to join in
the same ministry with Newcastle. Yet he himself had no per-
sonal following worth consideration numerically in the House
of Commons.
A way out of the impasse was found through the formation
of a ministry by the duke of Devonshire. Newcastle, Fox, and
the Chancellor Hardwicke resigned. Several members of the
Newcastle ministry were retained. The control of foreign affairs
216 The Decisive Struggle
lay with the two secretaries for the ' northern ' and ' southern
departments.' Holderness remained secretary for the northern
The department, which was responsible for the greater
Devonshire part of Europe ; Pitt was secretary for the southern
department, which included the Mediterranean
states and — fortunately — the colonies and India. But Pitt was
the virtual head of the administration, in which places were
found for his three brothers-in-law, Lord Temple and George
and James Grenville.
The new ministry was formed in November 1756. But already
Frederick of Prussia had struck the blow which transformed the
Frederick duel between Great Britain and France into a battle
strikes, involving all Europe. Before the Convention of
Westminster he had known of a secret treaty be-
tween Austria and Russia for the dismemberment of Prussia.
The Treaty of Versailles was certain to mean that France would
join the circle of his enemies. There was no doubt in his mind
that Saxony would also be added — that the four powers were
only waiting till they had all brought their military preparations
up to the point when they could crush him completely by a sudden
common declaration of war. Frederick had not scrupled, six-
teen years before, to throw his armies into Silesia without
declaring war, when he had, in fact, no excuse except that he
wanted something to which he had no right. He was not the
man to wait, and, for the sake of a diplomatic punctilio, to permit
himself to be destroyed. He resolved to strike at once, and to
offer his justification afterwards. He judged correctly enough
that the justification would be found in the ministerial archives
at Dresden. Also, he calculated that if he swooped upon Dresden,
Saxony would be immediately and permanently paralysed, and
that from Saxony he could make his spring upon Austria before
she or her allies were ready for him, without the danger of a
flank attack from Saxony. At the end of August he suddenly
marched over the Saxon border and advanced upon Dresden.
Swift and irresistible as was the attack, Frederick's immediate
military object was foiled. The small Saxon army was quite
unable to meet the much larger Prussian force in the field ; but
Drift 217
there was no disposition to an unconditional surrender ; it was
rapidly concentrated in an impregnable position resting upon
Pirna, some distance to the south of Dresden. There Autumn .
week after week it held Frederick at bay, hoping the
for succours from Austria. Saxony gained nothing,
but to Austria the delay was invaluable ; though
the Austrian government was much annoyed with the Saxons
for not falling back and joining the Austrian forces. But while
Frederick was held in check at Pirna, Browne, the commander
of the force on the frontier, was able to reorganise it. After a
month's delay he advanced to the relief of Pirna. Frederick
with the bulk of his force checked but did not defeat him at
Lobositz. But he was too late. Before he could relieve the
Saxons at Pirna they had been practically starved into surrender.
Augustus of Saxony had to retire to his Polish kingdom. Saxony
lay at the mercy of Frederick, who occupied Dresden, and was
able to make public the documents which proved the existence
of the suspected conspiracy for the dismemberment of Prussia.
But the delay had destroyed all chance of taking Austria by
surprise. On the other hand, the officers of the Saxon army
were obliged to give their parole not to serve against Prussia,
and the rank and file were compelled to serve in Frederick's
own army.
Frederick's intended campaign in Bohemia had to be post-
poned ; but his action in opening the attack hastened the formal
completion of the alliance of his enemies by the 1757>
second Treaty of Versailles in the spring of 1757. The effect
France, very conveniently for Great Britain, com-
mitted herself to the Prussian war ; the military party had won
the complete ascendency. Already, in anticipation of the
European war, they had in effect prevented the dispatch of any
large number of troops to Canada, and had induced the govern-
ment to concentrate upon the army instead of upon the navy —
upon the struggle which concerned France only in a very minor
degree, instead of upon the duel with Great Britain. That
Frederick had followed the wisest course in striking before his
enemies could combine against him is past question ; but by
218 The Decisive Struggle
so doing he had drawn France upon himself, and thereby rendered
an invaluable service to his ally.
That ally was not yet in a position to play her part. New-
castle as well as Pitt was aware that the British battleground
Fate of Byng, was not in Europe, but in America. George had not
January. yet risen to that conception. Months were still to
elapse before the Pitt dictatorship, so necessary to the British
empire, was to be an accomplished fact. But for the moment
the mind of the public was filled with the trial of Admiral Byng.
The court-martial opened on 28th December. New articles of
war had been drawn up in consequence of the inadequate per-
formances of the fleet during the last war ; and among them
was one the precise object of which was to prevent commanders
from evading battle, as it was at any rate supposed that they
had been doing, and as Byng certainly did before Port Mahon.
The article was unjust enough. Through an error of judgment,
certainly not from lack of personal courage, Byng had not, in
the judgment of the court, done his best either to relieve Port
Mahon or to support West when he engaged the French. The
court had no option but to condemn the admiral to death under
the articles, though it subjoined to its verdict a strong and
unanimous recommendation to mercy. No mercy was to be
shown, for the king and people were too angry to see that the
law itself was unjust. Pitt, to his own credit, braved unpopu-
larity by advocating the cause of Byng. He failed, and the
admiral was shot — ' to encourage the rest/ according to Voltaire's
sarcastic comment. But, as a matter of fact, it is difficult not
to conclude that the effect was to discourage the rest from
following his example. The death of Byng was a warning to
British admirals that it would be better for them to take risks
than to avoid them. And thenceforward they took them.
In February 1757 Pitt's Militia Bill was again introduced, and
was passed in a modified form which provided for a trained
Dismissal reserve of 32,000 men. On Pitt's initiative, two
of Pitt, Highland regiments for foreign service were raised,
March. largely from the clans which, twelve years before,
had joined the Jacobite rising ; their value was to be shown ere
Drift 219
long on the Heights of Abraham. Supplies were also voted for
a force which was to carry out the obligations of the Conven-
tion of Westminster and prevent a foreign army from entering
Germany — in other words, to hold the line of the Weser and block
the invasion of Hanover and Prussia by a French army advancing
from the Lower Rhine. The command was to be given to
Cumberland, who made it a condition that Pitt, to whom he was
personally hostile, should be dismissed. Cumberland's ally in
the House of Commons was Henry Fox, whose earlier association
with Pitt had been finally broken in 1755, when Fox had sur-
rendered his principles for the sake of office. Pitt was still by
no means acceptable to the king, and it appeared that his popu-
larity had been shaken by his disinterested defence of Byng.
The formation of a new ministry was privately entrusted to
Fox. No warning was given to Pitt. On ist April Cumberland
took his departure ; before the week was out Temple and Pitt
were dismissed, and the two Grenvilles immediately resigned.
But the dismissal of Pitt did not lead to the formation of a
new ministry ; it produced only chaos. A mere return to the
thoroughly discredited Newcastle administration chaos,
was out of the question. Pitt's popularity revived April-June,
in full flood. Cumberland was generally disliked, and it was
known that he was the prime cause of the minister's dismissal.
Public opinion was demonstrated when one after another of the
great towns presented Pitt with the freedom of the city. Popular
instinct had recognised the man who alone could give the nation
leadership and breathe life into it ; the nation was sound at
the core, though the dry-rot which pervaded the government
had generated something like a panic. The nation clamoured
for Pitt, while the politicians vainly attempted to form a series
of combinations, each one more hopeless than the last.
At last the * Great Commoner ' realised that there was only
one way in which the country could be saved — a
coalition between himself and Newcastle ; for the pitt and
simple reason that while Newcastle was incapable Newcastle,
, . .. . 29th June,
of governing himself, he could and would wreck any
government from which he was excluded. In June the coalition
220 The Decisive Struggle
was formed. In effect Pitt demanded, what was absolutely
necessary, that he should have a free hand in controlling the
conduct of the war, while Newcastle was to enjoy an equally free
hand in the distribution of places and all that manipulation
of backstairs influences which his soul loved and the soul of
Pitt loathed. The coalition was a combination of the most
extreme opposites, of the fervent idealist and the grubbing
materialist, of the statesman who scorned intrigue and the
politician to whom jobbery was the breath of life. But it was
a combination necessary to the State in the circumstances of
the time, and it produced the administration which made
the British empire.
II. WILLIAM PITT, 1757-1760
It was more than time for a clear brain and a strong hand to
seize the control. On ist May, while chaos was reigning in
1757 England, the second Treaty of Versailles between
The situation Austria and France was signed. From the French
in May. point of view it was, in fact, an amazingly foolish
treaty, entirely in the interests of Austria. France was to de-
vote herself to crushing Prussia, which was to be partitioned
chiefly between Austria and Saxony, though Sweden and the
elector palatine were to have a share if they joined the league.
Only when Austria was once more in full possession of Silesia
was France to be rewarded by the possession of sundry towns
in the Austrian Netherlands. The rest of the Netherlands were
to be given to Don Philip of Parma, and Austria was to get her
equivalent by having Parma and Piacenza transferred to her
— a possession, in fact, much more useful to her than the Nether-
lands, from which she was separated by the whole of Germany.
But if the bargain was a bad one for France, it was also very
bad for Prussia, because it exposed her definitely to the French
attack. To Great Britain, indeed, it meant the concentration
of French energies upon the war in Europe instead of on the
seas and in America ; but it meant at the same time an increased
probability that her one ally would be completely crushed,
William Pitt 221
and it became ail the more necessary that she should give
vigorous support to Frederick.
And Frederick needed all the support he could get. Russia
was moving against him or preparing to do so on the east,
Austria on the south, France on the west. Saxony Frederick,
was hors de combat, but beyond Saxony the princes of Southern
Germany were joining the anti-Prussian league. Sweden from
the north might take part in the attack. Only on the west
lay Hanover and Cumberland's composite army on the Weser
to fend off the direct French attack. Against this mighty circle
of foes Frederick had only his own Prussians and some reluctant
Saxons to give battle. His Prussians, though relatively few,
were the best trained troops in Europe, and he himself was far
the most brilliant of living generals ; but apart from this he
had no advantage except the possession of the ' interior lines '-
that is, he was at the centre of the semi-circle, ano^ could with
comparative rapidity transfer his main force from point to point
on the circumference. He was to owe his preservation to the
skill, the audacity, and the swiftness with which he used the
same force to strike deadly blows in quick succession now against
one enemy and now against another ; although it was never in
his power to remain long enough in any one quarter to follow
up the blows he struck.
When Pitt's great administration was being formed in England,
Frederick had just won a brilliant success, only to be followed
by an apparently overwhelming disaster. Before Prague and
Russians or Austrians or French were ready to Kolin, June.
strike, he had in May suddenly flung himself upon Prague,
shattered an Austrian force, and driven it into the city. But
Prague proved to this campaign what Pirna had proved when
Frederick attacked Saxony in the previous year. It offered an
obstinate defence which enabled a second Austrian army to
gather and march to its relief. Frederick, rendered over-con-
fident by his successes, turned from Prague with half his force
to fight the new army at Kolin. In spite of his rashness and
the superior numbers of the enemy, Kolin might have been a
victory, but for some blunders on the part of subordinates and
222 The Decisive Struggle
the fierce valour of some Saxon troops which had not been in-
cluded in the capitulation of Pirna, owing to their absence at
the time in Poland ; it was turned into a disastrous defeat.
Frederick had to retreat in haste into Prussia, though the
Austrian commanders lacked the energy to follow up their
victory.
The news of Kolin reached England in July ; not very long
before there had arrived from India the intelligence of the
A gloomy massacre of the British in Calcutta by the nawab
moment. of Bengal, Suraj-ud-Daulah, some twelve months
earlier. That ghastly outrage had already been avenged by
Robert Clive at the battle of Plassey, but the report of his doings
did not arrive till long afterwards. The outlook was very black
indeed at the moment when Pitt was holding his celebrated
interview with the king who had so stubbornly opposed his
ascendency. ' Sir/ said the minister to the king, ' give me your
confidence and I -will deserve it.' ' Deserve my confidence,'
replied the king, ' and you shall have it.' Both promises were
carried out with unfailing loyalty. The confidence was given
in full measure and deserved in full measure.
Hitherto there had been no definite conception of the principles
upon which the war was to be waged. Pitt's conception was
Pitt's war clear. Great Britain's own real weapon was to be
policy. the navy. Her direct blows against France were to
be struck by the navy or in Canada. In Europe her battles
were to be fought for her by Frederick ; Frederick, by engaging
France on the Continent, was to help Great Britain to win her
triumphs on the sea and in another hemisphere. Frederick,
then, must be vigorously supported by the supply of that of
which he stood most in need, money ; but the drain upon his
armies must also be minimised by troops which should hold
the French in play on the west, and by constant combined naval
and military operations on the French coast which should keep
masses of French troops perpetually locked up in garrison for
the defence of the ports and to prevent the landing of an army
of invasion. But it was some time before the new naval and
military strategy could be organised so as to have full effect ;
William Pitt 223
before the product of the former system or want of system could
be obliterated.
Both on the Lower and the Upper Rhine, French armies were
collected, the former to deal with Cumberland, the latter to join
forces with the imperial troops of South Germany. Hastenbeck
The French marshal d'Estrees crossed the Weser. andKioster-
On 26th July, Cumberland with his force of Hano- iotn s'ep-
verians, Brunswickers, and Hessians, gave battle timber,
at Hastenbeck. The fight itself was indecisive, but the duke
fell back to the north across the Aller to Stade, near the mouth
of the Elbe, to preserve the communications by sea with England.
There is reason to believe that in so doing he was acting upon
his father's orders instead of following his own inclination to
fall back eastwards and join forces with Frederick, who had just
made his way back from Kolin. D'Estrees was superseded by
the incompetent Richelieu, a court favourite, a wit, and a brave
man, but no general. Cumberland, however, allowed himself to
be manoeuvred into a cul-de-sac at Klosterseven, and was there
forced to capitulate on loth September. The Hanoverian troops
were to be permitted to go into winter quarters ; the rest of
the German troops were to be disbanded. Richelieu assented
to Cumberland's desire that the arrangement should be called
not a capitulation but a convention. Neither of the generals
bore in mind the important distinction between a ' capitulation '
and a ' convention/ that the former is technically within the
powers of the general in the field, whereas the latter does not
become actually valid until sanctioned by the Cumberland
government ; that is, the government may not disgraced,
repudiate a capitulation, whereas it is technically free to re-
pudiate a convention. The convention had been arranged
through the good offices of the king of Denmark. The duke
believed himself to have been acting in accordance with his
father's instructions. But there was an explosion of wrath in
the country ; George was furious, and declared that Cumberland
had acted without powers, and had disgraced himself ; and the
convention was repudiated. The duke resigned all his offices,
refusing with an admirable dignity to put forward the very
224 The Decisive Struggle
complete defence which would have transferred the obloquy of
the proceedings to the father who had insulted him instead of
to himself. Once more Pitt showed his magnanimity by taking
the part of the man who had done more perhaps than any one
else to keep him out of office. But Cumberland's public career
was ruined. It was partly due to Pitt himself that the command
of the army in Hanover was placed in the very efficient hands
of Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick.
In other quarters, too, the tale of failures was increasing. In
America Montcalm captured two more British forts. A British
other squadron under Holburne sailed for the St. Law-
failures, rence to co-operate with the British commander-
in-chief Lord Loudoun against Louisbourg. Loudoun decided
that the attempt was hopeless, and Holburne's squadron was
so badly damaged in a hurricane that only a portion of it was
able to make its way home again ; whereas a French squadron
succeeded in reaching Louisbourg. Another small French
squadron evaded the blockading British fleets and escaped to
Indian waters. Finally, a strong naval and military force, which
was sent under General Mordaunt and Admiral Hawke to capture
Rochefort failed ignominiously because the commanders could
not or would not co-operate ; Mordaunt being undoubtedly the
real delinquent.
At the close of the year, however, the prevailing gloom was
brightened by the brilliant achievement of the king of Prussia.
Frederick's After the disaster at Kolin he reorganised his forces,
victories at The French marshal Soubise from Alsace joined the
and^uthen imperial German troops on the south and advanced
November and upon Saxony. A Russian army entered East Prussia,
the isolated province of the Prussian kingdom, and
defeated Frederick's general Lehwald at Gross- Jagersdorf.
Swedish troops from Stralsund were threatening Prussian
Pomerania. Frederick chose Soubise as the enemy with whom
he must first deal. Leaving the duke of Brunswick-Bevern to
watch the Austrians under Daun, the king marched into Saxony.
But Soubise was not to be drawn into an engagement. Then a
cleverly conducted Austrian cavalry raid was carried up to Berlin
William Pitt 225
itself. A movement of Frederick's for the protection of the
capital enticed the army of Soubise to move from its position.
Frederick seized his chance of forcing an engagement ; and
although outnumbered by two to one, routed the enemy's forces
in the brilliantly fought battle of Rossbach (5th November).
The attack from the south-west was ruined. The Russian
general retired from East Prussia under the impression that the
Tsarina was dying, and that a complete change of Russian
policy would follow the accession of the new Tsar. Lehwald
was released to attack the Swedes and drive them back into
Stralsund. But in the meantime the Austrians had resumed
their activity, forced Bevern back into Silesia, and captured
the important towns and forts of Schweidnitz, Breslau, and
Liegnitz, taking Bevern himself prisoner. Nevertheless, Frederick,
marching from Rossbach with troops full of a renewed confidence
in themselves and their chief, succeeded in forming a junction
with the troops which Bevern had commanded, brought the
Austrians to an engagement, and won on 5th December the most
brilliant of all his victories at Leuthen.
With the next year, 1758, Pitt's system was beginning to come
into full play. George's pusillanimous desire to neutralise
Hanover was counteracted, as it had been in the 1758
previous war, by Pitt's resolve to take the Hano- Ferdinand of
verian troops into British pay. A heavy subsidy Brunswick-
was provided for Frederick. Ferdinand of Brunswick, the new
commander, proved himself thoroughly capable of dealing with
the French forces under their incompetent generals and pushed
them back over the Aller, the Weser, and finally, the Rhine,
inflicting upon them a severe defeat at Crefeld ; after which he
was reinforced by the British troops — which had hitherto been
denied him — to the number of nearly 10,000 men.
The policy of blockading French ports was developed, and that
of creating diversions by descents upon the French coast was
carried on with energy, though with little enough Deveiop-
apparent success. In May a large force of soldiers ment of Pitt's
and ships attacked St. Malo, but accomplished system-
nothing of any importance. In August another expedition
Innes's Eng. Hist.— Vol. HI. P
226 The Decisive Struggle
attacked Cherbourg, destroyed the fortifications, captured guns
and stores, and did a good deal of damage to the harbour. But
a renewed attack upon St. Malo in September was completely
repulsed with heavy loss. This whole group of enterprises has
been severely criticised. From the days of Drake's Lisbon
expedition, such operations involving the joint action of soldiers
and sailors were repeatedly rendered futile by the mutual jealousy
of the services, their failure to agree upon a concerted plan, and
their common incapacity for understanding what it was reason-
able to expect from the other partner. At Rochefort, at St.
Malo, and even at Cherbourg, comparatively little loss was
inflicted on the enemy, at a very heavy cost; a gibe passed
current that we were ' breaking windows with guineas.' It must
be remembered, however, that the main intention in all these
cases was to divert French troops from the armies on the Rhine,
to keep numbers of them locked up at every point where a
sudden attack might possibly be delivered by the power whose
naval superiority enabled it to strike when and where it thought
fit. Frederick the Great himself fully recognised the value of
these diversions, and actually suggested the policy ; Anson,
the highest naval authority of the day, approved of them. But
because the advantage which accrued from them was only in-
direct and therefore not easily recognisable, while they habitually
failed in achieving their ostensible objects, they naturally in-
vited condemnation prima facie. The fact, however, is manifest
that the French armies on the Rhine accomplished nothing in
1758. Though their failure is attributable more to inefficiency
in their commanders than to insufficiency in their numbers, it
is at least probable that if their numbers had been increased and
their commanders had not been made nervous by perpetual
uncertainty about the point which would be selected for the
next blow, they would have given more trouble to Ferdinand
of Brunswick.
In America also the vigour of Pitt's administration displayed
itself. There Pitt planned a triple attack. Loudoun was re-
called. Jeffery Amherst, with the young general James Wolfe
as second in command, was appointed to the military leadership
William Pitt 227
of an expedition against Louisbourg with which a squadron
under Admiral Boscawen co-operated. This was preceded by a
squadron which was sent to blockade Louisbourg, pianof
and to prevent the entry of reinforcements from campaign in
France. Hawke destroyed a fleet of transports America-
which was being prepared at Rochefort, while the Mediter-
ranean squadron prevented the sailing of a fleet for America
from Toulon. The second attack was to be made from the
south on the Upper St. Lawrence by way of Lake Champlain and
Ticonderoga, under General James Abercromby ; while a third
colonial force was directed to the west against Fort Duquesne
on the Upper Ohio.
The expedition under Amherst and Boscawen succeeded in
its object, and Louisbourg was captured on 27th July. Fort
Duquesne was also captured, to be rechristened partial
Fort Pitt (subsequently Pittsburg). Abercromby 's success,
expedition, however, met with disaster. Without waiting for
his guns, he delivered a frontal attack on the entrenched position
at Ticonderoga, where the defenders were thoroughly protected
by a strong abattis, from behind which they poured a withering
fire upon the attacking troops. The assault was completely
repulsed with very heavy loss, and Abercromby retreated ; so
the plan of campaign as a whole for the year was frustrated.
The captures of Louisbourg and Fort Duquesne, and the restored
effectiveness of the maritime supremacy, were the palpable gains
of the year ; bringing an encouragement which had been heralded
earlier by the news of Clive's amazing triumph at the battle of
Plassey in Bengal in the summer of 1757.
On the Continent Frederick was still holding his own, though
he was doing little more. He had gained nothing by a campaign
in Moravia in the earlier part of the year. In Frederick's
August he was obliged to quit Moravia by the re- fortunes,
newed advance of the Russians, against whom he gained a very
hard won victory at Zorndorf on the Oder. From Zorndorf
he had to dash back, to check the Austrian advance into Saxony,
where he experienced a defeat at Hochkirchen at the hands of
Daun. The Austrian, however, did not push his advantage, and
228 The Decisive Struggle
before the end of the year Frederick had reorganised his forces
without losing any more ground.
The next year, 1759, was a bad one for Frederick, for every
great engagement was draining the life-blood of Prussia, while
1759. his opponents still had great hosts to draw upon
for the reinforcement of their armies. But for Great Britain
it was the ' wonderful year/ the year of victories, although there
was a striking recuperation in France through the accession to
power of the able minister Choiseul ; and the French armies were
placed under the command of the best available officers instead
of court favourites.
Even in Germany, a full share of the honours fell to the British
soldiery with Ferdinand. The French under the command of
The Minden Contades and Broglie pushed forward across the
campaign, Rhine, captured Frankfort, defeated Ferdinand at
July-August. Bergeil) forced him back, and captured Minden on
the Weser, on the Hanoverian border. A battle and a victory
were absolutely necessary if Hanover was to be saved ; but
Contades was in a position where it was impracticable to attack
him. Ferdinand, though with a smaller force, detached 10,000
men to force Contades from his position by falling on his com-
munications. Contades thereupon advanced, under the im-
pression that he could overwhelm his opponent. But Ferdinand
by the disposition of his troops successfully lured Contades into
a carefully prepared trap. Mainly by the splendid courage and
discipline of the British infantry regiments, which advanced
under a heavy fire and completely routed three successive charges
of the French cavalry, the French were driven back ; and but
for the wholly inexplicable conduct of Lord George Sackville,
who commanded the first line of British cavalry and abstained
from charging in spite of repeated orders, the French would have
been cut to pieces. As it was, Ferdinand won a very decisive
victory, though the enemy escaped annihilation. Sackville was
subsequently cashiered ; but the failure of one man to do his
duty was of no account as compared with the magnificent con-
duct of the British soldiery. The battle of Minden (ist August)
was a shattering blow to the French army.
William Pitt 229
But Minden paled in comparison with the triumphs which
followed. Pitt had resolved upon the conquest of Canada in
this year, and, on the other hand, Choiseul had re- Choiseul
solved upon the invasion of England. The British plans an
conquered Canada, but the French did not invade invasion-
England. On the contrary, their navy was wiped off the seas.
However well directed, however energetic Choiseul's prepara-
tions might be, it was in vain to collect transports and flat-
bottomed boats, men and supplies, for use in England, so long
as British fleets made it impossible to reach the British shores.
As always, the two main French fleets lay at Brest and at
Toulon ; transports were waiting at Havre, at Rochefort, and
elsewhere. Admiral Hawke kept watch over Brest Boscawen at
and the Channel, Boscawen in the Mediterranean ; Lagos, August,
and yet Pitt could spare twenty-two ships of the line for the
campaign in Canada, and four for Indian waters. Until August
the business was one mainly of watching and waiting, though
Rodney was detailed to bombard Havre in July, without achiev-
ing any important results. Boscawen, however, was obliged to
withdraw to Gibraltar from his watch over Toulon to repair
some of his ships. The French admiral La Clue slipped out of
Toulon, hoping to evade Boscawen and to effect a junction with
the Brest fleet. A heavy haze almost enabled him to succeed,
but one of Boscawen's look-outs sighted the French fleet, and
Boscawen started in pursuit with fourteen sail. Five of La
Clue's twelve ships ran for Cadiz. One of the remaining seven
fought a desperate fight with the British ships as they came up,
and delayed the pursuit of the rest. Nevertheless, of the others,
Boscawen ran four ashore at Lagos, two of which he captured
and burnt two. This action was, in fact, a breach of neutrality, as
Lagos was in Portuguese territory ; but it broke up the Toulon
fleet.
Still Choiseul hoped that the Brest fleet would be able to effect
an invasion of Scotland, though on a smaller scale than the
great invasion originally projected. The scheme Quiberon, 20th
was ruined by Hawke. Hawke's base for guarding November.
Brest was Tor Bay. When a westerly gale was blowing no
230 The Decisive Struggle
squadron could come out of Brest, and Hawke, driven from the
open sea, could ride safely in Tor Bay. The French ships would
not venture out. To the British public it appeared that nothing
was happening, and the admiral was being burnt in effigy just
at the moment when his weary watch was ended and he was
achieving a particularly brilliant victory. A westerly gale had
driven Hawke into Tor Bay in the first week of November ;
it had also enabled a French squadron from the West Indies
to make its way into Brest. The gale dropped, and Conflans,
the French admiral at Brest, slipped out of harbour and sailed
south, apparently with the intention of picking up a body of
troops at the Morbihan, with a view to invasion of the British
shores. Giving chase to a small British cruising squadron, they
came in sight of Hawke's fleet, which had put out from Tor Bay
at the first possible moment. The wind was rising to a gale,
and Conflans made for Quiberon Bay, an exceedingly difficult
piece of water, where he hoped to get into safety himself, while
the pursuing British, if they entered the bay, would run a
tremendous risk of going to pieces on the reefs. Hawke, how-
ever, took the risk. His van overtook the French rear, and in
the furious fight which followed, with all the terrific accompani-
ments of a raging storm, five of the twenty-one French ships
were taken or sunk. Seven made their way into the Vilaine,
where four of them were wrecked. Nine escaped for the time,
some into Rochefort, the rest into the Loire.
For practical purposes, the French navy was annihilated.
The remnants of the Brest and Toulon fleets were scattered in
The French various ports, two or three here and two or three
fleet wiped there, without the faintest chance of coming out
again. Two British ships ran on the shoals of
Quiberon and were lost ; but in the course of the year the British
had taken and added to their own fleet twenty-seven French
ships of the line. In its effects Quiberon was the most decisive
naval battle that had been fought since the Armada, because
it gave to the British not merely the supremacy but an absolutely
unqualified mastery of the seas. From that moment only a
comparatively small naval force was needed to keep the French
William Pitt 231
ports in a state of blockade ; the rest of the fleet was free to
operate where it would. Hawke's consummate naval strategy
had first paralysed the French fleet ; his splendid audacity
and his seamanship, and the daring and seamanship of his
captains, destroyed it.
Two months earlier, the genius of Wolfe had struck the decisive
blow in Canada. Pitt had chosen the young general for his
task with remarkable courage and insight, though Canada:
it must be noted that King George also realised the James Wolfe,
great qualities which were hidden under an unpromising exterior
as well as by eccentricities of manner. Wolfe was one of the few
men who had made a scientific study of his profession, and could
cheerfully reply when asked how he had devised a particularly
successful tactical development, that he had ' got it from
Xenophon.' But he was as far removed as possible from the
popular beau sabreur or the conventional martinet, though he
had fought at Dettingen when he was sixteen and served under
Cumberland at Culloden. His health was bad ; he had the
insignificant chin which commonly denotes incapacity, and he
was occasionally capable of the gasconading which naturally
inspires distrust. But wherever he had been Wolfe had dis-
played courage both physical and moral, capacity, and common
sense, combined with originality. Wolfe was chosen for the
command which in the previous year had been entrusted
to Amherst. Amherst, the senior officer, took the command
from which Abercromby had been recalled after his failure at
Ticonderoga.
As before, the attack upon Canada must be made by three
advancing columns. Wolfe, supported by a squadron, was to
attack Quebec, pushing up the St. Lawrence ; pian of the
Amherst, in the centre, was to move upon Montreal campaign,
from the south by Lake Champlain. The third column, corre-
sponding to that which had captured Fort Duquesne in 1758,
was to follow the western route by Fort Niagara and Lake Ontario.
It was hoped that the three columns would converge upon Quebec.
The programme, however, could not be carried out in full.
General Prideaux, with the third column, captured Niagara ;
232
The Decisive Struggle
Amherst succeeded in securing Ticonderoga and Crown Point ;
but not till it was too late for either force to hope to reach Quebec
in time, since with the approach of winter the St. Lawrence
would be blocked with ice, and the naval squadron would
necessarily be withdrawn.
Siege of
QUEBEC
1759
Emery Walker Ltd. sc.
The last and almost trivial reinforcements from France had
reached Canada early in the year, having escaped just before
Wolfe and the blockade of the French coast had been made
before6" completely effective. At the end of May the
Quebec, British squadron, under the command of Sir Charles
June. Saunders, reached the St. Lawrence; at the end
of June it had carried Wolfe and his army up to Quebec. Mont-
calm, with 5000 regulars and 10,000 militia, besides Indians,
elected to stand on the defensive against Wolfe, with his ships
and his troops, who numbered something under 9000. The
position, in fact, appeared almost impregnable, at least without
William Pitt
233
a very much larger besieging force. Wolfe could not invest
Quebec ; the cliffs on the south and west could hardly be scaled ;
on the east the space between the rivers St. Charles and Mont-
morenci, where Montcalm's camp lay, was too strongly entrenched
to permit of a successful attack. The mouth of the St. Charles
itself was secured by a boom. Wolfe encamped his forces
partly on the north of the St. Lawrence, east of the Montmorenci,
partly on the Isle of Orleans, under the guns of the squadron,
which, of itself, sufficed to prevent any conceivable prospect
of French reinforcements arriving from France. A portion of
the squadron with some of the troops was detached under Holmes
to force its way up the river above Quebec and there maintain
a perpetual threat of a landing ; to prevent which Montcalm,
in turn, had to detach a column under Bougainville.
But Wolfe had an apparently insoluble riddle before him —
the problem of attacking a force numerically superior, thoroughly
well equipped, under a very able commander, be- Wolfe's
hind apparently impregnable fortifications, and with difficulties,
the knowledge that on the approach of winter the siege would
have to be raised. For two months the riddle remained unsolved ;
Montcalm was not to be enticed from his entrenchments ; a
direct attack upon them was beaten off. Wolfe himself fell ill ;
his dispatches home were despondent. A letter written on
2nd September, which was received in London on I4th October,
produced a general impression that he had no hope of bringing
the enterprise to a successful conclusion. Two days later London
broke into a delirium of mingled triumph and sorrow ; for the
news had come that Quebec was taken, and that Wolfe had fallen
in the hour of victory. The two dispatches were published in
the same gazette.
The riddle had been solved. Wolfe had submitted to his
brigadiers alternative proposals for an attack from the east.
The brigadiers had submitted a counter proposal A plan of
for landing a force twelve miles up the river and attack,
attacking from that side. This suggestion was SePtember-
partly actuated by an impression that Amherst would very
shortly arrive, and that a junction with him could be effected.
234 The Decisive Struggle
Wolfe, having recovered sufficiently to make some investigations
for himself, decided to adopt the brigadiers' plan of making the
landing above Quebec, but he rejected the landing-place they
had chosen, and with it their theory of the attack. He selected
instead a point much nearer to Quebec, where he hoped to get
his forces on shore and to reach the Heights of Abraham, the
plain in front of the town of Quebec, thrusting at the enemy's
centre and severing Montcalm from Bougainville, while Bougain-
ville and his detachment were unaware of what was going on.
During the next few days the camp was shifted from the
position on the east of the Montmorenci to the southern side
of the St. Lawrence above Quebec. Four thousand
operation, men were secretly embarked on Holmes's ships. On
I2th-i3th I2th September Saunders opened a fierce bombard-
September. . . * ,
ment, as though in preparation for an assault upon
Montcalm's camp between the St. Charles and the Montmorenci.
Holmes's ships, on the other hand, moved up the river, drawing
Bougainville away to the west, while Montcalm had massed his
troops on the east to resist the expected attack. In the small
hours of the morning of I3th September, Wolfe with his 4000
men dropped silently down the river. They were carried past
the intended landing-place, but disembarked under the Heights
of Abraham, which were accounted so secure that no watch was
kept at the foot though there were sentries at the top. A party
of volunteers led the way in scaling the Heights, the rest of the
troops following ; the sentries at the top were surprised and
rushed. When the dawn broke the troops were already forming
line on the plateau.
The news was carried to Montcalm, whose troops were hurried
out and formed up under the walls. Of the British there were a
Victory. little over 3000, since the whole body had not scaled
the Heights ; the numbers of the French are uncertain, but were
certainly greater, possibly as much as double. The British were
drawn up in two lines, the French in a single line which, at about
nine o'clock, swung forward down the intervening slope, firing
as it advanced. The British with steady discipline reserved their
fire till the French were thirty yards away. Then a terrific
William Pitt 235
volley brought the French to a standstill, and at a second volley
they broke and fled, the British charging upon them with bayonet
and claymore, the pursuit ceasing only when it was stopped by
the fire from the ramparts of Quebec. Wolfe received his third
wound, a mortal one, at the moment of ordering the charge,
and ' died content.' When Bougainville hastened up he found
the battle already won. Montcalm, too, had received his death
wound, though he survived till the next morning. The French
governor broke up what had been Montcalm 's camp and fled.
On the I7th, the fourth day after the fight on the Heights of
Abraham, Quebec capitulated.
The fall of Quebec and the battle of Quiberon were decisive
of the contest in America and on the seas ; Quiberon indeed
was the more decisive of the two, since, even if A comment.
Wolfe had failed, the destruction of the French fleet would have
ensured the renewal of the attack in strength to which the French,
unreinforced, must have ultimately succumbed. Wolfe's achieve-
ment exemplified the possibility of perfect and triumphant co-
operation between the two services ; it was also in itself one of
those brilliant strokes which have staked everything upon
audacity ; and while designed and carried out with the utmost
skill on the part both of Wolfe himself and of Admiral Saunders
so as to minimise its risks, must still have ended in disaster if
the surprise had not been complete. The Seven Years' War
more than any other exemplifies the brilliant results achieved
by accepting tremendous risks, such as those which Hawke took
at Quiberon, Wolfe at Quebec, Clive at Plassey, and Frederick
times without number.
Only by taking such risks was Frederick able to save himself
from destruction. Sometimes as at Kolin he failed and almost
ruined himself. So it was with him at this time. Frederick's
A few days after Minden, and while Wolfe was still difficulties,
vainly seeking the solution of his riddle, Frederick flung himself
at Kunersdorf upon the Russians who had advanced to the Oder
and were about to effect a junction with Daun's Austrians.
After opening a successful attack, the Prussian king attempted
to do too much with his already exhausted troops against the
236 The Decisive Struggle
stubborn foe who greatly outnumbered him. The result was
a crushing defeat. It appeared that the Prussian army was
hopelessly shattered. Nevertheless, the Russian commander,
probably once more in the expectation of a change of policy at
headquarters, and Daun with his natural incapacity for activity,
made no further movement until Frederick had recovered from
his temporary despair, and had once again reorganised his broken
forces. But Kunersdorf had in effect enabled another army to
push into Saxony and occupy Dresden, and Frederick was to
suffer yet another disaster when a column dispatched by him to
cut the Austrian communications was overwhelmed by superior
numbers and compelled to capitulate at Maxen.
The year 1759 had been disastrous for France ; upon her had
fallen the three blows of Minden, Quebec, and Quiberon. Choiseul
Choiseul attempted two diplomatic moves. The death of
and Spain. Ferdinand of Spain had given the Spanish throne
to his half-brother Charles in., Don Carlos of Naples, who
thereby vacated his Neapolitan throne in favour of his second
son, Ferdinand. Unlike his half-brother, Charles hated England,
for he had bitter recollections of his interview with Commodore
Martin in the previous war. Choiseul had hopes now of bringing
Spain into the alliance against Great Britain. At the same
time, he endeavoured to enter upon a separate negotiation with
Pitt which should part Great Britain from Prussia. Instigated
by France, Charles intimated that Spain could not look with
equanimity upon the progress of the British arms in America.
Pitt, who was not in the least afraid of Spain, contented himself
with suggesting that Great Britain's doings in America were no
concern of Spain's. As for separate negotiations with France,
Pitt would not have dreamed of deserting the ally to whom he
already owed so much, even if he had not been convinced that
the preservation of the power of Prussia was a political neces-
sity. He was willing to negotiate in conjunction with Frederick ;
but upon no other terms.
In England the triumphs of the last year had established Pitt's
ascendency so completely, that unprecedented supplies were
voted for the war without a murmur. It was only the lavish
William Pitt
237
supplies of British gold which maintained on the west of Prussia
the force which, ably handled by Ferdinand, could still continue
to hold back the still greatly superior numbers of 1760
the French armies. It was only British gold which The struggle
enabled Frederick to keep in being his own Prussian ln Germany-
force in spite of the fearful depletion caused by the desperate
struggle which had now entered upon its fourth year. Through
1760 Frederick's enemies were slowly pressing upon him more
closely. He induced the Russians to fall back by a trick ;
at Liegnitz in Silesia, in August, and at Torgau in Saxony, in
November, he struck, and struck hard at the Austrians ; but
his victories were no longer crushing blows ; they were only
sharp reverses for the enemy, checks which held back the advanc-
ing tide which threatened to overwhelm him.
But the other tide, of British successes, swept on almost
unimpeded. In India the French received the coup de grace
at Wandewash. The British contingent with Fer- British
dinand won fresh laurels at Emsdorf and Warburg successes,
under the leadership of Eliott, later distinguished for his great
defence of Gibraltar, and Granby, who had already distinguished
himself at Minden, and became in England a popular hero — as
witnessed by the number of inns which adopted ' The Marquis
of Granby ' as their sign. In Canada the triumph of Wolfe was
completed by Amherst.
The organisation of the campaign for the year was left in
Amherst's hands. Though the British were in possession of
Quebec, Amherst still had to fight his way into The Canadian
Canada. The French, who had concentrated at conquest
Montreal, hoped that before Amherst could arrive comp e e •
from the west, or a squadron from the east, they themselves
would be able to recover Quebec, which was occupied by General
Murray, one of Wolfe's brigadiers, with a force which now
numbered less than 4000. The French advanced to the attack
with quite double that number of men, at the end of April.
Murray came out to fight them, but was driven back with heavy
loss on 28th April. A siege began, but in less than a fortnight
the first frigate of an approaching British squadron appeared
238 The Decisive Struggle
on the scene. The waterway was clear of ice. A week later
the French were in retreat. On the i8th May the British
squadron was at Quebec. The French at Montreal had indulged
themselves in illusive hopes of reinforcements from France ;
the reinforcements succeeded in sailing, but were duly cut off
by a British squadron in July. Meanwhile Amherst had worked
out his own plan of campaign against Montreal. Murray was
to advance from Quebec, another force under Haviland by
Amherst's old route ma Lake Champlain, and a third column
under Amherst himself from the west by Lake Ontario. The
converging move was carried out with such consummate skill
and accuracy that the three columns arrived before Montreal
simultaneously on 6th September. The united force was over-
whelming, and the French governor had no choice but to capitu-
late. On 8th September the conquest of Canada was completed.
The French population were by the terms of the capitulation
guaranteed liberty of religion and security of property. The
troops were to lay down their arms, and to be conveyed back
to France, pledged not to serve again against Great Britain in
the course of the war.
In October, when Pitt was in the zenith of his glory, George n.
died suddenly, and his young grandson, George in., reigned
Death of *n ^s stead. The change was to prove fatal to the
George II. ascendency of the Great Commoner, whom the old
October. king had supported with an admirable loyalty ever
since the reconciliation, in spite of the long antecedent years of
dislike and distrust. Before we turn to the story of the new
reign we have still to give the account of the great achievements
which, in the last four years of the old king's life, established
the British East India Company as a territorial power in India —
achievements to which it has hitherto been possible to make
only incidental reference.
III. CLIVE, 1755-1760
Although the French recalled Dupleix in 1754, when his place
was taken by Godeheu, it was still far from certain, at least
as far as appearances were concerned, that his schemes were
Clive 239
destined to be obliterated. If the nawab of the Carnatic was
in the grip of the British, Bussy was still supreme at the
superior court of the Nizam, who had bestowed 1755
upon the French the coastal district above the river The situation
Krishna, known as the 'Northern Sirkars,' for the inlndia-
support of his forces. The new French governor made a com-
pact with Saunders at Madras, by which it was agreed that the
companies should abstain from further hostilities. It looked as
if the condition of balance between the French and British was
to be maintained.
Clive, after his successes, had returned to England, ambitious
of taking an active part in home politics. Fortunately enough,
he was foiled, since, although he was elected to parliament, he
was unseated on petition. He enjoyed, however, the full con-
fidence of the directors and of the government, and in 1755 he
returned to India with instructions from the directors that
Bombay was to form an alliance with the Mahrattas in order
to check the increasing power of Bussy, which was 1756
causing them considerable anxiety. But in the dive's return
meantime Godeheu and Saunders had made their tolndia-
compact of abstention from interference in native politics ; and
the Bombay authorities, feeling bound to respect tfye compact,
would take no action. Instead of proceeding against Bussy,
Clive, in conjunction with Admiral Watson, who was in the Indian
waters with a small squadron, and with the Mahratta authorities
at Puna, destroyed a piratical confederacy which had recently
been established by the sea-robber Angria at Gheriah on the
west coast. Though the demolition of this dangerous nest of
pirates was entirely the work of Clive and Watson, Gheriah
itself was handed over to the Mahrattas, and Clive went on to
Madras where, in June 1756, he took over the command of Fort
St. David.
Meanwhile, the disruption of the Mogul empire had been
progressing. Three times since Nadir Shah's great invasion
Ahmed Shah Durani, who had made himself master Ahmed Shah,
of Kabul, followed in the footsteps of Nadir Shah and swept
over the north-west of India, where government had ceased tq
240 The Decisive Struggle
mean anything more than the collection of tribute for the Afghan.
The Afghan tribe of Rohillas had established themselves in
Rohilkhand on the north-west side of Oudh. The Mogul's
nominal wazir or minister, Safdat Ali, had established himself
in Oudh itself as nawab, and reigned there with very little
respect for his suzerain at Delhi. Another minister and soldier,
Ali Vardi Khan, had secured for himself as nawab the two Lower
Ganges provinces of Behar and Bengal. The Mahratta con-
federacy had been growing in strength ; the peshwa at Puna
had secured a general recognition as its head, and its western
chief, the Bhonsla at Nagpur, otherwise known as the Berar
raja, dominated the greater part of Central India, levying chauth
or blackmail from less powerful princes, and carrying his in-
cursions into Bengal itself. There was hardly a pretence of
recognising the existence of any central authority.
In 1756, the old and able Ali Vardi Khan died and was suc-
ceeded by his grandson, Suraj-ud-Daulah. He was a youth,
half mad and wholly bloodthirsty, brought up in
Bengal: The the harem — an extreme example of the worst type
Black Hole, of Oriental monarch. He conceived himself to be
almost omnipotent. In Bengal, during the earlier
struggle between French and British, Calcutta and Chander-
nagur had kept the peace; Suraj-ud-Daulah had no compre-
hension of the events which had been taking place in the Deccan,
and looked upon the British as a mere settlement of traders
whom he might treat as he liked. With a view to a possible
renewal of the French contest, some fortifications had been
perfunctorily raised by Drake, the British governor of Fort
William. Suraj-ud-Daulah ordered their demolition ; Drake
protested; the nawab conceived that he had thus obtained a
sufficient excuse for taking possession of the British settlement.
From his capital at Murshidabad he marched an army upon
Calcutta. Drake and some of his company fled in haste down
the Hugh ; others remained to offer a short but hopeless resist-
ance. On 2ist July Fort William was taken, with a hundred
and forty-six prisoners. They were all herded together in a
chamber where there was barely room for them all to stand up,
Clive
241
ventilated by nothing but one small grating. Then the nawab
forgot them. Next morning he remembered his prisoners, the
door of the prison was opened, and within it were found twenty-
three with the life still in them and one hundred and twenty-
three corpses. That was the story which reached Madras in
August, and London only in the following year.
The Madras authorities acted. They had Clive, and they had
Admiral Watson's squadron at hand. Nine hundred white troops
and as many sepoys with the five ships of war reached
the mouth of the Hugli on I5th December. On 2nd and Watson
January 1757 the nawab's garrison at Fort William at Calcutta,
surrendered. A week later Clive seized the fort at
Hugli. The nawab sent a great army to wipe out the foreigners ;
Clive's offers to negotiate were ignored. Clive marched against
the nawab's forces, fought them on 5th February, and retreated
again to Calcutta, having failed to carry the enemy's position.
The enemy, however, had had more than enough, and hurried
back to Murshidabad, where the nawab was seized with panic
and promptly offered terms. A treaty was made, reinstating
the British in all their privileges, with promises of compensation
for their losses.
Clive, according to his instructions, should now have returned
to Madras. But the report had just arrived of a declaration
of war between France and Great Britain. Suraj-
Chander-
ud-Daulah began to intrigue with the French at nagur
Chandernagur, and with Bussy who was 300 miles taken,
away in the Northern Sirkars. Clive and Watson
saw that if they left Bengal their work would have to be done
all over again ; the French must be removed from Chander-
nagur. On 23rd March the British attacked Chandernagur and
captured it, taking 500 prisoners. The blow at once decided
Bussy that the Deccan would be a more fruitful field for his
operations than Bengal.
Still the problem remained for Clive — should he return to the
Deccan, where a conflict with the French was certainly now im-
pending, or should he remain in Bengal, where he could still
hardly doubt that his departure would be the signal for Suraj-
Innes's Eng. Hist. — Vol. in. Q
242 The Decisive Struggle
ud-Daulah to fall upon Calcutta again. The problem was solved
for him. Great lords of the nawab's court were filled with
The Omi- terror for their own lives by the frantic caprices and
chundpiot. the bloodthirstiness of the young ruler. A con-
spiracy was set on foot to overthrow Suraj -ud-Daulah and to
make his commander- in-chief, Mir Jafar, nawab in his place.
The conspirators rested their hope of success on the co-operation
of the British. They opened negotiations with the British.
To them the fall of the treacherous and sanguinary tyrant would
mean the security of their position in Bengal. Clive entered
into the plot, still maintaining ostensibly amicable relations
with Suraj -ud-Daulah. The go-between was a Hindu named
Amin Chand, anglicised as Omichund. Terms and conditions
were practically settled, when Omichund suddenly put forward
a demand for an impossibly enormous reward for himself, amount-
ing to more than a quarter of a million. To refuse would mean
The Red *ne betrayal of the whole design. Clive stooped to
and White an enormous act of deception. Two copies of the
treaty were prepared, one on red paper the other
on white. The red treaty, which included the clause embodying
Omichund's stipulation, bore the signatures of the Calcutta
Council, of Clive, and of Admiral Watson. But the white treaty,
which omitted the Omichund clause, was signed by the native
conspirators. When Omichund saw the red treaty he was
satisfied — the white treaty he did not see. Nor did he know
that Admiral Watson had refused to take part in the fraud, and
that his signature, the absence of which would have been fatal,
had been forged.
To the day of his death, Clive maintained that he had acted
rightly ; that he was dealing with men who were entirely with-
comment. out the European conceptions of truth and honour,
men who would hesitate at no lie, no fraud, no treachery ; that
in the existing crisis there was no course open but to fight such
men with their own weapons. To the Oriental mind, what he
did presented itself not as the monstrous iniquity which it would
have been under Western conditions, but as a clever trick which
would be justified by success. Watson himself, though he would
Clive
243
not put his hand to the sham treaty, was so far demoralised by
the atmosphere that he allowed the forging of his own signature
to pass without protest. On no other occasion did Clive deviate
from the straightforward path, but the British had not yet learnt
the fundamental principle upon which their Oriental dominion
was to rest, that the Western moral standards must be main-
tained in all dealings even with Orientals.
In this case, the deviation from Western standards was accom-
panied by entire success. The treaty was completed upon iQth
May. At once Clive dispatched to the nawab a ciive's ad-
statement of British complaints and an announce- vance, June,
ment that he was coming with his men to Murshidabad to lay
these matters before the nawab's durbar or council. This was
to all intents and purposes a declaration of war. The nawab
gathered a huge army and moved towards Calcutta, while Clive
marched out with his whole force numbering noo Europeans,
twice as many sepoys, and ten guns. Five days after the dis-
patch of his letter, Clive had seized the fort and granary of
Katwar. The critical moment had come. Some 60,000 men
were moving against him. Mir Jafar, with 20,000 men, was to
desert and turn his arms against the nawab on the day of
battle ; but there were rumours that Mir Jafar had turned
faint-hearted and could not be trusted. The monsoon had
set in. If Clive entrenched himself where he lay, time was
more likely to bring Bussy to the support of the nawab
than to bring to his own aid the extremely untrustworthy
Mahrattas with whom negotiations had been opened. Retreat
would certainly mean ruin, advance might mean annihilation.
For three days he hesitated, then called a council of war — the
only one he ever did call — to which he communicated his own
opinion, adverse to an advance and in favour of waiting. Of
the eighteen members of the council of war, eleven agreed with
him, while seven were in favour of taking the whole risk. The
decision seemed to have been made ; but an hour's solitary
meditation changed it. Clive made it known that he had
resolved to advance at all costs. On the next morning,
22nd June, the force marched forward to Plassey, where it
244 The Decisive Struggle
passed the night with the nawab's huge host a short distance
away.
Clive had his men drawn up with the Europeans in the centre,
and the sepoys on the wings. Accompanying the nawab's huge
Battle of force there was a small band of some fifty French-
Piassey, men. At eight in the morning cannonading began,
and went on for some hours without marked result.
There was no movement on the part of Mir Jafar. Without
such a movement Clive had not intended to make an active
attack ; but early in the afternoon one of his officers saw the
French shift from their position, which he immediately seized.
Clive turned the whole of his artillery fire on the enemy's guns,
threw them out of action, and led his whole line forward ; where-
upon the nawab's army turned and fled with such promptitude
that only some hundreds of them were slain, and the victors lost
no more than seventy men. The nawab reached Murshidabad,
but was caught while trying to escape thence in disguise, and
was secured by Mir Jafar's son, who murdered him.
Such a victory in Indian warfare would normally have been
followed by massacre; nothing of the kind was permitted.
Effect of Four days after the battle of Plassey Mir Jafar was
Piassey. proclaimed nawab. But Clive, the miracle-worker,
was regarded by all the natives without exception as the real
conqueror and lord ; the new nawab was merely his servant.
Before the terror of his name armies melted away. No one
dreamed of disputing his supremacy, least of all Mir Jafar.
Whether he had meant to do so or not, Clive, in fact, had made
himself responsible for the rule of Bengal and Behar. He had
no official authority, but his behests were law ; and it was well
for Bengal that it was so, for his hand was outstretched to
protect the natives decisively from the violence and the extor-
tions which would have been the natural accompaniments of a
successful rebellion and a change of dynasty.
When Omichund discovered how he had been duped, the shock
was too much for his brain, and he became hopelessly crazed.
Mir Jafar was obedient, though he might secretly resent the
master's control. The nawab of Oudh thought for a moment
Clive
245
that he might make profit for himself out of the commotion in
Bengal ; he dispatched an army, but when his invasion was
reported Clive promptly took the field, and Safdat Ali's troops
did not wait to meet him. The British officers with Clive gave
him unanimous and loyal support, ignoring sundry foolish re-
arrangements which the directors in London at first thought
fit to order. Clive remained in Bengal as dictator.
Since the news of the declaration of war, which had arrived
in the spring of 1757, active operations had begun in the south.
The French had sent out a new governor-general, 1758
Lally-Tollendal, son of one of the Irish Jacobites Laiiyin
who had defended Limerick. Lally was a man of tlie Carnatic-
great talents, but of a most impracticable character, who drove
his subordinates to mutiny and could work with no colleague,
while he was totally incapable of understanding the natives,
whose prejudices he violated at every turn. The one hope of
the French lay in the diplomatic and military talents of Bussy,
who had made himself hardly less supreme at Haidarabad than
was Clive in Bengal. Lally ordered Bussy with his troops to
leave Haidarabad, thereby entirely losing control over the Nizam.
In May 1758, a month after he had reached India, Lally had
captured Fort St. David. He then attacked Tanjore, hoping to
obtain large supplies by its capture ; but the French
squadron which had succeeded in bringing him out Of Madras
retreated upon the arrival of a British squadron raised»
which threatened Pondichery, and compelled him to
return thither in order to keep his headquarters secure. Then,
reinforced by Bussy's troops from Haidarabad and the Sirkars,
he attacked Madras ; but there Lawrence was in command and
held him at bay until the appearance of the British squadron
in February 1759 produced a panic among Lally's troops and
compelled the French commander to beat a hasty retreat to
Pondichery.
The Nizam's cession of the Sirkars to Bussy should have been
invaluable to the French as a source of revenue for war purposes.
To this Clive in Bengal was fully alive. He himself could not
quit Bengal ; but no sooner was it apparent that Bussy was to
246 The Decisive Struggle
be withdrawn from the Sirkars than preparations were made for
dispatching from Bengal every available man to seize for the
Forde at British the Sirkars and the town of Masulipatam.
Masuiipatam, Clive took the risk of practically denuding Bengal
of white troops, and depending in effect on his own
personal capacity and prestige to retain his control there.
Colonel Francis Forde, the officer chosen to command the ex-
pedition, did his work brilliantly. If Bussy had been allowed
to remain at Haidarabad, Forde's task might have been im-
possible. As it was, the Nizam made no movement to defend
the Sirkars until it was too late. Masulipatam fell in April ;
the Nizam adopted the natural conclusion that the star of France
had set, cancelled the cession to Bussy, and ceded the captured
district to the British. Forde returned in triumph to the
Hugh.
The Oudh wazir's plan of invading Bengal at the end of 1757
had collapsed at the sound of Clive's name. Moved perhaps in
Bengal: Par^ ^Y the knowledge that British troops had de-
ciive's relief parted from Bengal, the wazir again, early in 1759,
prepared for an invasion. This time he was acting
in conjunction with the Shahzada, Shah Alam, the heir apparent
of the Mogul at Delhi. The prince had quarrelled with his
father and had ambitious schemes of his own. Mir Jafar, on
the one hand, was frightened and was anxious to submit ; on
the other, the Shahzada was making large offers to Clive for
British assistance in his schemes. But the Mogul himself de-
noun.ced his son's proceedings as rebellion. Clive perceived the
immense political advantages which would accrue from acting
as the supporter of the sovereign in such circumstances. He
ignored the terrors of Mir Jafar. The city of Patna offered a
determined resistance to the invader. Clive had only four
hundred Europeans available; but with these, six times as
many sepoys, and some of the nawab's troops, he marched to
the relief of Patna, covering the distance of four hundred miles
in twenty- three days. The Shahzada' s troops did not wait to
fight ; they scattered, and the prince himself fled hastily. Clive
himself was rewarded with what is known as his jaghir or estate,
Clive 247
the quit-rents of the districts which had been conferred on the
company on Mir Jafar's accession.
These events brought no comfort to the nawab himself, who
did not enjoy his position as a mere subordinate of the master-
ful Englishman who insisted upon decent govern- The Dutch
ment. The French had failed ; but it occurred to episode,
him that something might be done with the Dutch Octoben
who had a factory at Chinsura on the Hugh, and were not at all
pleased with the revolution which had made their trade rivals
masters of Bengal. He opened an intrigue with them, and they
were rash enough to listen to his proposals. In October, Dutch
ships with troops on board arrived in the Hugli, ostensibly with
no more dangerous intentions than the protection of their own
interests. Clive, however, had no doubt that they were acting
in collusion with the nawab. Still, there was no quarrel with
the Dutch, and he would have found it extremely difficult to
justify any action against them had they not themselves been
the aggressors. But when the Dutchmen seized some English
ships his course was clear. Forde, who had now returned from
Masulipatam, was at once sent against Chinsurah, and three
armed East Indiamen were sent down the Hugli to deal with
the seven Dutch ships. Both actions were successful ; the factory
and the ships were captured, and the Dutch had to petition the
victors to protect them against the nawab's son, who had meant
to co-operate with them until the sudden success of the British
changed his view of the situation. The episode was concluded
by a treaty, the Dutch apologising, paying compensation, and
agreeing thenceforth to keep no more than 125 soldiers in Bengal.
The achievement of 1759, the dispersion of the Shahzada's
army, the capture of Masulipatam, and the suppression of the
Dutch, made Clive feel that at last he could safely 1760
leave Bengal himself. In February 1760 he departed Wandewash,
for England. Before he left, the decisive blow had February-
been struck in the Carnatic against the French. During 1759,
after the failure before Madras, Lally's operations had been ruined
by the condition of his own troops. The loss of the Sirkars
deprived him of the necessary funds ; officers and men were
248 The Decisive Struggle
unpaid, in rags, half-starved and mutinous. Clive had sent down
from Bengal a brilliant young officer, Eyre Coote, one of the seven
who had boldly urged the advance in the famous council of war
before Plassey. Coote captured Wandewash, which had been in
French occupation. Lally, with his forces depleted by the dis-
patch of detachments southward to procure supplies, attempted
to recover Wandewash. There a battle was fought in which
the native contingents took no active part ; the fighting was
done by the French and British, who between them numbered
some 4000 men, the French being the more numerous. The
victory was complete, and Bussy who was present was himself
taken prisoner. After that, though Lally still fought on, the
struggle was quite hopeless, and the conquest was completed by
the capture of Pondichery in January 1761.
Meanwhile, after Clive's departure, one more attempt was made
upon Bengal by Shah Alam, the former Shahzada, who had just
Shah Alam succeeded to the imperial throne of Delhi. Again,
again. jn conjunction with the nawab-wazir of Oudh, he
invaded Behar. Again his troops were dispersed by two officers
trained in Clive's school and Clive's methods, Colonel Calliaud
and Captain Knox.
IV. BUTE, 1761-1763
From the moment of the accession of George m. the power of
the great war minister began to wane. The young king had been
The new brought up amidst influences which taught him
kins- to hold his grandfather in contempt. His mother
had never ceased to urge him that when his turn came he was
to 'be a king.' The doctrines formulated in Bolingbroke's
Patriot King had been ceaselessly instilled into his soul ; the
ideal of a monarch ruling as a beneficent autocrat had been
perpetually set before him. In every leading European state
the limitations on the power of the Crown were so slight that
each was practically an autocracy. Only in Great Britain the
king's control was fettered by the power of parliament ; and the
power of parliament was not itself what it professed to be — a
Bute
249
free expression of the will of the people — because parliament had
become a machine manipulated almost entirely by a few Whig
families. It was manifestly impossible to set up in Great Britain
an autocracy of the continental type, the type which Strafford,
Charles I., and James n. had attempted to achieve in England
with results so disastrous. The new scheme of monarchy was
to transfer the manipulation of parliament from the Whig
families to the Crown.
The Whig system had been concentrated in Newcastle ; it
was only by a coalition with Newcastle that Pitt had been able
to achieve and give effect to his own tremendous ascendency,
and then only because a crisis had arrived in which Newcastle
himself had been obliged to recognise that nothing but Pitt's
ascendency could save the country. That crisis had passed ;
and the policy of George may be summed up as the intention of
ridding himself of Pitt and taking Newcastle's place as the arch
manipulator of parliamentary majorities. To that Bute,
end the instigator and the first agent was the earl of Bute, a
Scottish peer who had established a supreme influence with the
dowager Princess of Wales, who herself exercised a supreme
influence over the mind of the young king ; a man of whom the
shrewd old king had remarked that he would make an excellent
ambassador at a court where there was nothing to do. He had
some pretensions to literary and artistic culture, and imagined
himself to be a statesman.
There was much in the young king's favour. George I. had
been an unqualified German. George II. was thirty years old
before he ever came to England, though, compara- The king's
tively speaking, he succeeded in identifying himself advantages,
with his British kingdom. George I. came into the country as a
foreigner to keep out the lineal representative of the royal family,
who was a young man not without promise. George n. for twenty
years of his reign was threatened with a possible subversion of
his throne in favour of the Stuarts. But George in. was born
and bred not a German but an Englishman, who 'gloried in
the name of Britain.' The dynasty had been established for all
but fifty years; under it the country had not only enjoyed
250 The Decisive Struggle
unexampled prosperity, but at the moment of George's accession
had reached an altogether unprecedented height of glory and
dominion, while the Stuarts were hopelessly discredited, and their
restoration had become almost unimaginable, certainly past
plotting for seriously. Finally, the prince was reputed to be
a pattern of the religious propriety and the domestic virtue
which have always appealed with special force to the English
middle classes.
Bute was at once brought into the privy council and the
cabinet, explicitly as the king's alter ego, the man who knew
Pitt's George's whole mind, practically the channel of
Prussian communication between the king and his ministers.
policy. jje Declined, however, the secretaryship of state
which the king offered him, preferring not to be hampered by a
portfolio. Pitt and Newcastle were the two obstacles that stood
obviously in the way of that royal ascendency at which George
and his favourite aimed. The desire to be rid of Pitt involved
the desire to be rid of the war which gave him his ascendency.
On the question of the war it was possible at least to divide the
cabinet. Pitt throughout had grasped and acted upon the
principle that the empire was to be won in Germany as well as
on the seas and on the American and Asiatic continent. Great
Britain had provided vast sums in order to enable Frederick
to maintain his defence, and Pitt was as resolute as ever to main-
tain that policy. But there were other politicians who conceived
that enough had been done for Prussia, who trembled at the
enormous expenditure and the swelling National Debt, and who
would have devoted British energies exclusively to the pursuit
of British interests — unconscious of the importance to British
interests of maintaining Frederick, and of the moral obligation
to stand by the ally whose stubborn resistance had already done
so much to secure the British victory. On these lines it was
possible to develop in the government circle a peace party
antagonistic to Pitt. In little more than twelve months the
great minister had fallen.
Choiseul was playing at negotiating for a separate treaty while,
in fact, aiming at a renewal of the Family Compact and the entry
Bute
251
of Spain into the war as an active ally of France. The true
object of negotiation was to gain time in order that Spain might
intervene effectively. Pitt was not in the least de- 1761
ceived, nor would he at any price make terms which choiseui
involved any desertion of Frederick. The repre- and Spain-
sentations of the Spaniards as well as of the French convinced
him that they were in collusion. Meanwhile, British successes
continued. While the Austrians continued to progress in Silesia,
Ferdinand again proved himself more than a match Britisn
for the French on the west, and British troops led achieve-
by Granby again distinguished themselves, notably ] Lents'
at the battle of Wellinghausen. A British expedition captured
Belleisle, off the French coast, an acquisition barren enough in
itself, but valuable as being an actual fragment of French soil,
for the restoration of which French honour would be willing to
pay a very high price. In the West Indies, Guadeloupe had been
captured before ; Dominica was now added to the spoils. Pre-
sently from India came the news that Lally had surrendered
at Pondichery. There was a feeling that enough had been won,
that France had already been brought to her knees, and that it
was wasteful and dangerous to continue a vast war expenditure
merely for the benefit of Prussia. Pitt, on the other hand, knew
that Choiseui did not consider that France was on her knees ;
that, on the contrary, he would encourage negotiations, but
merely for the purpose of gaining time. He urged that war
should at once be declared against Spain. In spite of his urgency,
war was not declared ; the treasure fleet from America pitt>s
reached Spain. Pitt, in October, declared that he resignation,
would be no longer responsible for the direction of Octol)er-
affairs unless he were the actual director, and he resigned. His
brother-in-law Temple followed suit. The arrival of the treasure
fleet gave Charles m. what he wanted; the renewed Family
Compact was made public. Pitt's foresight was indisputably
demonstrated, and on 2nd January 1762 war was declared
against Spain. Immediately afterwards, Spain attacked Portu-
gal, which had stoutly refused to join the anti-British alliance.
It became at once apparent to Frederick that he could no longer
252 The Decisive Struggle
count upon honestly energetic support from his ally. A happy
accident strengthened his position, for his enemy the Tsarina
1762. Elizabeth, whose anticipated death had already
Frederick. served so often to check the advance of Russian
armies, did actually die. Her successor, Peter in., was Frederick's
enthusiastic admirer, at once reversed her policy, restored East
Prussia to the Prussian king, withdrew his troops, and set about
negotiating an alliance with Frederick himself. Bute, who some
time since had accepted the secretaryship of state, and now
obviously controlled the government, withdrew the Prussian
subsidy because Frederick, who entirely distrusted him, would
not commit himself to a definite statement of the terms upon
which he would agree to peace.
It was now Newcastle's turn. He, with most of the cabinet,
had opposed Pitt on the Spanish question, in the belief that war
Fall of with Spain could be averted ; still he and some
Newcastle. of hjs ablest colleagues, with whom Cumberland was
associated, were opposed to the desertion of Frederick. When
Bute and his partisans in the cabinet insisted on an insufficient
vote for carrying on the war in Germany, Newcastle resigned.
Very much to his credit he entirely refused any reward for the
long services in the course of which his immense personal ex-
penditure, in what he at least conceived to be the interests of
the state, had reduced his income by not less than three-quarters.
The ministry was filled up with second-rate or third-rate poli-
ticians, who were looked upon as secure supporters of the king —
among them George Grenville, who was not, in fact, by any
means a king's man, but wanted peace at any price, because he
was terrified by the huge war expenditure.
The intervention of Spain necessitated the continuance of the
war. The change in Russia's attitude saved Frederick, in spite
The war °^ ^he withdrawal of the British subsidy, and in
on the spite of another Russian court revolution. Peter in.
Continent. was jepOse(j an(j subsequently murdered ; his wife
Catherine succeeded him on the throne, and for a moment seemed
inclined to revert to Elizabeth's policy. The Russian army which
had joined Frederick in Silesia was ordered to withdraw ; but
Bute
253
the general was in no haste to move, the Austrians were unaware
that they had only Frederick to deal with, and he was enabled
to win at Burkersdorf a battle which practically restored his
mastery of Silesia. The British troops had not been withdrawn
from Ferdinand's army, and he again conducted a successful
campaign against the French in which once more Granby rendered
distinguished service.
Even Pitt's opponents had claimed to support the policy of
vigorous naval warfare. In this field it is probable enough that
the actual plan of operations for the year had More
emanated from Pitt who, despite his resignation, captures,
abstained from attacks upon the government. Martinique was
captured ; an expedition to help the Portuguese swept the in-
vading Spaniards out of Portugal. In August the extremely
valuable island of Havana was taken, and in the next month a
British squadron which had been dispatched to the Pacific
captured Manilla and took possession of the Philippine Islands.
Bute was more anxious than ever to make peace. The English
people were not, and although at the general election in 1761
there had been a vast expenditure on bribery, and no Bute's man-
stone had been left unturned to secure the govern- agement.
ment a majority in the House of Commons, Bute was still doubtful
of carrying the Chamber with him. With the populace Bute
was violently unpopular, partly as the adversary of Pitt, partly
because he was a Scotsman, partly because his intimacy with
the princess dowager gave rise to scandalous nimours which
were without any real foundation. A violent and scurrilous
warfare was waged in the press, which was heavily subsidised by
both sides. Neither Pitt nor Newcastle was to be won over by
any sort of bribe, but Bute succeeded in purchasing the services
of Henry Fox, who was given the leadership of the House of
Commons in place of Grenville, who with all his faults was not
to be made an instrument of corruption. Fox had no such
scruples, and a majority for peace was secured. In November
peace preliminaries were signed.
France and Spain had learnt that the continuation of the war
meant merely that the Spanish colonial possessions would fall
254 The Decisive Struggle
a prey to the f tyrant of the seas.' If Prussia was exhausted,
so also was Austria, and it was now certain that the Tsarina,
1763 The though she might not actually support Frederick,
Peace of Paris, would not revert to Elizabeth's policy. All that
February. Great Britain would demand on Frederick's behalf
was that the French should withdraw from the German terri-
tories of which they were in occupation. In fact, to Great
Britain the peace was a tremendous triumph. It is true that
she could have very well demanded and obtained much more
than she claimed, since as matters stood it was obvious that the
longer the war went on the greater would be her acquisitions.
Still, magnanimity on the part of a triumphant victor is a sound
policy, provided that it is recognised as magnanimity. Unfor-
tunately in this particular case it was quite obvious that mag-
nanimity was not its characteristic ; that the government did
not claim more, because they were afraid to claim more.
When the Peace of Paris was signed at the beginning of 1763
the prizes of Great Britain were magnificent enough. India was
Terms of hers ; there the French were to have nothing but
the peace. trading stations, no posts which could be turned
into bases for political or military 'activity. Canada was hers ;
France had no footing on the North American continent except
in Louisiana, and she resigned Louisiana itself to Spain by way
of compensation for the loss of Florida which Spain surrendered
in exchange for Havana. Minorca, the only territory captured
from her during the war, was restored in exchange for Belleisle.
Senegal in Africa, and four West Indian islands, all of which
she had conquered, remained in her possession. Yet, if conquest
gives a title to possession, Great Britain was entitled to a great
deal more, which she surrendered without claiming anything in
return. She restored Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Santa Lucia
in the West Indies, and Goree in Africa. She conceded the fishing
rights in Newfoundland, which were to remain a source of trouble
and friction until the end of the nineteenth century. She re-
stored the trading stations in India, which according to the
theories of the time was at least unwise from the commercial
point of view. And finally, she restored the Philippines to Spain,
Bute 255
although the Spanish intervention had been a piece of wholly
unwarrantable aggression, and she did so without claiming any
compensation at all. If Bute and Bedford, who was at this time
his strongest ally in the pursuit of peace at any price, had had their
way, still more would have been surrendered ; but even in the new
cabinet there were members who refused to go all lengths.
A few days after the signing of the Treaty of Paris, Frederick
signed with Austria the Treaty of Hubertsburg. He had won
that for which he had fought. He had retained the Peace of
whole of the territory of which he had been in pos- Hubertsburg.
session when the war began. Upon that fact the government
rested its extravagant pretence that he was indebted to their
successful diplomacy. As a matter of fact, British diplomacy
had done for him practically nothing.
The peace was glorious only in the sense that the war had been
so triumphant, its fruits had been so immense, that it was im-
possible to avoid retaining the most substantial of what Great
its gains. What the diplomacy of the government Britain lost,
did was to give up as much as it dared ; to make manifest that
it did so from no creditable motives ; to leave France, rankling
under the consciousness of defeat in the field, hankering to recover
her losses and to take vengeance on the victor, and yet taking
to herself a modified consolation out of her success in snatching
from the clutches of an unscrupulous and grasping foe enough
to prove that her own superiority in the arts of diplomacy had
not deserted her. As for Prussia, Frederick never forgot what
he regarded as his ally's perfidious desertion. The Peace of
Paris confirmed Great Britain in the possession of the empire
of East and West which Pitt had won for her. It left her also
without a single state on the Continent which did not look upon
her with unfriendly eyes, save only Portugal. She had wantonly
thrown away the friendship of Prussia, she had failed to conciliate
France or Spain or Austria. The gain that the peace had brought
was the mighty work of Pitt which Bute could not undo ; for
all that it failed to do, for all the positive harm that it did, the
responsibility lay with the government which had thrust Pitt
on one side.
CHAPTER VI. THE ERA
I. THE TIME-SPIRIT
THE age of rationalism came in with the Restoration. The
ebullient paganism, the irrepressible delight in sheer human
The Restora- energy, in life and strength and beauty which gave
tionEra. birth to the mighty Elizabethan poetry, had long
passed away. Its emotional forces had been first absorbed in
the struggle between the passion of loyalty and the passion for
freedom, or in the religious and moral fervour of Puritanism.
With the Restoration came the reaction. Emotional fervour
was exhausted ; every kind of idealism lost its power of inspira-
tion. Puritanism became formalism, appropriated by the un-
cultured. The new generation produced no heroic figures, no
Eliot and no Strafford, no Montrose and no Cromwell. If it
had produced them it would not have known what to do with
them. It was tired of tense emotions, though it could work
itself up into fits of wild excitement. But as through the period
of storm and stress men had been guided by their hearts much
more than by their heads, in the new era they were guided by
their heads, not by their hearts. Reason displaced feeling.
The change was favourable to scientific progress, to the develop-
ment of criticism, of analysis, of a standard of style in prose
and in verse ; but it was destructive of all poetry founded
upon the deeper emotions, of all drama which penetrates behind
the superficialities. It reduced tragedy to rhetoric, and it gave
rise to a comedy unmatched in the intellectual quality of wit,
but almost devoid of the sympathetic and emotional quality of
humour, and unreal because it was not only irresponsibly un-
moral, but was deliberately antagonistic to the root principles
of morality.
256
The Time- Sp irit 257
The extravagance of the reaction worked itself out approxi-
mately by the end of the century The drama of King William's
reign was essentially the drama of the Restoration, The new
as the early Jacobean drama was essentially Eliza- century,
bethan. It did not survive the attack of Jeremy Collier,
because Puritanism, itself exhausted, no longer excited active
hostility, and the public was recovering its moral balance. The
literature of the stage after Anne's accession was not indeed
distinguished by any very elevated standard, but it became at
least less aggressively indecent, though it must be admitted that
at the same time it lost most of its pungency.
The viciousness of the drama, however, had not been in any
way an essential part of the new rationalism, since there is
assuredly no contradiction between reason and morality. It
was merely a by-product of the collision between Rationalism
and Puritanism. Throughout the greater part of the eighteenth
century rationalism continued to prevail over idealism, the
critical over the creative spirit. Dryden, who died The literary
in 1700, was very soon succeeded by Pope. When kings.
Pope died, in 1744, Johnson's ponderous foot was already on the
lower rung of the ladder by which he was to rise to the position
of literary autocrat. Each in the eyes of his contemporaries
was the first of living poets, however posterity may cavil at
bestowing that title upon any one of them. Widely as they
differed, the literary work of all the three had the common
characteristic that its appeal was directed not to the emotions,
but to the brains of the cultured public. But lyric poetry must
appeal to the emotions, as also must the drama, though that does
not of course preclude them from an intellectual appeal as well.
Appealing only to the intellect, or at the most to emotions which
are not vital, the poets of the new era could be neither great
dramatists nor great lyrists ; nor, for the same reason, could
they produce great epics. When modern criticism denies to
them the title of poets, the underlying assumption is that verse
must be either lyrical or dramatic — that it must, in short, be
emotional — in order to qualify as poetry. Setting aside Johnson
as being the leading figure in the second part of the century,
Innes's Eng. Hist. — Vol. in. R
258 The Era
this hypothesis entirely disqualifies Pope, and almost but not
altogether disqualifies Dryden. And the same criticism applies
to all but a very small proportion of the output of English verse
between the English and the French Revolutions.
Now whether Dryden and Pope are to be recognised as poets
or not really depends on our definition of the term ' poetry.' If
Concerning the material in which they wrought was not the
poetry. material of poetry at all, their works were not poems.
If, on the other hand, a consummate master of versification, even
within limited forms, is entitled to the name of poet, both Dryden
and Pope were great poets, because within the limits which they
set themselves they were unsurpassed as artists in verse. Each
in his own way perfected verse as an instrument for expressing
what he sought to express. But what they both aimed at, what
all the verse- writers with few exceptions, ' the mob of gentlemen
who wrote with ease/ aimed at, was not emotional but intel-
lectual expression ; and this was the fundamental characteristic
of the age of reason. Hence poetry was almost confined to the
satiric and didactic fields which in one view do not fall within
the poetic area ; or to what we understand by minor poetry,
which may be charming, tender, graceful, humorous, witty, but
never great, because it concerns itself only with the things
which are superficial and accidental, not fundamental and
essential.
As a satirist in English verse Pope stands second only to
Dryden ; his mastery of his instrument was so consummate
The Augustan that the extremely shallow didactics of the Essay on
A&e- Man passed muster as profound philosophy. When
he turned to minor verse, he achieved that masterpiece in dainty
mock-heroics, the Rape of the Lock. In his perfections and in
his limitations he summed up the characteristics of the English
Augustan age, or at least of cultured society in that age. It
could play delightfully. It could think in epigrams. It could
feel and it could sting superficially. But it was superficial in
everything. Too shallow for a vital sincerity, it mistook arti-
ficiality for art and conventions for fundamental principles, a
neat antithesis for an eternal verity, manners for morals. It was
The Time-Spirit 259
a society which could not produce poetry in the deeper sense,
because it was a society which neither had nor wished to have
ideals. Yet the Augustan age was not undeserving of its name.
It was an age in which a Maecenas and a Horace, or, if we extend
the limits of the Augustan era in Rome, a Cicero, a Tacitus, or a
Juvenal, would have found themselves entirely at home ; an age
of critical culture such as that which produced the best Roman
literature, though not of inspiration, such as those which gave
birth to the Athenian dramatists or the Elizabethans.
The unheroic character of the time is most conspicuous in the
political field. Very few men were ready to die for any Cause
imaginable. Half the Whigs were in correspondence its improved
with the Stuart court, and very few Jacobites were tone-
willing to take the risks of their convictions. It was the same
lack of strenuousness which pervaded literature. Nevertheless,
the downward course which had accompanied the reaction of
the Restoration was stayed. Literature was directed into cleaner
channels. Morality raised its head again, and was no longer
treated as an object of contempt. Addison and Steele engaged
themselves upon the side of virtue. Corruption had not reached
the heart of the nation. Even the comedies of Congreve and
Wycherley painted a society which took its tone from the court
of Charles II., and was becoming less debauched when Mary and
William were on the throne. The improvement was still more
marked in the reign of Queen Anne, and the society pictured in
the pages of the Spectator is something very different from the
society of the Restoration dramatists. The Tatter and the
Spectator set a new mode, and proved that literary accomplish-
ment need not be monopolised by indecency ; that it was pos-
sible to be clean and wholesome without loss of intellectual
quality. The court of the German sovereigns who succeeded
Queen Anne was as destitute of morality in the narrower use of
that term as the court of the Merry Monarch himself ; but its
depravity was not equally contagious because it was conspicu-
ously vulgar and unintellectual. Under its influence society
grew coarser, but the coarseness of vice repelled the intellectual
elements.
260 The Era
If an age which is rationalistic, an age which is anti-emotional,
is hostile to the production of great poetry because great poetry
Prose. is in its nature emotional, that does not preclude it
from being great in prose. Dryden has been called the creator
of English prose ; there were masters of individual prose styles
before him, but he was the first who set a style. Of Addison it
has been said that every one who desires to write English should
give days and nights to the study of the Spectator. Steele and
Addison between them created the short essay. Pamphleteering
was elevated into a fine art by Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift.
In the hands of Dryden and Addison literary criticism achieved
a like development. Defoe and Swift created prose fiction of
which Bunyan had been in some sort the unconscious precursor ;
and Addison, in the ' De Coverley ' papers in the Spectator,
suggested the novel of character.
The work of Addison and Steele belongs to the reign of Queen
Anne, in which appeared also Defoe's Shortest Way with the
The masters. Dissenters and some exceedingly characteristic work
of Swift's — the Tale of a Tub, the Battle of the Books, with sundry
extremely effective onslaughts upon the Whigs and Marlborough
and their conduct of the war. The star of Pope arose, and,
before the reign was over, he had published the opening of the
translation of the Iliad, which established itself as an English
classic, but was accurately and finally placed by the great scholar
Richard Bentley — ' A very pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but you
mustn't call it Homer.' But Pope lived and continued to write,
a recognised king of English letters, for thirty years after Queen
Defoe. Anne's death. Defoe struck a new field and began
his astonishing production of fiction with the immortal Robinson
Crusoe in 1719, when he was not far short of sixty. No man
has ever surpassed that great writer in his extraordinary capacity
for giving to inventions the appearance of convincing records of
personal experience. The Journal of the Plague Year would
carry with it an absolute conviction that it was a record of what
Defoe had seen with his eyes and heard with his ears, had it not
been an ascertained fact that at the time of the appalling visita-
tion he was not six years old. Hardly less convincing is the
The Time- Spirit 261
Memoirs of a Cavalier. Unlike these two, Moll Flanders was
avowed fiction ; but it is as realistic as the pencil of Hogarth,
whose work first attracted public attention after the accession
of George n. — the first of her sons whom England can claim as a
great painter. Swift again proved himself the most terrific of
pamphleteers with the Drapier Letters in 1724. Two years later
came Gulliver's Travels, which have achieved an extraordinary
and unique position as at once a scathing satire upon humanity
and a nursery classic.
The adventures of Gulliver can scarcely be classified as a
novel, though they are a triumphant and prodigious achieve-
ment in fiction. Defoe's novels found no imitators. The
But from 1740 onwards, the novel definitely took novelists,
its place as one of the recognised forms of English literature.
Samuel Richardson, a bookseller, led the way with the publica-
tion of Pamela in 1740. Like Addison, the good bookseller
desired to make his appeal to the fair sex at least as much as to
men, and to do so primarily as a moralist, but with fiction as
his medium. Pamela and its successors, Clarissa Harlowe and
Sir Charles Grandison, achieved a vast popularity which is to
be accounted for by the supreme inanity and wearisomeness
of the only fiction which had hitherto been available for feminine
perusal. Richardson's novels were exceedingly prolix ; Clarissa
appeared in eight volumes and Sir Charles Grandison in six ;
from a modern point of view, that is, they are ponderous and
tedious, sentimental and aggressively didactic ; but in Clarissa,
at least, the portrayal of the heroine's character is a piece
of work deserving of the highest praise, and it was hardly
possible to be prolix enough for condemnation by a genera-
tion which remembered the Grand Cyrus. It was not, how-
ever, the merits, but the weaknesses of Pamela which inspired
Henry Fielding to write Joseph Andrews, and to employ the
novel for the masterly delineation of every aspect of society
from the highest to the lowest that came within his very
wide ken, with a virile fidelity and gigantic humour which
entitle him to be regarded as the true progenitor of the
English novel. Six years later, in 1748, came Tobias Smollett's
262 The Era
Roderick Random, and in 1760 the Tristram Shandy of Laurence
Sterne.
Pope forged for the versemakers of his day fetters which they
were for the most part willing enough to wear. A very mild rebel
Hints of the was James Thomson, the author of The Seasons
romantic. an(j of The Castle of Indolence, who refused to be
bound by the couplet, employed blank verse and the Spenserian
stanza, and was a genuine lover and observer of nature. Not
till almost the middle of the century did the Odes of William
Collins and Thomas Gray appear to prove that in England the
lyric spirit still lived, though in the latter at least in very academic
guise. Spontaneity had been driven almost out of existence
by cultivation, regulation, refinement upon refinement, until
wholly artificial canons had made it seem impossible that any-
thing springing from a natural impulse should at the same time
be artistic. Only in Scotland there persisted that appreciation
of the homely and familiar which, wedded to musical language
and quite spontaneous in expression, is the peculiar heritage
of Scottish song, and reached its consummation in Robert Burns
only when Johnson himself was dead, and Pope had been more
than forty years in his grave. But the recognised men of letters
were not the authors of those songs, though the poetry of the
Scot James Thomson had more of nature in it than the work
of his English contemporaries. Scottish song for the most part
was born of the soil, and never got into print unless it was cap-
tured and edited by the bookseller Allan Ramsay, or actually
written by him.
In the Church, too, rationalism conquered. Toleration was a
part of the political creed of William of Orange and the Whigs.
The Church. Whenever the Whigs were in the ascendent, the
episcopal sees were filled with latitudinarian bishops who re-
pudiated the high ecclesiastical doctrine which produced the
non-jurors, and was inextricably involved with legitimism and
Jacobitism. Like the moderates of the Scottish kirk, the lati-
tudinarians in England contented themselves with preaching
what in Scotland was termed a ' cauld morality,' basing it upon
human reason and enlightened self-interest, which lacked the
The Time- Spirit 263
motive force both of Puritanism and of Anglo-Catholicism.
However reasonable it might be, it was not inspiring, and was
wholly unspiritual and wholly unsatisfying. As the political
materialism which was concentrated in the person of Walpole
would have ended by killing the national life had it not been
inspired anew by William Pitt, the materialism of the Church
would have destroyed religious faith had it not also derived a
new inspiration from John Wesley.
At the outset of his career a High Churchman of a pronounced
type, strict in the observation of ceremonies, given to fasting
and ascetic practices, Wesley founded at Oxford, John Wesley,
where he held a fellowship at Lincoln College, a small society of
devotees who were the objects of very general ridicule. But it
was not till he was five-and-thirty years of age that, in 1738, he
was seized with that passionate conviction of sin and of assured
salvation through the sacrifice of Christ which is called conver-
sion. From that moment he began his career as a preacher.
His conversion had been only just preceded by that of his
younger brother Charles, and of Whitefield. There was no in-
tention of secession from the Church, but the intensely emotional
preaching which was the product of an intense religious emotion
was surprising and disturbing alike to the rationalism and the
formalism, to say nothing of the indifferentism, in which the
Church was then hidebound. The name of Methodist, originally
attached in derision to Wesley's Oxford Society, was appro-
priated to the group of preachers who renewed the appeal to
the emotions of their audiences and insisted passionately upon
the immediate personal relation between the individual soul
and the God who had created it and had given His Son to die
for its salvation. Orthodoxy closed pulpit after pulpit to them,
though in their doctrine there was nothing which contradicted
the formularies of the Church. In 1739 they found a solution in
the beginning of field-preaching, and of the establishment of
chapels of their own which were not intended to displace the
churches, but in effect to provide themselves with pulpits since
the parish pulpits were closed to them. In the field-preaching,
the moving spirit was Whitefield. The Wesleys were both
264 The Era
reluctant, but when they appealed for guidance to the drawing
of lots after scriptural precedent, the lot cecided them in favour
The new of the new departure. Ultimately the irreconcila-
influence. bility of the Wesleyan methods with the system
of the Established Church caused complete separation. The
extravagance of their emotional appeal was repellent to most
cultured minds ; but their influence upon the uncultured classes
was enormous, and was indirectly felt even among the cultivated.
With all that there was of grotesqueness and of extravagant
superstition mingled in the movement, it is no exaggeration to
say that the Wesleys made religion once more a vital force in
the life of the English people.
The faith which moves mountains is altogether different from,
though it may be associated with, a reasoned belief, the intelligent
Reason in acceptance of particular dogmas. Rational belief
religion. js an affair of the head, not of the heart, a walking
by sight not by faith. Faith, however, may be paralysed by
intellectual difficulties, and the clergy of the eighteenth century
were not on the whole unsuccessful in their generation in their
efforts to reconcile orthodoxy with the claims of human reason.
They failed indeed to treat the Christian creed as being much
more than a tenable formula, but more than this can hardly be
demanded of the application of reason to religion. In the field
Scientific of scientific and philosophic inquiry, however, an
progress. age dominated by rationalism is likely to be active.
The scientific advance at the close of the seventeenth century
almost amounted to a revolution ; but its greatest strides were
made just before the accession of William in., when the Prin-
cipia of Isaac Newton was given to the world, and Boyle was
laying the foundations of modern chemistry. Still, after Newton,
though a vast amount of invaluable work was done, the period
was not distinguished by further great generalisations in the
field of natural science ; nor was it till the second half of the
century that scientific inquiry was directed to those extremely
practical applications which brought about the industrial revolu-
tion and the enormous development of manufacture.
At the same time, those studies which are covered generally
The Time- Spirit 265
by such terms as philosophy or mental and moral science re-
ceived much attention. Locke's Essay on the Human Under-
standing may be called the starting-point of the The phiioso-
peculiarly English school, as his Treatise on Govern- pkers.
ment formulated the political theory of the British constitution
after the Revolution. The third Lord Shaftesbury propounded
his doctrine of a ' moral sense ' in man. While Anne was on
the throne George Berkeley, afterwards Bishop of Cloyne, made
the most remarkable of English or Irish contributions to phil-
osophy with the publication in 1709 of his New Theory of Vision,
with a charm of style not commonly associated with abstruse
reasoning. Berkeley's Idealism is further developed in his later
works, most notably perhaps in his Alciphron (1732). Both
Berkeley and his great successor, Bishop Butler, directed their
arguments to a great extent to the refutation of the Deists and
the defence of the supernatural character of Christianity as a
revealed religion. This in particular was the aim of Butler's
Analogy. But the importance of Berkeley in the history of
philosophy, and of Butler in the special branch of ethics, is not
essentially bound up with this particular controversy. Butler,
like his contemporary Hutcheson, and Shaftesbury before him,
dwelt in his Sermons upon disinterested and benevolent impulses
as motives to moral conduct, in opposition to the school deriving
from Hobbes which reduced all morality to an enlightened self-
interest.
In the history of philosophy/ however, it may be questioned
whether the first place among British writers, at least before
the second half of the nineteenth century, should David Hume,
be given to the Irishman Berkeley, or to the Scot David Hume,
whose views were first enunciated in his Treatise of Hitman
Nature, which he described as ' An attempt to introduce the
experimental method of reasoning into moral subj ects. ' Portions
of this work, which fell almost flat on its publication, were after-
wards developed in the Enquiry concerning the Human Under-
standing and the Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals.
Hume, if any one person can claim the title, was the founder
of the doctrine of the Association of Ideas ; and in ethics was
266 The Era
the true begetter of the utilitarian philosophy, although the
phrase most intimately connected therewith, ' the greatest
happiness of the greatest number/ appears to have been coined
by Hutcheson.
In another field also, Hume occupied a position of the first
rank. Before him there had been English chroniclers of con-
temporary events and compilers of chronicles of past events,
and Sir Walter Raleigh had embarked upon a history of the
world. But with the exception of Clarendon and his History
of the Great Rebellion there had in effect been no other historian
in the larger sense of the term, and Clarendon's history dealt
only with the period of his own lifetime. Hume was the first who
approached the writing of the history of England in the philo-
sophic spirit, the first of the great British historians. The six
volumes of his History of England, issued between 1754 and
1761, were written from a point of view strongly favourable to
monarchism, and at a time long before the modern unearthing and
collating of invaluable records ; which have completely destroyed
the authority of his work, but not his value as a classic nor his
title to rank as one of the greatest of British historians as well
as the first.
Finally, we may observe that during this period, letter-writing,
like pamphleteering, was developed as a fine art ; the most dis-
Letters and tinguished practitioners of which were perhaps Lady
memoirs. Mary Wortley Montague, Lord Chesterfield, and the
inimitable trifler, Horace Walpole, whose memoirs also, with
those of Lord Hervey, gave a complete picture of the court, the
politicians, and the polite society, under the first two kings of
the house of Hanover
II. TRADE, INDUSTRY, AND AGRICULTURE
The note of the era which we are now reviewing was its lack
of idealism and of enthusiasms ; but its devotion to material
Material interests helped to make it one of very general
prosperity. material prosperity. Although the country was at
war in one half of the seventy-five years which it covers, its
Trade, Industry, and Agriculture 267
tangible wealth was enormously increased, especially in com-
parison with that of other nations. At the moment of the
accession of William of Orange, the volume of Dutch trade still
perhaps exceeded that of Great Britain. At the moment of the
Peace of Paris British trade had entirely distanced that of every
competitor. In every British war France was no less deeply
engaged, and in nearly all both Spain and Holland, as well as
the rest of the Netherlands. The effect in every case was the
transference to Great Britain of a portion of the trade of her
rivals, because, whenever war was going on, her command of
the seas tended to give her the monopoly of oceanic trade. How-
ever severely her commerce might be raided, the commerce of
France and Spain suffered more, and that of Holland not less ;
while the strain of the endless struggle so exhausted Holland
that she had already fallen far behind by the time of the Treaty
of Utrecht, and was without the power of recuperation. The
conspicuous proof of the country's wealth lies in the simple fact
that almost without effort she bore the strain of the war-taxes,
and was able at the same time to provide her allies with sub-
sidies without which they could not have continued the struggle.
During these three generations Great Britain became the mart
of the world ; after the lapse of another generation she was
rapidly becoming its workshop as well.
As yet, however, she was not making rapid strides as a manu-
facturing nation. There was some multiplication and exten-
sion of minor industries, partly the outcome of the g^g^t in_
Huguenot immigration due to the persecuting policy crease of
of Louis xiv. in France. But wool and woollen manufactures-
goods were still her staple home products for export. Even the
growing cotton trade was kept in check by burdens of legislation
imposed for the benefit of the woollen trade, which feared the
displacement of woollen by cotton goods. The carrying trade
tended more and more to fall into her hands with the expansion
of her marine ; but perhaps the main source of her increasing
wealth was the fact that she was the channel through which the
products of Asia and America reached the markets of Europe.
The great expansion of manufacture awaited the invention of
268 The Era
machinery driven by power, that is, by some other agency than
the muscles of men or animals.
Industry in the first half of the eighteenth century presents
very much the same characteristics as in the seventeenth.
Earlier Under the old mediaeval system trade had been
industrial confined practically to a limited number of large
regulation. towns, where it was subject to regulation and
supervision by the gilds, because in mediaeval society it appeared
at least that regulation and supervision were conditions necessary
to security. Membership of a gild was a condition without
which no one could practise a trade independently within those
areas where it was in effect possible to practise a trade at all.
The old system had begun to give way when increased security,
and the accumulation of wealth which could be borrowed or
hired for trading purposes, made it possible for traders to set
up for themselves outside the regulated areas, in places where
they could work in freedom from the gild restrictions. The
Elizabethan Statute of Apprentices preserved the ring-fence
which encircled a number of trades by forbidding anybody
anywhere to set up as a master on his own account until he had
served his apprenticeship, and by fixing a sort of property quali-
fication as a condition of apprenticeship. But practically the
Development businesses of spinning and weaving became open ;
of spinning and in the course of the seventeenth century most
and weaving. cottages had their spinning-wheel, and most farms
their loom, which materially added to the income of the cottar
and the yeoman, in greater or less proportion according to their
nearness or distance from the great marts. In other words, the
spinning and weaving industries did not involve the congrega-
tion of the workers in the large towns. The stage had been
reached when competition took the place of regulation for
ensuring the quality of work ; bad work and inferior goods
meant loss of employment and custom; it was not necessary
to the consumer's protection that the quality of the particular
goods provided should be secured by official supervision. On
the other hand, it had not yet become necessary to collect the
workers together in spots where power for driving machinery
Trade, Industry, and Agriculture 269
was readily procurable ; because with rare exceptions no other
power than that of the worker's muscles was brought into play,
and his own machine could be planted by his own hearth. The
spinning and weaving were for the most part either by-occupa-
tions of the cottar or the yeoman or copyholder, or else in suit-
able neighbourhoods they employed most of his time, his agri-
cultural occupations forming his by-employment. This, how-
ever, applied mainly to wool and woollens ; the colonies of
Huguenot silk-weavers, for instance, being engaged exclusively
in that particular trade.
The process of enclosure, of the appropriation of common
lands and the conversion of arable land into sheep-runs, had
practically come to an end in the sixteenth century. The open
In the seventeenth century there had been very field-
little improvement in the processes of agriculture. More than
half the land under cultivation was still worked on the old open-
field system, which, though modified, had not been very materially
altered since before the Norman Conquest. The farmer, that
is, did not occupy a continuous holding of so many acres in
extent which he cultivated according to the best of his judg-
ment. His holding consisted of a number of strips of land, not
contiguous, but mixed up with the strips of a dozen other holders,
all of whom sowed the same crops at the same time, in the same
section of land. Enclosure in one of its forms had meant that
landlords made it their business by exchange or purchase, or
by less justifiable methods, to secure for themselves contiguous
strips so as to get substantial contiguous areas which they could
treat after their own fashion, whether for cultivation or for
pasture. But the open fields were controlled by common work,
and every one, whether he liked it or not, was obliged to do as
his neighbour did. The system involved much wastage of time
and labour, and was perfectly calculated to throttle enterprise
of any kind. Outside the area of the land thus under regular
cultivation were the common lands, where the occupiers of the
estate had rights of common, and the cottar could take up a
very small plot for his own cultivation. Within the cultivated
area the system still prevailed which divided it into three
270 The Era
portions, each of which was left fallow every third year after
having carried succeeding crops of wheat and barley in the two
The small- previous years. The yeoman, copyholder, or small
holder. tenant-at-will, who occupied his few acres, could
extract from them little more than a bare subsistence, since,
even if he would, he could not have turned them to the
best account, and was preserved from penury through the by-
employments with which he supplemented his farm work. But
as a net result, though he could save little without extreme
economy, he made what was on the whole a reasonably com-
fortable living.
In the eighteenth century, however, agricultural improve-
ments were introduced by enterprising landlords who paid
Enterprise attention to the improvement of the soil, to manur-
and ing and draining, and the development of the culti-
enciosure. Vation of roots and grasses; notable among them
being Lord Townshend, who acquired the nickname of ' Turnip
Townshend ' on that account. Still the average cultivator would
not be beguiled from the ancient ways, and the yeoman who had
it in him io be enterprising was still forced along the beaten
track by his conservative neighbours. Enterprise was possible
only to the landlord ; and once again landlords became anxious
to increase the amount of land under their own management,
whereby they could render it profitable from their own point
of view, besides benefiting the community at large by making
it more productive. Year by year during the first half of the
century occasional Enclosure Acts were passed whereby con-
siderable additions were made to the areas under their direct
control, while a like process was carried on without the interven-
tion of legislation by the method of private bargaining with
occupiers, and holders of rights of common. But the second
period of active enclosure, which transformed the whole face of
agricultural England, did not set in with vigour until George in.
was on the throne, even as the Industrial Revolution which
created a new England of towns and workshops belongs to that
reign.
But while the reigns of the two first Georges gave presages
Trade, Industry, and Agriculture 271
of the approaching rural revolution, they were also not wholly
without presages of the coming Industrial Revolution, in which
coal, iron, and mechanical invention were to be the iron
great factors. The iron industry was in its infancy ; and c°ke-
only those iron-fields were worked which were within easy reach
of the wooded districts where charcoal could be obtained for
smelting. But before the middle of the century the Darbies had
discovered and applied at Coalbrookdale a method of employing
coke for blast furnaces which promised to supersede the use of
charcoal ; and an immense advance was made with the coke blast
furnace, employing water-power, invented by James Smeaton,
and adopted at the Carron ironworks, near Stirling, in 1760.
Hitherto the agency of natural forces had scarcely been
employed as driving power, except for the grinding of corn by
windmills and watermills instead of handmills. The possibilities
of steam had only been so far discovered and utilised as to be
applied somewhat ineffectively and at great cost to pumping in
mines. Even less possible would it have been to predict the future
of electricity, though that was already engaging attention. But
a step was made towards increasing production in the industry
of weaving with John Kay's invention of the fly- The fly-
shuttle, patented in 1733. At that date the allied shuttle,
industry of spinning had outgrown weaving in its productive
speed ; that is to say, the spinners were producing yarn faster
than the weavers could work it up. The fly-shuttle was a
machine which enabled a single weaver to work a double width
of cloth, and thus to double his output. This began the race
between spinning and weaving, since obviously the next step
was to discover some means by which the spinner should be
able to meet the increased demand for yarn. Although the
spinning- jenny of James Hargreaves, which multi- The
plied the individual spinner's power of production spinning-
eightfold, was not invented till 1764, it still belongs jenny-
to the earlier rather than the later era, because like the fly-shuttle
it was worked by hand, not by power. It was only when
the control of water and steam was achieved and applied to the
service of man that the Industrial Revolution really came to birth.
272 The Era
Down to the middle of the eighteenth century, then, no very
marked change had taken place in the face of the country.
Town and Slowly no doubt the town population was growing
country. relatively to that of the rural districts. At the
beginning of the century only one-fifth of the entire population
was urban ; at the end it had risen to one-third ; but the change
in the last quarter of the century was rapid, and in 1760 the rural
population must still have been more than three-fourths of the
whole. The Elizabethan Poor Law had certainly tended to
prevent the migration of labour from one district to another.
Poor Law. The Restoration Law of Settlement had increased
the difficulty of movement, and with one exception this was the
only material modification that had taken place since the acces-
sion of the Stuarts. The man who could find no employment in
his own neighbourhood and set out to find another neighbourhood
where his labour would be in demand, might be and generally
was, by the authority of the law, sent back to his own parish or
hundred, because the new parish in which he attempted to settle
declined to be responsible for him as for one of its own poor. The
one other modification referred to is the Workhouse Act of
1723, when some further provision was made for finding work for
the unemployed. The inevitable danger of providing relief for
workhouses, the destitute, without attaching conditions, is that
of pauperising the people — supplying, that is, an inducement to
the idle to prefer dependence on charity to honest work. The
law of 1723 ensured relief to the destitute, but only on condition
of their entering the parish workhouse, where they were given
work to do if they were capable of doing it. The abolition of
out-relief relieved the poor rate, and offered no attractions to
the wilfully idle ; but, on the other hand, the conditions caused
a stigma to attach to the receipt of poor relief which led numbers
of those who would have been in every respect proper objects
of such relief to endure any privation in preference to ' coming
on the parish.' Here again there was a revolution approaching,
entirely pernicious in its character ; though the intentions of
its perpetrators were wholly benevolent.
CHAPTER VII. GEORGE III. AND THE WHIGS
I. THE SITUATION IN 1763
GEORGE in. from the moment of his accession had before his
eyes one supreme object, to ' be a king ' — to recover for the
Crown effective supremacy in the State. All the The king's
questions which arose, until that object seemed to aim<
have been gained by the formation of Lord North's ministry,
were judged by him from that single point of view according to
their bearing upon that single aim. The obvious old methods
of attempting to over-ride or defy the will of parliament by the
exercise of the royal prerogative were out of date ; the time
when it had been possible to dream of employing them with
success had long gone by ; no one, whether an autocratic minister
or the king himself, could hope to govern unless he could rely
upon a parliamentary majority. It was necessary therefore for
the king to acquire in the House of Commons a secure majority
which should be at his own beck and call. To attain this end
he had to create a party of his own, for which a nucleus was to
be found in the old Tories who for half a century had been
entirely excluded from political power, discredited by their
association with Jacobitism. That association had come to
an end, and the Tory could with a clear conscience, for the
first time since 1688, apply to the king who was now on the
throne the sentiment of loyalty which could no longer attach
itself to the ' king over the water.1 The Tory element, however,
did not suffice for the king's purpose ; it was not strong enough
to provide a majority, or to break up the Whig connection —
which was the first condition of success.
The existing system in effect placed the control of parliament-
ary majorities in the hands of a few Whig families. Even the
Jnnes's Eng. Hist.— Vol. m. S
274 George III. and the Whigs
counties were to some extent dominated by the influence of
Whig magnates ; in a large number of boroughs the represen-
The Whig tatives were the nominees of a Whig magnate;
oligarchy. m others the electors were practically the town
council, since there was no uniform franchise ; and there were
many town councils which were quite prepared to sell a seat to
the highest bidder — who might be either a wealthy individual
ambitious of parliamentary honours, or a candidate backed by
party magnates with long purses. As long as the great Whig
families held together, they could control the votes in a sufficient
number of constituencies to be sure of a parliamentary majority.
The great Whig families were held together by sharing the spoils
of office, and it was by lavish expenditure and judiciously directed
patronage that Newcastle had made his own alliance necessary
to any one who sought to conduct the government.
Now George might have attacked the system itself ; and he
might have done so in alliance with Pitt, to whom the system
The king, was an abomination. It was only by sheer intel-
the system, lectual and moral ascendency in quite abnormal
and Pitt. circumstances, and by making terms with the
system itself, that the great minister had attained to effective
power in the State. The system had for a long time kept him
out of power, made it impossible for the man of genius who
could not control votes to reach a dominant position But
George did not want to substitute a permanent Pitt dictatorship
for the Whig system ; he wanted to be the controlling power
himself. It had already been proved that the system was too
strong for Pitt himself to be able to ignore it, and it would have
proved too strong to be ignored by a coalition of Pitt and the
king. If the system was to be got rid of at all, it must either
be through a reform which cut at the roots of it by reforming
the franchise and making the members of the House of Commons
the real representatives of a free electorate, or else by break-
ing up the Whig connection ; in which case the system would
probably only re-emerge in a new form. Pitt clearly had the
idea of a reform of representation ; but again, what the king
wanted was not a parliament which expressed the will of a free
The Situation in 1763 275
electorate instead of the will of a coalition of magnates, but a
parliament which would take its orders from the Crown. He
looked, therefore, to the breaking of the Whig connection and
the re-emergence of the system as an instrument in his own
hands ; and in this second part of his scheme, at least, he could
not hope for Pitt's co-operation.
Hence it was in the first instance his wish to break up the
Whig connection without employing Pitt, and hence again
Bute's first effort was directed to the overthrow of Breaking
Pitt, and to the detachment of Pitt's personal up the
following from the great Whig coalition. The connection-
second blow was struck with the fall of Newcastle, the head-
centre of the system. The Whig party was thrown into a state
of complete disintegration ; and out of this disintegration the
king intended to construct a party of his own and a system
identical in principle with that which had been broken down,
but under his own control. The difficulties he encountered in
working out his problem provide one leading feature in the story
of the first decade of his reign. This was the struggle which in
fact controlled the fluctuations of ministries.
The second feature of the epoch is the attempt of parliament
to control the freedom of the electorate through an extravagant
interpretation of the privileges of the parliament parliament
itself. It was unfortunate that the standard-bearer and the
of freedom should in this case have been not a publlc-
Hampden nor an Eliot, but a person so disreputable that it was
really difficult for decent persons to associate themselves with
him even in a just cause, difficult to persuade decent people
that a cause could be just which had so disreputable a champion.
The cause, in fact, was bound to win in the long run ; important
though the victory was, the strife attracted a wholly dispropor-
tionate amount of public interest ; disproportionate because
there were other questions demanding solution, problems vitally
affecting the British empire, which demanded the most careful
attention, the most deeply considered treatment ; whereas the
attention they received was casual and intermittent, and their
treatment was reckless and haphazard.
276 George III. and the Whigs
These problems lay outside the island of Great Britain. The
first, of very old standing, was presented by Ireland, always
The greater neglected in England until it reached such a pitch
problems. of disturbance as to compel some perfunctory
attention. Next, a very new one, was the problem of India,
a problem whose existence had hardly as yet been realised. To
India must be added Canada, where happily the tact and ability
of the successive governors, General James Murray and Sir
Guy Carleton, gained the loyalty of the French inhabitants in
spite of ill-advised and ill-considered instructions from London.
Ireland, India, and Canada affected the course of events and
of politics in England so little that we shall treat of them separ-
ately. The third problem, that of foreign relations, will demand
only incidental mention, since Great Britain in effect continued
to tread that path of isolation to which Bute had directed her
steps. The fourth, the biggest of all the problems, the one
most fraught with pressing difficulties, the one which demanded
at once the most delicate handling, the most thorough analysis,
the keenest insight, and the sanest judgment, was the problem
of the American colonies, which forced itself upon the politicians
at Westminster at every turn, and at nearly every turn was
signally mismanaged. Since it is thus inextricably bound up
with the account of those issues which have been referred to as
the two first of the leading features of the period treated in this
chapter, we must begin by attempting to elucidate the character
of the problem itself.
In earlier chapters of this work we traced the foundation and
multiplication of the colonies on the North American seaboard
The thirteen until they numbered thirteen, from the four colonies
colonies. on the north forming the New England group to
Georgia on the south. Akin to the New England group was
the next group of four, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania,
and Delaware. The five southern colonies, Maryland, Virginia,
North and South Carolina, and Georgia, are to be distinguished
from the eight northern colonies as the Plantation group, the
area of great landed estates devoted largely to the growing of
tobacco, cotton, or other produce, chiefly for export, and culti-
The Situation in 1763 277
vated mainly by slave labour, chiefly of negroes, partly of
convicts. Every colony or state was for ordinary purposes self-
governing, having an elected assembly, and a governor and an
administrative council which had not yet become responsible
to the legislature to such an extent as was by this time the case
in Great Britain. The governor's powers of intervention were
regarded in the colonies with a resentment of the same kind as
that which had been inspired by the exercise of royal prerogative
under the Stuarts in contravention to the will of parliament.
Further, we observe that the landed gentry of the Plantation
colonies had the general character of a landed aristocracy,
extremely tenacious of its own rights, and not abnormally con-
siderate of obligations to other communities or other classes in
its own community. In the northern colonies, on the other
hand, mainly of Puritan foundation, more industrial, more
mercantile, more democratic in their original structure, the
atmosphere was that of Puritan middle-class democracy, rather
than that of landed aristocracy.
Broadly speaking, Great Britain adopted towards her colonies
an attitude different from that of any other foreign state. To
the Spaniard, colonies were Crown property ; to the mother
French and Dutch they were assets of the State, country and
controlled by the State, for the benefit of the State, colonies-
with only a practically necessary minimum of management left
in the hands of the colonists themselves or of their commercial
directors at home. The British colony, on the other hand, was
left in the main to take care of itself, to develop its own prosperity,
and to fight its own battles, always provided that its interests did
not clash with those of the mother country ; that if the interests
of the two did clash those of the colony must give way completely.
The mother country did not claim a right in ordinary circum-
stances of exploiting colonies for her own benefit, but she treated
it as a matter of course that, wherever a question of conflicting
interests arose, the mother country dictated the answer to the
question.
The particular form in which the mother country found it
convenient to legislate for her own interests against the interests
278 George III. and the Whigs
of the colonies was that of commercial regulation. Until the
restoration of Charles n. in 1660 colonial trading was almost
Trade unrestricted. But when the Commonwealth Navi-
regulation. gation Act was modified at the Restoration, new
limitations were imposed. The Commonwealth Navigation Act
had restricted the carrying trade to British (including colonial)
ships, and the ships of the country in which the imports were
produced ; the object being to encourage British shipping. But
at the Restoration direct trade between the colonies and foreign
countries was forbidden ; they had to import from England or
at least by way of England, and to export to England. In
practice, though not in set terms, the carrying trade was mon-
opolised by English shippers. Duties were imposed at the
American ports in the interests of the British mercantile com-
munity— the ' English ' community until 1707, and after 1707
' British/ not in the full imperial sense, but in the restricted sense
applied to the island of Great Britain. The colonists were also
forbidden to manufacture for themselves sundry classes of
goods with which the English producers wished to supply them.
By this system of trade regulation, directed in the interests of
the mother country, the colonial trade was somewhat hampered,
and would have been seriously fettered if British governments,
notably that of Walpole, had not been intentionally lax in the
enforcement of the law. An immense contraband trade was
deliberately allowed to grow up ; the front doors were officially
bolted and barred, but the back doors were left on the latch.
Walpole's attitude had been simply the reflection of his attitude
to Nonconformity. He wanted to foster and expand the trade
of the colonies ; he regarded the regulations as being in them-
selves a mistake, but he knew that their removal would create
an outcry in the British mercantile community ; and therefore
instead of removing them he went as far as he could in the
direction of suffering their evasion. Nor did it occur to his
immediate successors to depart from that characteristic policy.
The colonies then had a common theoretical grievance.
Their self-government was liable to be interfered with by
governors whom they had not themselves chosen, although
The Situation in 1763 279
such interference was unusual. Their trade was restricted by
laws which the mother country had imposed in her own interests,
although those laws were enforced with laxity. Reasonof
But there were two facts which had hitherto colonial ac-
restrained the colonies from determined protest. <luie8cence-
First, the mutual jealousies of the separate communities pro-
hibited any effective combined action on their part. In the
second place, and partly on account of the said jealousies, the
colonists were dependent upon the mother country for defence
against French aggression. They could not afford to quarrel
with her, because if the French government intervened actively
to support the pretensions of the French colonies — while the
French colonists had the power of France behind them — the
British colonists needed at their own backs the counteracting
power of Great Britain and the British navy ; the more because
their mutual jealousies prevented them from concerting common
measures of defence, as was conspicuously demonstrated in
1754, when Franklin's federation scheme fell through.
But the situation was completely changed by the Seven
Years' War. The French had no longer a foothold in the North
America continent ; in the eyes of the colonials, a A changed
French menace no longer existed; they no longer situation,
required British fleets and regiments. But the old grievances
were there unmodified ; not pressing upon them acutely, but
present, although the old reasons for submitting to them had
vanished. On the other hand, there was a lively sense of in-
debtedness to the mother country, and especially to William
Pitt. The changed conditions called for a readjustment of the
old relations, and it should have been the business of a wise
statesmanship in England to utilise the sentiment of gratitude
in basing a readjustment upon the spirit of mutual sympathy.
Unhappily, the task fell not to the sympathetic statesman whom
the Americans enthusiastically admired, but in the first instance
to a political pedant entirely devoid of sympathetic imagination.
280 George III. and the Whigs
II. THE GRENVILLE AND ROCKINGHAM MINISTRIES,
1763-1766
Although Pitt on his retirement had patriotically abstained
from hampering the government, he denounced the Peace of
1763. Paris in parliament with uncompromising vigour.
Bute. The peace was extremely unpopular, both because
so much had been given up that might have been legitimately
secured, and because, at least in some quarters, there was a sense
that the government's treatment of the king of Prussia had been
distinctly discreditable. The other proceedings of the adminis-
tration did not counterbalance the hostile sentiment evoked
by the peace. In parliament, Bute was master of the situation ;
his majorities were secured. The principle of party vindictive-
ness was applied with unparalleled effrontery and universality.
Leading Whig noblemen on the Opposition side were deprived
of their dignified offices. From Newcastle himself down to
mere excisemen, there was a general clearance of every one who
had received a place by favour of the Whig ministers. Vin-
dictiveness, as always, bred vindictiveness and irreconcilability.
Bute had filled up his ministry with incompetent persons ;
perhaps the most incompetent was the chancellor of the ex-
The cider chequer, Sir Francis Dashwood, who raised a loan
tax. . upon terms by which supporters of the ministry
pocketed more than ten per cent, of the whole amount. To
provide revenue, he succeeded in imposing a tax of four shillings
a hogshead upon cider, to be levied by way of excise. There was
no justification for selecting one particular branch of industry
to be the victim of taxation ; the cider districts were infuriated,
and the popular indignation was excited by the application of
the detested excise in an aggravated form. Bute found the
position too intolerable; he hoped that by being
succeeded toy out of office he might cease to be the object of
Grenviiie, popular execration, while still retaining the control
of the administration in his own hands. He re-
signed, accompanied by Dashwood, having arranged that George
Grenviiie should be at the head of the administration as first
The Grenville and Rockingham Ministries 281
lord of the treasury and chancellor of the exchequer. He was
under the mistaken impression that he would find Grenville a
pliant tool, as well as an indubitably capable official. Bedford,
though even more responsible than Bute for the Peace of Paris,
was personally hostile to the favourite and declined to join the
cabinet. In April parliament was prorogued, the king in his
speech, which was of course put in his mouth by ministers,
having dwelt chiefly upon the glories of the peace, and with
supreme audacity claimed credit for the benefits secured by
the king of Prussia.
John Wilkes, the member for Aylesbury, was a clever libertine,
an adventurer with a passion for notoriety, who had adopted
journalism as a means to the gratification of his Number
craving. Having no particular principles he had forty-five,
adopted the popular side, and issued a paper of his own called
the North Briton, mainly devoted to scurrilous attacks upon
the Scots in general, and upon Bute in particular. Immedi-
ately after the prorogation of parliament the forty-fifth number
of the North Briton appeared. It contained a virulent attack
upon the king's speech, which it charged in effect with making
gross and scandalous misstatements. Every one knew that
the king's ministers, not the king personally, were responsible
for the words put into the king's mouth, but George took the
accusation as a personal insult to himself, and required ministers
to prosecute the offender. Halifax, one of the secretaries of
state, issued a general warrant which, without giving names,
ordered the arrest of the author, publishers, and printers con-
cerned with the production of the obnoxious pamphlet. Under
the warrant more than forty persons were arrested, including
Wilkes himself, on the publisher's statement that he was the
author. His papers were seized and he himself was sent to the
Tower. His ally Lord Temple was refused permission to see the
prisoner. On a writ of habeas corpus, however, he was brought
before Justice Pratt, Chief Justice of the Common justice
Pleas. Pratt pronounced that as a member of p*att.
parliament Wilkes was by privilege of parliament immune from
an action which could only be brought upon a charge of treason,
282 George III. and the Wkigs
felony, or breach of the peace, none of which could be imputed
to No. 45. Wilkes was set at liberty, amid popular demon-
strations. Pratt pronounced that although precedents existed,
general warrants were illegal. Several of the persons arrested
brought actions against the persons who had arrested them, and
recovered heavy damages. Wilkes himself brought actions
against the two secretaries of state ; but one of them, Egremont,
died, and the other, Halifax, discovered and employed legal
methods for deferring the hearing of the action indefinitely.
Wilkes proceeded to issue a reprint of No. 45.
Before parliament met again in November the ministry had
undergone some reconstruction. In fact, it was not strong
enough for George's purposes. He acceded to what
Grenviiie was perhaps Bute's suggestion that Pitt should be
ministry, invited to join the ministry, but Pitt would not come
back without some at least of his old colleagues.
The negotiations broke down, and George turned to Bedford,
who was not eager for office, but was piqued by the information
that one of the conditions put forward by Pitt had been that
neither Bedford nor any one else responsible for the peace should
be admitted. Bedford in turn made it a condition that Bute
should not only hold no office, but should withdraw from the
capital. Galling though this condition was, it was accepted ;
and the Grenviiie ministry became in September the Bedford
ministry. Lord Shelburne, originally introduced by Bute,
retired to attach himself to Pitt, and the new ministry was dis-
credited by the admission of the earl of Sandwich — a capable
administrator, but a notoriously depraved character who had
formerly been associated with Dashwood and with Wilkes in a
flagrantly profligate society known as the Medmenham Brother-
hood.
Parliament had no sooner assembled than the attack upon
Wilkes was renewed. It was opened in the Lords by Sandwich,
Renewed wno produced a profane and obscene paper, written
attack on by Wilkes and dedicated to himself in the days of
Wilkes. tkeir jntimacV) entitled An Essay on Woman, a
parody or burlesque of Pope's Essay on Man, and of the notes
The Grenville and Rockingham Ministries 283
thereon which had been written by Bishop Warburton. The
thing had been printed only for private circulation, not for
publication at all ; nobody could possibly imagine that Sandwich
had been actuated by any care for the public morals in informing
against his brother of Medmenham. But the use which had
been made of Bishop Warburton's name made it possible, with
a violent strain, to pretend that the essay was a breach of the
privileges of the House of Lords. On that basis the Lords
petitioned the Crown to command the prosecution of Wilkes.
On the same day the Commons voted, first, that No. 45 was a
false and seditious libel which should be burnt by the common
hangman ; and, secondly, that privilege of parliament did not
protect the author. Pitt, who denounced Wilkes himself in
the strongest terms, opposed no less strongly the
abrogation of privilege. The House, usually exceed- wilkes
ingly jealous of its own privileges, was ready to sink outlawed,
them in order to punish Wilkes. Wilkes retired to
Paris, having fought a duel with another member in which he
was himself wounded ; and when summoned to the bar of the
House sent a medical certificate to show that he could not
attend. The Commons declined to accept the certificate, and on
iQth January pronounced his expulsion. The Court of King's
Bench convicted him for the republication of the ' seditious libel/
and, as he was not present to receive sentence, declared him an
outlaw.
So closed the first act in the drama of 'Wilkes and liberty.'
The action of the government had been in plain terms a vindic-
tive attempt to prevent free speech and free criticism, Government
excusable only on the plea that the particular criti- vindictive-
cism had been particularly offensive. By bringing ness'
in the entirely irrelevant Essay on Woman at the instance of a
minister whose morals were notoriously no better than Wilkes's
own, they conclusively showed that they were actuated not by
a sense of public duty, but by exasperation and a desire for
vengeance. And in order to remove any possibility of a doubt
that these were their real motives, they proceeded to penalise
those of their ordinary supporters who had voted against them
284 George III. and the Whigs
on the Wilkes question. General Conway and Colonel Barre
were deprived of their commands. The Wilkes quarrel was by
no means trivial in itself. Freedom of speech, freedom of
criticism, freedom from the pretence that governments may over-
ride the law, as in the case of general warrants, whenever circum-
stances make it convenient to them, are essential to any form
of government which is not fundamentally despotic. The affair
of Wilkes created an amount of excitement which was super-
fluous only because the ultimate outcome of the contest was in
fact a foregone conclusion. Very different was the next contest
in which the government found itself engaged.
The enormous expenditure on the war, the expansion of the
National Debt, and the depletion of the treasury, inspired the
1763 in economists with the alarm which had made the
search of Peace of Paris possible. Bute's ministry, in its
search for new sources of revenue, had even been
reduced to inventing the unpopular cider tax. George Gren-
ville's pathetic entreaties that the House would ' tell me where '
else a tax could be imposed had elicited from Pitt the sarcastic
murmur, ' Gentle shepherd, tell me where/ which had affixed
to the minister the nickname of the ' Gentle Shepherd.' But if
Grenville had failed for the time to discover a substitute for the
tax upon cider, he and his colleagues at least lighted upon an
existing source of revenue which had been sadly neglected. If
the revenue laws were properly enforced in America it appeared
that something substantial would probably be realised. Steps
American were taken to put a stop to the contraband traffic,
contraband, to ensure that the goods landed in America paid
their proper toll ; and to this end the vessels of His Majesty's
navy were employed to supplement and strengthen the normal
preventive service. It was all quite legal ; but it was extremely
annoying to large numbers of worthy citizens in the colonies
who had been accustomed to take for granted that the laws
against contraband traffic were only intended to be partially
observed, and might be profitably broken with an easy con-
science, provided the thing were not done too ostentatiously, by
persons who were otherwise irreproachably law-abiding.
The Grenville and Rockingham Ministries 285
Ministers in England were troubling their minds with the
' Gentle Shepherd's ' question, unhampered by fears of causing
irritation in remote dependencies ; just as they had
1,1 • .. j- • xi •/ T * • * T, The colonies
ignored the irritation in the cider districts. It should help
presented itself to the mind of George Grenville to Pay for
that reason and equity demanded that the colonists,
who were the chief gainers by the great war, should pay their
share of the expenses. The argument was quite sound ; the
rivalries of the British and French colonists had been the prin-
cipal cause of the war, which had put an end to the French rivalry
and left the field clear to the colonists, while nearly the whole
of the cost had fallen upon the mother country. It was a clear
indisputable fact that the colonies were under a moral obligation
to make a substantial contribution. Still there was an item in
the account which was left out of the reckoning. The overthrow
of the French was, after all, not a gratuitous service to the
colonies. It was in the nature of a return, a compensation for
the subordination of the political liberties and the commercial
interests of the colonies to the political authority and the com-
mercial interests of Great Britain. The balance of debt was,
after all, not so heavily in favour of Great Britain as it appeared
on the Grenville balance-sheet.
The colonies, then, were under this moral obligation. In a
corrupt world, moral obligations materialised in pounds, shillings,
and pence are apt to dwindle down. A man of The appeal
another temper than George Grenville might have to sentiment
dreamed of making a stirring appeal to colonial dlsearded-
gratitude, to the warmth of sentiment which had been aroused,
to the generosity of a generous people who had been generously
helped without thought of reward. But Grenville did not trust
in American generosity, and there were substantial reasons for
distrusting it. Such an appeal would have to be made to the
states individually ; every state might respond warmly in words,
but each one would probably ask at once to what extent its
neighbours intended to respond in cash. Each one would con-
sider that its neighbours were under a heavier obligation than
itself. Each would adapt its views of handsome behaviour to a
286 George III. and the Whigs
criterion fixed by some one else. Massachusetts would see no
reason why it should contribute more than Carolina; the Carolinas
would see no reason why they should be expected to contribute
so much as Massachusetts. George Grenville conceived that the
ultimate response to an appeal for contributions of which the
amount should be assessed by the colonists themselves would
be meagre.
Yet money must be obtained from the colonists. Not only
did they owe a debt for the past, but it was necessary to con-
Ground for tinue the expenditure on their behalf. It was true
the demand, that the French had been beaten out of America,
but they would certainly try to get back there. The Indians,
too, were threatening to become a more serious menace. The
colonists had already proved their own incapacity for under-
taking their own defence ; the time had come when it was
necessary to establish an imperial standing army in America.
The colonists were not at all likely to see the necessity, and
would certainly offer no voluntary contributions for its main-
tenance. Their argument was obvious. The subordination of
colonial to home interests was the standing equivalent for what-
ever protection the British might extend to the Americans.
Grenville's most fatal blunder was his assumption that that
subordination was not a quid pro quo, something for which the
colonists were entitled to an equivalent, but a condition in-
herent in the relation between mother country and colonies.
Dismissing the idea of voluntary contribution, Grenville con-
ceived that he could legally enforce contribution by way of
taxation. And again within the strict letter of the
1764. TciXci-
tiontobe law he was right. All the colonies were estab-
imposedfor h'shed under charters; under all the charters the
Crown retained the power of taxing the colony.
The power had never been exercised with the object of raising
revenue ; according to the technical distinction, all the imposts
laid upon the colonies had been exacted not to raise revenue, but
by way of regulation of trade ; just as in the old days the im-
position of Customs in England had been treated not as a means
of raising revenue for the Crown, but as a part of the royal
The Grenville and Rockingham Ministries 287
prerogative of regulating trade. Walpole had once been urged
to provide revenue by taxing America, but that shrewd states-
man had been far too wary. The wealth that would accrue to
Great Britain from the development of colonial trade and the
colonial market was in his eyes worth a great deal more than
any sums which could be collected in the way of taxation. Nor
was it in his eyes politic to arouse a spirit of hostility which it
would not be easy subsequently to allay.
Grenville forgot the prudence of Walpole. The law permitted
the taxation of the Americans ; the law therefore should be
utilised for that purpose. Some fresh imposts were ordered
to be levied at the ports in 1764. It was also pro- 1765. The
posed to impose a stamp tax ; to require, that is, stamp Act.
that all legal documents should have a government stamp affixed
to them, the price varying according to the nature of the instru-
ment. On this proposal, however, the colonists were invited
to express opinions, and to suggest any alternative method of
raising the money required which appeared to them adequate ;
meanwhile, for a year the scheme was to be held in suspense.
Benjamin Franklin, who was resident in London as agent for
sundry colonies, discouraged the scheme, though he could suggest
no alternative but an invitation to the colonists for voluntary
contributions. No other satisfactory suggestion was forth-
coming, and in March 1765 the Stamp Act was passed without
a division of the House of Lords, and by a sweeping majority in
the House of Commons. Hardly any one appears to have attached
any significance to it in England ; although Barre delivered an
impassioned protest against it in the Commons, introducing a
reference to the Americans as the ' Sons of Liberty,' which after-
wards became a catchword.
In America the affair did not appear to be so trivial. Law
and precedent together had made it extremely difficult to protest
against impositions enforced for the regulation of .
trade. The new impositions might be warranted without
by law, but from precedent at least they had no representa-
support. In practice taxation was a new thing —
the term taxation having the specific meaning of impositions
288 George III. and the Whigs
for revenue purposes. In this sense the old impositions had
not been taxes ; whereas it had been carefully explained that
the new impositions were taxes. The most flagrantly unpre-
cedented of them was the Stamp Tax, because it was doubly
unprecedented; it was not only a tax, but an inland tax.
Hitherto there had been no inland impositions ; those that had
been levied were levied at the ports. In Walpole's day the British
public had fallen into a frenzy because the minister proposed
to extend inland taxation, and used the name of excise. So now
the irritation, long latent but recently roused anew by the
vigilant suppression of smuggling, received a fresh incentive.
The Americans found new burdens hitherto unheard of being
laid upon them ; in amount trivial enough, but in principle,
from the American point of view, monstrous. Was it not a
fundamental principle of British liberties proclaimed by the
Bill of Rights, resting upon the Petition of Right, based upon
Magna Charta itself, that there should be no taxation without
representation ? Yet a parliament in which America was un-
represented was imposing taxation upon America. No tech-
nical appeal to charters and laws could override a fundamental
principle of the constitution. At last Grenville had given the
old grievance a shape which supplied the Americans with a
handle.
The trouble was immensely aggravated by a factor of which
it is difficult for us to realise the importance — the remoteness
Mutual °f the colonies. Wolfe's dispatches from Quebec
ignorance. had taken six weeks to reach London. A naval
squadron, unimpeded by transports, had taken eleven weeks to
reach the American seaboard ; though this was noted as an
abnormally long time. When three months elapsed between
the writing of a letter and the receipt of the answer, there was
time enough for the answer to have become quite out of date
and inappropriate. This was a definite practical difficulty of a
kind easily ignored by a generation to which the telegraph has
become a matter of course. But apart from this, America a
hundred and fifty years ago was further oif than New Zealand
to-day, more difficult to visit, less known by personal observa-
The Grenville and Rockingham Ministries 289
tion, and infinitely less familiar through the press. When we
consider how little the average Englishman knows even now
about Australasia, how few people would probably give a correct
reply off-hand if asked to name the capitals of New Zealand,
New South Wales, Queensland, and Victoria, we may be the less
surprised at the portentous ignorance of the colonies which pre-
vailed in Great Britain — when the information that Cape Breton
was an island could come upon ?„ prime minister with the charm
of a new discovery. A sea voyage in the eighteenth century was
not to be undertaken even by the wealthiest as a mere pleasure
trip. Even in the twentieth century mutual misunderstand-
ings are fostered by distance ; in the eighteenth century the
difficulty of reconciling such misunderstandings was a hundred-
fold greater.
The immediate purpose of the Stamp Act was to provide for
the proposed standing army of ten thousand men. It was
followed up as a matter of course by the extension American
of the Mutiny Act in America, with the require- anger.
ment that the colonies themselves should provide quarters for
the troops. The Act was to come into operation in November.
The colonists were extremely angry ; the more so because their
opinion on the proposals had been asked only to be ignored.
The lead in the opposition was taken by Boston, the capital of
Massachusetts, the chief of the New England group. Massa-
chusetts was hit the hardest by the suppression of contraband
traffic. It was the headquarters also of the Puritan tradition
which prided itself on its passion for political liberty. The
town's meeting at Boston passed a resolution that parliament
had no right to tax the colonies without their consent. The
Assembly followed the example of the town's meeting, and gave
the lead to five other colonies which petitioned against the tax.
In the Virginian Assembly Patrick Henry made allusions to
Charles I., obviously containing an adroitly veiled menace.
On the initiative of Massachusetts, representatives from each
colony were invited to attend a general congress which assembled
at New York in November ; nine of the thirteen colonies were
represented, and the rest sent sympathetic messages. The
Innes's Eng. Hist. — Vol. in. T
290 George III. and the Whigs
congress passed addresses to the King, to the Lords, and to the
Commons, declaring their loyalty, but protesting against the
A colonial Act. Outside these strictly constitutional methods,
congress, but still within the letter of the law, associations
November. were forme(j to enljst the sympathies of the British
mercantile community by threatening its pockets. No British
goods were to be bought ; the Americans would wear out their
old clothes or array themselves in homespun ; they would
Non-im- make for themselves what they had hitherto pur-
portation chased from British makers, or would go without,
agreements. Demonstrations, however, were naturally not con-
fined to the law-abiding. Rioters destroyed government build-
ings and government property ; officials who had been appointed
to distribute the stamps declined or resigned office, conscious that
if they did not do so they would be subjected to mob violence.
When the stamps themselves arrived, they were seized and were
nearly all destroyed. The British parliament had made its law,
but obviously the enforcement of it was to prove more than
difficult. So much at least the Americans had demonstrated
before the end of 1765.
Meanwhile, however, changes had been taking place in England.
The formation of the Bedford administration, at the end of 1763,
The king and nacl by no means given the king what he wanted.
Grenvilie. it was true that the old Whig combination was
broken up, and that he had got nominees of his own and of
Bute into the ministry ; but at the head of it were Bedford and
Grenvilie, its indispensable members, and they, not the king, were
masters of the situation. It was not that Grenvilie differed
materially from the king in his views of policy, but that he took
upon himself to lecture the king at every turn, and generally
treated his royal master in the same spirit of tactless pedantry
which made him so impracticable and exasperating in his other
political relations. George chafed under the burden.
The climax arrived in 1765. At the beginning of the year the
king fell ill, showing symptoms of that mental derangement by
which the later years of his life were overshadowed. He
recovered, but the event made him anxious to make due pro-
The Grenville and Rockingham Ministries 291
vision for the government in case of his incapacitation or death.
He had married in 1761, and he had an infant son and heir ; it
did not seem sufficient to assume that in such circum- The Regency
stances his consort would become regent ; conse- Bm-
quently a bill was prepared which was to limit the choice of a
regent to members of the ' royal family.' The question arose
whether this included the king's mother, the dowager Princess
of Wales, or only the queen and persons who stood in the line of
succession as descendants of George n. Ministers conceived that
if the Princess of Wales should become regent Bute's ascendency
would be restored, which was the last thing they desired. They
wished, therefore, to exclude the princess from the list of persons
eligible for the regency, and they obtained George's assent to the
omission of her name by warning him that if it were included the
House of Commons would certainly make matters a great deal
worse by formally striking it out. The Lords passed the bill
with the name omitted ; whereupon the Commons expressly
inserted it. It was made to appear that George had wished to
exclude his mother, against the wishes of the Commons.
George was furious, and appealed to his uncle the duke of
Cumberland for help. Cumberland proposed to apply to Pitt.
Pitt was prepared to form an administration on Failure of
terms which would have been accepted; but un- appeals to
fortunately he had made up his mind that he would ]
not take office without Temple. Temple declined, and the whole
negotiation fell through. Cumberland could find no one to under-
take the business ; and the king was forced again to subject
himself to Grenville and Bedford on their own terms. In their
triumph they adopted towards him an attitude so intolerably
overbearing that he appealed to Pitt once more ; the appeal
failed for the same reason as before, and George found himself
with no alternatives save utter subjection to Bedford and Gren-
ville, or an official reconciliation with that Whig ' connection '
which it had been his primary political object to defeat.
So in the middle of July a Whig administration was formed under
the leadership of the marquess of Rockingham. Rockingham and
the duke of Grafton, who took one of the secretaryships, were
292 George II L and the Whigs
still young men without administrative experience — gentlemen,
sportsmen, politicians only from a sense of duty. Newcastle now
brought little strength with him ; General Conway
Rockingham had no rea-l force of character ; there were, in fact,
ministry, no true elements of efficiency in the whole group,
although behind Rockingham there was the genius
of his private secretary, Edmund Burke. The ministry was well-
meaning, entirely honest, not without common sense, but alto-
gether unimpressive; and no one was more alive to its weak-
ness than its own members, all of whom would have hailed the
accession of Pitt to their numbers with unfeigned satisfaction.
Under his leadership they might well have made a great adminis-
tration ; but without a convincing leader they were doomed to
only a brief tenure of power. They had been brought into the
position by Cumberland ; and at the end of October Cumberland
died. As Whigs of the ' connection ' George disliked and dis-
trusted them; and the few 'King's Friends,' followers of his
own who had been included in the ministry, were really a hostile
and embarrassing element among them.
Parliament did not meet again for business until January 1766.
So far no active steps had been taken for dealing with the trouble
in America ; but ministers had learnt that Pitt was
Repeal of entirely opposed to the enforcement of the Stamp
the stamp Act, and consequently they had resolved on its
repeal. Pitt was at no pains to conceal the small
account in which he held the members of the new government,
but he gave them their cue. The home government had full
authority to legislate for the colonies, but it had no right to tax
them. From outside parliament, petitions against the Stamp
Act were pouring in from the merchants of the great towns whose
market in America was closed, and whose customers in America
were withholding payment of their debts. Rockingham an-
nounced that the king was in favour of the repeal of the Stamp
Act ; the King's Friends put it about that the king was opposed
to repeal. Rockingham, who had spoken in perfect good faith,
on the strength of George's own words, sought an explanation
from the king, who said that he was opposed to repeal, though a
The Grenville and Rockingham Ministries 293
repeal would be better than simple enforcement. What he wanted
was modification. The ministers, however, went through with
the bill for the repeal of the Stamp Act ; but accompanied it by
a formal Declaratory Act asserting the legal power The
of the British parliament to impose taxation on the Declaratory
colonies. Pitt opposed the Declaratory Act, because ct'
he regarded any such taxation as unconstitutional, on the ground
that the colonies were not represented. At the present day the
meaning which is apt to be attached to the word representation
is by no means the same as that attached to it a century and a
half ago. The phrase ' No taxation without representation ' is
now generally used as if it meant that only persons endowed
with the franchise may legitimately be taxed. In 1765, only a
fraction of the population of the British Isles enjoyed the fran-
chise; but both Pitt and Burke, the two most powerful and
uncompromising advocates of the constitutional The question
doctrine, would have claimed without hesitation ofrepre-
that the members of parliament represented the l
masses as well as the electors. Even this form, however, of
indirect representation was wanting to the American colonists.
On Chatham's principle, no constitutional means could exist for
compelling the colonies to contribute to the imperial revenue
unless they sent representatives to Westminster. There were
not wanting theoretical advocates of the inclusion of members
for the colonies in the House of Commons. But when we observe
that even at the present day one of the obstructions to all schemes
of imperial federation is to be found precisely in the difficulty
of retaining in one centre for parliamentary purposes repre-
sentatives from the overseas dominions, and realise also how
very much less difficult it would be to-day than in the days
when George in. was king, the impracticability of such a solution
at that time becomes convincing. The plain truth was that
imperial obligations could not be enforced upon the colonies
without ignoring the maxims on which the principles of political
liberty had been formulated in Great Britain. The real truth,
that the general principle holds good though the formula is not
universally applicable, was really implied in the course taken
294 George III. and the Whigs
by the government, of asserting the actual power of taxation as
a right that could not be resigned, even at the moment of pro-
nouncing that no such emergency had arisen as would alone
warrant its exercise.
The repeal of the Act was accompanied by general rejoicings
both in America and in England. But the harm had been done.
Failure of The whole principle of British control had really
the repeal. been dragged into the arena. Before Grenville's
unfortunate measure, the practice which rested upon unbroken
precedent would have been extremely difficult to challenge ;
now it invited investigation, criticism, repudiation. The repeal
of the Stamp Act very soon lost the colour of a generous concession
to sentiment, and was regarded in America as a victory, a con-
cession wrung from the reluctant mother country, really because
she did not dare to refuse it. The Declaratory Act merely meant
that she would return to the attack whenever she felt it safe to
do so. It is true that if the British parliament had continued
to act in the spirit of the Rockinghams, the train which had been
kindled might possibly have been quenched. But when a little
later the British parliament deliberately provided fresh fuel, the
good that had been done by the Rockinghams was distorted into
evil.
Weak as the ministry was, its measures were continued upon
sound lines. The question of general warrants was practically
settled. The cider tax was repealed. Walpole's
End of the
Kockingham principles were applied to the recognised imposts
ministry, a^ the American ports, and a large reduction of
duties diverted a great quantity of the contraband
trade into legitimate channels, so that the customs receipts were
greatly increased. Still the government was conscious of its
own weakness, conscious of Pitt's hostility and the king's. It
became known that Pitt was ready to take office without Temple,
but also that he would insist on a reconstruction which would
involve Rockingham's resignation. Rockingham wanted Pitt
as an ally, but did not choose to retire in his favour ; and in this
he was supported by several of his colleagues. Others, includ-
ing Grafton and Conway, were ready to sacrifice Rockingham
The Graf ton Ministry 295
to Pitt. In July the disintegration of the cabinet had gone so
far that the king no longer hesitated, and he invited Pitt to form
a new administration.
III. THE GRAFTON MINISTRY, 1766-1770
The hopes which had centred in the Great Commoner were
destined to be grievously disappointed. Pitt's opportunity had
come for forming a government which ignored
party ties and connections. Edmund Burke de- The new
scribed the result in his great speech on American ministry,
taxation delivered some years later. There were
Whigs of the Rockingham connection, personal followers of
Pitt, King's Friends ; men who had been scarcely on speaking
terms with each other, men who were united by no common
principles whatever. The group which remained definitely
outside was the Bedford, together with one section of the Rock-
inghams. There was a general disposition to submit to Pitt's
leadership, since every one knew that he was a giant amongst
pigmies. But even pigmies dislike an ostentatious insistence
upon differences of stature. Pitt was naturally arrogant and
overbearing in manner, contemptuous of lesser men, the most
difficult of colleagues. His natural deficiencies of temper and
tact were aggravated by his sufferings from gout, which later
prostrated him so completely that he became unable even to dis-
cuss business of any sort, however imperative. His great popular
power had always been based upon the public con- The earl
viction that he was entirely disinterested, a belief of Chatham,
fully warranted by his refusal in the days when he was pay-
master-general to appropriate the immense perquisites which,
according to universal practice, fell to the holder of that office ;
yet his hold on the popular imagination had been slightly
weakened when he accepted a title for his wife, though not for
himself, on his retirement from office ; and now his popularity
suffered a serious blow when it was announced that he had
accepted for himself the earldom of Chatham, and could no
longer be idolised as the Great Commoner. Hitherto his strength
296 George III. and the Whigs
had lain in the mastery which his eloquence exercised over the
House of Commons ; that power vanished with his retirement
to the House of Lords. All these circumstances combined to
rob him of the supreme authority, both in parliament and with
the nation outside parliament, upon which were based the calcu-
lations of all those who had anticipated his acceptance of office
with enthusiasm. Even at a very early stage, his high-handed
ejection from office of one of the Rockingham remnant caused the
immediate resignation of those members of that section who
were not personally attached to him, including Admiral Saunders,
the able successor of Lord Anson at the Admiralty. The places
of the ministers who resigned were taken chiefly by members
of the group of King's Friends.
What Chatham might have accomplished if he had retained
his physical and intellectual powers we can only guess. What
Chatham's he intended to do we have means of judging. A
intentions. ministry under his control would assuredly have dealt
boldly and sympathetically with the grievances of the Americans.
, It is more than probable that Chatham and Clive between them
would have brought the government of the territories newly
acquired by the East India Company under the direct control
of the Crown. It is likely that he would have taken in hand
actively the Irish question, which a revival of the political spirit
hi that country was now pushing into a new prominence. It is
certain that he contemplated a reform of representation in Great
Britain, which would at least have reinforced the independent
section of the electorate by adding to the number of the county
members ; for the counties were in the pockets neither of
magnates nor of corporations. Quite certainly he would have
devoted himself to the reorganisation of a European league,
jealous of the recrudescent danger from the revived Family
Compact.
No single one of all these measures materialised in the hands
of the ministry which bore at first the name of Chatham, and
later that of the duke of Grafton. With only one of them was
Chatham able even to make a beginning. The political com-
bination which he sought to form was one of the whole group of
The Graf ton Ministry 297
the Northern powers, —Russia and Prussia, Sweden, Denmark,
and Holland. It was a combination which would have delivered
Great Britain from her isolation, and would have pr0jected
checkmated the designs of the Bourbon powers, Northern
which were now possessed with the determination Lea^ue-
to fit themselves for a renewal of the contest with Great
Britain. The scheme, however, was less obviously to the
advantage of the other European powers concerned. There
was one obstacle in the way which Pitt failed to surmount, and
which, even if he had been able to prolong his efforts, he would
probably have found insuperable. This was Bute's legacy, the
unconquerable distrust of Frederick of Prussia. In Chatham
himself Frederick had entire confidence ; for Chatham he had
the highest admiration. But he had learnt an unpleasant
lesson. Five years ago Chatham had fallen when apparently
in the zenith of his power. The result had been, from Frederick's
point of view, a flagrant desertion of her obligations Frederick
by Great Britain. The same thing might easily of Prussia,
happen again. An alliance with Chatham was one thing ; but
the adoption of a policy which was likely to leave Prussia
stranded as soon as the domination of Pitt's personality should
cease, for whatever reason, did not commend itself to Frederick.
He had no reason to fear hostility from France except on the
ground of his being an ally of Great Britain. The friend he
wanted was Catherine of Russia ; the external object on which
he was concentrating, apart from the business of recuperation
and administrative organisation, which demanded his close and
continuous attention, was the appropriation of Polish terri-
tory which isolated one part of his dominions from the rest.
A partition of Poland satisfactory both to himself and to
the Tsarina was to him a matter of greater importance than
the resuscitation of dangerous Bourbon ambitions. Frederick
rejected Chatham's overtures for a northern alliance ; and
what he refused to Chatham there was no faintest chance of
his conceding to any one else.
It is to be observed, in connection with the whole outlook in
European politics, that in 1765 the Emperor Francis, the husband
298 George I IT. and the Whigs
of Maria Theresa, died, and was succeeded in the imperial dignity
by their son Joseph II., who was now also associated with his
Joseph II. mother in the government of the direct Austrian
dominion. Joseph was a man of ambitions, an idealist, an
enthusiast with considerable intellectual endowment, to whom
the Silesian question did not appeal as it had appealed to Maria
Theresa ; consequently his appearance as a prominent actor
on the political stage very materially modified the international
antipathies and rivalries upon which continental diplomacy had
turned since the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle.
Chatham accepted office and his peerage in the summer of
1766. Before three months of 1767 had passed, his gout had
incapacitated him, and the heterogeneous ministry
Order in which he had collected was left to follow its hap-
Councii, hazard way without a leader. Before the blow
September. . „ .. , , , n f
fell there had occurred an episode of some consti-
tutional interest. At the end of September, when parliament
was not in session, the government had by its own authority
forbidden the export of corn, because two successive bad harvests
had caused a serious shortage of grain, and forced the price up
to forty-nine shillings — a rise which was accompanied by much
distress and some bread riots. There was statutory power for
imposing such an embargo when the price reached fifty-three
shillings, but not before. No one as a matter of fact had any
doubt that the prohibition of export was a necessary measure ;
but when parliament met some six weeks later it was objected
that ministers in such circumstances ought to have summoned
parliament at once, instead of acting upon their own authority.
Chatham himself took the straightforward ground that the cir-
cumstances had made immediate action imperative, without
pretending that the course taken was strictly legal. But Lord
Camden — formerly Chief- Justice Pratt — defended the govern-
ment on the extremely injudicious plea that there had been
nothing worse than ' a forty days' tyranny/ an observation
which, coming from a Whig, invited scathing comment from
the Opposition ; and the dignity and prestige of the cabinet
suffered.
The Graf I on Ministry 299
The effacement of Chatham, still the nominal chief, at the
end of March, virtually left the individual ministers to go their
own way. The old difficulty of finding sources of
revenue, the legacy of the war expenditure, was Chatham
still active. Chatham had undoubtedly expected in eclipse,
that the acquisition of Bengal could be turned to
account by the imperial treasury. His disappearance left the
control to colleagues who did not share his views, and could now
act according to their own lights. The chancellorship of the
exchequer had fallen to Charles Townshend, brilliant, witty,
personally charming, but quite without ballast. Townshend pro-
posed to raise the land tax from three shillings, at Charles
which it then stood, to four. A four-shilling land Townshend.
tax was regarded as a burden upon the land scarcely justifiable
except in actual time of war. The landed interest threw out
the money bill. Townshend at an earlier stage had boasted
that he could raise from America a revenue sufficient for the
maintenance there of the standing army. Defeated on the
question of the land tax, he proposed to make good his boast ;
and, relying upon the Rockingham Declaratory Act, imposed
customs duties at the American ports upon six articles — glass,
paper, painter's colours, red and white lead, and tea. Only the
last was of any serious commercial importance. To make the
thing the more grotesque, Townshend's arrangement would have
actually cheapened tea to the American consumer, because
while threepence was to be paid at the American The tax
port, where nothing had been paid heretofore, on tea.
there was a rebate of a shilling granted on the duty which had
to be paid at the British port, through which the tea had
to pass before it could go to America at all. If the imperial
revenue gained, it would only be on the principle, which has
often enough proved a sound one, that high duties defeat their
own object, that low duties pay better, because of the multipli-
cation of goods consequently passing through the Customs.
The American would not suffer, because he would get his tea
cheaper.
But the American would pay directly at the American port,
300 George III. and the Whigs
instead of indirectly at a British port. A tax was being imposed
upon the American at American ports for the purposes of the
American imperial revenue, and avowedly for those purposes ;
indignation. which was precisely the course of action which the
Americans had denounced as being unconstitutional, although
the Declaratory Act had taken the other point of view. It
mattered nothing that the whole revenue expected to be raised
was no more than £40,000 ; the colonists were once again given
their chance of proclaiming that the fundamental principles
of the British constitution had been violated, that when a
principle was at stake it made no difference whether the sums
involved were large or small. As long as the Declaratory Act
was to be looked upon merely as a dead letter, a formal expres-
sion of a pious opinion only intended to save the face of the
government, it had been allowed to pass. But here it was being
brought into play without even the pretence of a necessity
brought on by a grave emergency. That was sufficiently shown
by the paltry amount which the tax was expected to raise.
From the American point of view, the right of the government
at Westminster to impose the tax at all must be flatly and
uncompromisingly repudiated.
America was in a blaze of indignation at once. The latent
spirit of antagonism to the assertion of the British ascendency
Mutual in anY shape or form had not been destroyed by
irritation. the repeal of the Stamp Act ; even the overt
expressions of satisfaction had been accompanied by a stolid
resistance both in Massachusetts and in New York to the quarter-
ing there of British regiments in accordance with the Mutiny
Act. The new measures by resuscitating the constitutional
grievance prepared the way for translating the latent sentiment
into an active energy. And in England the insufficiency of the
American recognition of the concession made by the Rockinghams
was already causing a revulsion of the feeling which had at first
made the public favourably inclined towards the colonists.
Having done all the mischief he could Charles Townshend
died in November. His place as chancellor of the exchequer
was taken by Lord North (son of the earl of Guildford), a man
The Graf ton Ministry 301
who regarded it as his first duty to carry out the king's wishes.
Endowed with no great abilities and no keen insight, his kindli-
ness and good humour were entirely imperturbable,
and no amount of abuse, however shrewdly directed, succeeds
availed to penetrate his armour-plated placidity. Townshend,
It was his weakness, we are told, that his affections
over-rode his judgment, and he surrendered his own opinions
to please those persons of whom he was fond. A vain effort
had already been made by Grafton, when Chatham's incapacity
had become too painfully manifest, to strengthen the govern-
ment by a Rockingham alliance. An equally vain attempt
had been made by Rockingham to form an alliance with the
Grenville group, who saw that no partnership was possible
so long as their views and those of the Rockinghams on the
American question was flatly contradictory. Grafton was looked
upon as the recognised head of the ministry, which was slightly
modified in order to admit some members of the Bedford circle.
In America the new Act came in force in November. The
Boston merchants at once renewed their non-importation agree-
ments; and immediately after the New Year the 1768. Effects
Massachusetts assembly addressed a circular letter in America,
to the rest of the colonies emphasising the need of united action
and successfully smoothing away obstacles to co-operation. As
the year 1768 advanced the breach between mother country
and colonies was widening. Governor Bernard at Boston com-
plained that he had no authority, and could have none without
a vigorous backing from home. In New York, where the two
parties were equally balanced, the British or Tory party obtained
a temporary ascendency. In Boston there were riots, hardly
checked by the arrival of a couple of regiments in September,
although the appearance of two more in the following January
(1769) prevented further disturbances for the time.
Meanwhile, there had been a general election early in the year
in England. The government retained its solid majorities. In
the early autumn the Bedford faction procured the dismissal
of Shelburne, who, clinging to Chatham's views, was the one
active member of the cabinet who was in clear opposition to its
302 George III. and the Whigs
American policy. The cloud which had settled down upon
Chatham's powers was lifting. The administration of which
Changes in ^e was nominally the head had discarded every
the British feature of his own policy; a month after Shel-
ministry. burne's dismissal he expressed his disapproval by
resignation. In December Bedford showed how blind ministers
had become to counsels of moderation by moving for the revival
of a long obsolete statute of Henry vm. which would enable
the trial of offenders in America to be transferred to the Law
Courts in England. The proposal was only intended to frighten
the colonists ; as it was impossible to carry it out in practice, it
merely had the effect of irritating them.
Virginia and Carolina associated themselves with New York
and Massachusetts in the non-importation agreements. The
1769 The effect of those agreements on British trade was so
tea tax alone serious that the government, in 1768, attempted
retained. conciliation. Grafton, in fact, was half-hearted over
the whole business, and wished to withdraw the new taxes
altogether ; but though Camden and Conway were with him
they were outvoted in the cabinet. It was resolved that con-
ciliation should be carried to the extent of dropping five of the
six taxes and retaining that upon tea. Seeing that the number
or importance of the taxes themselves was entirely beside the
question, this astonishingly futile proposal had in the eyes of
the colonists no colour of conciliation ; it struck them merely
as a feeble attempt at a pointless compromise dictated not by
good-will but by weakness. The position was in no way
strengthened by a letter addressed to the colonies by the secre-
tary of state, Lord Hillsborough, announcing that government
did not intend to impose any further taxes for revenue. The
colonists pushed the advantage they seemed to have gained,
and again in answer to the demands of Boston the government
withdrew Governor Bernard and half the troops. The colonists
became more convinced than ever that ministers were actuated
only by their own weakness.
The plain truth was that Townshend's taxes had created an
impossible position, The Stamp Tax had been imposed in one
The Grafton Ministry 303
year, and repealed in the next without producing the impression
of an unqualified surrender. The process could not possibly be
repeated if the British government was to retain The
any show of authority at all ; while on the other dUemma.
hand, the colonies could not submit even to the least of the new
taxes without surrendering their whole case, or admitting that
they were not strong enough to stand up for their rights. No
sovereign less mighty than an Edward i. or an Elizabeth could
have given to a withdrawal in such circumstances the colour of
magnanimity, of an act of grace ; for no British ministry would
it have been possible except for one dominated by Pitt at the
zenith of his prestige. For the colonies it was equally impos-
sible to yield so long as they believed that they could make
their resistance good. The feeble attempts at conciliation could
only strengthen them in that belief.
By the summer of 1769 Chatham's health was restored. His
hostility to the ministry was obvious. Grafton, who had drifted
with his colleagues mainly from the lack of the vigour Reappear.
necessary to impose his leadership on them, found ance of
himself very much in disfavour with the great man Cnatnam*
whom it had always been his inclination to follow. Camden
and others were encouraged to a more open dissent from their
colleagues. It was not possible to form a united Opposition out
of groups so diverse as the Rockinghams and Grenvilles, with
their antagonistic views on the leading question of the day ; yet
their forces, combined with Chatham's personal following, could
render the position of the government extremely uneasy. Other
events, to be recorded below, had been taking place since the
beginning of 1768 which were still more ominous for the govern-
ment than its American troubles.
When parliament met in January 1770 it seemed extremely
probable that the ministry would be overthrown. Nevertheless,
when Chatham and Camden, himself still a member 1770
of the cabinet, opened the attack in the House of Resignation
Lords, their amendment to the address was defeated ° ra
by an overwhelming majority ; and the address itself was carried
in the Commons by almost two to one. So far as the Houses
304 George III. and the Whigs
were concerned, matters did not look as if ministers were likely
to be defeated. Grafton, however, was conscious of his own
weakness. Camden's conduct made it imperatively necessary
that he should be dismissed. His dismissal was followed by the
resignation of Granby and Dunning. Grafton could find no one
to accept the vacated chancellorship except Charles Yorke, a son
of the great Lord Chancellor Hardwicke. Yorke himself was
only pressed into the service with extreme reluctance, which was
so aggravated by the reproaches of his Rockingham associates
that his acceptance of office was followed within three days by
his death — possibly from natural causes, possibly, as popular
rumour proclaimed, by his own hand. Grafton, despairing of the
task of the cabinet reconstruction, resigned.
But George had no intention of submitting himself again to
the Rockinghams or the Grenvilles, or to Chatham, whose whole
views of the political situation were now opposed
Formation . r
of North's to his own in every respect. For some time past
administra- \^ w{\\ had really been the controlling force in the
administration ; he believed that the time had come
when he could dominate parliament altogether. He summoned
North to form a new administration. North was ready to obey
orders. The vacancies could be filled up from the King's Friends.
The parliamentary majority was under control. North became
official head of a government which took its orders from the
king. It was not long before it became evident that the king's
ten years' struggle for power had brought him a complete
victory. With no ministers of ability even approximately first-
rate, with all the richest talent of both Houses gathered in the
Opposition, the king's will guided the destinies of the country
for more than ten years disastrously but continuously, yet
always with parliament as its instrument, and with ministers
who commanded parliamentary majorities as its agents.
We must turn back, however, to review another series of events
which had been taking place during the last two years, the
revival of the contest with Wilkes and certain incidents on the
Continent. The last may be briefly dealt with. Great Britain
was too much taken up with private concerns to pay adequate
The Grafton Ministry 305
attention to what was going on in Europe. The island of
Corsica had been for some time in subjection to the Genoese.
The Corsicans revolted, sought to drive the Genoese 1769 Frencn
out of the island, and under their leader Paoli annexation
appealed to Great Britain to deliver them, offering of Corsica-
to place themselves under her dominion. Great Britain declined
the offer, and on the other hand the Genoese, finding Corsica an
exceedingly troublesome possession, ceded the island to France.
Although Admiral Saunders and Edmund Burke, the one from a
professional point of view, the other as perhaps the most clear-
sighted politician of the time, both protested with energy,
Britain allowed the transaction to pass. In 1769 Corsica became
a French possession, and Napoleon Bonaparte was born a French
subject.
The general election in the spring of 1768 brought Wilkes back
to England, to which he had only paid a brief visit since his
outlawry. Although still technically an outlaw, he 1758. Wilkes
stood for the city of London, which rejected him, redivivus.
and then for Middlesex, which returned him with a large majority.
He at once made it obvious that he intended to revive his
role of demagogue, a plan which would probably have been
quietly scotched by the grant of a free pardon and the disregard
by the government of any further advertisement on his part.
Instead of this, the government chose to give him all the adver-
tisement it could. Shortly after his election he surrendered to
his outlawry. Acclaiming mobs accompanied him to prison,
and wild riots were anticipated. Weymouth, one of the secre-
taries of state, who was almost as hostile to Wilkes as the king
himself, had the troops ready to suppress violence ; when riots
actually broke out, the troops, after being roughly handled,
fired on the mob, killing five men and wounding several more.
To the Wilkites, of course, the incident was easily represented as
a massacre. The mob's clamours for the liberation of the popular
champion were not calmed when Lord Mansfield reversed the out-
lawry on a technical point, but pronounced sentence of a heavy
fine and several months' imprisonment in respect of the charges
for not answering to which Wilkes had originally been outlawed.
Innes's Eng. Hist.— Vol. in. U
306 George III. and the Whigs
Wilkes from prison issued, with libellous comments, for public
edification, copies of the letter in which Lord Weymouth had
The instructed the magistrates to call in the military.
Middlesex When parliament met, Harrington, one of the King's
Friends, moved that Wilkes should be expelled
the House. The expulsion was carried, although it was pointed
out that it was without any justification, except the old stories
of which a new House of Commons had no business to take any
cognisance. Wilkes was promptly re-elected for Middlesex.
The House, not to be foiled, declared that the election was void,
and that Wilkes was incapable of being elected to sit in the
existing parliament. It was within the power of the House to
expel or to unseat a member, but no one had ever before professed
1769. that it could of its own will pronounce any one in-
capable of election. Logically, the vote of the House involved
the claim that a majority could forbid the election of any indi-
vidual obnoxious to it. The electors of Middlesex who had
chosen Wilkes objected to being disfranchised ; they asserted
their rights, and elected him the third time. Again the House
annulled the election, and not without difficulty a new candidate,
a Colonel Luttrell, a person of more notoriety than credit, was
induced to present himself for election. For the fourth time
Wilkes headed the poll with a huge majority ; but the House
ignored the votes which had been cast for him, and declared that
Colonel Luttrell was duly elected.
Something over a twelvemonth had been passed in the struggle,
and so far as the seat in the House was concerned the king had
Effect of won a definite victory. But both he and the govern-
the battle. ment had damaged themselves badly in the eyes of
the public ; the House of Commons itself had lost credit by its
extravagant assertion of privileges for which there was no pre-
cedent, in defiance of the rights of electors. Wilkes himself, on
the other hand, though he had lost his seat, had gained a much
greater notoriety than he would ever have achieved on the floor
of the House of Commons, and the power he was able to wield
through his unbridled pen, in the character of a victim of oppres-
sion and a champion of popular liberties, was infinitely increased.
Indian Affairs 307
Wilkes, moreover, had the satisfaction of recovering £4000
damages in the suit against Lord Halifax which had for so long
a time been successfully evaded, and his extensive debts were
paid off for him by subscribers who would never have dreamed
of spending a penny for his benefit on his own merits. The city
of London proceeded to give expression to the popular sentiment
by electing him an alderman while he was still in prison. The
third act of the play was to be played after the formation of
North's ministry.
IV. INDIAN AFFAIRS, 1760-1770
When Clive left India in February 1760 the struggle with the
French was already practically at an end. Twelve months
afterwards Pondichery itself was in British hands ; The Peace
the Peace of Paris confirmed the victory and the of Paris,
terms, which only allowed the French to retain trading stations
in India on condition of maintaining no armed force and abstain-
ing from every kind of political intervention. Except for a
brief moment, some score of years afterwards, when a French
squadron threatened to play a decisive part in the struggle
between the British and the native power of Mysore, and again
at the end of the century when Napoleon formed designs which
never materialised, though the fear of them influenced British
policy, France ceased to count as a factor in the story of
the British advance in India. But British dominion, British
ascendency even, had not as yet been established except in a
fraction of the Peninsula.
The British were indeed masters of Bengal and Behar — the
Lower Ganges basin — from a point some way below Benares to
the Bay of Bengal ; yet in that great province The British
they were without any true legal status. North position,
of the river Krishna they were in occupation of the great belt of
coast territory called the Sirkars, granted to them by the Nizam.
The nawab of the Carnatic was their puppet ; the Nizam at
Haidarabad feared but did not love them, and^ except for his
fears was quite independent of them. About Madras, and
308 George III. and the Whigs
about Bombay on the west coast, they owned but a very small
patch of territory. There was no continuous land communica-
tion between the three areas, and no common subordination of
the three governments or presidencies to any central authority
on the spot. For the British had embarked unconsciously on
the career which was to involve them in the gradual absorption
of the Peninsula, most often involuntarily by the impelling force
of circumstances, not rarely quite against their own wishes, some-
times, but seldom, with expansion as a deliberate aim. It may
indeed be affirmed that in the whole series of governors-general
all except two assumed office with the intention of refusing
to be beguiled into any expansion of the company's territories ;
those two being Mornington and Dalhousie, both of whom
started with a conviction that the extension of British control
would be for the benefit alike of British and natives.
In 1760, however, there was no governor-general. Bombay
stood apart ; it had not yet been sucked into the political
NO dominant vortex. Madras managed or mismanaged its own
power. affairs, irrespective of Bengal ; Bengal, mutatis
mutandis, did likewise, irrespective of Madras. And the native
powers developed after the fashion of oriental dominions upon
the ruins of the Mogul empire, accounting the development of
the British power as merely another example of what was going
on amongst themselves. Despite the awe inspired by Clive
personally, the native potentates would probably have agreed
that if any general empire succeeded that of the Moguls it would
be that not of the British but of the Mahrattas, unless some new
conqueror followed the footsteps of the old invaders through the
Afghan passes.
At the moment of dive's departure, the question between the
Afghan and the Mahratta appeared to be on the point of settle-
Mahrattas ment by dint of sword. For twenty years past
and Afghans, Ahmed Shah, the Durani king of Kabul, had swept
periodically over the north-west ; though he had
established his government over it only in the sense that a
military viceroy collected tribute. On the other hand, the
Mahrattas had been developing their national organisation
Indian Affairs 309
under the guidance of the great peshwa, minister, mayor of the
palace, at Puna, Balaji Rao. The eyes of the Mahrattas were
turned not to the European invader from the sea, but to the
Asiatic invader from Afghanistan. It was from him that the
empire was to be wrested. The gage was thrown down when
the peshwa's brother, Ragonath Rao, marched into the north-
west and mastered districts which the Afghan regarded as his
own. In 1761, Ahmed Shah came down in his wrath ; from
every quarter the Mahrattas gathered their hosts ; on the
stricken field of Panipat their vast army was shattered to pieces.
The campaign was said to have cost them two hundred thousand
men. If the Durani had been anything more than a very
brilliant fighting chief he could have made himself effective
master of half India ; as it was he merely marched back to
Afghanistan, leaving the north-west a prey to anarchy ; nor did
any other Afghan invader thereafter appear as a competitor for
dominion in India. But the victory of Panipat stemmed the
tide of Mahratta expansion ; many years passed before the
Mahratta power recovered from the blow which it then received.
Another strong power was enabled to develop in the south, while
the footing of the British was becoming more secure, and by
the time that the Mahrattas were prepared to challenge the
British as their rivals for a general supremacy the outcome of
such a struggle was already a. foregone conclusion.
The power which profited most from the overthrow of the
Mahrattas at Panipat was that of the able and ambitious soldier
Haidar Ali, who raised the comparatively insigni- HaidarAii
ficant kingdom of Mysore into a conquering military of Mysore,
power. Mysore was one of those Hindu kingdoms which boasted
a royal house some centuries old, but had been actually ruled
for two or three generations by hereditary mayors of the palace.
Haidar, a successful Mussulman captain of mercenaries, raised
himself to the position of chief of the Mysore armies, whence
it was an easy step to overturn the ruling raja, seize the control
of the state, and hold it in the name of an incapable or infant
representative of the royal house, and finally to drop all dis-
guise, depose the legitimate monarch, and assert himself as
310 George III. and the Whigs
sultan of Mysore. Long before he took this last step, however,
Haidar had been persistently absorbing into the Mysore kingdom
outlying territories of Mahratta chiefs, portions of the Nizam's
dominions, and such minor principalities as were brought
within striking distance by each advance he made.
Haidar was not only an exceptionally able soldier ; he was
also of an extreme shrewdness. He had no desire whatever to
Haidar and challenge the British; it was not through contest
the British, with them that he hoped to extend his dominion.
1761-70. When he did come into collision with them it was in
consequence of a collision with the Nizam, who called the British
to his aid. Madras, in fact, was drawn into a war with Mysore,
which was brought to an end by a treaty in 1769 ; but in the
course of that contest Haidar All formed from his experiences a
very low estimate of the administrative and diplomatic abilities
of the Madras government, without losing his respect for the
abilities which might be displayed in the field by British officers
in spite of the difficulties habitually placed in their way by the
superior authorities. At the end of the decade, Haidar's attitude
to the British was one of latent hostility, tempered by a desire
to retain their goodwill for the sake of their support in conflicts
with the Mahrattas, who were a more immediate menace to
his ambitions than the British.
For by that time the Mahrattas, headed by Balaji's successor,
Madhu Rao, had recovered from the shock of Panipat, had
Mahratta re-established their ascendency up to the Jumna
progress, and the Ganges, and virtually held in the hollow
1760-70. Q£ their hand the nominal sovereign of the Mogul
empire. The check upon their further consolidation was born
of their own internal dissensions, which generated among them
what would have been called a civil war if such a term could be
applied in a community so loosely organised.
Having described the general situation as it developed between
1760 and 1770, we can now turn to the specific field where in
fact, though not in form, British dominion was most effectively
planted, the province of Bengal and Behar.
Vansittart, the official chief whom Clive had left behind him
Indian Affairs 3 1 1
in Calcutta, was a well-meaning person ; but he entirely failed
to control his subordinates. In fact, the officials of the com-
pany found themselves in an altogether unprece- 1761_3
dented position. It was so easy to fill their pockets The British
at the expense of the natives, and even incidentally in BengaL
of the company itself, that to the great majority of them the
temptation proved irresistible. There was no one to call them
to account, no native dared to resist them, and their own native
agents made too much profit for themselves to be dangerous.
Officially they claimed for the company a trading monopoly,
and immunities from every kind of impost or restrictive regula-
tion. Unofficially individuals claimed those rights for them-
selves. As servants of the company they were very badly paid ;
it was understood that they could rectify deficiencies by a little
private dealing. The natural consequences were that in Bengal
they were more interested in accumulating wealth for them-
selves than in promoting the prosperity of the company. Offi-
cially the officers of the company were without any responsi-
bility for the government ; they would neither rule themselves,
not allow the native government to rule. The unfortunate Mir
Jafar failed to satisfy the company's claims upon him, and
was presently deposed in favour of his son-in-law Mir Cassim,
who undertook to satisfy the company's demands.
Mir Cassim was both able and of an independent spirit. He
set about a successful financial reorganisation, but at the same
time he determined to rid himself of the British 1763.
tyranny, and of the British monopoly. Still, in Mir Cassim.
order to meet his obligations to the British until he could openly
challenge them, he had recourse to the ordinary methods of
extortion. Ellis, the head of the British factory which was now
established at Patna, believed or imagined that the position
there was in danger, and attempted to take forcible possession
of the city ; thereupon the indignant nawab descended upon
Patna, and seized the British residents. The Council of Calcutta
declared war upon him, announced his deposition, and dispatched
troops to Patna. Mir Cassim massacred his prisoners and fled
into Oudh. Mir Jafar was restored to the titular nawabship,
312 George III. and the Whigs
but survived only a short time, and was succeeded on his death
by a son who was a minor. From this time there was hardly
any pretence of recognising the nawab's authority.
The Oudh nawab, Shujah Daula, incited by Mir Cassim, now
made his last attempt to challenge the British. He prepared
1764. Buxar, for an invasion. The company's troops were placed
October. under the command of Major Hector Munro. The
situation was dangerous, for resentment was running high ; the
sepoys were mutinous, and if they had revolted the handful of
white men in Bengal might have been wiped out. Munro nipped
mutiny in the bud by seizing the ringleaders and putting them
to death by blowing them from guns — a form of execution not
in itself cruel, but terrible to the Mohammedan soldier, because
of his peculiar beliefs concerning his material resurrection in
another life. Having crushed the mutiny, Munro marched
against Oudh, and inflicted upon the nawab a decisive defeat
at Buxar, between Patna and Benares. The battle in effect
might have been to Oudh what Plassey was to Bengal. It placed
the province at the mercy of the British. On the other hand,
had Munro been defeated the British would in all probability
have been driven out of Bengal. But the British did not take
possession of Oudh ; Buxar finally confirmed what had been won
at Plassey, but it had the further effect of enabling Clive on
his reappearance in India to transform Oudh, which had hitherto
been a menace to Bengal, into a permanent defence, a barrier
against aggression from the west.
The state of affairs in Bengal, the chaos of the administration,
and especially of the finances, created so much perturbation at
1765 ciive headquarters in London that the company took the
returns to wise step of sending Clive out to India to take
ia' ay> matters in hand. Buxar was fought and won in
October 1764. In May 1765 Clive landed in India for the last
time as governor, with virtually unlimited powers. Great as
had been the services rendered by him in the past, no period
in dive's career is more honourable to him than that of his
third sojourn in India. He had to ' cleanse the Augean stable,'
to organise government, to lay down a policy for the future.
Indian Affairs 313
All that it was humanly possible for one man to do in the twenty
months from May 1765 to January 1767 Clive did ; all that he
did was right, and all that he did could have been done only by
a man utterly fearless and indomitable, clear-headed and far-
sighted, acting with no thought save for the public good.
The Augean stable was cleansed. The root of the evil lay,
first, in the absence of responsibility of the company ; secondly,
in the position of the company's servants. Clive olive's
saw the immediate necessity of giving the company's reforms,
servants a remuneration which should at least set them above
the necessity of using their position as a means to enriching
themselves by illegitimate methods. The company's servants
were forbidden to trade privately, and were debarred from the
practice, which had arisen naturally enough, and indeed inevit-
ably, of receiving presents from the native magnates. The
system was liable to such scandalous abuse that it had to be
stopped. The civilians, shut out from their royal road to
immense wealth rapidly acquired, were enraged, but their anger
did not turn the governor a hair's-breadth from his course.
Justice and common sense required that they should have
legitimate compensation ; the valuable salt monopoly which had
been conferred upon the company was appropriated by Clive
to the provision of adequate salaries. In the earlier days the
soldiers had rightly enough been granted double pay — ' double
batta ' ; there was now no warrant for such expenditure, and
Clive announced that double batta should cease. The officers,
imagining that they were masters of the situation, promptly
resigned. Clive was ready for that emergency, accepted the
resignations, appointed fresh officers, and arrested the ring-
leaders. The rest for the most part came to their senses and
were then reinstated. The Bengal army was reorganised with
an establishment of three thousand European troops and a
proportionate number of sepoy regiments.
Clive realised that no government was possible in Bengal
except that of the British themselves. He could not create a
constitution; but he procured for the company a The Diwani.
legal status. The Mogul Shah Alam was still admittedly the
314 George III. and the Whigs
legal sovereign of all India, although he was actually little better
than a refugee at the court of the Oudh wazir. In August 1765
Clive made a formal agreement with Shah Alam by which the
Mogul conferred upon the company the diwani of Bengal and
Behar ; the official authority, that is, to collect and administer
the revenues of the provinces. At the same time, he obtained
from the Mogul a formal cession of the Sirkars, the provinces
which had already been granted by the Nizam, who was techni-
cally only one of the Mogul's viceroys. The continuity of British
territory was almost completed by an agreement with the
Mahratta Berar raja, who was in possession of Orissa between
Bengal and the Sirkars. Proprietary rights in Orissa, technically
called ' zemindari ' rights, were ceded, Clive agreeing on behalf
of the company to pay the chauth or tribute claimed by the
Mahratta chief. By the treaty with Shah Alam the company
acquired a definite status as a territorial power, under the Mogul,
and holding its authority from him.
At the same time a step was taken which associated the
company still more intimately with the supreme authority,
dive's Oudh After Buxar the British had retained the districts
policy. of Allahabad and Korah, a portion of Oudh which
was of great strategic importance. Clive now recognised Shujah
Daula as sovereign of Oudh under the Mogul, and restored the
Allahabad district to Oudh, with the proviso that it was to be
handed over to Shah Alam himself. Clive had seen all along
that extensive and almost unlimited conquest was possible ; but
he was also satisfied that it would be an immense blunder. To
organise government in the regions already acquired was a task
more than sufficient for the capacities of the company. The
annexation of Oudh would have been according to oriental
ideas an entirely legitimate consequence of the battle of Buxar.
dive's insight recognised that Oudh as a strong and friendly
state interposed between Bengal and the western Mahrattas
would be much more valuable than as an extra British province
easy to conquer but difficult to hold and to govern. The main-
tenance of Oudh as a buffer state became from Clive's time an
integral portion of British policy ; and almost the one merit
Indian Affairs
of the Oudh dynasty was its consistent loyalty to the relations
established in 1765.
Similarly, in Clive's view it was the business of Madras to
maintain the Nizam at Haidarabad as a friendly power inter-
posed between the British and the Mahrattas. The The Nizam
Berar raja, whose domain interposed as a wedge and the
between the Ganges and Madras areas, was to be Bhonsla-
treated in a friendly spirit so as to prevent the possible concentra-
tion of Mahratta energies upon hostility to the British.
These were the broad lines of the policy laid down by Clive.
Nevertheless when he left India for the last time at the beginning
of 1767 he had not been able to complete his work After ciive.
by creating a fully organised government of Bengal ; he left the
presidencies without any common central authority nearer than
London ; some of his work was actually undone by the directors,
and the Council in Bengal still failed to act up to their responsi-
bilities. The company's servants continued to be inadequately
paid ; the salt monopoly was in part diverted from the objects
to which he had assigned it, and consequently the company's
servants continued to engage in private trade and to receive
presents. The company did not organise the revenue depart-
ment, but left the management of it to native officials, with
only a very perfunctory supervision by European officers. The
army was entirely under the control of the British ; but they
made no attempt to take upon themselves the administration
of justice. The company continued to find that its own profits
fell very far short of its anticipations. The Madras authorities
blundered over their treatment of the Nizam and of Haidar AH.
The portentous misrule of the years between 1760 and 1765 was
not indeed repeated ; the worst of its features had been removed ;
but misrule and mismanagement still prevailed to such an extent
that in the next decade the British parliament found intervention
necessary, and the peculiar policy which it adopted had the
effects that we shall see in following the career of Warren
Hastings,
316 George III. and the Whigs
V. IRELAND : TO 1770
In earlier chapters we have remarked upon the pitiful state
of prostration to which Ireland was reduced after her resistance
A survey. to the Revolution had been crushed. Never at
any period of her history had she experienced quiet and firm
government, equal laws enforced with an even hand, justice
dispensed as a matter of course. Always, since the reign of
Henry n. in England, the supreme authority in the island had
been the deputy of a foreign prince ; exercising, for some cen-
turies, an alien control within a limited area, outside of which
the central government could only make its existence felt after
a very spasmodic fashion. Under the Tudors the English
supremacy had gradually asserted itself all over the island,
which was partly colonised by adventurers who were apt to
treat the native Irish as outer-barbarians. The colonisation
was renewed by the plantation of Puritan soldiery upon the soil.
The climax was reached when after the Revolution the penal
laws deprived the Catholics, who were three-fourths of the
population, of every semblance of political liberty, all but
disqualified them from owning property, and denied them the
power of educating their children, except as Protestants. Through
the first half of the eighteenth century the prostration was com-
plete; nor did it apply only to the Catholic population. The
Nonconformists, chiefly Presbyterian, who formed so large a
proportion of the whole Protestant population, especially in the
north, suffered from the same political disabilities as their
brethren in England. Full political rights were consequently
enjoyed only by a fraction of the whole population ; and even
those rights fell a long way short of the rights of the free
electorates in Great Britain.
It is unnecessary here to recapitulate the social grievances
under which the Roman Catholics suffered as Roman Catholics.
The political They were powerless to act, almost powerless to
conditions. complain. In the political field, Catholics were ex-
cluded, Protestant Nonconformists were partially disabled ; seats
in the legislature and all administrative offices were confined
Ireland: /0 1770 317
to one small class. But further, the functions of the legislature
itself were limited, and the administration was not responsible
to it as had come to be the case in England. The Irish parlia-
ment had no power either to initiate or to amend legislation ; it
could only suggest. If its suggestions, known as ' heads of bills,'
were approved by the Privy Council of Great Britain, that body
drafted a bill based upon them, but modified to suit its own views,
and such bill was then introduced in the Irish parliament to be
accepted or rejected as it stood. The Irish parliament in itself
was not only, as concerned the Commons, elected on a very
limited franchise out of a still more restricted number of eligibles ;
all the evils of the electoral system in Great Britain were still
more rampant in the sister island. Numbers of constituencies
returned their members at the dictation of a small number of
magnates ; other seats were frankly purchasable. In England,
the current prices for purchasable seats at the general election
of 1768 ranged from £1000 to £5000. Irish prices were not so
high, because the demand was less keen ; but the same system
prevailed with the same shamelessness. In fact, however, it
was not till the closing years of the reign of George n. that
there were any signs in Ireland of an active revival of political
interest.
The third of the permanent outstanding grievances of Ireland
was that of her agricultural and industrial conditions. With
the exception of the linen trade, all her industries, industry
apart from the land, were deliberately suppressed, and the land,
throttled, if not actually prohibited, in order to prevent competi-
tion with the trade of Great Britain — or rather of England, since
the policy in its completeness dated from a time long before the
Union with Scotland. Virtually the population were compelled
to subsist upon the soil, because apart from the soil there was
no occupation by which they could make a living. From the
soil rightly turned to account a living could have been made ;
but it was not rightly turned to account. Almost the whole of
the land was owned by big Protestant landlords, of whom a large
proportion had estates in England and were habitual absentees.
Those big landlords had no personal interest in their estates or
318 George III. and the Whigs
in the people who lived upon them ; the estates were merely
properties from which they expected to derive a substantial
and secure income, and were leased to tenants, usually at not
unreasonable rates. But the tenants sublet their holdings,
and subtenants sublet them again, habitually at rack rents,
that is, at the highest rent they would fetch ; so that the actual
occupier paid — when he did pay — more than the soil could
possibly afford. The peasant, having nowhere else to turn to,
was in effect bound to the soil on whatever terms his immediate
landlord chose to be satisfied with. The occupiers had nothing
to spend ; or if having anything they spent it on the land, they
were promptly called upon to pay increased rents. The situa-
tion was aggravated by the development of grazing and enclo-
sures, the appropriation of common lands — as in England under
the Tudors — which had formerly helped to provide means of
subsistence, and the appropriation of large tracts to the breed-
ing of sheep and cattle instead of to cultivation. There was
thus virtually no employment for the agricultural labourer ; the
peasant was the cottier with a potato patch ; the land which
was not leased to cottiers at rack rents was taken up by the
graziers who found the business more profitable than agricul-
ture, and if they were Roman Catholics had a better chance of
retaining in their own hands more than the third of the actual
profits, which was all that the law allowed them. The peasant
had no remedy at law, first because he could not afford to appeal
to the law, and, secondly, because all those who administered the
law belonged to the class against whom the appeal would be
made. In the eyes of the peasant the law itself was the op-
pressor ; and wherever that is the case the popular conscience
is on the side of the law-breaker.
About the beginning of the reign of George in. the popular
hostility to the law began to organise itself. Its motive was
Whiteboys. neither political nor religious, but was definitely
agrarian. The first objects of the attack were enclosures and
enclosers, and the unfortunate cattle, to make room for which
human beings had been thrust on one side. Bands of marauders,
known as ' Whiteboys/ from the white shirts and cockades
Ireland: to 1770 319
which they wore, broke down enclosures, houghed cattle, and
took condign vengeance on any one who sought to interfere
with their proceedings. In a very short time it was found that
the law was powerless against them, because no evidence was
procurable, whereas any one who disobeyed their behests very
promptly paid the penalty. The ' Whiteboys ' were the first
of those agrarian organisations which for considerably more
than a century made it their business to set the law at de-
fiance. They rose in the south and west, where Protestants
were comparatively few ; but it seems clear that there was
no definite connection between Catholicism and the agrarian
movement.
The political inertia was intensified by the fact that there was
no law limiting the life of a parliament. The parliament sum-
moned at the beginning of the reign of George n. The
was the parliament which was still in being when Undertakers,
he died. The mere fact that the accession of a new king en-
tailed the summoning of a new parliament provided at last an
outlet for the dissatisfaction which had long been simmering.
The ordinary government of the country was carried on not
by the lord-lieutenant, who usually spent only six months out
of two years in Ireland — the period during which the Irish parlia-
ment was also sitting — but by the group of influential magnates
who were known as the ' Undertakers/ the Irish equivalent of
the ' Whig connection ' in England. In some respects there-
fore there is a clear parallelism between the constitutional
struggle in England in the first decade of George m.'s reign and
the parliamentary contest which arose in Ireland. Just as
George sought to break up the ' Whig connection ' which para-
lysed him in England, so he sought to break up the power of the
Undertakers in Ireland. As the W^higs stood for the principles
of the Revolution in antagonism to any increase in the powers
of the Crown, so the Undertakers stood for the principle of self-
government. But the Undertakers' self-government and the
Whig principles of liberty meant to each the domination of a
narrow oligarchy ; and so in the one country Chatham was as
zealous to break up the ' Whig connection ' as the king himself,
320 George III. and the Whigs
and in the other country there was a popular party hostile to
the Undertakers.
The signs of resurgent political activity were at once apparent.
The new Irish parliament was prompt to assert the British
Demands of doctrine that money bills could originate only in
the Irish the House of Commons ; sound constitutional
parliament. Doctrine for Great Britain and the parliament of
Great Britain, but, like the American claim that taxation and
representation are inseparable, not readily to be conceded to His
Britannic Majesty's subjects outside of Great Britain. For
some years the English Privy Council persisted in sending money
bills to Dublin, which the Dublin parliament rejected, substituting
money bills of its own. The Irish parliament clamoured for a
Septennial bill to rectify one of the many parliamentary anoma-
lies ; and it clamoured for a Habeas Corpus Act of which England
had enjoyed the benefit for the better part of a century. It could
get neither.
Pitt between 1761 and 1766 had shown sympathy with the
demands of the Irish as he had sympathised with the attitude
1767. Anew of the Americans. But whatever his plans for
departure. Ireland may have been when he was called to the
head of the government in 1766, they were wrecked by the break-
down of his health. In 1767 a change was inaugurated on which
George himself had for some time been insisting, chiefly no doubt
with a view to diminishing the power of the Undertakers. Lord
Townshend, the brother of Charles Townshend, himself the
original ally of Pitt in the introduction of the Militia Bill, and
afterwards one of Wolfe's brigadiers in the Quebec campaign,
was sent to Ireland as viceroy, with the novel condition that he
was to remain in constant residence. The new rule was ominous
for the Undertakers, but it was at least calculated to imply that
the lord lieutenant would treat his functions seriously. The
intention was conciliatory, because George was contemplating
an increase of the standing army in Ireland, to be paid for out
of Irish resources ; not because Ireland needed an increased
standing army — it had remained undisturbed during the 'Forty-
five and the Seven Years' War — but because George wanted
Ireland: /0 1770 321
more troops, and his subjects in Great Britain would object to
being asked to pay for them.
The new viceroy seemed likely to be personally popular ;
moreover he gave out that favourable consideration was being
given to the more pressing demands of the Irish — cross
security of tenure for the judges, a Septennial Bill, purposes,
and a Habeas Corpus Act. Also there was to be an end of the
distribution of pensions, by which, in Ireland as in England, the
government had been in the habit of buying support. The Irish
parliament promptly passed what were called ' heads of bills '
(the form taken by their suggestions for legislation), applying
to Ireland the English rule that the judges should be removable
on addresses from the two Houses of parliament. The English
Privy Council, however, had no intention of granting such power
to the Irish parliament. They required that the Irish Privy
Council should join in any address for the removal of the judges,
and that the judges should also be removable upon addresses
from the parliament of Great Britain. That was not what the
Irish parliament wanted, and the bill was at once thrown out.
Irritation, not conciliation, was the outcome.
It became the more imperative to allay the popular feeling by
meeting the demand for limiting the duration of parliament. A
period of eight years was substituted in the bill for Tne
the seven years of the parliament of Great Britain, Octennial
because the Irish parliament only sat for six months Act* 1768*
in alternate years. The measure had the desired effect of calm-
ing public feeling ; still the Octennial Act did not suffice to
reconcile the Irish parliament to the army augmentation. The
army bill was defeated, though only by a small majority. The
life of the parliament having expired under the new Act, there
was a general election : Townshend found himself better sup-
ported in the new parliament. Nevertheless the refusal in
England of a Habeas Corpus Bill met with prompt
retaliation in the rejection of a money bill sent over Townshend's
from England ; on the old plea that money bills adminiatra-
ought to originate in the Irish House of Commons.
Satisfied with this assertion of its own rights, the Irish parlia-
Innes's Eng. Hist.— Vol. HI. X
322 George III. and the Whigs
ment proceeded to vote supplies on its own account, and to show
its goodwill by passing the Augmentation Bill. The particular
object of conciliation having thus been attained, the parliament
was immediately prorogued. The expectation that its com-
pliance would be rewarded by further concessions was bitterly
disappointed. Still, through a reversion to the evil practice of
corruption by the distribution of pensions and places, Townshend
was able to secure an actual majority when the Houses again
met in 1771. In short, the method by which George had at last
achieved his ascendency in England was repeated in Ireland ;
corruption by the Crown was to defeat the Undertakers as it had
defeated Newcastle and the Whig connection.
CHAPTER VIII. THE KING AND LORD NORTH
I. BEFORE THE STORM, 1770-1775
THE repeal of the American duties was carried in parliament
under Lord North's auspices in March 1770. Precisely at that
time irritation in Boston, which had taken the form 1770. A lull
of mobbing the soldiers whose numbers had been in America,
reduced, led to an affray in which a few soldiers who had been
attacked fired upon their assailants, five of whom were killed
and some others wounded. A Boston jury tried the case with
perfect fairness and virtually acquitted the soldiers ; nevertheless
the ' Boston Massacre ' became a convenient text for agitators.
The announcement that the tax on tea was to be retained de-
stroyed whatever beneficial effects might have been anticipated
from the repeal of the other duties; and although the non-
importation agreements broke down except in respect of tea,
and there was a lull in the active displays of antagonism to the
government, that antagonism was sedulously kept alive and
took an increasingly firm hold upon the minds of the Americans.
For a time, however, public attention in Great Britain was with-
drawn from the colonial question, which was commonly sup-
posed to be smouldering out.
Some excitement was created by foreign affairs, which for a
moment seemed likely to involve Great Britain in another war.
The French annexation of Corsica had been received 1769.71
with British remonstrances, which were so palpably The Falkland
intended not to materialise in action that France s an 8'
and Spain began to feel confident that no vigour was to be
expected from the British ministry. Both those countries had
for some time been devoting themselves steadily to reconstruct-
ing their fleets ; while the British fleet had been seriously
324 The King and Lord North
neglected in spite of the considerable sums which had been
voted for its maintenance. In 1764 and 1765 the French and
the British had occupied respectively the two islands of the
Falkland group in the neighbourhood of the Straits of Magellan.
The French then handed over their island to Spain. In 1769 a
small Spanish squadron laid claim to the British island, a claim
disputed by the captain of a British warship. Both sides agreed
to refer the question to their respective governments, but in the
interval the Spaniards took possession, going so far as to detain
another British warship for some time. Manifestly Spain was
reckoning upon French support and intended her action to be
a challenge. The British ministry, however, at once made it
perfectly clear that, however unimportant the islands themselves
might be, the Spanish methods would not be tolerated. Louis
did not intend to go to war, and dismissed Choiseul, who probably
did. The Spaniards, left to themselves, were not at all prepared
for a duel, and gave way on all points at the beginning of 1771.
There was temporary activity in the dockyards and in the re-
cruiting of additional sailors. Still the government failed to
produce the impression that they were likely to conduct a
vigorous foreign policy.
From their own or from a purely British point of view, how-
ever, they could not be blamed for their inaction, when during
1772. the next year Frederick and Catherine began the
partftion business of partitioning Poland by appropriating
of Poland. the provinces which each of them particularly
desired. Neither Russia nor Prussia was a power whose aggrand-
isement was likely to injure Great Britain, and both were more
likely to check than to advance the power of the allied Bourbons.
In fact, nothing but an abstract objection to political brigandage
would have warranted protest or interference ; the victim,
Poland, fulfilled no useful function as an independent state, and
no one would have been disposed to protect her except from
motives of self-interest. So a great part of Poland was parti-
tioned for the first time, Austria taking her share as the third
power whose boundaries marched with those of the despoiled
kingdom.
Before the Storm 325
In the English parliament, interest again centred in matters
connected with John Wilkes. The Middlesex election had
forced into special prominence the anomalous character of some
of the powers of the House of Commons in dealing with elections.
It made conspicuous, what every one had known for a long time,
that whenever election questions came before the House they
were made the subject of a simple party vote instead of being
dealt with on their merits. There was no question, nor had
there been any since the days of James I., that the House of
Commons was the only body which possessed authority to
deal with such matters, and the practical result was, that the
majority in the House was frequently able to add to its own
numbers and to over-ride the choice of constituencies by unseat-
ing a member. There was hardly a pretence of listening to the
evidence in cases of election petitions ; the majority of the
Commons voted in favour of the candidate who belonged to
their own party. To George Grenville, who was in effect leader
of the Opposition in the representative chamber, belongs the
credit of procuring the Act which delegated the decision on
election petitions to a committee of fifteen sworn to give judg-
ment in accordance with the evidence. Grenville, who was
already suffering from mortal disease at the time when he was
planning and carrying the Act, died very shortly after it was
passed.
The city of London, which had chosen Wilkes for one of its
aldermen, and for its lord mayor Beckford, a violent partisan
of Chatham, was vehement in its advocacy of the Tlie city
cause of the members whom the House had refused and the
to admit. It attacked the government and the £°vernment-
king with remonstrances couched in language which was con-
spicuously unseemly, though by no means unwarrantable. But
Chatham failed to procure the support of the Rockinghams
when he supported the demand of the city for a dissolution. The
ill-feeling in the city was further exemplified in the battle which
was now in progress for the freedom of the press. For half a
century past the House of Commons had been in the habit of
asserting its privileges by attacking criticisms of its proceedings
326 The King and Lord North
in the public press as scurrilous and seditious libels, and by per-
sistent efforts to prevent the publication of its debates. In fact,
while criticism was of an extremely malignant character, as
exemplified, for instance, in the savage invective of the Letters
of Junius, there was a feeling that the Law Courts were being
1770 used for the punishment of libels on behalf of govern-
Juriea and ment, and with the real intention of prohibiting free
comment. Great excitement therefore was caused
when, upon a prosecution of a bookseller for selling the unknown
Junius's Letter to the King, Mansfield as Lord Chief- Justice laid
it down that the jury had to decide only on the fact of publica-
tion, not on the question whether the matter published was
libellous, that being the judge's affair. It would appear that in
this vexed question, legal opinion recognises that Mansfield's
interpretation of the law was sound. But the immediate effect
was to cause juries to ignore evidence and decline to convict.
It was not till twenty years later, however, that the right of the
jury to decide on the character of the libel was established by
an Act of parliament at the instance of Charles James Fox.
Chatham supported by Camden demanded a declaratory Act
to that effect in 1771 ; but their motion found practically no
support.
The publication of debates in the Houses of parliament was
unquestionably a breach of privilege. In the days when freedom
Publication of speech within the walls of parliament would have
of debates. been seriously hampered if the individual utter-
ances of members had been reported outside, the secrecy of
debates was almost a necessity. Those days, however, were
long past. The public wanted to know what was said in parlia-
ment, and the prohibition did not prevent the publication of
reports which could never be called authentic and were often
flagrant misrepresentations ; the writers whereof sheltered
themselves under the transparent pretence that their accounts
of parliamentary proceedings were not and did not purport to
be anything but fiction, or at most the embodiment of rumours.
On a member complaining of one of these reports, the House
ordered the arrest of the printers. The press took the matter
Before tJie Storm 327
up, and its comments led to the arrest of half a dozen more
printers, in spite of the determined opposition of Burke and
other members of the parliamentary Opposition. Then the city
magnates played their part. Two of the arrested printers were
promptly discharged when brought before Alder-
men Oliver and Wilkes, on the ground that there The House
was no crime charged against them. A third, on and the
being arrested by a messenger of the House, gave
the messenger in charge for assault. Lord Mayor Crosby —
Beckford was now dead — discharged the printer, Miller, and
held the messenger to bail. The House summoned Crosby and
Oliver as members, and also Wilkes, to attend. Wilkes refused
to attend except as member for Middlesex. The House did not
venture to cross swords with him again, but Crosby and Oliver
were committed to the Tower, where they were ostentatiously
visited by several of the Opposition leaders. The House had
scored a technical victory, but at such cost to its own prestige
that it did not again venture to challenge public opinion,
which so manifestly resented its attitude that there was no
further interference with the publication of debates, though in
this case also a long time elapsed before such publications were
formally sanctioned.
The king and queen were models of connubial propriety :
unfortunately the same thing could be said of hardly any other
prince of the House of Hanover. Scandals in con- Royal
nection with the marriages of George's two younger Marriages
surviving brothers, the dukes of Cumberland and Act»1772<
Gloucester, brought about the Royal Marriages Act of 1772 : an
Act by which no marriage can be legally contracted by any
member of the royal family without the consent of the sovereign,
before the age of twenty-six, or after that age without a year's
notice to the Privy Council, enabling parliament to forbid such
marriage if it thinks fit to do so. The bill was opposed, as claim-
ing for the Crown and the royal family a distinctive position for
which there was no historical justification ; a position consonant
with continental ideas of royalty, but not with those of Great
Britain. The real significance of the measure, however, lies in
328 The King and Lord North
the fact that from it dates the growth of the antagonism between
the king and Charles James Fox, Henry Fox's son ; a young
man who had hitherto supported the king and the king's govern-
ment, of which he was destined to be the most fiery opponent.
In the same year inquiries were on foot as to the position
of the East India Company ; inquiries which had momentous
results with regard to India itself, but which also
East India had an incidental influence on the progress of affairs
Company's jn America. It is only to this particular aspect of
the matter that we advert at this point. The
company was in serious financial straits. To relieve those
straits it was desirable to facilitate the sale of the immense stock
of tea in its warehouses. To that end it was resolved that the
whole of the duties payable at the British ports should be
returned by way of drawback on re-export ; the drawback
previously allowed on re-exportation to America having been
three-fifths of the whole amount. It was in consequence of this
rearrangement that three ships carrying consignments of tea
arrived at the harbour of Boston in December 1773.
In the meantime American dissatisfaction instead of smoulder-
ing out had remained very much alive. It was true that the
America: non-importation agreements in general had been
the Gaspee. dropped ; but what we should now call the boycott
of tea had been stubbornly maintained. In 1772 a royal
schooner, the Gaspee, employed in the preventive service, having
run upon some shoals, was boarded and burnt ; and the per-
petrators remained undiscovered, though their identity must
1773 The have been widely known. In 1773 the breach was
Hutchinson widened by the publication in America of a number
of letters which had passed some years before
between Governor Hutchinson of Boston, Bernard's successor,
the Chief Justice Oliver, his brother-in-law, and Whately, George
Grenville's private secretary in London. Hutchinson and Oliver,
both supporters of the British government, had expressed their
views of the situation with the natural freedom of private
correspondence, in terms which, when made public, excited the
intense indignation of the Americans. Demands were at once
Before the Storm 329
formulated in strong language for their removal, although it
could not be said that there had been any actual impropriety in
the letters, viewed as entirely unofficial communications. On
the other hand, the publication aroused a corresponding storm
of indignation in England, because it implied a gross breach of
honour on the part of some one. That correspondence had on
Whately's death come by some unknown channel into the hands
of Benjamin Franklin in London. According to the British
point of view, Franklin, who had sent the letters to America,
must have known that they would be published in spite of his
own formal instructions to the contrary, and his connivance at
their publication was utterly inexcusable in view of the circum-
stances under which they had come into his hands. Franklin
accepted the responsibility for what he had done, and when the
petitions for the removal of Hutchinson and Oliver were laid
before a committee of the Privy Council a violent attack was
made by the solicitor-general, Wedderburn, upon Franklin, who
never forgave the insults to which he listened with an unmoved
countenance.
In the midst of the excitement over the Hutchinson letters the
East India Company's tea ships arrived in Boston harbour.
Vessels dispatched to other ports had not been The Boston
allowed to unload, and took their departure : at tea-party.
Boston the consignees of the tea were the governor's sons ; the
governor forbade the ships to leave until the duty on the tea
had been paid. On i6th December a great meeting was held,
energetic speeches were delivered, and when the meeting broke
up large crowds gathered at the docks ; where a party of some
fifty men, arrayed as Red Indians, boarded the ships and pitched
all the tea chests overboard. The proceedings were conducted
without other violence, to the applause of the crowd. A much
more outrageous, if a much less impressive, expression of the
popular feeling occurred six weeks later when a preventive
officer was tarred and feathered.
Temper was rising in England as well as in America. The
popular sympathy, which had been extended to the colonies
and had applauded the repeal of the Stamp Tax eight years
33° The King and Lord North
before, had long been alienated, and there is no doubt that the
British public at large was entirely in favour of penalising the
1774. Penal colonists who set the law at defiance. General Gage,
measures. the governor of New York, reported his opinion
that firmness would soon restore order. The king and his
ministers determined upon coercion, and in March 1774 a series
of coercive measures was introduced. In Massachusetts the
government was removed to Salem from Boston ; the port of
Boston was to be closed until the town made compensation to
the East India Company for the tea they had destroyed. A
second bill suspended the Massachusetts charter, increased the
powers of the governor and the nominated council, and prohibited
town's meetings. A third bill removed trials on capital charges
for acts done in the execution of the law to Great Britain or
Nova Scotia. A fourth provided for the quartering of troops
in the colony. All the bills were passed by overwhelming
majorities in both Houses, despite the opposition of Burke and
Chatham. From prudential rather than conciliatory motives
Hutchinson was recalled, and Gage, who retained his appoint-
ment as commander-in-chief, was made governor of Massachusetts.
Such stringent measures would doubtless have been effective
if the Americans had not already committed themselves to
American the struggle with their whole souls. Undoubtedly
feeling. there was a party which was deliberately directing
American sentiment towards separation ; but probably the
majority of Americans, like George Washington, did not desire
separation unless they should find that it was the only condition
upon which they could retain what nearly all Englishmen, placed
in the same position, would have called their liberties. But on
that head American opinion was solid, if not unanimous ; there
was to be no surrender. The loyalists, the Tories as they were
called, were comparatively a small minority, and were subjected
at least to social persecution. The feeling had taken too deep a
root to be stamped out by any coercive measures ; and it was
curiously intensified by the one entirely commendable Act which
was passed in 1774, an Act dealing not with any of the thirteen
colonies, but with Canada,
Before the Storm 331
There was in Canada only an exceedingly small British and
Protestant population, numbering perhaps about one in two
hundred of the whole. The French had not been Canada,
dispossessed ; they remained in occupation of their lands and in
full enjoyment of religious liberty, in accordance with the terms
of the cession. The English language, however, and the English
laws had been enforced ; the government was what we may call
the government of a Crown colony ; in which the population
had no share — no grievance as far as they were concerned, since
they had been equally without a share in it when they were
French subj ects. The British settlers, however, began to demand
an Assembly, which, on the principle of excluding Roman
Catholics in accordance with the law in England, would merely
have meant the establishment of a small British oligarchy in
the midst of a large French population, in the place of Crown
government ; while the French population was restive under
the imposition of English laws and customs in place of those to
which it was attached both by habit and by national feeling.
It was upon the advice of the governor, Sir Guy Carleton
(afterwards Lord Dorchester), that the Quebec Act was intro-
duced to reorganise the government of the colony. 1774. The
The Act provided that the old tithes and dues Quebec Act-
should continue to be paid to the Roman Catholic clergy,
Protestants being exempted from such payment. The French
civil law and the English criminal law were to be established.
There was not to be an elective assembly ; but there was to be a
legislative council nominated by the Crown, while taxation was
to be the function of the British parliament.
The Quebec Act aroused fresh alarm in the colonies, partly
because it displayed no tendency towards popular government,
but insisted upon the powers of the Crown, partly its effect in
because it not only recognised but re-endowed tne Colonies,
the Roman Catholic Church. New England and the northern
colonies had the Puritan tradition ingrained in them ; in the
southern colonies the tradition was that of the Cavaliers, but of
the Cavaliers who had carried the Test Act — anti-Romanist
no less than anti-Puritan. It is curious to observe that in Eng-
332 The King and Lord North
land a measure so emphatically liberal on the religious side was
warmly approved by the party which was so thoroughly illiberal
in its treatment of the Americans, and was denounced by
Chatham and the Whigs on the basis of the Whig tradition of
' no popery/ Even the ' no popery ' cry, however, failed to
arouse any strong popular hostility to the measure in England,
and the Quebec Act was duly passed. It was not only in itself
a wise measure ; it also secured the unswerving loyalty of the
Canadian population in the troubles to come.
In England, no one believed that the Americans would fight.
It was anticipated that the resistance in Massachusetts would
American be easily put down, and that the rest of the colonies
preparations, would give it no support. Boston port was duly
closed on ist June, and no direct resistance was offered at
the moment. But it was only because the resolution of the
colonists was to take a more formidable and impressive shape
than that of sporadic attacks upon the military. The sense of
unity, of the common interests of the colonies, had at last become
a reality. Only Massachusetts had been penalised ; but the
other colonies recognised that the quarrel was their own. Among
them Virginia took the lead. Her assembly of burgesses decreed
that ist June, the day of the closing of Boston port, should be set
apart as a day of fasting and intercession. When the governor
dissolved the assembly, its members continued their meetings,
and agreed that a general congress should be summoned. In
Massachusetts more than half of the members of the executive
council, now nominated by the Crown instead of being elected
by the assembly, refused appointment. From all over the
country supplies poured in to the Bostonians whose port had
been closed.
One after another, the colonial assemblies gave their adhesion
to the proposal for a Continental Congress, which met at Phila-
delphia on 5th September. Of the thirteen colonies
Continental Georgia was the only one that was not represented.
Congress, George Washington, who was one of the delegates,
still believed that no one desired separation in itself.
But the resolutions of the Congress offered no hope of a com-
Before the Storm 333
promise being accepted. It was pronounced that all Americans
should support Massachusetts in resisting the penal acts. A
non-importation agreement was adopted. The repeal of the
five Acts was demanded. A Declaration of Rights was drawn
up detailing the unconstitutional treatment to which the colonists
had been subjected, after the precedent of 1688. It was resolved
that the Congress should again assemble in the following May,
that the Canadians should be invited to send delegates, and that
in the meantime a petition to the king and an address to the
people of Great Britain should be sent to England. At the same
time the loyalty of the colonies to the Crown and the empire
was emphatically affirmed.
While Congress discussed, Massachusetts was acting on its
own account. Gage cancelled the writs for the Assembly which
should have been summoned in October ; but the Massa-
elections were held and its members transacted chusetts.
business, under the name of the ' Provincial Congress/ as if they
had been a legally appointed assembly. They organised a
militia, who were known as the ' minute men ' because they
were to be ready to meet at a minute's warning. Officers were
appointed, a committee of supplies, and a committee of safety.
In response to their appeal, other colonies began to form similar
military bodies. New York was the only one of the colonies
which dissociated itself from the proceedings of Congress.
In England there was a dissolution, and a new parliament was
summoned to meet on 3oth November. George was satisfied to
find that his majority in the House of Commons England bent
was larger than before. The ministers and the on coercion,
nation had gone too far to recede now, even had they been dis-
posed to do so. Burke, Chatham, and the rest of the Opposition
still in effect proclaimed that the Americans were in the right,
that the obnoxious Acts were in themselves unjustifiable and
ought to be repealed ; but neither the ministers nor the nation
would listen to such arguments. Chatham moved for the recall
of troops, but was defeated. Petitions came in from several
great commercial centres ; they were ignored. Chatham himself
was again incapacitated by an attack of the gout. North intro-
334 The King and Lord North
duced bills to cut off the New England colonies — to which
others were afterwards added — from commercial intercourse,
1775. On by way of retaliation for the non-importation agree-
theedge. ments. Additional troops and additional sailors
were voted. To these measures North added a proposal which
was intended to be conciliatory, but served no particular purpose
except that of increasing the violence of the extreme anti-
American section, who regarded anything that savoured of con-
cession as a betrayal. The Conciliation Bill offered to exempt
from taxation for purposes of revenue any colony which would
undertake on its own account to pay what the British parliament
would accept as an adequate contribution for common defence.
In the eyes of the colonists and their supporters in England the
real intention of the bill was to introduce dissension among the
colonists, and thereby to render coercion the easier. North
himself and at least a large section of the party probably intended
honestly enough to open a door to reconciliation, but party
spirit was already running far too high to permit the honesty
of the attempt to be recognised ; only its futility was palpable.
II. THE WAR WITH THE AMERICANS, 1775-1778
The sword was drawn on igth April 1775. Gage in Massa-
chusetts had at last realised that the colonists would fight unless
1775 the British forces were considerably augmented.
Lexington, He had applied for reinforcements in addition to the
19th April. four regiments which were at his disposal. The
Americans were collecting arms and military stores of all kinds,
and were drilling everywhere. At Concord, some miles from
Boston, they had a depot of arms. On the night of the i8th
Gage sent a party of troops to seize the stores. On the morning
of the iQth, as the troops were passing through Lexington, there
was a collision with a party of the local militia, when some shots
were fired, and a few of the colonials were hit. The soldiers
marched on to Concord, where they found that part of the stores
had already been removed. They destroyed the remainder,
though not without some more fighting, and on the way back
The War with the Americans 335
they were fired upon repeatedly, the colonial marksmen keeping
under cover. By the time the soldiery got back to Boston there
had been something over two hundred casualties, the Americans
having suffered about half as many.
This skirmish of Lexington opened the war ; encouragingly
for the colonials, who were taught by it conclusively that in some
circumstances at least they could hold their own against the
regulars. The battle served as a general call to arms, and
within a few days several thousand men were encamped before
Boston. The Continental Congress reassembled on loth May,
assumed the functions of a regular government, rejected Lord
North's proposals, and nominated George Washing- War.
ton as commander-in-chief and head of the continental army
at Boston (i7th June). In the meanwhile a body of volunteers
under the command of Ethan Allan and Benedict Arnold, acting
with the consent of the Massachusetts committee of safety,
surprised and captured the forts of Ticonderoga and Crown
Point, commanding the direct route to Canada. On the other
hand, considerable reinforcements for Gage were being dispatched
from England, and before the end of May Generals Clinton and
Burgoyne arrived with two thousand more soldiers. Thus
strengthened, Gage proclaimed an offer of pardon to any of the
rebels who would come in with the exception of Samuel Adams
and John Hancock ; but the proclamation met with no response.
Before Washington could arrive to take up the command the
first really important engagement of the war had taken place.
Boston is on the south side of the river Charles ; on Bunker Hill,
the north is Charlestown. Close by are two heights, 15ttl June-
Bunker Hill and Breed's Hill. To anticipate an expected move-
ment on Gage's part, the colonials occupied Breed's Hill and
entrenched it. Three thousand British troops were sent to storm
the position, which they succeeded in doing, but only after
heavy loss and two severe repulses. Though an actual victory
for the British, the battle of Bunker Hill demonstrated more
decisively than Lexington the capacity of the colonials for facing
the attack of regulars. So far as moral effects went, Bunker Hill
was a colonial victory.
336 The King and Lord North
Still an attempt was made by the Americans at reconciliation.
Congress sent to England what was known as the ' Olive-branch
The Olive- petition.' The authorities in England, however,
branch had now come to the natural conclusion that they
petition. would not treat with open rebels except on terms
of complete surrender. George refused to receive the petition.
Bargains were entered upon for employing German mercenaries
in the American war. Congress itself discounted its olive-branch
by taking measures for the invasion of Canada. In the autumn
the capture by the Americans of the fort of St. John was followed
by the surrender of Montreal ; and Sir Guy Carleton, who had
less than a thousand men under his command, made ready at
Quebec for a siege. At Boston the place of General Gage was
taken by General Sir William Howe, to whose brother Lord
Howe the naval command was entrusted. The American
volunteer army was willing enough to fight, but was painfully
lacking in discipline and in the proper sense of subordination. It
was only with extreme difficulty that Washington managed to
hold his men together in their lines.
The American attack upon Canada during the winter was
disastrous to them. An expedition was dispatched under
Winter: the Benedict Arnold against Quebec, marching from
Canadian Maine through an exceedingly difficult country.
expedition. j^. succeedec[ m joining hands with a force under
Montgomery coming down the St. Lawrence from Montreal ;
but the whole of the supplies and equipment were in terribly
bad condition. A desperate attempt to storm Quebec on
3ist December was completely repulsed. Still the besiegers hung
on obstinately, although the French Canadians, after some hesi-
1776. tation, definitely sided with the government and
refused supplies to the rebels. Even when reinforcements
arrived in the course of the spring the besiegers were unable to
make any impression on Carleton's defences. When the ice
broke up and the St. Lawrence became navigable, reinforcements
came to Carleton early in May. In June the siege was raised,
and Canada was evacuated by the invaders.
Meanwhile, Howe at Boston was hardly an improvement upon
The War with the Americans 337
General Gage. Washington, as the spring came on, prepared
for an attack upon Boston itself. Howe, like Gage before him,
was of opinion that from a military point of view B0ston
it was a mistake to remain in Boston at all, but the evacuated,
evacuation had been forbidden for political reasons. Marcn-
In March Washington seized Dorchester heights. Howe failed
to dislodge him, and before the end of the month the British
force was compelled to withdraw by sea to take up its quarters
for the time being at Halifax in Nova Scotia. It was the evacua-
tion of Boston which enabled Washington to send reinforce-
ments to the army before Quebec, although that was a move
from which no advantage resulted to the insurgents.
When Howe retired from Boston the war had been going on
for eleven months. It is scarcely possible to doubt that if it
had been conducted by the British with any real A bad
vigour or system, matters would by this time have beginning,
looked very ill for the insurgents. The continental army, as
the American troops were called, was enlisted only for short
terms, its composition was amateur in the extreme, its officers
had little control over their men, and it was extremely difficult
to keep the men themselves from going home when the fancy
took them. The men in fact thought themselves as good as the
officers, which in private life many of them were ; the officers
were jealous of each other, and nearly all of them were jealous
of the indomitably patient chief, who, by his remarkable control
over himself, yet managed to maintain the control over them
also. But the British generals made no plans and struck no
blows. A decently efficient naval squadron could have con-
trolled the whole seaboard, but the squadron which was in
American waters during the first twelve months of the war was
quite insufficient. The truth was that, when the government
had made up its mind that the rebellion was to be put down by
force, it ought without further delay to have made an overwhelm-
ing demonstration of military power. Nowhere else was it
threatened with war ; it had a fleet which a dozen years earlier
had been able to sweep the ocean at its will ; and yet it lacked
the energy or the intelligence to provide either a military or a
Innes's Eng. Hist.— Vol. in. Y
33$ The King and Lord North
naval armament which could venture upon a bold offensive.
The result was that by the early summer of 1776 the colonials,
instead of feeling that they were fighting a desperate battle
against great odds, were full of a confidence inspired not by their
own efficiency, but by the inefficiency of their opponents ; and
that confidence was hardly weakened by the fiasco of the
Canadian expedition. And in the meantime every month that
the war dragged on embittered feeling on both sides ; and in
America the party which had all along been working for separa-
tion was on the point of sweeping the board.
Early in June Congress was discussing and approving a de-
claration of independence, proposals for a definite federation,
and resolutions in favour of seeking foreign alii-
The Declcir<L-
tion of ances. On 4th July it issued the famous Declaration
independ- of Independence, which was signed by the repre-
sentatives of twelve out of the thirteen colonies, New
York being the only abstainer. The colonists had thrown away
the scabbard, and had definitely pronounced that the time for
reconciliation on any terms whatever was passed — that they had
severed themselves for ever from the British empire. With the
Declaration of Independence an entirely new situation had
arisen. The attitude previously adopted, of readiness to return
to the position as it had been before 1763, was entirely abandoned.
Explicitly the war was no longer a war waged for the preserva-
tion of their just rights by British citizens ; it was avowedly
and uncompromisingly a war of separation.
Meanwhile, however, the extremely efficient admiral, Lord
Howe, had arrived at Halifax with a fleet ; and before the end
The Howes °^ June General Howe and his forces had been
before New landed at Staten Island in front of New York,
York, une. wnich was now to take the place of Boston as the
military centre. Thither Washington had already transferred
the army from Boston. New York was selected as the point
of British attack, apart from military reasons, on the political
ground that it was the state in which the two parties of the
colonists were most evenly balanced. There was a brief delay
before the attack opened. North was never able to free himself
The War with the Americans 339
from the belief that the colonial resistance would collapse from
its own inherent weakness at an early date. The Howes had a
commission of a limited character to make proffers of reconcilia-
tion. A proclamation was issued again offering pardon to those
who would come in ; Howe sought to negotiate with Washington
personally, but the negotiation broke down because Washington
refused to treat except in his official capacity ; while Howe was
not authorised to recognise that he had any official capacity at all.
Hostilities then were renewed towards the end of August.
The Americans were driven out of their position on Long Island
into New York itself. 'Then there was another
futile discussion between three commissioners from successes,
Congress, Franklin, John Adams, and Routledge, autumn-
and Lord Howe, who met them unofficially. Nothing came of
it. In the middle of September, Washington was compelled
to evacuate the city ; and then, in a series of operations, to
abandon one entrenched position after another until finally
he was pushed over the Delaware river. Clinton made a diver-
sion in the New England states, and Carleton advancing from
Canada seized the fort of Crown Point on Lake Champlain.
The successive reverses had reduced Washington's troops to a
dangerous state of demoralisation, and again it can hardly be
doubted that if Howe had followed up his successes with vigour,
the continental army would have been broken up altogether.
Conquest was within the grasp of the British commander.
That conquest would have served any useful purpose may be
doubted. The Americans would indeed have been Futility of
unable to take the field again in force so long as a conquest.
the country was in military occupation ; but Great Britain
could not permanently remain in military occupation, and there
could be no doubt that as long as the old grievances remained
the colonists would have taken the earliest opportunity of renew-
ing their defiance. Conquest, in short, except as a preliminary
to a complete reconstruction of the relations between the mother
country and the colonies, would have served no satisfactory
purpose ; and there is no sign that any such reconstruction was
contemplated in England.
34° The King and Lord North
But the government had committed itself to the position
that conquest was necessary ; and on that hypothesis it was
General mere *olly to abstain from making the conquest
Howe's complete and decisive at the earliest possible date.
Of that precise folly General Howe was guilty.
Perhaps he imagined that the demoralisation caused by the
autumn campaign might be trusted to do his work for him
without any more fighting. At any rate when Washington had
been driven over the borders of New Jersey into Pennsylvania, the
British general considered that he had done enough, and relapsed
into complete inactivity ; whereas Congress took the strongest
line that it was possible for it to take, refused to listen to the com-
plaints of jealous officers, recognised the astonishing ability with
which Washington had made the best of his almost impossible
position, and instead of curtailing his powers extended them.
In the general plan of campaign it had been intended that
Carleton with the British forces from Canada should secure the
sir Guy line of Lake Champlain, and descend the Hudson
Carleton. to effect a j unction with Howe. But Lake Champlain
was held by Benedict Arnold's fleet ; it was late before Carleton,
in spite of immense energy, was able to launch a fleet on the lake
which destroyed that of the Americans. By the time that the
British had been able to capture Crown Point it was too late in
the year for further operations, and Carleton retired. It was
singularly unfortunate that Lord George Germaine, known at
the battle of Minden as Lord George Sackville, had joined the
government and succeeded in turning the king's mind against
Carleton. In the next year Sir Guy found himself superseded
in the military command by General Burgoyne, and immediately
resigned his Canadian governorship.
Howe, satisfied with what he had done in November, scattered
his forces over a very extensive line, hoping thereby to give
1777. confidence to the loyalists of the district. Washing-
foaNewSt°n ton Was left to pul1 his demoralised troops together,
Jersey, and to give them fresh heart by a forward move-
January, ment which ought to have been impossible. Before
the end of December he had struck at Clinton on the Delaware ;
The War with the Americans 341
and early in the year 1777 had driven the British in from New
Jersey to New York and Rhode Island.
Howe remained persistently inactive. The general plan of
campaign for the year was on the same lines as before ; Burgoyne
with the troops from Canada was to come down the incompatibie
Hudson and join hands with Howe; and having plans of
thus completely severed the southern from the camPai£n-
northern colonies, the two generals were to overwhelm Washing-
ton's army. Howe, on the other hand, had a scheme of his own
for seizing Philadelphia ; a plan which was well enough in itself,
provided that its execution did not interfere with the com-
bined operations ; which unfortunately was its effect. If the
thing was to be done at all, it should have been early in the
year, so that the force to co-operate with Burgoyne could be
detached for that purpose by the time that he was ready to
move.
Howe intended to carry his force from New York by sea to
Delaware Bay, and so to advance upon Philadelphia from the
south — the Congress, it may be remarked, removed The
itself from Philadelphia in anticipation of the event.
But his forces were not ready for embarkation until juiy.
late in July. He left Clinton at New York with November.
8500 men, whereas it was necessary to have a much larger
force to co-operate properly with Burgoyne ; and he himself
departed with 14,000 men. But the difficulties of Delaware
Bay forced him to carry on south to the Chesapeake Bay, and
August was almost over before he had landed at its head, at the
Elk river. In the course of September Howe defeated Washing-
ton, who had advanced to meet him, at Brandy wine Creek, and
occupied Philadelphia. But Washington still lay between him
and New York, and in the first week of October made an attack
upon Howe, which was repulsed. The British general, appar-
ently quite heedless of Burgoyne, sent for 4000 of Clinton's
troops. He was able to drive back the defeated American
commander, who established himself for the winter at Valley
Forge in a very unsatisfactory plight, while the British at Phila-
delphia were in comfortable quarters.
34 2 The King and Lord North
Meanwhile, however, Howe's Philadelphia campaign had com-
pletely ruined the concerted operations. Burgoyne had started
Saratoga, in June. On 6th July he was at Ticonderoga. But
17th October. he was no SOoner on the march again than his
troubles began. He could only struggle on slowly and painfully
through a hostile and difficult country. Clinton was paralysed,
the more completely when so many of his troops were called
away by Howe. Burgoyne was drawn at Saratoga into a trap
from which there was no escape, and was there compelled to
surrender with his entire force on i7th October.
Burgoyne had done his best to carry out his orders, and effect
a junction with the force which he believed to be moving up to
General meet him. Clinton did what he could with the
Howe force at his disposal. The disaster must be laid
esponsible. UpOn Howe's shoulders. He knew of Burgoyne's
movement, and he should have known that, except as part of a
combined movement, it could not succeed. He let the combined
movement go, in order to carry out his private plan of securing
Philadelphia. Apparently the only sort of excuse that can be
offered is that he believed Burgoyne to be marching through a
friendly country, whereas the country was extremely hostile,
and believed also that his own capture of Philadelphia would
raise all the loyalists in arms and produce a loyalist reaction.
He was wrong on every point ; and he made it impossible for
himself to redeem his error by only starting after Burgoyne's
march had begun, and then by persisting in his plan, although
it involved the further delay of going on to the Chesapeake
instead of to Delaware Bay.
The disaster was a serious one, but even the surrender of five
thousand men need not have been in itself fatal. It was fatal
French because it let loose a new enemy upon the British.
sympathy For some time past American commissioners had
or America. ^een jn parjS) where they were made much of and
applauded as heroes in the cause of liberty by a court where
liberty was theoretically very much in fashion ; a court which
had not yet begun even to imagine that the subject was a danger-
ous one for itself. The ' sons of liberty ' in America were hostile
The War with the Americans 343
to the tyrant power of England. From the moment the war
began, the French sympathies had been all on the side of the
colonists. Turgot, the finance minister, was opposed to inter-
vention. In his shrewd view, the colonies were in the first place
certain to win in the long run, while in the second place, if they
did not win, they would continue to be a source of weakness
rather than of strength to the British empire. Nothing then
would be gained for France by interfering on their behalf ;
besides which, French finances were by no means in the condition
necessary for the conduct of a great war. On the other hand,
Vergennes, the vigorous minister who had succeeded Choiseul,
was eager to intervene, not openly, but in the way of lending
secret and ' unauthorised ' help, at least until such time as a
decisive blow could be struck, and struck in conjunction with
Spain. Spain was waiting her opportunity to attempt the
recovery of Gibraltar, as soon as Great Britain should seem to be
too thoroughly involved to offer effective resistance. And if
France or Spain, or both, should discover an opportunity for
intervention, there was no European power which had the
slightest inclination to draw the sword on behalf of Great Britain.
Until the disaster of Saratoga, however, although money and
supplies had been finding their way from France to America,
and although French volunteers were offering their Effect of
swords to Washington, more to his embarrassment Saratoga
than to his advantage, the presumption had con- inFrance-
tinued to be that the American resistance would collapse of itself.
Saratoga produced the immediate impression that the colonials
had a distinct prospect of proving the winning side, a prospect
which foreign intervention might turn into a certainty. For the
French government, then, the news of Saratoga was decisive.
It arrived in the beginning of December; Vergennes at once
informed the American commissioners that France 177g
was prepared to make an alliance, which was for- AFranco-
mally concluded at the beginning of February. If
France went to war with England, neither of the
parties was to make peace with the common enemy except by
mutual consent or until the independence of the United States
344 The King and Lord North
was formally recognised by treaty. As to conquest, whatever
might be captured in the West Indies was to go to France, while
Canada was to go to the United States. The fear that Canada
might again become the menace that it had been before the
Seven Years' War was minimised — a fear which had weighed
considerably with a good many Americans against proposals
for a French alliance. The treaty was published by France in
March (1778).
In England, ever since the war began the Opposition had per-
sistently denounced it ; but they remained in a minority so
Chatham. hopeless that for a time the Rockingham group
adopted the futile plan of secession. In 1777 Chatham had once
more appeared to take the lead. The presence of the American
commissioners in Paris, and the manner in which they were
lionised, was sufficient proof that it was necessary to be ready
to engage in a struggle with the Bourbon powers. Chatham was
equally urgent that the grievances of the colonists should be
redressed unconditionally, and that the nation should concentrate
on resistance to the Bourbon menace. Ministers still tried to
delude themselves and the public into believing the formal denials
of any hostile intent on the part of France. But by the beginning
of 1778 it was impossible to remain blind any longer. In Feb-
Characters, ruary North made a last desperate attempt at
the crisis. conciliation, but although his offer amounted to
little short of a complete surrender, it was too late. The
Americans, with France behind them, would now take nothing
short of complete independence ; for they believed, not without
reason, that the French fleet was now far stronger relatively to
the British than it had been at any time during the century.
If the British lost control of the sea, the Americans would have
the game in their own hands. North himself was in despair.
He was under no illusion as to his own abilities, and urged the
king to call Chatham to the head of the government. Still the
king refused, though he is credited with having contemplated
dropping the American quarrel in order to devote the whole
energy of the nation to war with France. Whether Chatham
himself, even in the plenitude of his powers, could have saved
The War with the Americans 345
the situation is more than doubtful. It is conceivable that the
man to whom the Americans owed and acknowledged so deep
a debt, the man who twenty years before had delivered them
from the French menace, the man who had consistently and
unfailingly championed their cause from the Very outset, might
have won back the loyalty which had still been dominant even
four years earlier. The man who had saved the British empire
once when no other man could have done it might have saved
it again.
But it was not to be. Chatham was old, worn, exhausted
with disease. On 7th April, the duke of Richmond, acting for
the Rockinghams, moved a resolution in favour of Chatham's
withdrawing all the forces from America. Chatham last effort,
was brought into the House to oppose the motion. Aprn*
Convinced though he was that, as concerned all the causes of the
quarrel, the Americans were in the right, he was equally con-
vinced that at whatever cost the disruption of the empire was
not to be permitted, the claim to independence was not to be
allowed. Desperately ill though he was, he answered Richmond
in a speech which was at times barely audible. Richmond
responded ; Chatham attempted once more to rise and reply,
but fell back, stricken with apoplexy. It was his last effort.
On nth May the great empire builder was dead.
As a dictator he had been superb ; as anything but a dictator
he was impossible ; and English political conditions made any
dictatorship impossible except in the presence of Effect of his
what was felt universally to be an overwhelming death, May.
crisis. Such a crisis had arrived. If life and health had been
granted to Chatham, his dictatorship might have been forced
upon the country even in despite of George. Two years,
one year, earlier, it might have been possible for him, though
for no other man, to have reunited the empire. In 1778 it is
scarcely possible to believe that even he could have achieved
that end. With his death vanished the last fraction of a chance.
Great Britain was left to struggle through what was perhaps
the most desperate crisis in her career under the guidance of
mediocrities. She did win through, torn, bleeding, maimed —
346 The King and Lord North
but unconquered except so far as she was conquered in the victory
of her own sons ; unconquered, and destined ere long again to
prove her right to stand among the mightiest nations of the
earth.
III. Ax BAY, 1778-1783
The French intervention entirely changed the character of the
war. Until 1778, it ought to have been easily within the com-
The British petence of the British government to conquer the
failure. colonies in the military sense — to shatter their
armies, annihilate their commerce, and suppress all armed re-
sistance. It was in a different sense that Chatham's statement
was true, that the colonies could not be conquered. The conquest
could have been effected, but it could not have been preserved
without the perpetual maintenance in America of a standing
army considerably larger than the whole normal peace estab-
lishment. Chatham's contention was absolutely sound, since
the expectation of retaining the Americans as loyal subjects of the
British Crown upon those terms would have been absurd. But
it would not have been in the least absurd to believe that with
reasonable vigour and tolerable skill at military headquarters,
the Americans could have been compelled by force of arms to
accept terms dictated by the British. They had not been beaten
after three years of fighting, because Admiral Howe's squadron
was too small to blockade the coasts, and because General Howe
never followed up his successes, and by sheer mismanagement
ruined the combined movement of 1777, which ought to have
given him the complete mastery, instead of ending in the disaster
of Saratoga.
But down to 1778 the war was simply a duel between the
colonists and the mother country. From 1778 onwards the
The new mother country had on her hands France, the press-
conditions. jng danger that Spain would be joined to France,
and after 1779 the actual alliance of Spain with her other enemies.
In 1763 she had nothing to fear from French and Spanish fleets ;
the case in 1778 was very different. Both France and Spain
had spent the interval in reorganising their fleets and bringing
At Bay 347
them up to a high standard ; Great Britain had plenty of ships,
but only a fraction of them were fit for service or manned with
crews. The French intervention was practically decisive as
far as America was concerned ; it transformed Great Britain's
attempt to subjugate her own recalcitrant colonies into a
desperate and doubtful struggle to preserve her own position
as a first-class power.
The effects were felt immediately. In accordance with the
conciliation bills which North carried in February, commissioners
were sent out to treat with the Americans. They in America,
on the other hand were stiffened by the news of the French alli-
ance, and in effect refused to treat except on condition of the
withdrawal of the British fleets and armies, or the recognition
of their own independence — two practically equivalent proposi-
tions, since the concession of either would have involved the
concession of the other as a corollary.
But this was not all. France was ready to act. Two squadrons
were soon ready to take the seas, one under D'Estaing for
American waters, the other under D'Orvilliers to operations
' contain ' the British channel fleet. General Howe ta 1778-
was recalled, without any reluctance on his part, and the chief
command was conferred upon Clinton, with instructions to
withdraw from Philadelphia and to concentrate in New York.
The retreat was accomplished successfully, though not without
considerable difficulty and some sharp fighting. Admiral Howe
with great skill brought back the convoys from the Chesapeake
and carried them up to New York a few days before the arrival
of D'Estaing's squadron at Sandy Hook ; and the Frenchman,
though his strength was approximately double that of Howe,
did not venture to attempt an attack, but, having failed in his
specific object of catching Howe in the open and cutting off the
convoys, withdrew. Meanwhile Keppel in the home waters
could put to sea with only twenty ships of the line, and en-
gaged D'Orvillier's fleet, which was of equal numbers, in a
battle off Ushant of an entirely indecisive character. Before
the end of the year D'Estaing, who had retired to Boston
harbour, withdrew to the West Indies, again leaving the actual
348 The King and Lord North
control of the American coast to the British. The concentra-
tion at New York was followed by a dispersion. Under orders
from home, Clinton dispatched an expedition to the Southern
States under Cornwallis, and he was further weakened at the
end of the year by the withdrawal of four thousand men for
Barbadoes in the West Indies, and the departure with them of
Admiral Hotham's squadron ; the West Indies having now
become the French point of attack. Washington was corre-
spondingly relieved, though he had some difficulty in prevent-
ing Congress, in its elation, from following the British example,
and reducing his forces before New York in order to send a
fresh expedition to Canada.
The arrival of Hotham's ships at Barbadoes enabled Barring-
ton, who was the admiral in command there, to seize the stra-
1779. tegically valuable island of St. Lucia a few days
before the appearance of D'Estaing who, though in superior force,
again would not venture to attack. In the first half of 1779
D'Estaing captured the islands of St. Vincent and Grenada, but
missed an opportunity for engaging, with greatly superior force,
the British squadron ; which under the command of Byron, who
had superseded Barrington, attacked under a mistaken impres-
sion as to the size of D'Estaing's fleet, but withdrew when the
error was discovered.
By 1780 then, nothing more of a decisive character had occurred
in the American area. Clinton at New York, and Washington
Spain in New Jersey, were neither of them able to strike
declares war. an effective blow at the other. In the West Indies
the French retained, but did not make use of, their naval
superiority. Cornwallis in the Southern States was more
than a match for any forces which could take the field against
him, but could practically do nothing more than control the
district in the immediate neighbourhood of his army. But for
Great Britain the outlook had become more serious, because
in the summer of 1779 Spain declared war ; the combined
French and Spanish fleet in the European waters outnumbered
the British fleet; and Spain turned her attention to the im-
mediate object of her own desires, Gibraltar, the prolonged
At Bay 349
siege of which was commenced. In 1780, Guichen arrived in
the West Indies to reinforce and take command of the French
fleet, while Admiral Rodney joined the British fleet, Gibraltar
having thrown reliefs into Gibraltar and destroyed besieged and
two minor Spanish squadrons en route. Rodney relieve<L
succeeded in bringing Guichen to an engagement off Dominica ;
but his captains did not understand his novel plan of attack,
mistook the meaning of his signals, and so deranged 1730. The
his scheme that the battle was indecisive, instead west indies,
of being a crushing blow to the French force in the West Indies.
The opportunity did not recur, and the French predominance in
ships was somewhat increased by further reinforcements.
Clinton also was able to strike a sharp blow by sending an ex-
pedition south which captured Charleston, taking a very large
number of prisoners ; but this was counterbalanced The
by the arrival from France of reinforcements for American
Washington, under the command of Rocham- Contment-
beau, which compelled Clinton again to withdraw the troops
from Charleston, and further to reduce the forces with which
Cornwallis was seeking to dominate the south. The result was
that the resistance in that quarter became increasingly active ;
and although Cornwallis dispersed the American troops at
Camden in August, he was obliged to fall back in order to
maintain his communications with the coast. In the north the
Americans passed through a critical period, owing Benedict
to the treason of one of their ablest commanders, Arnold.
Benedict Arnold, the leader of the former expedition against
Canada. His resentment at what he regarded as the unjust
treatment he received led him to enter into correspondence
with the British. In the course of this intrigue a young British
officer, Major Andre, was captured in civilian attire within the
American lines, carrying treasonable letters of Arnold's. In
spite of strong representations made to Washington, Andre
was hanged as a spy. His unhappy fate excited extreme sym-
pathy, but Washington's action in the matter cannot be im-
pugned. Arnold himself succeeded in escaping, and received
a commission in the British army.
35° The King and Lord North
In the autumn Rodney himself with a part of his fleet was in
the North American waters, whither he had come in pursuit of
Rodney. Guichen, who with a considerable portion of his
fleet had left the West Indies. Guichen's destination, however,
was Europe. Rodney's appearance, therefore, produced no im-
portant effect, apart from the fact that for the time being the
British were in complete control of the sea in the north. In
Rodney's absence, a French squadron at Newport and the
British squadron under Graves at New York were sufficiently
equally matched to make the British control precarious. Before
the end of the year Rodney withdrew again to the West Indies,
partly to prevent the risk of that portion of his fleet which he
had left behind under Hood being overwhelmed, and partly
because of a fresh complication which had arisen.
This was a declaration of war between Great Britain and
Holland. During the great wars of the middle of the century
The Dutch the neutral powers had complained much of the
join the war. British doctrines as to the right of search and the
seizure. of enemy's goods carried on neutral ships. Now that
Great Britain was in difficulties the Baltic powers united in a
league, which was known as the Armed Neutrality, to maintain
the rights of neutrals. The league was joined by Holland. It
was ascertained that correspondence was passing between Dutch
authorities and the Americans, which in the eyes of the British
government constituted a sufficient casus belli. In fact Holland's
enmity was not very alarming, because there was no possibility
of Dutch fleets now combining with the French. But the inter-
vention of Holland gave the opportunity for seizing the Dutch
island of St. Eustatius in the West Indies, a place of great wealth.
1781. St. It was captured accordingly by Rodney in February
Eustatius. ij8i. Unfortunately the admiral was so earnestly
engaged in securing the booty that the new French squadron
under De Grasse was able to effect its junction with the rest of
the West India fleet, because Hood, Rodney's subordinate, was
not in sufficient strength to prevent it. Later in the year Rodney
himself was obliged to go back to England leaving Hood in charge.
Though Rodney was a brilliant chief, the substitution of Hood
At Bay 351
certainly in itself had done no harm ; but again Hood's force
was quite inadequate to deal with the French fleet upon equal
terms.
The reason for this inadequacy lay in the immense preponder-
ance of the hostile fleets in European waters, and in the con-
tinuous pressure upon Gibraltar, which had been Tnefleets
unrelieved since February 1780. The old danger in European
of an attempted invasion of the British shores waters-
revived. Thus it was that when De Grasse sailed for the West
Indies in March 1781, the British, admiral, Derby, having failed
to intercept him, was unable to pursue because he was under the
immediate necessity of carrying reliefs to Gibraltar and Port
Mahon. In fact no ships could be spared for the West, because
of the preponderance of the enemy in the European waters ;
though it is curious to observe that in whatever force the French
and Spanish fleets might be collected, they never attempted to
force an engagement with the smaller squadrons of the British.
In the course of the year, however, the Dutch were practically
disabled by a hard-fought action off the Dogger Bank with a
British squadron under Admiral Sir Hyde Parker. The engage-
ment was quite in the traditional style of the Anglo-Dutch
battles. It could hardly be claimed that the British got much
the best of the fight ; but it practically prevented the Dutch
from again taking the sea in force.
But the moment was at hand for the French fleet to take
action of a decisive character, the explanation of which lies in
the operations on the American continent. At the cornwailis,
end of 1780 Cornwallis had decided to march through ta tne soutn-
the Southern States from South Carolina to the Chesapeake, so as
to join hands with Clinton at New York and deal a decisive blow
at Washington. Though a British detachment under Tarleton
was defeated in January at Cowpens, Cornwallis pushed forward,
and on I5th March inflicted a severe defeat at Guildford Court
House on a force which outnumbered his own two to one. His
column, however, was only a small one. His advance was but
a slow struggle ; Clinton would not reinforce him, and it was
not till the end of May that he effected a junction in Virginia
352 The King and Lord North
with a column under the command of Arnold which brought
the number of his troops up to five thousand. Clinton believed
that Washington was preparing for a grand move on New York.
The result was that as Cornwallis was making his way northward
he received instructions in June to occupy Yorktown at the
The trap at mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, and to remain there
Yorktown. on the defensive. Washington, however, was in a
position to strike either to the south at Cornwallis or at New
York itself. He concerted with Rochambeau and De Grasse a
plan for falling upon Cornwallis in overwhelming force while
Clinton was deceived into believing that New York was to be
the object of the grand attack. The plan was completely suc-
cessful. In July the American army was concentrated as if
for an attack upon New York. Soon afterwards Cornwallis, in
accordance with his orders, established himself in Yorktown;
the assumption being that the sea communication with New
York would be kept open. It was not kept open. De Grasse
sailed from the West Indies ; Hood pursued him with a smaller
force, expecting to form a junction with Graves at Chesapeake
Bay. But De Grasse, arriving first, drew Graves out of the
Fall of bay ; and he as well as the French squadron from
Yorktown, Newport got back into the Chesapeake while Hood
October. wag effecf.jng hjs junction with Graves at Sandy
Hook. Consequently when Graves and Hood got back to the
Chesapeake they found De Grasse there before them in superior
force, in a position which completely cut off Cornwallis from
assistance, and from which he could not be dislodged. In the
meantime Washington had marched for Yorktown leaving a
sufficient force to mask Clinton, who was still anxiously awaiting
the delivery of the grand attack upon New York itself — con-
firmed in his expectations by misleading dispatches which had
been written with the express intention that they should be
intercepted. Yorktown was thus completely invested, without
hope of relief, and on igth October Cornwallis was compelled
to surrender.
The fall of Yorktown was decisive so far as concerned the
American War of Independence. The British had no foothold
At Bay 353
anywhere except in New York itself, and they had lost the com-
mand of the sea, without which there was no possible prospect
of a recovery. So completely had the naval situa- After
tion been reversed since the Seven Years' War that Yorktown.
while the French and Spanish were in superior force both in
American and in European waters, the French had been able to
detach also to Indian waters, under Bailli Suffren, a squadron
which was there about to prove itself slightly superior to the
British naval force in those seas.
In 1782 then the interest of the war becomes entirely naval.
The war for Great Britain had resolved itself at last into a
desperate struggle not for empire, but for political
existence, against the Bourbon powers ; and at the gives way to
moment all the omens seemed to be in their favour. tlie Whigs,
Peace could not have been obtained except on the
most ignominious terms, terms to which no Briton would have
dreamed of submitting, from the stubborn king who would have
fought to the last gasp down to men who had not only denounced
the war from the beginning, but had openly proclaimed their
satisfaction at British defeat. Against the Bourbons the nation
was ready to drain the last drop of its blood. No matter
what political party might be predominant, the ministry would
be a fighting ministry so far as France and Spain were concerned.
The administration was now completely discredited by a long
series of disasters ; North at last succeeded in persuading George
to accept the resignation which he had tendered repeatedly.
The Whigs came in under Rockingham's leadership, but with
the Chatham section of the party strongly represented ; yet the
Rockingham policy would have been North's. Probably the
event of the war would have been the same if there had been no
change, though matters in relation to the Americans themselves
were simplified by the accession to power of the party which
had always acknowledged, and urged the recognition of, the
fundamental justice of their claims.
But with the change of ministry came a change in the fortunes
of war. Before North's resignation in March, Minorca had
fallen ; but in April the tide turned. During the winter De
Innes's Eng. Hist. — Vol. in. Z
354 The King and Lord North
Grasse and Hood had returned to the West Indies from the
Chesapeake, but Hood could not and De Grasse would not force
Rodney's a decisive engagement. Both were awaiting rein-
victory, forcements. In February Rodney returned to the
April. scene to take the chief command. It was known that
a great Spanish fleet was to sail for the West Indies, join De Grasse,
and overwhelm the British. On 8th April De Grasse sailed from
Fort Royal in Martinique for Cap Frangais in Hayti, where he
was to be joined by the Spaniards. Rodney started from St.
Lucia in pursuit. Next day his van overtook the French off
Dominica, while his rear lay becalmed ; but De Grasse did not
use his opportunity, preferring to continue on his course. But
his progress was slow. On the I2th Rodney again caught up
with him off the island known as The Saints. In the engagement
which followed it had apparently been Rodney's intention to
follow the usual practice of engaging the whole of the enemy's
fleet along the whole line ; but an opportunity occurred for
tactics which the fleets had discarded for a century. Rodney
in the leading ship pierced through a gap in the enemy's line,
followed by the next five ships. The seventh ship, which was
followed by the rest of the fleet, crossed the line at another gap.
By this movement of ' breaking the line ' the French line of battle
was completely disorganised, and the French centre was crushed
before their van could come into action. De Grasse himself with
British n*s flagship was captured after a hard fight; four
prestige more ships of the line were taken ; according to
Hood, if Rodney had chosen to pursue, he might
have captured almost the whole fleet. The victory was not in
fact in itself an overwhelming one ; but its moral effect was
decisive. The prestige of the British navy was restored ; in
France and Spain as well as in England the conviction was
established that the maritime power was still invincible upon
the seas.
That conviction was confirmed in the Mediterranean. The
siege of Gibraltar was now in its third year. Twice relieved, it
had held out stubbornly under its indomitable commandant
Sir George Eliott, defying the blockade and answering the
At Bay 355
repeated bombardments with a fire as fierce as the enemy's and
more destructive. In the summer of 1782 preparations were
made for an overwhelming attack. In September Gibraltar
the great bombardment opened from sea and land, unconquered,
For four days it continued. On the fifth day, SePtemtoer-
ten battering ships entered close in and the fire was re-
doubled. But the battering ships themselves were destroyed
by the fire from the fortress. Nine of them blew up, and still
there was no sign of slackening in the defence ; the enemy had
struck their stroke and it had failed. The blockade was con-
tinued ; but a month later a final relief was skilfully effected
by Lord Howe, who had resigned his command in 1778 on
account of his strong opposition to ministers and their policy,
but resumed it after North's resignation. The relief was the
last act of the war, except in Indian waters, where hostilities
continued until they were terminated by the definitive peace
in 1783.
Peace had been in the air ever since Rodney's victory. The
British government negotiated separately with the Americans
represented in Paris by Franklin, and with France Peace witll
herself. Their ends were facilitated by their own America,
readiness to acknowledge the fait accompli of November-
American Independence, and by the American consciousness
that unless a separate agreement were arrived at, the French
would do their best to secure the fruits of victory for themselves
at the expense of their allies. The preliminaries of the American
treaty were signed on 30 th November. Therein the independent
sovereignty of the American states was recognised, and a line
passing through the great lakes and the basin of the Mississippi
was agreed upon as forming their boundary. The British can
hardly be blamed for failing to protect the loyalists in America.
That group had throughout been the object of the fiercest
animosity of the dominant party ; if the war had been con-
tinued, the British would still have been unable to afford them
military protection, and they would only have been treated
the more rancorously. Many thousands of them found refuge
in England ; ten thousand ' United Empire Loyalists ' were
356 The King and Lord North
provided with lands on the Upper St. Lawrence, and twice as
many were planted in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
Peace preliminaries with France and Spain were signed in
February 1783, though the definitive Treaty of Versailles, which
did not vary from them materially, was not com-
•with France pleted till September. The condition of French
and Spain, finances in fact compelled the acceptance of terms
with which the British in the circumstances had no
reason to be dissatisfied. In the West Indies the status quo was
restored except for the cession of Tobago to France. In Africa,
France recovered Senegal and Goree, which she had lost in the
Seven Years' War. Spain kept Minorca ; and Holland, when
peace was made, received back what Britain had taken from
her in the Indian seas, with the exception of Negapatam. The
total result was that Great Britain lost a large portion of her
empire, which set up for itself as an independent nation, and
also lost Minorca, but nothing else that was of importance ;
while neither France nor Spain gained anything that was of
material value. France by her encouragement of the American
doctrines of liberty precipitated her own Revolution, hardly
less than by the heavy war expenditure, which intensified the
financial chaos and the intolerable burden of taxation upon her
unprivileged classes. For Great Britain the strain had been
cruel ; but Warren Hastings had saved her position in India,
the sources of her wealth remained to her, and the genius of the
younger William Pitt enabled her fully to recover her financial
equilibrium. And she had learnt once for all the lesson that
colonies, if they are to become a permanent source of strength
to the empire, must not suffer any curtailment of the full rights
of British citizenship.
IV. INDIA, 1770-1784
Admirable as was the work accomplished by Clive during his
last administration, he had not been able to establish a satisfac-
torily organised government of the British dominion in India.
The official recognition of the company in Bengal, as diwan,
India 357
administrator of revenue, had provided it with a legal status,
but not with a governmental system. Practically the Bengal
Council was obliged to entrust the revenue adminis- The position
tration to native officials, subject to some super- in 1770.
vision of a not very expert character, by British officials called
'collectors.' The law courts were still in the hands of the
officers of the puppet nawab ; while the collectors themselves
were more intent on amassing wealth than upon safeguarding
the interests either of the company or of the native population.
' Nabobs ' continued to return to England with disorganised
livers and distended purses which enabled them to buy an undue
share of the control of the political machine ; while in India a
devastating famine in Bengal, one of those disastrous visitations
with which even the highly organised government of the twentieth
century finds it so difficult to deal, brought home to the public
mind the inefficiency, and worse than inefficiency, of the un-
organised government in 1770.
The consciences of directors in England, made tender by their
financial embarrassments, became uneasy ; and in 1772 they
appointed Warren Hastings, governor of Bengal, 1772
to investigate, reconstruct, reorganise. In the past Warren
he had been distinguished as an able administrator, Hastm£s-
and one of the few who had loyally upheld the well-meaning
Vansittart in his efforts to restrain the misrule before Olive's
last visit. The conscience of parliament as well as of the
directors was disturbed. It was not pleasant to feel that the
British had made themselves responsible for the Theparlia-
government of a large region, and were conspicu- mentary
ously failing to act up to the responsibility. Nor mc*uiry'
was it pleasant to find the East India Company coming to the
government to ask for financial assistance instead of being in a
position to make a substantial cash return to the government
for its privileges. A parliamentary inquiry was instituted ;
the nabobs in general and Clive in particular were fiercely
attacked. Clive defended himself so successfully that a pro-
posed vote of censure was transformed into a resolution recog-
nising the magnitude of his services. But the inquiry resulted
358 The King and Lord North
in the first attempt to provide something like a constitution for
the government of the great dependency.
Lord North's Regulating Acts, passed in 1773, were by no means
a successful effort. The system they set up very soon proved
The problem, unworkable. But there was no precedent to which
the constitution-builders could turn for guidance. Since the
days of the Roman empire, it had not fallen to the lot of any
civilised power to take upon itself the government of a vast
population wholly alien in race, in creed, in customs, in laws,
and ideals, accustomed to be ruled by the sword, yet possessed
of a civilisation rooted in a past more remote than that of the
English themselves. The experiment therefore was not suc-
cessful, but by its very blunders it prepared the way for a re-
organisation logically indefensible but astonishingly successful
in its working.
Hitherto His Majesty's government had asserted no control
over the proceedings and methods of the East India Company.
1773. North's ^ na(^ been claimed for the latter that they held
Regulating their possessions in India from the Mogul, and that
intervention on the part of the Crown would be a
violation of their chartered rights. The officials in India had
been simply servants of the company, which made all the appoint-
ments, and gave instructions as to policy which its servants
disobeyed at their peril. The plea that government interfer-
ence would be a violation of the charter was now brushed aside
on the general principle of the supremacy of parliament over
all British subjects.
The purpose of the Regulating Acts was twofold: the re-
organisation of the government of the company at home and
Tne of the government by the company in India. The
management ultimate control still remained with the directors
and proprietors in London, but the qualification
of proprietors was raised from £500 to £1000 of stock ; and in
place of the annual reconstitution of the court of directors, only
one-fourth of the number were to retire in each year in rotation.
The patronage remained with the company, except as laid down
in the second part of the Acts, and a substantial advance was
India 359
at the same time made to the company to preserve it from
bankruptcy.
The constitution-making was contained in the second part.
The governor of Bengal was to be at the same time governor-
general of all the three presidencies. Bombay and ^^ a<iminis-
Madras each retained its own governor and council, tration in
but all questions of war and peace and alliances India-
belonged to the governor-general in council, who was still
responsible for his acts to the government of the company at
home. At the same time a divided authority was created in
India itself. The administration was in the hands of the
governor-general and a council of four members, whose decisions
were arrived at by a majority vote, the governor-general's vote
counting for no more than that of each of his colleagues, except
that he had also a casting vote when opinions were equally
divided. His judgment could in consequence be systematically
over-ridden if opposed by three members of his council. In the
first instance, the governor-general and the four members of
council were appointed not by the directors, but by the govern-
ment. But beside the executive authority the Act set up a new
judicial authority, a High Court of four judges appointed by
the Crown, who were able to claim that they were not servants
of the company at all, were not subject to the executive authority,
but were responsible to the Crown and the Crown alone. In
this body the chief justice was Sir Elijah Impey. The governor-
general appointed was the then governor of Bengal, Warren
Hastings ; but only one of his council, Barwell, was an experi-
enced servant of the company ; the other three, Philip Francis
(commonly reputed to be the author of the Letters of Junius),
Monson, and General Clavering as military member, were appa-
rently selected to express the prevailing distrust of the experi-
enced Indian authorities.
Hence when the judges and the new members of council
arrived in India in October 1774, there ensued a prolonged period
of perpetual conflicts of authority. The judges conflicting
claimed that they were in India to administer authorities.
English law in the name of the Crown, and with no responsi-
360 The King and Lord North
bility to the executive, whose acts and whose officers they could
call to account. The executive found itself perpetually impeded
and crossed by the judicial body ; and ' the triumvirate/
Francis, Clavering, and Monson, systematically set themselves
in opposition to the governor-general and his one supporter
Barwell. Hence we must bear in mind that the rule of Hastings
in India falls into several distinct periods. The first is that when
he was governor of Bengal, from 1772 till October 1774. In
the second period, which lasted till Monson's death in September
1776, the triumvirate were in the majority, and made a point
of over-ruling Hastings. During the next twelve months,
Hastings on the whole predominated ; the council was equally
divided ; but it was claimed by Clavering that Hastings had
resigned, and that he himself was governor-general. Then
Clavering died, Wheler arrived to take Monson's place, and Eyre
Coote to take Clavering's. Thus after 1777, although the new
members of council were by no means warm adherents of
Hastings, opposition to him was no longer systematic ; and for
the remainder of his governor-generalship his will predominated.
The contest between the executive and the judiciary was brought
to an end in 1780, by a compromise to which we shall revert
later. We shall now proceed with the story of Warren Hastings,
which may be more conveniently treated under two separate
aspects: the administration of the British territories, and the
relations between the British and the native powers.
It was the first task of Hastings as governor of Bengal to make
the diwani, the financial administration, a reality. The prin-
Hastings cipal source of revenue was the land, which was
in Bengal divided into large estates or districts called zemin-
daris ; the zemindar we may describe provisionally as the land-
holder, who was responsible for producing the amount of revenue
1772-4. at which the land was assessed. Hastings appointed
The Diwani. a committee to inquire into the whole question
of land tenure, made a new provisional assessment for a period
of five years, suspended the native officials pending inquiries
into charges which had been brought against them, and ap-
pointed British collectors or district officers; at the same time
India 361
district courts of justice were appointed with European magis-
trates, and a court of appeal at headquarters ; whereby the
foundations of an administrative system were laid down.
But the process had raised up a host of enemies against
Hastings. With the arrival of the new members of council and
the judges, the Regulating Acts came into force,
and the triumvirate at once showed the extra- triumvirate
vagance of their hostility to the governor-general, and the
A new nawab, Asaf ud-Daulah, at this moment
succeeded to the throne of Oudh. The old nawab's mother and
widow, the 'begums,' claimed that the royal treasures had been
left to them. The new nawab, thus despoiled, could not meet
the obligations due from him to the company ; yet, since
Hastings supported his claim against the begums, the council
took the side of the ladies and guaranteed them in possession of
the treasure. A prominent native Brahmin, Nanda Kumar,
commonly known as Nuncomar, who had various Nuncomar.
grudges against the governor-general, saw his opportunity for
an attack, and preferred charges against him. The council
encouraged Nuncomar, and insisted that the charges should be
heard at the council board. Hastings refused to preside at his
own trial, and prepared to bring a charge of conspiracy against
Nuncomar. In the nick of time a native, Mohun Persad, who
had a long-standing lawsuit against the Brahmin, discovered
his opportunity for bringing a charge of forgery against his
enemy before the new court of justice which administered
English law. By that law, forgery was a capital crime ; though
in the eyes of orientals it was a venial offence. After a trial
conducted with scrupulous fairness, Nuncomar was condemned
and was duly executed, neither his friends on the council nor
his enemy Hastings raising a finger to help him. There is no
evidence whatever that the charge was suggested or the trial
instigated by Hastings, or that the judges, who were unanimous,
could reasonably have arrived at any other conclusion than
that Nuncomar was guilty ; yet for generations the diatribes
of partisans and historians hostile to Hastings made the world
at large believe that the whole affair was a conspiracy between
362 The King and Lord North
the chief justice and the governor-general. The myth, however,
has been thoroughly exploded in comparatively recent times by
Sir Fitz- James Stephen's exhaustive examination of the story.
Nuncomar was executed in June 1775. The personal charges
against Hastings collapsed with the disappearance of this one
1775.77 most untrustworthy witness ; but the triumvirate
Perversity of continued their course. They abolished the new
the council, ^strict courts of justice and reinstated the nawab's
officers. They controlled the relations with the Mahrattas in
defiance of the governor-general's judgment. Monson died in
1776 ; but six months after the arrival of the council Hastings
had sent home a provisional resignation, afterwards cancelled,
to his agent in London. But the resignation was laid before
the directors, and early in 1777 instructions were received at
Calcutta, appointing Clavering to act provisionally as governor-
general. Hastings repudiated the whole transaction, and the
judges bore him out, pronouncing that he, not Clavering, was
governor-general. The impasse was ended by Clavering's death,
and the arrival of fresh instructions confirming Hastings in his
post.
Hastings, now predominant, was able to carry out his own
policy. He established his board for the examination of land
1777 tenures, and a thorough revision of the assessment.
Hastings He arranged for the maintenance of a military
reorganises. force for the defence of Oudh, to which end the
revenues of the Benares district of Oudh were assigned to the
company — the beginnings of the system which came to be
known as that of ' subsidiary alliances.' The antagonistic
authorities of the executive and the judiciary were now reach-
ing a stage so acute as to produce a deadlock in the government.
Hastings was even forced into an alliance with his enemy Francis,
to resist the impossible pretensions of Impey who was his per-
sonal friend. Ever since their arrival, the judges had been
The contest acting up to their own theory of their position,
with the very much as if they had been appointed with the
primary object of discovering and punishing mis-
conduct on the part of the administration. Every officer up
India 363
country found himself liable to be hailed before this new tribunal
by any one who thought fit to bring a charge against him how-
ever frivolous. At last the council gave orders that the pro-
cesses of the court should be disregarded ; the court fulminated
writs against the council and every one who should obey them.
The situation was impossible ; the only conceivable 1730.
escape from it was by some compromise which The solution.
should induce the judges to act as officers of the company. The
council had restored the criminal jurisdiction of the nawab's
courts, but had left the civil and fiscal jurisdiction with the
company's district officers. Hastings separated the civil and
fiscal functions, appointing civil magistrates, and proposed to
set up a supreme court of appeal at Calcutta, of which he in-*
vited Impey to become the chief. Impey accepted ; in his new
capacity he had effective supervision of the district courts in
his hands ; and the deadlock was removed. The fact that he
was offered and accepted, provisionally, a salary as chief of the
Sadr Adalat, as the new court was called, has been made the
basis for further diatribes against the unfortunate chief justice.
The transfer of Benares to the British made Cheyt Singh, the
raja of Benares, a vassal of the company, which took the place
of the Oudh nawab as his overlord. In 1778 the Benares,
financial embarrassments of the government, in- 1778-81.
volved in a war with the Mahrattas, were heavy. Cheyt Singh's
loyalty was doubtful ; and Hastings demanded from him an
increased contribution of £50,000, which was paid. In the
second year there was delay in the payment. When the demand
was repeated in the third year it was not paid. Hastings,
believing that the raja was acting with treasonable intent,
imposed upon him a further fine of £500,000, and proceeded
in person to arrest him in his own capital. The population rose,
and cut up the military escort of Hastings, who had to beat a
hasty retreat to Chunar, where he remained while he summoned
troops to suppress the insurrection. That end was achieved with
little difficulty, and though Cheyt Singh himself escaped, a new
raja was established. Hastings would appear to have been
acting technically within his rights throughout ; but there can
364 The King and Lord North
be no question that his demands, and especially the fines, were
excessive, and could be excused, if at all, only on the ground of
extreme financial necessity.
The Benares insurrection took place in the latter half of 1781.
While Hastings was at Chunar he was visited by the Oudh
The Oudh nawab, whose subsidies were very much in arrear.
begums. Asaf ud-Daulah stated his case : with the best
intentions he could not possibly meet his obligations
while so large a proportion of the State treasure and revenues
was held by the begums under the guarantee of the British
government. If the British would permit him to take possession
of the wealth to which he was certainly entitled, he could dis-
charge his debts. There had never been any doubt in the mind
of Hastings that the nawab's claim was just ; the situation had
been created entirely by the perversity of the triumvirate. It
was not difficult to conclude that the guarantee which had been
given to the begums might legitimately be cancelled, especially
as those ladies were very strongly suspected of having fomented
the Benares insurrection. Hastings authorised Asaf ud-Daulah
to take possession of the treasure by force. He omitted to
impose conditions ; the seizure was accompanied by normal
oriental processes of cruelty and violence ; but the subsidies
were paid. The company, not Hastings, reaped the advantage,
at a time when cash was very much wanted. But by this time
Francis had gone home and was working his hardest in England
to injure the governor-general. The affairs of Cheyt Singh and
the Oudh begums provided invaluable opportunities for charges
of extortionate tyranny ; the court of directors censured Warren
Hastings ; and the governor-general tendered his resignation, and
returned to England at the beginning of 1785.
More space has been given to these episodes than their intrinsic
importance demands, because very largely upon them have been
Foreign based the popular impressions of Hastings as a
policy. tyrannical pro-consul, and of his methods as typify-
ing the iniquitous aggression by which the British dominion in
India was established. There remains another episode which
falls under the same category ; but it belongs to the story of
India 365
the more definitely external relations, to which we have now to
turn.
The principle of policy laid down by Clive on his departure
from India was that the British should seek no further acquisi-
tions of territory, though conquest was undoubtedly The Rohillas.
within their power, but should aim at preserving 177°-
a balance of power between the native states, and, so far as
possible, amicable relations with all of them. But with regard
to the Bengal presidency in particular, it was taken as essential
that Oudh should be maintained as a substantial buffer between
the British province and Mahratta aggression on the west. It
was in pursuance of this policy that Hastings as governor of
Bengal took part in the Rohilla war. By 1770 the Mahrattas
had recovered from the blow dealt them at Panipat ; Sindhia
was again over-running the north-western districts from Agra to
Delhi, and was pushing across the Jumna to the Ganges. This
brought the Mahrattas in contact with the Rohillas, who occupied
the district of Rohilkhand, on the west of Oudh and on the north-
east of the Ganges. The matter was the more threatening,
because the Mogul Shah Alam, whom the British had established
at Allahabad, placed himself in Sindhia's hands, and would have
ceded the Allahabad district itself to him if the British had not
themselves reoccupied it and restored it to the Oudh nawab,
Shujah Daulah. The Rohillas were Mohammedan Afghans who
had established their mastery over the Hindu population by the
sword within the last forty years.
The Rohillas themselves were a serious menace to Oudh, a
menace which would become still more serious if they should
become friendly with the Mahrattas. Shujah Daulah 1773. The
wanted Rohilkhand, but he could not eject the RohiiiaWar.
Rohillas without British help. He submitted to Hastings
plausible pretexts for giving that help. He had aided the
Rohillas in repelling a Mahratta incursion ; they had engaged
to pay him forty lacs of rupees (£400,000) for his assistance, but
had not done so, and were intriguing with the Mahrattas. If
the British would help him, he would pay them the forty lacs.
In 1772 the East India Company was in great straits for want of
366 The King and Lord North
money ; the nawab's rupees would be of the greatest service ;
but besides this, the strengthening of the barrier against the
Mahrattas was of the utmost. importance. The Rohillas were in
Rohilkhand by right of the sword, and of nothing else ; there
was no moral reason against their expulsion by the Oudh nawab.
Hastings assented to Shujah Daulah's proposal, and sent the
company's troops to co-operate with him. The Rohillas were
expelled, and Rohilkhand was annexed to Oudh, while the
British received the promised consideration for their services.
From the oriental point of view there was no sort of doubt of
the legitimacy of the whole operation. From the western point
A comment, of view it was true that the Rohillas had no direct
quarrel with the British, but they constituted a very appreciable
danger to a British ally, whose preservation was of vital import-
ance to the British themselves. In view of the precarious position
of the British in India, and of the fact that the Rohillas were
merely a group of alien conquerors, Hastings clearly had full
justification for assisting his ally in their expulsion. The point
in respect of which he cannot be acquitted of blame is, that no
adequate precautions were taken to ensure that western instead
of oriental methods of warfare should be adopted. Consequently
the suppression of the Rohillas was effected with all the normal
accompaniments of an oriental conquest, in spite of repeated
protests on the part of the British commander. Hastings was
to show again in the case of the Oudh begums his one grave
deficiency. He had not learnt the great principle of the British
ascendency, that the European must not only himself act up to
European moral standards at all costs, but can only actively
co-operate with orientals upon the condition that they act up to
the same standards.
Hitherto we have dealt almost exclusively with those opera-
tions of Hastings in which his conduct requires defence, and the
The saviour defence itself sometimes falls considerably short of
of India. a complete justification, though in every case it
suffices to clear him from the more rancorous charges which have
been brought against him. We have seen him engaged rather in
a desperate struggle to procure an absolutely necessary revenue
India 367
from legitimate sources if possible, but by methods which some-
times transgressed the border-line between the legitimate and
illegitimate. We have still to see how almost single-handed he
saved the British dominion in India from destruction at the hands
of great native powers, in spite of difficulties created by the
blundering folly and incapacity of the governments at Bombay
and Madras, and the deliberate thwarting of his policy by his
own council, at a time when Great Britain was distracted by her
struggle with the American rebellion and then with the Bourbon
powers.
In 1772 Madhu Rao, the son and successor of the great Baiaji
in the office of peshwa, died. He was succeeded by his brother,
who also died within the year. A posthumous child 177t
was expected, but Ragonath Rao, otherwise called Bombay
Ragoba, the brother of Baiaji, sought the peshwa- and Rasol)a"
ship which the ministers at Puna intended to confer upon the
infant when it should be born. The attitude of Sindhia, Holkar,
and the Bhonsla on the question was dubious. Ragoba appealed
to the British at Bombay for support, offering them in return
Salsette and Bassein, which they were desirous of possessing.
When the infant was born in April 1774, Sindhia and Holkar
declared for the regency at Puna ; nevertheless the 1775 Treaty
Bombay Council accepted Ragoba's proposals, and of Surat,
signed the Treaty of Surat in March 1775 ', although
the separate presidencies were expressly debarred from making
alliances. Hastings himself was entirely opposed to the action
of Bombay, but he was also aware that since the treaty had been
made the government ought to stand by it. The triumvirate
took a different view as a matter of course, and although the
Bombay troops, acting on behalf of Ragoba, had already inflicted
a defeat on the Mahratta force, the Calcutta Council 1776 Treaty
repudiated the Surat treaty, and made on their own of Purandar,
account the Treaty of Purandar with the Puna March-
regency, in March 1776. Ragoba was thrown over, and Bombay
had to be contented with Salsette alone. In the course of the
next eighteen months the arrival of the French adventurer, St.
Lubin, at Puna, where he was warmly welcomed, was an alarming
368 The King and Lord North
symptom. At the end of 1777, Hastings was at last predominant
at Calcutta. The course of events in the western hemisphere
emphasised the danger of a revival of intimate relations between
the French and the native powers in India. In 1778 France was
actually at war again with Great Britain, and before the end of
that year Hastings had authorised a new treaty with Ragoba
which he was prepared to support by an expeditionary force from
Bengal.
To that end he had established amicable relations with the
Bhonsla, and the commander Colonel Goddard had advanced a
considerable distance through friendly territories in
The Wargam January 1779 when news reached him of a disaster,
convention, Bombay, instead of awaiting his arrival, had tried
to strike on its own account, and had dispatched a
force against Puna, which only narrowly escaped being cut to
pieces, and had been compelled to make the convention of
Wargam with Sindhia, which was a practical surrender of all the
Bombay demands. The situation was saved by the brilliantly
1779-so. vigorous action of Goddard, who made a swift dash
Goddard. upon Surat, frightened the Gaekwar into remaining
neutral, and restored the British prestige in the west. At the
beginning of 1780 Goddard, having agreed with the Gaekwar to
secure to him the lordship of Gujerat in independence of Puna,
captured Ahmedabad, which lies within that province, scattered
the forces of Holkar and Sindhia, who was temporising, and
secured the western districts on the north of the Nerbudda. His
operations were to some extent assisted by a diversion effected
in Sindhia's dominions by a small column dispatched by Hastings
for that purpose under Major Popham.
Madhava Rao Sindhia was a particularly acute statesman
who was aiming at raising himself to the real leadership of the
Sindhia. Mahrattas ; and he had not made up his mind on
the important question of the strength of the British power.
At this time it would seem that he hoped to break up that
power, and to reap the profits, but did not wish as yet definitely
to commit himself to the attempt. In fact he never did commit
himself to it, because he never found an opportunity which
India 369
promised sufficient security of success ; and he wished to retain
the chance of cementing an alliance with the British as an
alternative to overthrowing them. As matters now stood, he
would probably have definitely adopted a peace policy, but for
a new storm which descended upon the British.
Haidar AH in Mysore and the Nizam at Haidarabad, both of
them conceived with justice that they had been badly treated
by the Madras government, which had given incom- The Nizam
patible pledges to each of them, and then sought to and Haidar
excuse itself from carrying out its pledges to either. ****
To each of those powers the danger from the Mahrattas had
appeared so pressing in the early years of the decade that neither
of them cared for an open rupture with the British. But when
the Mahrattas became engaged in their own internal feuds too
deeply to take combined aggressive action, Haidar had used his
opportunity to consolidate his own power at their expense.
When the British gratuitously involved themselves in the
Mahratta complications it occurred to the Nizam that the south-
ern powers might combine against them. The convention of
Wargam at the beginning of 1779 confirmed him in this view.
Haidar on the other hand had already opened communications
on his own account with the French at Mauritius, France and
Great Britain being now at war. His hostility to the British was
intensified by their seizure of the French port of Mahe, which
he regarded as being under his protection, since it lay within the
coastal territories over which he had extended his rule. The
grievance was the greater because the Madras authorities had
sent their troops across what was indubitably Mysore territory.
So the Nizam found everything ready for putting his scheme
in execution. He himself and Haidar were to deal with Madras,
and the western Mahrattas with Bombay, whilst the Bhonsla
would prevent intervention from Bengal.
Haidar accepted the role of protagonist, and in the summer of
1780 swept down from the Mysore mountains into the Carnatic
with the vast army which he had been organising for years past.
Madras was soon paying the penalty for its sins and for the
general corruption of its government. It had made no prepara-
Innes's Eng. Hist. — Vol. III. 2 A
370 The King and Lord North
tions to meet the deluge which ought to have been foreseen.
Haidar swept the Carnatic, cut up one column under Baillie,
and drove back another, which had advanced under
1 7ftO TTriidfiT
invades the the once brilliant leader Hector Munro, in precipi-
Carnatic, tate flight to Madras. For the moment it seemed
as if the British would be wiped out of the southern
presidency altogether. But neither the Bhonsla nor the Nizam
had moved as yet ; in the west, Goddard's prowess inspired
the Mahrattas with discretion. In the north, Popham's small
column startled all India by successfully surprising Sindhia's
capture of mighty fortress of Gwalior, which had been reputed
Gwaiior. impregnable. To Sindhia, to the Bhonsla, and to
the Nizam this brilliant feat was convincing. All of them began
to turn their minds to an accommodation with the British.
Hastings in Bengal made swift preparations to remedy the
disastrous blunderings of Madras ; even before the end of
the year reinforcements under the veteran Eyre Coote were
dispatched to the south.
Any lingering doubts in Sindhia's mind were removed by the
vigorous activity of Goddard and Hartley in the Puna region,
1781. British and by a brilliant action fought by the little
successes. column, in the command of which Popham was suc-
ceeded by Bruce in April 1781. Eyre Coote's arrival in Madras
completely changed the situation there. Hampered though he
still was by the wretched mismanagement of the Madras authori-
ties, and his consequent lack of supplies, he was able to take the
field in the early summer, and to inflict two defeats upon Haidar,
who knew that he had now met his match. Moreover a new
governor arrived at Madras, Lord Macartney, who took matters
in hand with vigour, and improved the general position during
the winter by seizing the two Dutch ports of Negapatam in the
south, and Trincomali in Ceylon. In the meantime Hastings had
not permitted even the insurrection of Benares to disturb his
course of action ; and even while he was at Chunar his negotia-
tions with Sindhia finally secured that potentate's goodwill in
the further negotiations which still remained to be conducted
with Puna. By the peace which was at length arranged with
India 371
the Mahrattas, the British finally abandoned Ragoba, but re-
mained in possession of Salsette and Bassein.
Haidar, however, was still unconquered. In the western
hemisphere the British fortunes were at their lowest, for York-
town was surrendered in October, and the balance 1732. suffren
of naval superiority still seemed to lie with the and Hughes.
French. In 1782 Admiral Suffren arrived in Indian waters with
a squadron which under his brilliant command proved a fraction
more effective than that of the British commodore Hughes.
Four stubbornly contested battles were fought by sea in the
course of the year, in none of which could either side claim a
definite victory. But Hughes could not prevent his opponent
from landing reinforcements, and capturing Gudalur and Trinco-
mali, which he found a more serviceable port than any that was
available for Hughes. On land neither Haidar All nor Coote
could succeed in winning a decisive victory. Then Coote's
health broke down completely ; but on the other hand Haidar
died, leaving his throne and the command of his troops to his
equally ambitious and active but much less able
son Tippu Sultan. Haidar 's death decided the sultan
Puna government to agree to the definitive peace ; succeeds
nevertheless the issue of the Mysore war still seemed
doubtful when the veteran French commander Bussy was able
to land in India, and Suffren was still at Trincomali. The cer-
tainty, however, that peace between France and England was
immediately impending, presently followed by the news that
the preliminaries had actually been signed, prevented further
operations on the part of the French during 1783. 1783-84.
If Hastings had enjoyed a free hand there can be Peace,
little doubt that Tippu would now have been soundly beaten.
But the attitude of the directors had now become so hostile to
the governor-general that he was unable to control the Madras
authorities, with the result that in 1784 they concluded a peace
with the Mysore sultan very much upon terms which he might
have dictated if he had been the conqueror, or had at least
proved himself distinctly the superior ; with the result that he
became firmly convinced that he had in fact been the victor.
37 2 The King and Lord North
When Hastings left India in February 1785, an experienced
Indian official, Sir John Macpherson, was appointed to act
1784. as governor-general ad interim. Warren Hastings
Hastings had done his work. He had saved India. He had
leaves India. taught the Mahrattas and the Nizam that the
British, so long at least as a strong man was at the head of the
government in India, were not to be beaten even though they
might suffer reverses. He had won the respect of all the native
powers, of almost the whole British community, and more than
the respect of the population of Bengal ; and he had laid the
foundations of the Indian Civil Service. He returned to England
to find himself denounced as a tyrant and extortioner with all
the thunders of Burke and the lightnings of Sheridan. Eleven
years earlier his mighty predecessor Clive had gone to the grave,
struck down by his own hand, the victim of the melancholia
partly induced by the bitterness of the attacks made upon him.
Those two, through good and evil report, had fought and won
Britain's battle in India, and had established the ascendency
which in course of time was to spread all over the peninsula the Pax
Britannica — perhaps the most astonishing political achievement
the world has known since the establishment of the Pax Romana.
V. GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND, 1770-1784
Although the ministry of Lord North is condemned by pos-
terity for its conspicuous failure in all the essentials of a capable
North's and intelligent government ; although it was re-
ministry, sponsible for destroying all prospect of a recon-
ciliation between the mother country and her colonies ; although
when it had gone to war, it transcended the records of all previous
governments in its mismanagement of the military situation ;
although in home affairs it achieved nothing but technical
victories over opponents whose cause finally triumphed in their
despite ; the fact remained that it was a strong government in
the sense that it was irresistible in parliament, that its general
policy commanded the approval of the electors, and that its
majorities were unshaken at the general election of 1774 and
Great Britain and Ireland 373
even of 1780. The Opposition was in fact too much divided
to agree upon a common ground of attack, apart from the
entirely unpopular line of its antagonism to the government's
American policy, until the crisis brought about by the Saratoga
disaster which exposed the essential weakness of the adminis-
tration. During those eight years therefore, parliamentary
and domestic affairs in Great Britain call for no more detailed
attention than they have already received.
In Ireland, however, the revived political energy was increas-
ingly active. Townshend in the last years of his administration
had secured the power but not the popularity of 1772.
the government by an utterly shameless use of Harcourt
those methods of corruption which in England had
transferred the control of the electorate from the Whigs to the
Crown. Nevertheless when Lord Harcourt succeeded Townshend
at the end of 1772 he found a powerful Opposition led in parlia-
ment by Henry Flood, and resting upon what had begun to take
the character of a national sentiment. No immediate cause of
friction arose, but Harcourt soon found it advisable to recom-
mend a measure calculated at once to relieve the severe financial
strain and to conciliate Irish feeling.
In Ireland there was no land tax ; the new scheme was that
of imposing a tax of two shillings in the pound, not upon the
whole of the land but upon that of absentee land- The Absentee
lords. It has already been observed that vast Tax-
estates in Ireland were owned by English magnates who never
set foot in the island, but expended the revenue which they
drew from it not in Ireland, but in England. The system of
absenteeism was for obvious reasons extremely injurious ; a
tax upon absentees was regarded upon all hands in Ireland as
obviously just ; magnates who for their own convenience dis-
regarded their responsibilities as Irish landowners might legiti-
mately be required to provide compensation in cash. But
its justice did not appeal to the absentees themselves. The
proposal was strongly opposed by the Rockingham group in
England, whose personal interests were largely involved, and
by their foremost intellectual champion Edmund Burke.
374 The King and Lord North
According to the argument, it was unjust that the absentees
should be penalised for giving the preference to their English
The tax over their Irish estates, and for residing in the
defeated. country where their greater interests lay. The
tax would force them to reside in Ireland and to desert their
public duties in England. It would emphasise the false doctrine
that Ireland was separate from Great Britain, and would en-
courage a war of retaliation much less injurious to Great Britain
than to Ireland itself. It is extremely difficult to believe that
any important section of the absentees would have elected to
reside in Ireland instead of in England, in order to avoid paying
the tax. It was to be imposed not as a penalty but as a legiti-
mate method of obtaining compensation for injuries from which
Ireland suffered, and would continue to suffer, under the absentee
system. As for the ' false doctrine/ that Ireland was separate
from England, the whole existing system of commercial regula-
tion rested precisely upon that assumption, denied the identity
of British and Irish interests, and subordinated the interests of
Ireland to those of Great Britain. Chatham and his followers
asserted the principle, which Burke himself applied to the
American colonies, that it lay with Ireland to direct her own
taxation. The position of the Rockinghams, however, appealed
to the whole landed interest. It was obvious that the measure
would meet with vehement resistance in England and would
probably be rejected. Harcourt perceived that such an event
would greatly aggravate the sentiment in Ireland which was so
strongly opposed to British control ; disastrous results might
follow if Ireland followed the line which was being followed in
America. He endeavoured therefore, while publicly advocat-
ing the measure on behalf of the Irish government, to procure
a vote adverse to it in the Irish parliament. An impression
was sedulously fostered that the absentee tax would soon be
expanded into a general land tax. The resident landholders
took alarm; and when a resolution in favour of the tax was
introduced in parliament, and formally supported from the
government benches, it was defeated.
The failure of the absentee tax then involved no direct quarrel.
Great Britain and Ireland 375
The American crisis and its development into the War of
Independence prohibited any such active opposition to the
government as would have created an appearance Influence of
of disloyalty. Flood himself accepted office. At the American
the same time, the similarity of the Irish and the <*uarreL
American grievances necessarily fostered in Ireland a widespread
sympathy with the Americans, and made it more dangerous for
the British government to turn a deaf ear to Irish complaints.
When Flood joined the Irish government the leadership of the
reforming party devolved upon the earl of Charlemont and
Henry Grattan.
At first, however, no practical advance was made towards
removal of grievances. Agitation in Ireland was for the time
directed rather to the demand for free trade. But 1778
just as the landed interest in England had proved Commercial
an insuperable barrier to the absentee tax, the re axa lons*
mercantile interest in England offered a strenuous resistance
to commercial concessions. In 1778, when North himself was
disposed to go to considerable lengths for the sake of concilia-
tion in view of the American situation, all that could be obtained
was the inclusion of Ireland in the benefits of the Navigation
Acts. In the same year, Grattan procured the catholic
first relaxation in the penal code which weighed so relief,
heavily upon his Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen. The law
which conveyed the inheritance of a Roman Catholic's estate
to any one of his children who might elect to turn Protestant
was repealed. It may be remarked, however, that the whole
tendency for some time past both in Ireland and in England
had been to connive at the evasion of laws whose original excuse
had been the hypothesis that a Romanist might almost be
presumed to be a Jacobite. WThen Grattan's bill was passed
in Ireland, an analogous measure was passed for England in the
British parliament.
The latter measure was a mild enough concession to the spirit
of toleration; but when in the following year, 1779, it was
proposed to extend it to Scotland, the extravagance of the
' no popery ' sentiment in that country immediately made itself
376 The King and Lord North
felt — so strongly that the measure was abandoned. Its defeat
excited the bigoted Protestants of the southern country to
1780. The demand its repeal for England. The crazy Lord
Gordon Riots. George Gordon set himself at the head of the move-
ment, a huge petition was signed, and in June 1780 Lord George
marched to Westminster at the head of a great mob, which
broke loose from all control, and held London in terror for
three days while it sacked chapels, destroyed property, and
finally broke into Newgate prison which was in part burnt
down. The rioting was only suppressed when the king took
upon his own shoulders the responsibility for ordering out the
soldiery.
Both for England and for Ireland, the situation had been
changed by the French declaration of war. From 1778 onwards,
consoiida- Chatham being dead, the whole Opposition in
tionoftne England was coming into line with the demand
opposition. £Qr concentration upon the French war, and the
immediate recognition of American independence. It was
recognised that policy was directed not by the king's ministers
but by the king himself, whom the ministers obeyed often in
direct opposition to their own judgment. Parliament was con-
trolled by means of the corrupt system of distributing pensions
and sinecure places at the public expense. That system had
been satisfactory enough to the Whigs in the days when they
themselves controlled it ; it was not so satisfactory when the
control was in the hands of the king. Hence arose the cry for
' economic reform/ the abolition of the abuses of expenditure, in
respect of which a vigorous agitation was started in the country,
1780 and which was embodied in Burke's bill for Economic
Economic Reform, introduced in February 1780. Although
in theory the bill commanded the assent cf the
House, it was destroyed in committee because in its details it
struck at too many personal interests. The Opposition were
again divided upon the question of what ought to be done.
Fox was demanding parliamentary reform, annual parliaments,
and the addition of a hundred county members. Burke was
opposed to any material change in the representation ; Richmond
Great Britain and Ireland 377
in the House of Lords took a line similar to that of Fox, but
still more advanced. In the Commons, however, when John
Dunning introduced his famous resolution, that ' the Dunning's
influence of the Crown has increased, is increasing, resolution,
and ought to be diminished/ it was carried. King George gave
his answer to the Dunning resolution by springing upon the
country in September a general election, on which enormous
sums were expended, and which kept the ministerial majority
unimpaired. The election is otherwise noteworthy because
William Pitt, Chatham's second son, who was now only in his
twenty-second year, was one of the new members. Burke lost
his seat for Bristol, but another was found for him by Rocking-
ham at Malton.
The general election confirmed the North administration in
office. The disasters of 1781, however, capped by the surrender
of Yorktown, proved fatal. North had been dis- 1732.
credited by the issue of a large loan which, like Fall of North.
Dashwood's loan in 1763, was so engineered that the lenders
made out of it a profit little short of a million : of which one
half was said to have gone to the pockets of supporters of the
government in the House of Commons. The king struggled
hard to persuade North to remain in office, for if North went
a Whig ministry was inevitable ; and in preference to accepting
the Rockinghams, George was all but prepared to retire to
Hanover. But within six months of the fall of Yorktown the
ministerial majorities had disappeared. The king was forced
to accept North's resignation and the construction of a new
ministry, which had Rockingham at its head, but included both
wings of the Whig party, and notably Chatham's old supporter
Lord Shelburne, on whose support George's own hopes were
fixed. Pitt, though little more than a boy, declined any office
of less than cabinet rank, and remained for the time outside the
ministry, though he had vigorously denounced the war and
associated himself with some of the more advanced Whig
doctrines.
The second Rockingham administration came into power in
March 1782. Three months had hardly passed when Rockingham
378 The King and Lord North
died, and George was able to make Shelburne prime minister.
In the interval acute disagreements had arisen. Shelburne
had an abnormal capacity for inspiring distrust;
hams and he was looked upon by most of the Whigs as the
Shelburne, king's representative in the cabinet, in association
with the Chancellor Thurlow, the one member of
the North administration who by George's express desire was
admitted to the new ministry. Shelburne too did not see eye
to eye with his colleagues on the question of acknowledging
American independence ; though none even of the most ardent
advocates of peace were ready to yield to the Bourbons, especi-
ally after the news of Rodney's victories in April. Burke's
new bill for economic reform abolished many abuses, but was
less stringent than his former bill, owing to the attitude of
Shelburne and Thurlow. Pitt proposed parliamentary reform
as the true remedy for the evils under which the country was
suffering, but his motion in spite of Fox's support was defeated.
Of all the ministers Fox was the hottest in his antagonism to
Shelburne. The quarrel between them was brought to a head
because Shelburne was responsible for colonial and Fox for
foreign affairs, so that one was conducting negotiations with
the American commissioners in Paris, while the other was treat-
ing with the French themselves — an impossible position when
neither of the two had the confidence of the other. When
Rockingham died, Fox declined to serve under Shelburne.
Burke, Sheridan, and other leading members of the party asso-
ciated themselves with him, though only one other member of
the cabinet resigned. Pitt, who had attached himself to Shel-
burne, entered the cabinet as chancellor of exchequer. There
were now three parties in the House, the ministerialists whose
cohesion was extremely dubious, Fox's Whigs, and North's
followers. But before Fox's resignation the Rockingham
ministry had passed the Act which gave to Ireland the inde-
pendent legislature which is known as Grattan's parliament.
It has already been remarked that in Ireland as in England,
the declaration of war by France changed the situation. Popular
sympathy with the colonies was one thing, disloyalty in the
Great Britain and Ireland
379
face of a foreign foe was another. Troops had been with-
drawn from Ireland for the American war ; there was pressing
danger that France would select Ireland as an objec- 1778
tive for invasion. Quite spontaneously a movement Ireland: the
sprang up for the formation of a large volunteer vo11
force ; it was zealously encouraged by men of all parties ; the
lead was taken by Charlemont ; the Catholics, no less than the
Protestants, although they were themselves debarred from
carrying arms, were liberal in providing money. Emphatically
the movement was loyalist ; but it was equally obvious that
it might assume a very different aspect. Government viewed
it with alarm, but to suppress it officially was out of the question.
Moreover any such attempt would have aroused to the utmost
the resentment of the entire population.
In plain terms the fact that had to be recognised was this,
that however successful the official government might be in
controlling the parliamentary vote, Protestant
Ireland was thoroughly bent upon its demands commercial
for freedom of trade and legislative independence, and other
T • u r 4.1, r t, A • concessions.
Irish Catholics had no enective means ot expressing
their opinions, and could not in any case resort to force ; the
volunteer movement had unexpectedly placed in the hands of
the Protestants a military force which, if it should be turned
against the government at a moment when all its resources
were needed for fighting the combination of the Americans and
the Bourbons, would enable the Irish leaders to dictate their
own terms. When the Dublin parliament met at the end of
1779, Flood from the government benches joined with Grattan
in demanding free trade and also the relief of Irish Protestant
dissenters from the Test Act. The British government dared
not maintain its resistance ; the test was withdrawn, and the
commercial restrictions were almost entirely removed.
The victory gave fresh confidence to the popular leaders ;
while the viceroy Buckingham was aware that the strength of
the government could only be maintained by the most profuse
corruption. In April 1780, it became manifest that even in the
Irish House of Commons the feeling in favour of independence
380 The King and Lord North
was almost unanimous, even though members might vote against
their convictions. A sort of test question was provided by the
1780. The introduction of the Mutiny Bill. As matters stood
Irish Mutiny the British parliament had extended the Mutiny
BlU> Act to Ireland on its own authority, in accord-
ance with the Declaratory Act which had affirmed the power
of the British parliament to legislate for Ireland. In Ireland
the legality of that claim was repudiated; magistrates were
prepared to act upon the doctrine that in Ireland no Mutiny
Act whatever was in force. The introduction in the Irish
parliament of an Irish Mutiny Bill created a dilemma. If
the bill were rejected in England, the magistrates would act
upon the doctrine that the military in Ireland were merely
civilians, and it would be impossible to enforce military dis-
cipline. If the bill were accepted in England that would be
tantamount to acceptance of the Irish doctrine. The British
government in fact evaded the dilemma by altering the Mutiny
Bill, so as to make it perpetual instead of annual. It was no
longer a mere substitution of an Act of the Irish parliament for
an Act of the parliament at Westminster ; and beyond this, the
Irish intention had been to gain for the Irish parliament the
precise power which the English Mutiny Act had gained for
the English parliament, of being able to threaten refusal of its
renewal — a power which vanished when the Act was made per-
petual. Nevertheless the government succeeded in procuring a
majority to pass the Act in Dublin.
At the end of 1780 Lord Carlisle succeeded Buckingham as
viceroy. In the course of 1781, the most serious fears were
1781. Irish entertained of a French invasion in the south of
loyalty. Ireland : the volunteers made a fresh and convinc-
ing demonstration of their loyalty, many thousands of the men
of the north enrolling themselves for the defence of the south.
Broadly speaking, the foreign danger made strongly for loyalty,
and thus practically strengthened the hands of the government.
When at the end of the year the news arrived that Yorktown
had fallen, the feeling that the government must be supported
at all costs was so strong that some of the Opposition leaders
Great Britain and Ireland 381
suspended their intended demand for independence, in order to
give their loyal addresses the utmost possible force. Grattan
himself would have joined the demand for redress of grievances
to the expression of loyalty, but the majority against him was
overwhelming, arid was not one which had been artificially
manufactured.
Nevertheless, the case for the Nationalists was emphatically
strengthened by the loyalty they had displayed, and outside
of parliament there was no inclination to relax the
energy of the demand for legislative independence, volunteers
If the Americans had already practically assured at Dun-
their independence by fighting for it, there was
the more reason why the Irish should receive the measure of
independence which they demanded without any diminution
of loyalty. In February 1782, there was a great gathering of
the representatives of Ulster volunteers at Dungannon. The
volunteers it must be remembered were all Protestants with
an interest in the maintenance of the Protestant ascendency,
but Grattan had especially associated himself with the cause of
justice to the Catholics. The meeting at Dungannon affirmed
the principles of legislative independence and of limiting the
Mutiny Bill ; to these demands it added another for the relaxa-
tion of the Penal Code, at the instance of Grattan ; and beyond
this it took significant measures for perfecting the volunteer
organisation. Several volunteer meetings in other parts of the
country endorsed the proceedings of the volunteers of Ulster.
The moment was propitious. A month after the meeting at
Dungannon North's ministry had fallen. The Rockinghams
had all along been committed to the main constitu- Grattan's
tional principles upon which the Irish demand was parliament
based. The claim for legislative independence was '
conceded. By the repeal of the Declaratory Act the parliament
of Great Britain surrendered its claim to legislate independently
for Ireland. The legislative control both of the Irish and of the
British Privy Councils was abolished. The Mutiny Act was
limited to two years. Until the Legislative Union of 1800,
Grattan's parliament ruled in Ireland with unrestricted legis-
382 The King and Lord North
lative powers. The British Acts of 1782 which gave this inde-
pendence were confirmed in 1783 by a further Renunciatory Act,
demanded by Flood and others in opposition to Grattan, which
expressly resigned the claim of the British parliament to legis-
late for Ireland ; since Flood argued that the simple repeal of
the Declaratory Act did not amount to a positive repudiation
of the principle.
The last stage of the war, the relief of Gibraltar, the negotia-
tions which arranged the peace preliminaries, on the one hand,
with the Americans, and on the other with France
July 1782-' and Spain, belonged to the period of Shelburne's
February, ministry. But though Shelburne enjoyed the king's
confidence, the government was not strong in parlia-
ment. It was attacked on the one side by Fox and his associates,
and on the other by North's followers. It was evident that some
reconstruction would be necessary, and it was generally antici-
pated that either Shelburne would discard his colleagues of what
had been the Rockingham group, and would coalesce with North,
or that he himself would be forced to retire, and the Fox party
would return to power in association with the Rockinghams.
What actually happened was that Fox and North coalesced. It
was an amazing combination. For years North had ruled
simply as the king's instrument ; Fox was distinguished by his
pre-eminent hostility to the royal power. North was a Tory,
Fox was the most democratic of prominent statesmen. Yet the
two united to shatter the Shelburne administration, and when
Shelburne's continuation in office proved finally impossible in
February 1783, they were able to force the famous coalition
ministry upon the extremely reluctant monarch. Pitt and
Richmond went into opposition along with Shelburne, flatly
refusing to have anything to do with North ; while a figurehead
was found for the coalition in the person of the duke of Portland.
It was Fox's very definite intention to put an end to govern-
ment by the king ; but the nature of the extraordinary coalition
1783. The which had been formed, and which shared no
coalition. common political principles, practically prohibited
the carrying out of any definite programme. Though Shelburne
Great Britain and Ireland 383
had been overthrown by the carrying of a vote of censure on the
terms of the peace, his supplanters made the definitive peace in
September upon practically identical terms. In the House of
Commons ministers commanded an overwhelming majority ;
yet the fact that their union was incomplete was shown when a
new parliamentary reform bill was introduced by Pitt, and was
defeated in spite of the support given to it by Fox. But the two
groups were in solid union when Fox in the autumn introduced
a new bill for the government of India, a question which recent
events had forced into a foremost place.
During the second Rockingham ministry parliament was
already turning its attention to the Indian question, and passed
resolutions for the recall of Warren Hastings. The Need of an
directors would have acted upon the resolutions, India Act.
but the court of proprietors was loyal to the governor-general,
and its decision was final. There was no one in England capable
of presenting the case for Hastings, who was generally condemned
by public opinion, since his enemies were both active and able.
When the coalition ministry was formed in 1783, Henry Dundas,
who had held office under North but was now allying himself
with Pitt, introduced an India Bill, of which the primary object
was to confer very greatly increased powers upon the governor-
general, but to give that office to some nobleman whose estab-
lished prestige would make his position a very different one from
that of a servant of the company personally unknown in England.
The government, however, promised a bill of their own in the
autumn, and that of Dundas was withdrawn. The proposals of
Fox, prepared largely in consultation with Burke, took the form
of two bills which were introduced in November.
The scheme recognised the national responsibility for the
dominion in India. It vested the control in a board of seven
commissioners, nominated by parliament to hold Fox,a Indla
office for four years. If vacancies occurred during BUI,
that time they were to be filled up by the Crown. :
At the end of the four years a new Board of Commissioners was
to be appointed by the Crown. A subordinate board, nominated
by parliament from the larger proprietors, was to direct com-
384 The King and Lord North
mercial affairs ; vacancies in this board were to be filled up by
the proprietors. All patronage was to be vested in the supreme
board, and the bill further proposed to abolish presents and
monopolies, and to lay down sundry administrative regulations.
As an administrative scheme, the serious defect of the bills was
probably to be found in their failure to recognise the necessity
for leaving an adequate latitude of action to the governor-general
in India ; but in England a different line of attack was followed.
The directors in the first place found themselves completely
shelved, and raised an indignant outcry against the breach of
opposition their charter. If this bill should become law no
to the bill. chartered company could from thenceforth feel
secure in its privileges. The antagonism of the entire com-
mercial community was roused. The Crown and the political
Opposition allied themselves with the commercial opposition,
but also had their own grounds for attacking the bills. Unwisely
the seven commissioners nominated in the bills were all members
of Fox's party. For four years the whole of the valuable Indian
patronage would be a party perquisite ; it would be used, it was
argued, to secure the unqualified support of the ' nabobs ' ; the
unqualified support of the nabobs would secure to the party
the complete control of the electoral machine ; the whole thing
was in fact a plan devised in order to establish ministers per-
manently in power. As long as ministers were in power they
would have the appointments to the Board in their own hands
and would utilise it as a party instrument ; and as long as it
could be utilised as a party instrument it would secure to the
ministers their parliamentary majority.
In the House of Commons the bills were carried by over-
whelming majorities ; outside of parliament the feeling was
strongly hostile, owing to the alarm of the corn-
Defeat and
dismissal mercial community and the effect of the arguments
of the Opposition. The attitude of the Lords was
doubtful, and in the circumstances the king adopted
the extremely unconstitutional course of influencing the vote of
the Lords by making it known that he would treat every vote
cast for the bill as an act of hostility to himself. The proper
Great Britain and Ireland 385
constitutional course for the king at that time would certainly
have been to dismiss his ministers, appeal to the country,
and abide by the country's decision. By the course which he
did actually adopt George procured instead the defeat of the
obnoxious bills in the House of Lords. Then in turn the wise
and constitutional course of ministers would have been to insist
upon a dissolution and to appeal to the country against the
dangerously unconstitutional action of the Crown. What
actually happened was that within twenty-four hours of the
defeat of the bill George dismissed his ministers, and invited
Pitt, who was not yet five-and-twenty, to form an administration.
Pitt, with a self-confidence which was superb because it was
justified by the event, though at the moment it appeared pre-
posterous, accepted the task. His cabinet con- pitt takea
sisted, besides himself, entirely of peers ; signifi- office,
cantly enough he would not offer a place in it to Deceml)er'
Lord Shelburne. He himself stood alone in the Commons. The
ejected ministers scoffed. They reckoned that with their great
majority they could paralyse the new government and force Pitt
to resign, whereupon George would be obliged to reinstate them.
They would not demand an appeal to the country ; which caused
the country to believe that they expected to be defeated at the
polls, and made that event all the more probable. Pitt fought
his battle with amazing coolness and skill. Fox ought to have
made the issue turn upon the Crown's unconstitutional use of
influence ; Pitt made it to turn upon the ministers' unconstitu-
tional claim to force themselves upon the Crown. Fox ought
to have posed as the champion of constitutionalism ; had he
done so his case would have been a very powerful one. He
threw it away, and by enabling Pitt to adopt that role himself
made his adversary's case very much the stronger. Pitt was not
ready for an immediate dissolution ; he wanted time to bring
home to the electors the nature of the struggle, and to win their
confidence.
For three months, from igth December 1783 to 25th March
1784, the spectacle of the young minister fighting single-handed
against all the most experienced and brilliant orators and debaters
Innes's Eng. Hist.— Vol. HI. 2 B
386 The King and Lord North
of the day appealed to the sporting instinct of the public ; the
Opposition majorities dwindled ; outside parliament the tide set
1784. Pitt's steadily in favour of Chatham's son. When Pitt
triumph. fad dissolve, the Opposition lost a hundred and
sixty seats, and Pitt was returned to power with the biggest
majority on record at his back.
CHAPTER IX. THE YEARS OF PEACE
I. AT HOME, 1784-1792
AT the end of the tenth year after the death of George n. it
appeared that his grandson had emerged as decisively the victor
in the struggle which he had been waging to restore The Crown's
the supremacy of the Crown in the body politic, domination.
George m. had made himself the master of parliament, which
obeyed his behests for the next twelve years — a record without
any precedent since the accession of the house of Stuart. He
had won his victory by capturing the control of the electoral
machinery through the purchase, by one means or another, of the
bulk of the influences inside and outside of parliament which
were open to corruption. Thus after the tenth year he had been
able to rule through a group of ministers whose political insight
was singularly defective, but who were by no means devoid of
parliamentary talents, while they were unanimous in their sub-
serviency to the Crown. Behind all this, however, lay the vital
fact that public opinion in the country was blind enough to
endorse the royal policy.
The actual truth was that no government could stand for long
unless it had a substantial mass of public opinion at its back.
Public opinion had forced the elder Pitt upon Supremacy
George n. in spite of all the corrupt influences that of public
could be brought to bear. During the first ten °Pinion-
years of George m.'s reign, public opinion had never been
sufficiently pronounced to control the fate of ministries ; during
the next ten years it was definitely on the king's side ; so that
after the dissolution in 1780 the king's supporters retained their
solid majority. When during the next year it turned definitely
against the ministerial policy, the king was reluctantly com-
387
388 The Years of Peace
pelled, in March 1782, to accept the resignation which North
pressed upon him. The fall of North's ministry proved that it
was impossible for the king to retain permanent control of the
government in defiance of public opinion, in spite of all the
illegitimate machinery at his disposal, just as the fall of New-
castle's ministry in 1766 had demonstrated the same truth with
regard to the Whig connection. The lesson was emphasised by
the general election of 1784. Public opinion was determined to
sweep away the coalition and was strongly disposed to take the
risk of placing its confidence in the younger Pitt, who found
himself in the new House of Commons with a majority of more
than a hundred and sixty behind him. The Opposition was
shattered to pieces.
It was the confidence inspired by Pitt during the first three
months of 1784 which brought about the debacle. The king
King George, na(^ defeated his enemies, but it was to Pitt that he
Pitt, and the owed the decisive character of the victory. There
public. was ^o ke no return to the conditions of 1770.
George himself knew that he had found in his young minister
not a servant but an ally ; one who would not be coerced into a
policy of which he disapproved ; one who also, like his father
before him, sought to establish a government ' broad-based
upon the people's will/ not upon the successful employment of
corruption. The only alternative to the alliance was the return
to power of a body of politicians in whose creed hostility to royal
influence was a fundamental article. For his ally, subserviency
to the Crown was in no sense an article of faith as it had been
with North and the King's Friends ; nor would he be persuaded
to subserviency for the sake of remaining in office. For office for
its own sake, and the emoluments appertaining to it, Pitt cared
as little as his father, though he was intensely ambitious of
power. The king's dream of an autocracy carried on through
parliamentary forms was dissipated. Pitt, not the king, was
the real master of the situation. If the two had not remained
in substantial accord, George would have been driven back to
the old position of struggling to buy a predominant parliamentary
party of his own. If they had not been in substantial accord
At Home 389
with the country, the ministry would again have been broken
up. But on the main points, the king, the minister, and public
opinion remained in general agreement, and Pitt with one brief
interval remained at the head of the government until the day
of his death.
Pitt, however, was a statesman of a very different type from
Chatham. In certain respects he was more nearly akin to
Walpole. If in some ways he was autocratic, yet character-
among his political aims there were many which he istics of pitt-
placed in the category of adiaphora, things indifferent, desirable
in themselves, but not fundamental. The modern practice
which requires the acceptance by a majority in the House of
Commons of every measure introduced by ministers was still in
the remote future. Adverse votes, even on questions which might
have been regarded as of first-rate importance, were not regarded
as involving resignation. Pitt would have been more than
astonished by the suggestion that the career of a ministry ought
to be terminated by a snap vote procured by a cleverly engineered
surprise. He did not consider that he was called upon to resign
because measures which he advocated were defeated, except
where he considered himself definitely pledged (as in the case of
Catholic Emancipation for Ireland in 1801), so long as the broad
lines of his policy commanded the general approval of the House
and the country. What he did require as a condition of his
partnership with the king was, that George should not use
the royal influence against his own measures. To a straight-
forward defeat by straightforward opposition, he adopted the
same attitude as Walpole, when that minister found that he
could only carry the Excise Bill in the teeth of popular feeling.
He let the question drop.
The nine years which passed between the beginning of 1784
and the beginning of 1793 occupy a rather curious position in
our history ; curious because they seemed to be The Pitt
preparing for developments which were suddenly paradox,
thwarted by the catastrophe of the war with France, and of
which the resumption was postponed until a time when all the
conditions had been completely changed. During those years
39° The Years of Peace
Pitt's policy was on the lines of what came in the nineteenth
century to be called Liberalism. As Locke had provided the
Revolution Whigs with a text-book of constitutional theory, so
Adam Smith had just provided a new text-book of economic
theory, which was already threatening the ascendency of the
old mercantile doctrine, the doctrine to which orthodox Whigs
had been as closely attached as to the principles of the Revolu-
tion. Pitt was the disciple of Adam Smith, and was zealously
engaged in translating the theory into practice, until all the
normal economic conditions were turned completely upside
down by a war which paralysed the operations of commerce :
he had been in his grave for more than a dozen years before
Huskisson again began to follow upon the same paths. Pitt
began his public life as a parliamentary reformer. In this course
he was checked at the outset ; but he would assuredly have
resumed the role if the French Revolution and its consequences
had not inspired nearly all the educated elements of society
with the conviction that any encroachments upon privileges,
any concession of power to the unenfranchised elements, would
mean red ruin and the breaking-up of laws. Not till more than
twenty years after his death did parliamentary reform again come
within the range of practical politics. Pitt had begun his career
as an advocate of peace ; he was fated to guide the destinies of
the country during the most tremendous war in which she had
ever been engaged. Of all the projects with which he associated
himself in the years when he was a peace minister, only one
made continued progress, unchecked by the French war. In
the year after his death, British participation in the slave-trade
was abolished.
The political aspects of the nine years now coming under review
fall under three heads which can most conveniently be treated
1784-93. in separate sections — domestic affairs, the affairs of
greater Britain, and foreign relations. Domestic affairs again
fall into two divisions, the first general, the second financial or
commercial, which again we shall find it convenient to treat
consecutively in separate sections. Postponing therefore the con-
sideration of Pitt's finance, we proceed now to the general record.
At Home 391
Apart then from the financial reorganisation necessitated by
the late war and by ministerial incompetence, the main business
of the session of the new parliament in 1784 was
the passing of a new India Bill, shaped by Pitt and affairs, the
his lieutenant Henry Dundas, to take the place of Westminster
the measure which had brought the coalition to
ruin. In spite of the opposition of Fox and Burke, Pitt's bill
was passed with huge majorities. The details, however, belong
to our Indian section. Another matter which occupied much
public attention was the affair of the Westminster election.
There had been two government candidates for the two seats
in the constituency, but Fox, standing as an Opposition candi-
date, had achieved the second place in the polling. A scrutiny
was granted by the high bailiff. Weeks and months passed, the
scrutiny was still incomplete, and Fox could not take his seat
for Westminster, though he could appear in the House as member
for another constituency which had returned him. When Fox
petitioned for an order to the high bailiff to make the return,
Pitt was ill-advised enough to oppose. He persisted in main-
taining that attitude until March 1785. The general opinion
had decided long before that such treatment of a political oppo-
nent who had already been badly beaten was unwarrantably
spiteful ; the House refused to obey Pitt any longer and gave the
desired order, the majority against the prime minister being
just short of forty.
From the time of this parliament, the practice of beginning
the winter session in the last months of the year, hitherto cus-
tomary, was discontinued, and it became the rule
that the new session should begin after the New parliament-
Year. In 1785, Pitt for the last time came forward ary reform
as the advocate of parliamentary reform. It was
a subject with which Chatham had almost certainly intended to
deal when he entered upon his last administration. In 1770 he
had been defeated in his advocacy of a measure for largely in-
creasing the representation of the counties, when he had warned
the House that if it did not itself soon take in hand the reform
of representation it would be ' reformed with a vengeance ' from
39 2 The Years of Peace
outside. Yet the subject had again fallen into the background.
There was no real popular outcry except in such moments of
excitement as that engendered by the Wilkes agitation. The
Commons generally were hostile to the movement, because there
were too many members who owed their seats to the owners
of pocket boroughs, or to judicious methods of corruption, for a
majority to be willing to be forced to fight for their seats. The
magnates who controlled pocket boroughs did not want reform.
Such constitutionalists as Burke were afraid that any change
would destroy what they regarded as the legitimate preponder-
ance of the landed interest ; they had confined themselves to the
advocacy of what was called Economic Reform, the abolition
of illegitimate methods of controlling votes. When the Rock-
ingham ministry was formed, Pitt had moved a resolution in
favour of parliamentary reform, which was defeated, although
supported by Fox. When the coalition was in power he had
again raised the question only to be defeated once more. He
now proposed that a number of decaying boroughs should be
disfranchised but should receive compensation, and that other
decaying boroughs should have the option, if they fell below a
certain standard, of surrendering their claim in return for com-
pensation. It was estimated that by this means about a hundred
representatives could be given to populous towns which were
at present unrepresented, to the counties, and to London and
Westminster, whose population entitled them to an increase in
the number of their members. The franchise was to be extended
to copyholders and householders. Fox, however, though an
advocate of parliamentary reform, refused to support the bill,
because he objected to the principle of buying out the rotten
boroughs — a principle which Pitt himself disliked, and had in-
troduced chiefly as a means to removing opposition to the bill,
which was duly defeated by a majority of seventy-four. The
question excited so small a degree of popular interest that
neither Birmingham nor Manchester, towns which were without
representatives, were moved to petition in favour of the bill.
The same question was agitated in Ireland. In that country
it was complicated by the proposal of the eccentric bishop of
At Home 393
Derry for the extension of the franchise to Roman Catholics, a
plan which was approved by Grattan, though it did not find
general favour among the Protestants. The real
uses of the volunteer movement had disappeared; pariiament-
the danger that it might be employed improperly ary reform
for political purposes was emphasised by the demand
of the bishop and of Flood, that a volunteer convention should
be held in Dublin to formulate their demand in a manner which
should impress the Dublin parliament. Charlemont did his
best to ensure the predominance of the moderate element in
the Convention.
But the whole proceeding was a serious blunder. The Irish
House of Commons had precisely the same reasons as the British
House of Commons for objecting to reform itself, and in a still
greater degree. The appearance of Flood and some other
members on the floor of the House in their volunteer uniform
was a challenge which could not fail to be taken up. Flood
presented his bill, which was promptly rejected, and was again
defeated when brought in for the second time in March 1784.
Parliamentary reform vanished from the field of practical
politics for more than forty years.
Pitt's defeat in 1785 on the question of parliamentary reform
was followed in the same year by a second rebuff, this time in
relation to Ireland. In that country the fight for Irish
independence, though it had actually been conducted relations,
with a loyalty and sobriety somewhat remarkable in view of the
American example, had inevitably given encouragement to the
more disorderly and disaffected elements. The independence
of the legislature did not counteract this tendency, as was shown
by the proceedings in 1783 which have just been described.
The relations created by the establishment of Grattan's parlia-
ment were by no means satisfactory, because in some respects
too much and in others too little had been conceded. On the
one hand, the Irish Executive continued to be appointed by and
responsible to the Crown under the advice of English ministers,
instead of being responsible to the Irish legislature. On the
other hand, legislative independence was accompanied by fiscal
394 The Years of Peace
independence. Just as England and Scotland before the Union
of 1707 found their commercial interests clashing, very much to
the detriment of the poorer country, so now there was nothing
to prevent the parliaments of Great Britain and of Ireland from
passing mutually hostile commercial legislation. The mere
fact that it would have been extremely unwise of Ireland to
establish tariffs or bounties detrimental to English commerce
was no security against the thing being done ; nor was there
any security that Great Britain would not now treat Ireland as
England had treated Scotland before the Union. Ireland, in
fact, had been delivered only from the grievance of legislative
control ; the persistence of executive control and the risk of
fiscal friction still left to her inducements to press for such a
complete severance as America had achieved, and as Scotland
had only been prevented from claiming by the Union of 1707.
The Viceroy Rutland was already of opinion that an incorpor-
ating union was the only alternative to complete separation
within a short time.
In Pitt's view, the fiscal relations were the most serious diffi-
culty, as they had been the most serious difficulty with Scotland
1785 Pitt's at t^ie ke£mnmg °* tne century. The commercial
proposed concessions made by Lord North had removed
commercial many restrictions imposed by the British parlia-
ment upon Irish trade, but had not established free
trade between the two islands. There were still prohibitive tariffs
against the import of Irish manufactures, though the embargoes
upon Irish exports to and imports from the colonies and foreign
countries had been removed. Pitt proposed not an incorporat-
ing union, but a perpetual treaty of commerce establishing
complete free trade between the two countries. Whether or
not the commerce of Great Britain would be benefited by such
an arrangement, the benefit to Irish commerce would certainly
be immense. It was right, therefore, that Ireland should pay
a reasonable price. The American analogy suggested what
that price ought to be. Now that Great Britain had resigned
all fiscal control over Ireland, the same difficulty might arise
with Ireland as had arisen with the colonies ; there was no means
At Home
395
of compelling Ireland to make her fair contribution to the naval
defence of the Empire. The price, then, was to be the payment
by Ireland of a fixed contribution, which was to be appropriated
specifically to imperial defence by the imperial government.
This fixed contribution was to be drawn from the anticipated
increase in the hereditary revenue of the Crown, derived from
customs and excise, so that it would be directly proportioned
to the development of Irish commerce, which it was the primary
object of the proposed treaty to procure.
It was expected that there would be considerable opposi-
tion in Ireland to the proposal upon two grounds : one that the
contribution to the imperial revenue had too Reception of
much of the appearance of a tribute, the other, the measure,
that Irish manufacturers would be prevented from protecting
their industries from the irresistible competition of Great Britain
by the imposition of duties. The proposals were, however,
carried in the Irish parliament with a modification stipulating
that the contribution to the navy should only be such surplus
of the hereditary revenues, in time of peace, as remained when
Irish expenditure had been met out of revenue. In England,
however, resolutions in favour of the proposals were no sooner
introduced than the British commercial interests both in England
and in Scotland were up in arms, declaring that Free Trade with
Ireland would ruin British commerce because of the comparative
cheapness of Irish labour.
It was evident that Pitt's proposal would never be carried.
After three months' interval a fresh set of resolutions was intro-
duced by Pitt, intended to conciliate the British 1785
opposition. In effect the Irish parliament was to Alteration
be compelled to adopt all legislation for the regula- and reJecti<m-
tion of trade which might be enacted by the parliament of Great
Britain, while sundry limitations were attached to the importa-
tion of goods to Ireland, and the exportation of Irish goods to
British colonies, though in other respects British trade regula-
tions were not to differentiate between the two countries. Fox
denounced the new proposals as being the purchase of Irish
slavery at the price of English commerce. Pitt nevertheless
396 The Years of Peace
succeeded in carrying his resolution. But the change trans-
formed the Irish acceptance of the former proposals into pas-
sionate hostility. Grattan was not prepared to purchase com-
mercial concessions at the cost of the newly- won fiscal freedom.
Since Pitt's primary object had been the conciliation of Ireland,
it was obviously useless to go on with the scheme, even if the
government had been strong enough to carry it in the face of
bitter opposition ; and the whole proposal was withdrawn.
The leading features of the two following years, 1786 and 1787,
were the establishment of Pitt's Sinking Fund, the initiation
1786-87. of the impeachment of Warren Hastings, and the
commercial treaty with France, all of which will be dealt with
elsewhere. The year 1787 is also noteworthy as the first in
which the evils of the slave-trade were mooted in parliament,
and a committee of inquiry was appointed — to the great indig-
nation of that portion of the commercial community which was
interested in the traffic.
In 1788 occurred an incident which for a time seemed likely
to bring about the fall of Pitt. The king's brain gave way and
1788 he became temporarily insane. It was doubtful
The Prince whether he would live, and whether, if he lived, he
of Wales. would recover his sanity. Arrangements for a
regency became an imperative necessity. The Prince of Wales,
following the precedent of his grandfather and great-grand-
father, was on very ill terms with the king. He had long been
ostentatious in his alliance with Fox. His private life was as
conspicuous for indecency and debauchery as was his father's
for its extreme propriety. He had married secretly a Roman
Catholic lady, of unimpeachable virtue, a Mrs. Fitzherbert, yet
he had instructed Fox, who acted in perfect good faith, to give
the rumour an unqualified contradiction. His extravagances
had already compelled him to obtain from parliament a grant
of £160,000 for the payment of his debts. Yet there could be
no doubt that, according to constitutional practice, the heir to
the throne being of age must be the regent. It was no less
certain, that as soon as he should be regent, the ministry would
be dismissed, while it was probable that Fox would be joined
At Home 397
by a sufficient number of Pitt's nominal following to carry on
the government. The royal favour was still a material element
in the distribution of parties.
There was a chance, however, that the king's illness might
after all be brief. Pitt claimed that, while the Prince of Wales
was the proper person to appoint as regent, it was The
necessary that the appointment should be made Regency Bill,
by parliament, and accompanied by express limitations to his
powers, which might otherwise be so exercised as to embarrass
the government seriously if and when the king should recover.
Fox was rash enough to assert that the prince had an indefeasible
right to the regency. But if he had a right to it, it followed
that parliament had no right to limit his powers without his
own consent, just as it could not restrict the royal prerogative
without the consent of the Crown. Fox, a terribly bad tactician,
enabled Pitt to assume the role of the champion of the rights of
parliament and to denounce the most advanced of Whigs as the
champion of the prince's prerogative. The House of Commons
supported Pitt. Fox spoke as if a change of ministry were an
assured matter, and Pitt's desire to limit the powers of the
regency were intended merely to embarrass his successors. But
a further question was involved for which no precedents could
be adduced. An Act of Parliament required the royal assent,
and the king could not give his assent, being incapacitated.
Pitt proposed that a commission should be appointed with
authority to affix the Great Seal to the bills. The proposal was
carried in both Houses. The limitations proposed placed the
charge of the king in the hands of the queen, and forbade the
regent to make peers, or to bestow any offices or pensions except
during the royal pleasure — that is, if the king recovered, he
could cancel any offices or pensions bestowed in the interval.
These restrictions, however, were to be made in the expecta-
tion of the king's early recovery, and in the contrary event
were to be subject to revision.
The king's breakdown had occurred on 5th November 1788 ;
the terms of the regency were accepted by the prince at the end
of January. The Regency Bill was formally introduced early
398 The Years of Peace
in February, was passed by the Commons, and had reached an
advanced stage in the House of Lords, when it was announced,
1789. Fate on igth February, that the king was convalescent.
of tne BUi. The proceedings were suspended, and three weeks
later George was able to announce that his health was restored.
The crisis had passed. Its effect was to establish relations much
warmer than heretofore between the king and Pitt. The whole
episode had a somewhat absurd epilogue ; for the Irish parlia-
ment, anxious to emphasise its own independence, sent over an ad-
dress inviting the prince to assume the regency without imposing
any limitations. But when the commissioners with the address
arrived, they were too late, for the king had already recovered.
With the assembly of the States-General in May the curtain
rose upon the terrific drama of the French Revolution. On
1789-92. I4th July, the Bastille fell, and from that time
interest concentrates upon the events in France, until the
declaration of war in February 1793. During those years the
domestic events of interest were few. A general election in 1790
confirmed Pitt's majority. In 1791 some relief from annoying
disabilities was extended to Roman Catholics. From 1791
onwards a persistent campaign was carried on against the slave-
trade, but though Pitt supported the agitation he declined to
make Abolition a government measure. In 1792, Fox at last
procured an Act of Parliament which definitely gave to juries
the right of deciding on libels which twenty years before Lord
Mansfield had declared to belong to the judges. After 1792
there was an end to all legislation except such as was of a
reactionary and repressive character.
II. PITT'S FINANCE, 1784-1792
We turn now to Pitt's financial record, the policy which, aided
by the industrial revolution which was now in progress, enabled
Pitt's the country to recover from its exhaustion at the
finance. en(j of the last war so completely that in a still more
exhausting war Pitt became the paymaster of Europe As we
have already noted, the publication of Adam Smith's Wealth of
Pitfs Finance 399
Nations in 1776 provided him with a new text-book of economic
principles which had been in some respects foreshadowed by
Walpole, though only in that minister's own carefully veiled
fashion ; for Walpole had been the last man to avow principles
the enunciation of which would have stirred commercial ortho-
doxy to its depths. Commercial orthodoxy regarded the mercan-
tile theory as axiomatic ; and Walpole would never Adam smith
have dreamed of calling the theory in question, andmer-
According to that doctrine, we may remind our- cantUlsm'
selves, it is the business of the State so to regulate trade as to
direct it into the channels which increase the strength of the
country. The strength of the country is increased by a trade
which exchanges goods for treasure, and diminished by a trade
which exchanges treasure for goods. The strength of the country
is also increased by making it self-supporting, independent of
supplies from foreign countries ; by the development of indus-
tries which provide health-giving employment ; and, in the case
of an island like Great Britain, by the expansion of its marine
so as to provide it with the most valuable material in time of
war. Conversely the country is weakened by a commerce which
tends to increase the strength of rivals by giving them treasure
for goods, encouraging in them the development of healthy indus-
tries, independence of external supplies, and an expanding marine.
From these premisses it followed that it was desirable to obtain
a market for our own products, and to shut out from our own
markets those products of foreign countries which it was able to
produce for itself, of foreign countries which did not in return
open to us a still better market for our own goods, of foreign
countries such as France with which we were liable to be at war,
while the commerce with them would help them to accumulate
the resources which are the sinews of war. From this theory
also had sprung the Navigation Acts, on the hypothesis that
they would expand the shipping of England and contract the
shipping of Holland. A natural accompaniment of the theory,
though not a necessary conclusion from it, was the normal belief
that a heavy taxation of imports was at once desirable
mercially and productive of revenue.
400 The Years of Peace
This last proposition was not bound up with the mercantile
theory. Walpole had seen the fallacy, and had enlarged the
The Walpole revenue by the reduction of tariffs which increased
precedents. m greater proportion the amount of the goods upon
which the duties were paid ; while it also increased corre-
spondingly the market for British goods. But Walpole him-
self did not venture to touch duties upon goods which entered
into competition with British products, and no one was more
strenuous than Walpole in his denunciation of the proposed
commercial treaty of the Tories with France in 1713 ; a treaty
which was held up to execration partly as an abrogation of the
popular Methuen Treaty with Portugal, and still more because
it was believed that in the balance more goods and less treasure
would come from France into England than would go from
England into France.
The new doctrines of Adam Smith cut at the root of the whole
mercantile theory. According to this view the exchange of goods
The new for treasure over the whole field would adjust itself
view. automatically. If money went out of the country,
ipso facto a demand for money would be created. Money prices
would fall and British goods would be cheapened. Being
cheapened, the demand for them in foreign markets would
increase, and money would come back to England in exchange
for the increased export. Treasure in fact was not essentially
distinguishable from any other kind of goods ; that it appeared
to be so was merely the fictitious result of its being employed as
the standard and medium of exchange. To regulate trade at all
was an error ; it should not be forced into channels directly
productive of strength unless under certain exceptional circum-
stances ; because if left to itself it would follow the channels
most productive of material wealth to the individual trader, and
therefore to the aggregate of traders ; and for practical purposes
material wealth would be converted into actual strength, accumu-
lated wealth in general, not treasure in particular, being the
sinews of war. The prosperity of other countries was not to
be deprecated; the more they prospered the better would be
the markets open to us, and our own prosperity would be pro-
Finance 401
portionately greater. All taxation was a restriction upon
trade, and therefore an evil checking the production of wealth ;
an evil necessary indeed for the provision of revenue, but in
general admissible only for that particular end. These were
the general principles of the new doctrine, though exceptions
to the general rules were recognised.
A general and immediate acceptance of a body of views
contravening the established doctrine and practice of centuries
was not to be looked for. The commercial world still had a
whole-hearted belief in protection, and a sincere terror of com-
petition ; as was shown clearly enough when Pitt, with larger
ideas in his mind, endeavoured to establish freedom of trade
with Ireland. The mercantile community then forgot that its
prosperity had been in no degree diminished by the concession
of Free Trade to Scotland. The idea that healthy competition
may stimulate industry rather than retard it was not immediately
acceptable, and hardly became so until the industrial develop-
ments in the ensuing half century had given to Great Britain in
addition to her commercial ascendency an even more unqualified
manufacturing supremacy. When Great Britain had become
the workshop of the world her manufacturers ceased to fear
foreign competition, and became enthusiastic free-traders, though
the great agricultural interest which found itself undersold by
foreign competitors remained fervently protectionist ; whereas
in 1784 the Industrial Revolution was still only in its initial
stage, and competition was feared by the manufacturer as well
as by the landowner. But in other respects Pitt was able to act
broadly in accordance with the precepts of Adam Smith.
To Pitt as to Walpole finance was the dearest interest of
statesmanship, and it was the success of Pitt's financial measures
which, more than any other single aspect of his 1784
policy, secured the popularity of his administration. The financial
When he came into power he found himself faced situatlon'
by a huge National Debt (which had about doubled since 1760) ,
and chaotic financial conditions which year by year produced a
heavy deficit. There were innumerable taxes, but they had
been imposed upon no system at all. Pelham, like Walpole, had
Innes's Eng. Hist.— Vol. in. 2 C
402 The Years of Peace
acted upon the principle that low duties upon goods for which
there is a demand are more productive than high duties ; but
Pelham's successors, at their wits' end for revenue, had piled
up the duties again, so that in 1784 the duty upon tea was
no less than 119 per cent. Upon foreign spirits also the duties
were enormous; with the result that great quantities of the
heavily taxed goods were brought into the country by smugglers
without paying any duty at all.
Pitt in his first budget of 1784 took the bold step of making a
heavy reduction of the duties upon tea and foreign spirits. That
The 1784 upon tea was brought down from 119 to 12 \ per
budget. cent. Since it was not to be supposed that nine
times as much tea as before would immediately find its way
through the customs, or that there would be a corresponding
increase in the legitimate importation of foreign spirits, it was
necessary to find some fresh sources of taxation. This was
effected partly by the imposition of an increased window tax.
There was already a tax upon windows ; every house must have
windows ; under Pitt's tax every house which had from seven
to ten windows paid a shilling a window, and those which had
more than ten paid half-a-crown a window, while cottages, which
were a most windowless, paid nothing. The burden of the tax
consequently fell upon the comparatively well-to-do, while it
was a cheap tax to collect because the amount payable by each
house could be ascertained by the simple process of counting the
windows from outside. A number of small taxes were also
imposed upon articles of finery or luxury, from racehorses to
ribbons, which hurt no one, but even in the aggregate brought
no very substantial return.
These measures, however, did not suffice to meet the immediate
necessities, and Pitt was obliged to raise a loan of £6,000,000.
A reform. But in doing so he introduced a reform of great
importance. The loan was thrown open to public tender and
the lowest tender was accepted ; whereas under North's ministry
in particular Dashwood's precedent had been habitually followed,
and loans had been raised by private contract among supporters
of the government who were allowed to pocket very substantial
Pitt's Finance 403
profits. At the same time Pitt adopted the principle of funding
as much of the unfunded debt as was possible — that is to say,
of transferring the unsecured debts of the government to the
consolidated stock with interest secured on a specified portion
of the revenue.
The Budget of 1784 was so far successful that, in the next
year, there was every promise that the revenue would soon
balance expenditure, and that before long the Budget of
minister would be able to give shape to his favourite 1786-
project of beginning to pay off the National Debt out of revenue.
Meanwhile the remainder of the unfunded debt was funded,
and some additional taxes were imposed, notably one upon
domestic servants, graduated according to the number employed ;
though this proved extremely unpopular so far as concerned
female servants.
In 1786 Pitt's great end had been achieved. The revenue
would exceed expenditure approximately by £1,000,000, and it
might be assumed with certainty that it would 1786
continue to increase as smuggling, already greatly The sinking
reduced, would continue to diminish. Pitt then rund*
introduced his bill for a Sinking Fund, to be formed by setting
aside annually £1,000,000 out of the revenue. Walpole had
instituted a Sinking Fund, but it had been practically a dead
letter, because no government when in want of funds had
scrupled to raid it for expenditure. Pitt's fund was to be re-
served exclusively for the discharge of the National Debt. It
was to be placed in the hands of a Board of Commissioners, to
whom £250,000 was to be paid quarterly. They were to invest
that money to the best advantage, and also the interest upon
it. Accumulating in this way at compound interest the sum
would in a few years swell to such dimensions that the National
Debt could be paid off. The plan was satisfactory enough so
long as there were surpluses out of which the fund could be main-
tained, or even so long as the government could raise loans at
a rate of interest lower than that which was received by the
Board. But it was not perceived that in time of war the in-
creased expenditure would necessitate the raising of loans at a
404 The Years of Peace
rate of interest higher instead of lower ; that in effect the money
paid into the Sinking Fund would be money borrowed at those
higher rates, and that consequently the State would be, broadly
speaking, borrowing money at a high rate of interest that it
might invest it at a lower rate in order to pay off the debt of
which the interest was lower. Pitt, in fact, did not anticipate
that there would be such a war ; when the war did come, he
realised that the continued payment into the Sinking Fund was
actually bad finance ; but he went on with it because, however
illogically, it gave confidence to the public which had not
awakened to the fallacy, and the preservation of confidence
appeared to be worth the price paid for it. Still, economists are
by no means disposed to regard that excuse as sufficient, and
there can be no question at all that the price paid was a very
heavy one.
Much less dubious, though much more virulently criticised
at the time, was the commercial treaty with France which Pitt
laid before parliament in 1787. Here most definitely
The French the old mercantile doctrine was thrown overboard,
commercial as the Tories had sought to throw it overboard in
treaty
1713. French and British had each been in the
habit of excluding or almost excluding the trade of the other
country from their markets. The treaty which Pitt negotiated,
and which was actually signed in September 1786, established
what was comparatively free trade between the two countries.
The prohibitive tariffs in general were reduced, while for the
most part the goods of either country were placed on the ' most
favoured nation ' footing, that is to say, the duties imposed were
no higher than the lowest imposed upon the same kind of goods
imported from any other country. Protectionist interests were
not alarmed because the French products did not compete with
home products ; moreover it soon became manifest that what
was called the balance of trade would not be unfavourably
disturbed as had been anticipated in 1713, because there was a
greater demand for British goods in France than for French goods
in Great Britain. Pitt dwelt upon increased commercial inter-
course as tending to generate good feeling between the countries.
Pitt's Finance
405
It is curious to find the most fiery opposition emanating from
Fox, on the ground that France was the irreconcilable foe of
Britain, and Britain should by no means adopt a ^^ country
policy which tended to increase the prosperity of and the
her rival. Not many years were to elapse before reaty>
Fox adopted a very different attitude towards France. But it
is quite clear that if the old mercantile doctrines had not already
lost much of their hold upon public opinion, hostility to the
treaty would have been strong and widespread, whereas as a
matter of fact it commanded general acceptance. In this as
in everything else the war when it came brought a reaction.
Belligerents are apt to make everything secondary to the
grand object of inflicting as much damage as possible on the
opponent, and French and British each bolted and barred their
doors against the other ; but when for peaceful emulation was
substituted a commercial struggle a outrance, a desperate effort
on each side to ruin the other, it was upon France that the
greater injury fell.
In the same year in which parliament debated the French
treaty, Pitt set the finishing touches to his financial methods.
The vast miscellaneous swarm of heterogeneous
customs treaties was systematised as well as the simpiifica-
excise, not with the object of increasing or diminish- tion of
ing the actual amount of the duties, but for the very
necessary purpose of simplification ; for the existing complexities
made it an extremely laborious task for the ordinary merchant
to work out with accuracy the amount of the duties he was
called upon to pay. The result was not an increase of revenue,
but a very considerable economy in expenditure, a substantial
reduction of the working staff required, and the abolition of
a number of wholly superfluous appointments which were
practically sinecures.
406 The Years of Peace
III. THE EMPIRE, 1785-1793
Fox's India Bill wrecked the coalition ; inevitably it was
Pitt's first duty to provide his own solution of the problem
1784. offered by the great dependency. Pitt's India Act
The India fixed the system of government which with only
Act* minor modifications remained in force until 1858.
For administrative purposes its most marked departure from
Fox's scheme was its recognition of the necessity for endowing
the governor-general with very large discretionary powers. This
also had been the leading feature in the abortive India Bill
introduced by Dundas and withdrawn in the early days of the
coalition. Those features of Fox's Bill which had aroused such
violent opposition at home were removed.
As under North's Regulating Act, the supreme authority
on the spot was vested in the governor-general in council, who
The governor- were also the governor and council of Bengal ;
general and the Madras and Bombay presidencies having each
his council. -^ Qwn gOvernor an(j council. But, besides the
governor, there were now to be not four other members of
council but three, one being commander-in-chief, in each presi-
dency. The commander-in-chief in Bengal stood in much the
same relation to the other two commanders-in-chief as the
governor of Bengal to the other two governors. Since the
governor had a casting vote, he could not be over-ruled except
by a council unanimously opposed to him. Practically no
future governor-general was in danger of the fate of Hastings,
who found the control taken out of his hands by his colleagues.
In the first form of the bill a large latitude was allowed to the
governor-general. But before the post, for which Cornwallis
was chosen, was accepted by him, he insisted that that latitude
should be still further extended, and that he should have authority
in emergency to act upon his own responsibility without con-
sulting the council. The new Act, moreover, avoided the
blunder into which North had fallen, of setting up beside the
executive a judiciary responsible only to an entirely different
authority. In India itself there was to be no divided control.
The Empire 407
In England, however, the Act set up two authorities, the East
India Company and a Board of Control directly responsible to
parliament. To these two authorities the governor- Board of
general was responsible. The main limitation on his Control, and
powers was that he was enjoined to make no alii- the comPany-
ances without having first obtained their sanction. The directors
of the company issued to him general instructions ; he might
for sufficient reasons, known to him but not to them, disobey
those instructions ; but if he did so he would have to justify his
action to them and take the risk of being recalled. The Board
of Control represented the national sense of responsibility for
the conduct of the Indian government. The head of the board
was a minister of the Crown, and the personnel of the board
changed with the change of ministry. Its authority was supreme.
It had access to the correspondence of the directors, and a general
power of supervision ; and the governor-general could neither
be appointed nor recalled without its approval ; patronage re-
mained for the most part in the hands of directors, but even in
this field they were hardly able to resist pressure from the Board
of Control. The first president of the Board of Control was
Henry Dundas, who utilised his position to inundate India with
his own countrymen ; which was a cause of some irritation and
jealousy, but in fact provided the Indian government with a
considerable number of particularly efficient administrators,
while it materially helped Dundas himself to form the Scottish
members of the British House of Commons into a compact body
of unfailing supporters.
The appointment of the first governor-general under the new
regime was delayed. It was intended to act upon the principle
that he should be, not an official whose experience 17gg
was restricted to India itself, but one versed in cornwaUis
public affairs, of recognised capacity, judgment governor-
and weight, who would have no reason to fear
responsibility. The first intention was to appoint Lord
Macartney who was governor of Madras ; but the selection was
not approved ; and the government was able to withdraw the
offer when Macartney required as a condition of acceptance
408 The Years of Peace
larger powers than the Act provided. This, however, did not
prevent the government from conceding those larger powers to
Lord Cornwallis. No better appointment could have been
made, for without being in any sense a genius, Cornwallis was
like Wellington ' rich in saving common sense,' clear-eyed and
cool-headed, just and sincere, at home alike in the camp and in
the council chamber ; a man in short to be absolutely trusted,
while his social position made him careless of favour or disfavour.
Before Cornwallis left England, Warren Hastings had arrived.
He became at once the object of attack. The generous indig-
1786. nation of Fox and Burke had been roused by the
tales of wrong poured into their ears by the de-
warren tractors of Hastings ; tales which in their sympa-
Hastings. thetic imagination acquired a still more lurid
character. Pitt, whose susceptibilities were less excitable,
declined to join the attack, and was as a matter of course
accused of attempting to screen Hastings. Burke formulated
a series of charges. The first dealt with the Rohilla war. Pitt
sat silent ; Dundas declared that that question was already a
chose jugee, since after the facts were known Hastings had been
appointed governor-general ; the House repudiated the charge.
It was generally believed that the government intended to
support Hastings and oppose an impeachment ; but when the
second charge was brought forward, dealing with the Benares
affair, Pitt surprised both his followers and his opponents by
supporting it, on the ground that while Hastings was warranted
in his demand for money and troops, the fine he had imposed
was excessive and tyrannical. He carried with him a sufficient
number of supporters to make a majority against Hastings.
Pitt's change of front seems to require no very elaborate explana-
tion. Avowedly he had not examined the evidence as to that
particular charge until just before the debate. When he did
examine it, it appeared to him convincing, and he spoke and
voted accordingly. He never had the slightest intention of
acting as a partisan of either side.
Other charges were then introduced and accepted. The im-
peachment was resolved upon in May 1787 ; and in February
The Empire 409
1788 the trial of Warren Hastings before the peers was opened.
It provided the occasion for much magnificent rhetoric then and
afterwards ; it brought almost to bankruptcy the 1788-95.
man who, whatever else he had done, had worked Tne trial-
not for his own enrichment but for that of the company. But
after the magnificent initial display public interest dwindled.
The Lords sat to listen to the charges at increasingly prolonged
intervals ; for thirty-five days in the first year, not half as many
in the next ; and finally delivered their verdict seven years
after the impeachment began. Hastings was unanimously
acquitted on every count of the indictment.
Cornwallis arrived in India in September 1786. Macpherson
in the interval had discharged his task successfully enough ;
Sindhia had seized the opportunity of the depar- India, 1785-6.
ture of Hastings to try the metal of the acting governor-general,
but not finding him at all malleable made haste to resume his
attitude of diplomatic friendliness. In the south, the Mysore
sultan, having as we have seen made peace with the British,
very much to his own satisfaction, was at war with the Puna
Mahrattas, and with the Nizam, each of whom was endeavouring
to make a cat's-paw of the other. The new governor-general
gave Tippu a very strong hint that British intervention would
not be to his advantage, which brought him to a more pacific
frame of mind, and the hostilities were promptly terminated.
The powers bestowed upon Cornwallis, his personal character,
and the respect in which he was universally held, enabled him
to undertake the work of organising the adminis-
tration upon a healthy basis, with an authority Administra-
and a security not enjoyed by his predecessors, tive reforms
.. , of Cornwallis.
No private influence, however weighty, prevailed
with him to give appointments to incompetent or untrustworthy
persons. He succeeded, where Hastings had failed, in forcing the
company to give to their officers adequate salaries which raised
them above the necessity of increasing their means by illegiti-
mate methods. He definitely established the system of separat-
ing the revenue branch of the civil service from the judicial ;
and he placed the criminal jurisdiction in the hands of British
41 o The Years of Peace
instead of native courts of justice, while continuing to administer
Mohammedan law to the Mohammedans, Hindu law to the
Hindus, and an equitable compromise where both Moham-
medans and Hindus were concerned.
The name of Cornwallis is perhaps most definitely associated
with his permanent land settlement in Bengal. This was a
ThQ subject which had engaged the serious attention
permanent of Hastings. On the basis of the inquiries insti-
settlement. tuted by hig pre(iecessor, Cornwallis completed the
assessment of the whole presidency for revenue purposes, and
declared that that assessment was to be permanent. In other
words, the whole profit of improvement and development was
to go to the holders of the land. Further, the position of the
zemindar was made permanent ; he was treated as the owner
of the soil with free powers of alienation, very much as if he had
been an English landowner unrestricted by the law of entail.
In fact the zemindar in the past had not been the owner of the
land in the English sense ; he had enjoyed the revenues of an
estate conferred upon him during pleasure, subject to his pay-
ment to the government of the amount at which his estate was
assessed ; he had been primarily a government official, appointed
The to collect the land revenue of the zemindari or
zemindari. district which was farmed out to him. The land
itself was held originally by various tenures as the property of a
hereditary landowner, or of the ryot, the actual cultivator of
the soil, or of the village community ; the zemindar was an alien
imposition, though his creation might have dated back for a
couple of centuries, or more, and his rights had tended to become
hereditary in practice if not in theory. Following the English
analogy, Cornwallis made the position of the zemindar permanent,
as though he had been the real landowner, in order to give him
security of tenure and a consequent inducement to expenditure
on the development of his estate without any danger that the
government would raise his assessment on the strength of his
own expenditure and improvements. At the same time the
security of tenure of his tenants was safeguarded in accordance
with what was understood to be the law and custom of the
The Empire 4 1 \
country. Later it came to be understood that the zemindar as
such was for the most part a middleman between the govern-
ment and the real proprietors of the soil, although no doubt in
many cases the zemindari had been granted not to some one
from outside, but to a hereditary landowner. In the later
settlements outside Bengal, the zemindar comparatively speak-
ing disappeared, and the government dealt directly with the
talukdar, the ryot, or the village community.
Cornwallis was thoroughly imbued with the sound doctrine,
derived from Give, that the British ought not to aim at exten-
sion of territory. But like most of his successors, Tippu,
he found extension of territory forced upon him. sultan.
In his case, Tippu of Mysore was responsible for the necessity.
That potentate aimed at making himself supreme in Southern
India, and his experience with the Madras government had
taught him to hold a low opinion of the British capacity for
counteracting his ambitions. The Nizam, on the other hand,
wanted to use the British for the curbing of his dangerous
neighbour. Under an old treaty, the Nizam had The Nizam,
agreed to cede to Madras a district known as the Guntur Sirkar.
Cornwallis pressed him to carry out the cession ; and he replied
by inviting the British to carry out on their side another obliga-
tion under a former treaty of the Madras government, to re-
cover for him certain districts of which he had been robbed by
Haidar. The situation was embarrassing, since the British
government had recognised Haidar as the owner of those districts
since the obligation had been incurred.
Cornwallis, therefore, agreed to provide the troops promised
under this earlier treaty for the Nizam's protection, but with the
stipulation that they were not to be used against 1739.92
any ally of the British — Tippu's name not being The Mysore
included in the list of allies. If, then, the Nizam camPaisns-
chose to declare war on Tippu, he could use the troops ; but the
British themselves would not have declared war. Tippu, how-
ever, regarded the excuse as sufficient, and attacked Travancore,
which was under British protection, at the end of 1789. A
campaign against Tippu was then a necessity. Haidarabad
412 The Years of Peace
and Puna both allied themselves with the British, though with
no intention of relieving them of serious work. The campaign
conducted in 1789 by General Meadows was unsuccessful. In
1791, Cornwallis himself took the command, but again without
success, owing chiefly to the extremely dubious behaviour of
the Mahrattas. In 1792, however, Cornwallis again took the
field. This time the campaign was decisive, Tippu was forced
to submit, and, in accordance with the invariable law of oriental
warfare, was required to cede large districts, which Cornwallis
divided, not unequally, between the British, the Nizam on the
north-east, and the Mahrattas on the north-west. Even this,
however, as we shall see, did not suffice to teach Tippu the
necessary lesson.
But in 1792, war with France was impending, and in the next
year Cornwallis was recalled, not because he was not wanted in
India, but because he was wanted in England.
Shore Sir John Shore, who had been of immense service
governor- to him in working out the land settlement, had in
the meanwhile visited England ; and Cornwallis was
sufficiently impressed by his capacity and by the enlargement of
his ideas, consequent upon his visit to England, to name him as
the one Indian official to whom the governor-generalship might
be safely entrusted ; and Shore consequently succeeded to that
post.
The American War of Independence had torn the thirteen
colonies from the British empire, and created the United States
Canada. of America. These colonies, however, had not
been accompanied by those in the northern portion of the con-
tinent, which had been taken from the French, or had in the
past been in debate between British and French. Thither great
numbers of the loyalists betook themselves, after the recogni-
tion of American independence, preferring to remain under the
British flag. They were planted chiefly in New Brunswick and
in Upper Canada ; with the result that in Upper Canada or
Ontario, where the French had not spread, the population was
British and Protestant ; whereas in Lower Canada there was
only a sprinkling of British and Protestants among a French
The Empire 413
and Catholic population. In the new region the provisions of
the Quebec Act were inappropriate ; and consequently, in 1791,
the Canada Act was passed, separating the colonies 1791. Tne
of Upper Canada or Ontario and Lower Canada or Canada Act.
Quebec. Each was governed upon the old colonial lines ; each
now received its own legislature, with an elective and a nominated
chamber, and a governor, who with his executive council was
responsible, not to the colonial legislature, but to the Crown.
In both the Canadas there was a spirit of strong hostility to the
new American Republic, which was to bear its fruits later. In
French Canada the hostility was traditional ; in Upper Canada
it was the obvious consequence of the conditions under which
the colony had been planted with loyalists, who had left their
southern homes out of attachment to the British name, and
to escape from the vindictiveness of the Republic.
In another region of the globe altogether, these years witnessed
the first beginnings of another great British expansion. Spaniards
and Dutch had in past centuries occupied the Australia-
archipelagoes which lie close to the south-eastern Captain
shores of the Asiatic Continent ; but there had °° '
been very little exploration of the Southern Pacific. In 1768,
Captain Cook began his series of voyages to the unexplored
regions. In 1770 he traced the eastern coast of Australia, pro-
claimed the British sovereignty there, and gave the country the
name of New South Wales. For some years it remained un-
occupied. Discovery without occupation was not recognised
as giving an effective title to possession, and it was still open to
French or Dutch or Spanish, to plant themselves in Australia.
Neither they, however, nor the British, were immediately
attracted thither.
The recognition of American independence, besides depriving
the British empire of a vast region, presented it with a new
accidental problem. Hitherto the plantations had pormal
supplied a field for the deportation of convicts ; annexation,
that field no longer existed after 1783. A sugges- 1788'
tion was put forward, that the continent which Captain Cook
had discovered should be utilised for the purpose ; and in 1787
414 The Years of Peace
the experiment was tried of dispatching thither a consignment
of seven hundred and fifty convicts, in charge of a body of
marines, with Captain Phillip as governor. In January 1788,
the expedition landed in Botany Bay, hoisted the British flag,
and took possession of Australia for the British Crown. Within
a week of the landing, some French ships appeared on the scene.
It is possible that if Phillip had been only seven days later
Australia would have been annexed not to the British, but to
the French dominions. If the importance and value of Australia
had been realised, such a French occupation would no doubt
have been only temporary, and the war would have transferred
the continent to the British. But its value was not realised,
and it is more than possible that it was only this very narrow
margin of time to which we owe the incorporation of Australia
in the British empire.
IV. GREAT BRITAIN AND EUROPE, 1784-1793
When William Pitt came into power in 1784, Great Britain,
exhausted by her struggle, was in no position to intervene
Europe actively in European politics, which were highly
in 1784. complicated. France and Spain, both of them
also exhausted, were also indisposed to activity. Maria Theresa
was dead, and Joseph n. in Austria was inspired on the one
hand with ideas of a beneficent amelioration of the condition
of his subjects, at the hands of an autocratic but benignant
father of his people, and on the other hand, with ambitions more
directly tending to increase the power of Austria. The Russian
Tsarina had for years past been extending the power of Russia ;
a few years before she had in conjunction with Prussia and
Austria effected the first partition of Poland, by which each of
those powers had substantially extended its territories at the
expense of that distracted country. Also her successful wars
with Turkey had brought within sight her cherished ambition
of establishing herself as a naval power on the Black Sea as well
as the Baltic. Frederick of Prussia since the desperate struggle
of the Seven Years' War had devoted himself primarily to avoid-
Great Britain and Europe 415
ing foreign quarrels and compromising alliances, while his
energies were given up to a systematic organisation of his own
kingdom ; until the opportunity occurred for consolidating his
dominion, increasing its revenues, and strengthening it for
defence, by joining in the partition of Poland in 1772. Austria
was in alliance with Russia on one side, and with France on the
other, "while France was in alliance with Russia and Spain, but
both Great Britain and Prussia were without allies.
So far as Great Britain was concerned, the region where
trouble seemed likely to arise was in the Netherlands. The
Dutch were in possession of their barrier towns in Austria and
the Austrian Netherlands ; and lest Antwerp Holland,
should become dangerous to them, they enjoyed by treaty the
control of the Scheldt, which was not open to navigation by the
ships of other powers. Joseph succeeded in forcing the Dutch
to evacuate the barrier towns, but when he tried to compel them
to open the Scheldt, Great Britain might have found it necessary
to interfere if France had not done so. The closure of the
Scheldt was maintained and guaranteed by France, under the
Treaty of Fontainebleau in 1785. So long as Antwerp was in
Austrian hands, this was in the interests of France, while if it
should fall at any time into the hands of France, that city with
an open port would become a menace to England. England
was also affected by another of Joseph's schemes, that of ex-
changing the inconveniently remote Netherlands, of which
Austria could make very little use, for Bavaria, which lay on her
own border. This design was also frustrated, not by England,
but by Prussia. Frederick the Great, who viewed the scheme
with extreme disfavour, procured an alliance for the integrity
of Germany among the German princes, including King George
as elector of Hanover, which was known as the Fiirstenlund,
which checkmated Joseph.
In Holland the Republican or anti-Orange party was in the
ascendent, and leant, as it always had leant, to France, whose
influence was increased by her recent intervention. Pitt was
inclined either to a Prussian or to an Austro- Russian alliance
in order to hold France in check, but was foiled in both projects.
416 The Years of Peace
The death of Frederick in 1786 placed on the throne his nephew
Frederick William n., a monarch who lacked both the political
1788 and the military genius of his uncle. The new king
The Triple was the brother-in-law of the stadtholder, William
Alliance. Q£ Qrange 'r;he French and Republican party in
Holland at this moment won the upper hand ; a close alliance
between France and Holland seemed threatening, when an insult
to the Prussian king's sister induced him to negotiate an alliance
with Great Britain for the restoration of the stadtholder. France
was not prepared to intervene in arms in face of this combina-
tion ; she retired ; and the result was the re-establishment of the
Orange or English ascendency in Holland, and a Triple Alliance
(1787) between Prussia, Great Britain, and Holland. It is note-
worthy that the Anglo-French commercial treaty was ratified
by the British parliament at a time when it was by no means
impossible that the affairs of Holland would bring about
a renewal of the French war. The Triple Alliance in 1788
terminated for the time the isolation of Great Britain.
In 1789, at the moment when France was absorbed in the
initial stage of the Revolution, an Anglo-Spanish quarrel arose.
1789-90 As a result of Captain Cook's explorations on the
Nootka west coast of North America, a settlement of British
traders had established itself at Nootka Sound, near
Vancouver island. The Spaniards considered that western
North America belonged to them up to a much more northerly
latitude, although they were not in occupation. They were still
full of their time-honoured jealousy of British attempts to trade
with their American colonies, which themselves resented the
restrictions upon their commerce imposed from Madrid. The
Spanish government also had an exaggerated belief in its own
power and in the readiness of France to come to its support,
being quite unconscious of the straits into which the French
monarchy was falling. There was accordingly a repetition of the
affair of the Falkland Islands. A Spanish frigate seized British
ships in Nootka Sound ; when compensation was demanded by
the British government it was refused. Spain insisted on her
own untenable claim, which rested upon no better basis than that
Great Britain and Europe 417
a Spanish ship had reached Nootka Sound four years before
Captain Cook. Twelve months after the seizure, the British
government having in the meantime obtained promise of support
from the other members of the Triple Alliance, the facts were
laid before parliament. Immediate preparations were made for
war. The French government was disposed to support its ally ;
but by this time, May 1790, the French National Assembly was
master of the situation. It declined to go to war. At the end
of six months Spain had completely realised that the unfortunate
French monarchy was a broken reed, and that the French
National Assembly was more likely than not to pierce any
monarchical hand that leaned upon it. Even at this early
stage the French Revolution had broken the Family Compact,
whereby a complete change of front on the part of Spain was
necessitated. Since she could no longer face British hostility,
she sought British friendship instead, and conceded the whole of
the British demands.
Great Britain then had come satisfactorily out of the negotia-
tions for the French commercial treaty, the Dutch complication,
and the Nootka Sound affair. Pitt was less success- 1788_90
ful in his last serious attempt at intervention on the Britain and
Continent before the outbreak of the great war. In Prussia-
1788 the intervention of the Triple Alliance prevented the destruc-
tion of the kingdom of Sweden by Russia and Denmark, which
would in effect have made Russia supreme in the Baltic ; whereby
Catherine was irritated. She was now in alliance with the
Emperor Joseph for the futherance of her own designs against
Turkey. Frederick William wished to turn to his own account
in Poland the embarrassment of Austria in the Turkish war,
Joseph's hands being further tied by a revolt in the Netherlands
against the Austrian supremacy. The British government,
however, did not feel called upon to plunge into a war for
Prussian aggrandisement ; the alliance was one for defence.
The death of Joseph at the beginning of 1790 gave the Austrian
and the imperial crowns to his extremely able brother,
Leopold ii., hitherto grand duke of Tuscany. The attitude of
the British government was unchanged, the more because it
Innes's Eng. Hist.— Vol. HI. 2 D
4i 8 The Years of Peace
desired the secure establishment of the Austrian power in the
Netherlands lest they should be drawn to seek the protection
of France.
Frederick William was annoyed, and Pitt was disposed to
conciliate him by acceding to his wishes in another quarter and
1790-1. checking the aggrandisement of Russia. Chatham
Pitt, Prussia, had seen in the still young and growing strength of
and Russia. Russja a valuable counterpoise in Europe to Bour-
bon aggression ; he had moreover no sympathies with the
Ottoman power. But now the expansion of Russia had been so
vigorous that Chatham's son took alarm. If Catherine were
able to place a powerful fleet in the Black Sea as well as in the
Baltic, Great Britain would have to take account of the Russian
navy in the Mediterranean as well as in northern seas. The
Russian menace, which perpetually dominated the minds of
British statesmen during the nineteenth century, was already
looming on the younger Pitt's horizon. At the end of 1790 the
Russian troops under Suvarov were overwhelming the Turks.
Prussia called for intervention ; and in the beginning of 1791
Pitt laid before parliament proposals for armaments to be
dispatched both to the Baltic and to the Black Sea, and an
ultimatum was sent to St. Petersburg at the end of March.
But the country did not share Pitt's views. Fox and Burke
thundered denunciations against the Turks ; the true policy
1791. for Britain was alliance with Russia ; a Russian
Pitt's defeat. fleet in the Mediterranean was to be desired,
not feared ; a Russian war would be ruinous to the Baltic
trade. In the cabinet Pitt's colleague and cousin, Lord
Grenville, was opposed to his views. Though Pitt's majorities
in the Commons were not substantially reduced, he realised that
the sentiment of the country was against him, and in April the
ultimatum to Russia was withdrawn. Catherine got her way,
and by the Peace of Jassy, in the beginning of 1792, obtained
the frontier she desired. At the same time Pitt's withdrawal had
filled up the cup as far as Frederick William was concerned, and
he resolved to substitute an Austrian alliance for that with Great
Britain. A few weeks later, on ist March, Leopold n. died, and
Great Britain and Europe 419
was succeeded by his son, who after the imperial election became
the Emperor Francis n.
During the past two years events had been moving rapidly
in France. Since the accession of Louis xiv., almost a century
and a half before, England had established and 1789 Social
elaborated a constitutional monarchy, which vested conditions
the supreme political control in the hands of parlia- in BritailL
ment, finally deprived the executive of the power of overriding
the law, and secured to all citizens of the Empire an equal title
to the protection of the law. Privileges remained. Disabilities
attached to certain religious professions ; the whole vast class
of hired workmen were without parliamentary representation ;
and the copyholder or small tenant had no vote, though his
interests were fairly well represented by the votes of the yeomen.
Still the bourgeoisie and the small agriculturalist had a voice in
the government of the country which could not be neglected.
Socially, indeed, class distinctions were strongly marked, but
their sanction was customary, not legal ; the borderland between
class and class was indefinite, and social barriers, if difficult to
pass, were not insuperable. There was no hereditary noblesse ;
the peerage was accessible to any distinguished commoner, the
children of peers were themselves commoners, and the inheritance
of nobility was restricted by the law of primogeniture. Such
exemptions or reliefs from taxation as existed were not the
privileges of the powerful, but relaxations in favour of the poorest
classes.
On the Continent, however, both the political and social
development had followed upon a very different line, of which
France presented the archetype. Under the rule Social
of the cardinals in the second quarter of the seven- conditions
teenth century, the Crown had won its battle with ** France-
political feudalism. Government was concentrated in the hands
not of any kind of parliament, but of the Crown. The executive
could override the law, and the law was administered in the
interests of the powerful. The noblesse formed a hereditary
class, to which admission from outside was almost impossible ;
while the children of the nobles remained noble from generation
420 The Years of Peace
to generation. In France the nobility and the clergy were
virtually immune from taxation, whereas in England they paid
precisely the same taxes as their neighbours, and birth carried
with it no legal privileges at all except the right of the eldest son
or nearest male heir to succeed to the title. The whole burden
of taxation fell upon the labouring and trading classes, and most
heavily upon the peasantry, who were subject not only to special
taxes but to servile obligations such as had virtually disappeared
in Great Britain as far back as the fifteenth century. The ruinous
wars initiated by Louis xiv., and continued through the eighteenth
century, had rendered altogether crushing a burden of taxation
which would have been intolerable even if the noblesse and the
clergy had borne their share. For years before the French
Revolution, French thinkers and writers had been protesting
against the existing system with biting satire, with merciless
logic, or with emotional rhetoric. Some had held up to admira-
tion the balance of political powers in Great Britain and the
fusion there of monarchical, aristocratic, and democratic ele-
ments. Others contrasted the social order with a mythical
Golden Age before the strong had made laws for the enslavement
of the weak, and dwelt with enthusiasm upon natural rights,
the rights of man, of which man had been for the most part
robbed by the tyranny of society.
Unconsciously enough, the ruling classes of France had given
the most active encouragement to revolutionary ideas by their
France and attitude in the American War of Independence.
theAmerican Deaf to the mutterings which heralded the coming
cataclysm, they developed a lighthearted enthu-
siasm for the American doctrines of liberty and natural rights,
which had been derived, in part at least, from the French philo-
sophers ; without a suspicion that such doctrines were destruc-
tive of the very foundations of the political and social structure
of which caste privileges were the essence. By plunging into
the War of Independence, France at the same time carried the
financial strain to breaking point ; and her government woke
up to the absolute necessity of reform only when the point had
been reached when any attempt at reform would certainly be
Great Britain and Europe 421
swept away in revolution, a complete subversion of the whole
political and social structure.
The doom of the old order was sealed by the resolution to
summon the States-General, an assembly of the three estates,
nobles, clergy, and commons, to find an answer to the problems
which one after another of the king's ministers had failed to
solve. From the meeting of the States-General, in May 1789,
events moved swiftly. The determination of the
1 »TftQ
third estate that there should be not three chambers, Birth of
two of which could override the third, but a single tne French
chamber of all the estates, gave to the third complete
predominance. The Paris mob wrecked the Bastille, the fortress
prison which typified the old order. The States-General re-
solved itself into a ' national ' or ' constituent ' assembly for the
construction of a new system based upon the rights of man.
Great Britain at first looked on with mildly qualified approba-
tion. Ardent spirits, like Fox, rejoiced enthusiastically. Con-
servative spirits, like Burke, took alarm. But the average man
saw the French engaged in a rather laudable effort to achieve
at one blow the emancipation from feudal and monarchical
tyranny which England had achieved for herself by centuries
of dogged persistence. It was reprehensible but hardly sur-
prising that the effort should be accompanied by disorders and
excesses. If the peasantry in the country districts broke out
in savage insurrections against the seigneurs, burnt their
chateaux, and murdered aristocrats, it was very shocking — but
such things could not happen in England.
But in France the pace grew faster. The National Assembly
abolished all feudal institutions, and numbers of the nobility
took flight from France ; the emigres were soon
j i • i .r .r • • j. J-- 1789-91.
engaged in clamouring for foreign intervention. The
The new constitution practically vested all power in Constituent
r™ , : . , „ . Assembly,
the Assembly. 1 he king became virtually a prisoner
in Paris. The most advanced group, known as the Jacobins,
became predominant in the Assembly. Lafayette, a fastidious
enthusiast, once the popular hero, was losing his influence.
Mirabeau, the Titan, who had led the third estate to victory,
422 The Years of Peace
might just conceivably have succeeded in combining monarchical
with popular government under his own control ; but while he
was striving desperately to gain the confidence of the Crown, he
was struck down by death in March 1791. The king in despair
fled with his family from Paris in June, hoping certainly to
escape over the frontier, and designing probably to appeal to
his brother-in-law the Emperor Leopold, and the king of Prussia,
to restore him to a real throne. But at Varennes, just within
the frontier, he was recognised and detained, and was escorted
back to Paris. On the discovery of his flight, the Assembly
suspended his royal functions ; and it kept them suspended until
his formal acceptance of the new constitution in September.
In the Assembly, which had hitherto professed itself loyal to
the monarchy, the voices which demanded its abolition and the
1791. The establishment of a republic grew louder and more
Declaration numerous. On the other hand, the emigres, the
of Piinitz. most aggressive of whom had gathered at Coblenz,
were also waxing more clamorous in their demands for foreign
intervention. What the emigres wanted was the restoration
of the absolute monarchy and the old regime in an intensified
form. For them Leopold had no sympathy, but the suspen-
sion of the monarchy forced him to propose that the powers
should refuse to recognise the French government until the
monarchy was restored. In concert with Frederick William,
who, deserted by Great Britain in his designs against Russia,
was seeking the Austrian alliance, the emperor issued from
Piinitz a declaration in favour of armed intervention if the
powers would agree to act together. The certainty that at this
date Pitt would not be persuaded to intervene accounted for
a step much less aggressive in fact than in appearance, because
it really committed him to nothing. Moreover, the acceptance
of the constitution by Louis at once warranted the withdrawal
of the declaration.
But the indignation of France had been aroused. Also the
new constitution in France provided for the dissolution of the
National Assembly, and the election of a new Legislative
Assembly, to which none of the members of the old Assembly
Great Britain and Europe 423
were to be eligible. When the new Assembly met, the republican
element in it was predominant. Among them the wing who were
known as the Girondists, the literary republicans, 1791 The
were as yet the stronger party. To the Girondists Legislative
it appeared that a patriotic war, a defiance of the Asseml)1y-
insolent dictation of foreigners, would consolidate the nation;
and almost at the moment of Leopold's death, in March 1792,
war was declared against Austria, in the expecta- Declaration
tion that a French invasion of the Netherlands of war,
would be welcomed by the population which Marcn1792-
had so recently been in open rebellion against Austrian
supremacy.
Throughout this whole period, Pitt and the British govern-
ment had maintained the attitude of aloofness from affairs in
France. Pitt himself had at first believed in The British
common with the majority of his countrymen that attitude,
the outcome of the upheaval in France would be the establish-
ment of constitutional liberties after the British model. But as
the French Revolution developed, a feeling of great hostility
towards it was excited in England, a feeling which received a
tremendous impulse from the publication of Burke's Reflections
on the French Revolution at the end of 1790. Burke had held a
leading position among the Whigs as an advocate of the reform
of palpable abuses and as a devotee of the principles of liberty,
as they were embodied in the existing constitution of the king-
dom of Great Britain. But essentially he was a conservative, a
believer not in change but in development, in the steady adapta-
tion of the existing system to changing conditions, not in the
substitution for it of something which had not Burke>8
grown up naturally, however logically perfect and Reflections,
complete it might appear. He saw France engaged in
destroying the system which, whether bad or good, had arrived by
natural growth, and endeavouring to set in its place an academi-
cally devised system which had no roots in the past. Such a
process was in his eyes doomed in any case to failure. It was
doubly doomed when effected by violence, which openly set at
naught the most hallowed traditions, and even the funda-
424 The Years of Peace
mental principles of morality and religion. It had been sug-
gested with a certain cynicism that the power of France would
be ruined by the Revolution, which should therefore be viewed
with satisfaction by the British. Burke replied that the example
set by France* was fraught with more danger than was to be
feared from her arms. With a striking prescience he warned
his readers that far greater excesses were in store than any which
had hitherto been perpetrated, and pointed to a military dicta-
torship following upon anarchy as the inevitable outcome of the
Revolution. Rightly enough he insisted that English liberties
were not the product of the pursuit of abstractions such as the
hypothetical rights of man, but of a practical insistence upon
the preservation of definite rights established by precedent and
confirmed by long custom.
An immense influence was exercised by Burke's famous
pamphlet ; British insularity resented the presentation in other
Hostility quarters of French ideas as worthy of British
to the admiration ; and the British passion for law and
Revolution. or(jer was thoroughly aroused by the subversion
of law and order on the other side of the Channel. If less stolid
souls were fired with enthusiasm for ideals which seemed to
them to be the righteous motives of the upheaval in France,
the British public at large was more moved by the palpable un-
righteousness of the acts in which it was issuing. And besides
all this, while men with advanced ideas in the higher ranks of
society were expressing a dignified approbation or even a fervent
admiration for democratic ideals, there were not wanting in
Great Britain, to say nothing of Ireland, agitators who were
seeking Jto kindle in the breasts of the masses a fierce conviction
that they, too, were the victims of a monstrously iniquitous
system, and that they, too, if they put forth their strength,
could overthrow that system. It does not appear that such
ideas did take root either widely or deeply among the working
classes, but there was at least sufficient cause for grave anxiety.
British respectability was becoming seriously alarmed before the
end of 1791 ; before the end of 1792 the alarm was degenerat-
ing into panic, and from the time of the September massacres,
Great Britain and Europe 425
panic dictated the attitude of the government towards every
attempt to give voice to any popular grievance.
In the spring of 1792, however, Pitt was still serenely con-
fident that there were no war clouds in the horizon — that Great
Britain would continue an unconcerned spectator 1792 The
of the European conflict which France deliberately European
challenged. The declaration of war between France war begins-
and Austria was soon followed by the declaration of war between
France and Prussia. French troops were massed on the Nether-
lands frontier. The French minister of war, Dumouriez, revived,
and popular opinion endorsed, the old theory of Richelieu and
Louis xiv., that France was entitled to her natural boundaries, —
boundaries fixed by Nature when she made the continent of
Europe, namely, the Rhine, the Alps, the Pyrenees, and the sea ;
a theory which involved her absorption of Savoy, as well as of
the Rhine provinces and the Austrian Netherlands. Sardinia,
therefore, was added to the circle of her enemies. But when
French troops invaded the Netherlands they were ignominiously
expelled, the soldiers having no confidence in officers who were
aristocrats.
The Paris mob invaded the Tuileries, insulted the queen,
Marie Antoinette, and forced Louis to wear the red cap of liberty.
In July, the duke of Brunswick, who had been placed in command
of the Prussian army, issued a proclamation which stirred the
fury of the whole French people. In August, the royal family
escaped from the Tuileries and placed themselves under the
dubious protection of the Legislative Assembly ; the mob
sacked the Tuileries and massacred the Swiss Guard who stood
to their posts with magnificent loyalty.
The extremists, headed by Danton and Robespierre, captured
the Commune, the government of Paris, and in effect held the
national government in their own hands, completely The
dominating the Assembly. Prussian troops crossed September
the frontier, and captured Longwy and Verdun. massacre8-
Paris believed that the royalists were organising an insurrection
and a massacre. The Commune, in a house-to-house visitation,
swept together and flung into prison an immense number of
426 The Years of Peace
suspects. When the news came that Verdun had fallen, while
the peasants of La Vendee were in open revolt on the side of
Church and King, there followed that systematic slaughter of
the suspects known to history as the September massacres.
But in the meantime, Dumouriez, who was reckoned as a
Girondist, had taken up the command at the front ; a new spirit
pervaded the French troops, a spirit of confidence ; and at the
cannonade of Valmy the Prussian attack was repulsed, an
event which proved to be a decisive turning-point in the
The Republic military operations. On 2ist September, the life of
proclaimed. the Legislative Assembly came to an end, and its
place was taken by a new National Convention, overwhelmingly
republican, which opened its career by proclaiming the republic
and the abolition of the monarchy.
In England the tide of public opinion was rising higher and
higher against the French, while on the other hand the friends
of the Revolution were organising societies, ranging
Whigs from the orderly ' Friends of the People ' to the
support * London Correspondence Society/ which associated
itself with the French Jacobins. Their agitation
produced in May a counter-proclamation against seditious
writings issued by the government. Burke's association with
Fox had been broken off long before, and the Portland Whigs,
the bulk of the Whig Opposition, now joined Burke in support-
ing the government, which on the suspension of the French
monarchy in August withdrew its ambassador from Paris. Yet
Pitt still believed that war might be averted.
That hope vanished rapidly after the establishment of the
Convention. Both Prussia and Austria were neglecting the
Autumn- French war, and giving their attention to a fresh
French partition of Poland, in conjunction with the Tsarina,
which was completed at the beginning of 1793,
leaving to Poland only a small remnant of its former territory.
The Prussian troops fell back over the French frontier ; French
armies advanced upon the Rhine, where they captured Maintz
and Frankfort on the Maine ; a French army entered Savoy,
the annexation of which to France was proclaimed ; and
Great Britain and Europe 427
Dumouriez in the Netherlands defeated the Austrians at
Jemappes, drove them out of the country, and was welcomed
with open arms by the population.
The Convention then adopted the attitude which destroyed
all hope of prolonging the peace. It declared that the naviga-
tion of the Scheldt was to be opened, in defiance The Scheldt
of the old treaties, guaranteed by France herself to be opened,
as lately as 1785, and again by Great Britain as well as by
Prussia in 1788. It announced that all districts occupied by
French armies were under the protection of the Republic, that,
in them, all privileges were abolished, and the previously exist-
ing governments were at an end. Great Britain could not pos-
sibly tolerate the opening of the Scheldt, which would have con-
verted Antwerp into a French naval port, and a serious menace
to the British maritime power in the North Sea. Moreover,
apart from her direct interest in Antwerp, it was impossible for
her or for any one else to admit that France had a right to
tear up treaties on the ground that they contravened what she
was pleased to call natural rights.
Only one thing was needed to raise popular indignation to a
point at which the demand for war would become irresistible,
even if Pitt had still been disposed to resist it ; 1793
and that was provided when the French Conven- Regicide,
tion put ' Louis Capet ' on trial for his life, and January-
sent him to the guillotine in January 1793. It was no longer
possible to believe, as it had been at least until October, that
France was in arms against foreign intervention. France was
in arms to extend her own dominions, and avowedly to give
military support to any of the peoples which should emulate
her own example and rise against their monarchical war,
government. Pitt's attitude on the question of the istFebruary.
Scheldt was uncompromising, and on ist February the French
Republic declared war upon Great Britain.
CHAPTER X. THE WAR WITH THE FRENCH
REPUBLIC
I. FEATURES OF THE WAR, 1793-1802
THE war which opened in 1793 was brought to an end techni-
cally by the Peace of Amiens in 1802. In reality that peace was
The two a mere suspension of hostilities, and the struggle
parts of was again renewed in the next year, to be again
the -war. suspended in 1814, and finally brought to its de-
cisive conclusion on the field of Waterloo in 1815. In many
respects, however, there is a marked difference in its character
before and after the Peace of Amiens. The period from 1793
to 1802 is sufficiently complete in itself to justify the selection
of the latter date for the close oj: the present volume ; we are
ringing down the curtain not between the acts of a single drama,
but between two plays, distinct like the three parts of a trilogy.
In one respect also a definite climax had been reached with the
Legislative Union of Great Britain and Ireland ; a climax
which, at the moment of writing, appears certain to have its
precise counterpart in the climax of the ensuing volume with the
passage of the Home Rule Bill under the recent Parliament Act.
Pitt's war with the French Republic, the Republic which was
technically in being from the outbreak of hostilities to the Peace
Why Pitt of Amiens, was neither a war of aggression, nor a
went to war. war for empire, nor a war for an abstract idea.
Apart from the fervour of his patriotism, which he inherited
from his great father, Pitt's aims and objects were essentially
practical. He did not seek war ; to the last moment he per-
sisted in his belief that war could be avoided, that Great Britain
could stand on one side, and leave France whether as a monarchy
or as a republic to fight out her own quarrel with the continental
428
Features of the War 429
powers. But he found himself in a position in which, from his
own point of view, war was forced upon the country by her
direct responsibility for maintaining a treaty which France
claimed the right to tear up, though she had herself insisted
upon it only eight years before. Such obligations are often enough
cynically ignored when they clash with the national interests
of the moment, when some plausible ground of evasion can be
suggested ; or they may be honestly set aside on account of
changed conditions, which could not have been taken into the
reckoning when the obligation was incurred. But in this case
the moral obligation was very clearly backed by the national
interests. For a century it had been an axiom of British policy
that the ports from Dunkirk to the Texel could not be allowed
to fall under the control of France. In the circumstances of
1793, the opening of the Scheldt would mean an immense acqui-
sition of maritime power by France immediately, and would
further secure as a consequence her complete political predomin-
ance in Holland itself, and her effective control of the ports of
Holland. The opening of the Scheldt was the crucial question
on which it was impossible for Pitt to give way, and which
forced Great Britain into war, with the enormous mass of public
opinion behind him.
Public opinion, however, more than Pitt himself was influenced
by positive hostility to the French Revolution. The excesses of
the Paris mob, the flaming denunciations of Burke, popular
the September massacres, and finally the trial and support,
death of the king, had convinced four-fifths of the people of
England at least of the diabolic origin of the French Revolu-
tion, and of the utter ruin of all social order as the inevitable
corollary of its success. Pitt went to war against the Republican
government of France exactly as he would have gone to war
against Louis xiv. in similar circumstances ; because the foreign
policy of the French Republic was being conducted on the same
aggressive lines, with the same intent of extending France to her
natural boundaries, the same arrogant assertion of her right to
ignore engagements, and a still more presumptuous assumption
of the French title to intervene in the domestic politics of other
43° The War with the French Republic
nations. But the people of England were actuated in at least
an equal degree by hatred of the Revolution itself, as interpreted
by the September massacres, and the fear of all that it seemed
to them to mean. And that hatred and fear grew more intense
and ineradicable with the progress of the Reign of Terror.
Nor was the conduct of that section of the Whigs who re-
mained in Opposition calculated to allay the popular feeling.
The Fox, in the grip of his grand idea of liberty and
Opposition, justice, could see all that there was of right and
very little that there was of wrong in the doings of France.
She was the champion of the Great Cause, and her splendour in
that character blinded him to the fact that she was pursuing a
policy of greed and aggression even while she flaunted the
banner of the Cause, precisely after the precedent of the most
absolute of her kings. He saw that in the first instance she had
turned against the European powers because they threatened
gratuitous intervention in her own private concerns ; he did not
see that France was claiming precisely that right for herself
which she had resented so fiercely and so justly when claimed for
themselves by the European monarchs. The Whigs acclaimed
French successes against the Allies, and openly deplored French
defeats. When a country is plunged into war, her people will
not tolerate the attitude of the citizen who applauds the victories
of her enemies because in his private judgment the enemies have
the better case. In short, the line adopted by the Opposition
destroyed even such influence as they might have exercised with
the body of the people ; they were heard, because they made a
noise ; but they were not listened to ; they added fuel to the
flame instead of quenching it.
On the other hand, even from the British point of view the
war did not retain its character of being directed to the resist-
Outcome of ance of French aggression. The princes of Europe
the first-war, avowedly made it a war of counter-aggression, a
war by which France was to be stripped of the territories she
had acquired, and was to be forced to reinstate the Bourbon
monarchy. The triumph of the Allies would have riveted the
chains of the old system more firmly than ever ; the Allies did
Features of the War 431
not triumph, and when peace again reigned on the Continent
in 1802 France was indisputably the most powerful state in
Europe. Her victory, however, was not complete, and it was
only in part the victory of the Revolution. It was not complete,
because Great Britain was not only undefeated, but had strength-
ened her hold upon India, established her naval supremacy
more decisively than ever, and almost monopolised transmarine
commerce, besides enormously developing her own industrial
resources, while those of every country on the Continent were
crippled. It was not the victory of the Revolution, because
though France was still a republic in form, government had been
effectively transmuted into the despotism of the First Consul,
though he had not yet assumed the imperial title. And yet the
Revolution had been so far victorious that there was no longer
any country in Western Europe whose government could afford
to regard the popular will as a negligible quantity, and in France
herself, when the Bourbon monarchy was restored thirteen years
afterwards, the absolutism and the privileges of the ancien
regime could not be reinstated.
Of the war itself there are two main phases clearly distinguish-
able. The first ends at the close of 1797 with the Treaty of
Campo Formio and the British naval victory at The two
Camperdown, coinciding with the coup d'Etat of Phases.
Fructidor. From that time the personality of Bonaparte
becomes predominant, and the brilliant young general of the
Republic has already fixed upon England as the enemy whose
destruction must be compassed. At the outset of the first
period there is a general coalition of all the western European
powers against the French Republic, a coalition whose members
gradually drop away till Great Britain and Austria are alone
left, and finally Austria, by the Treaty of Campo Formio, leaves
her obstinate ally isolated. Already, however, one extremely
critical period has been passed, and the British naval superiority
has been confirmed. The second period witnesses the Egyptian
expedition of Bonaparte, the decisive naval victory of the Nile,
a new European coalition, Bonaparte's return, the coup d'£tat
of Brumaire, the disruption of the coalition, and the second,
43 2 The War with the French Repiiblic
isolation of the maritime power whose fleets were now irresistible,
followed by the Peace of Amiens.
At the beginning of 1793, Pitt when he entered upon the war
had no doubt whatever that it would be of short duration.
The vital Since, as was notoriously the case, France had been
strength almost bankrupt in 1789, it seemed incredible that
she should not be on the verge of bankruptcy in
1793 after four years of convulsions. Yet year after year passed,
and the expected bankruptcy was always a little further off in
the future until it disappeared out of sight altogether. A similar
erroneous conviction had possessed the continental powers when
the English cut off the head of King Charles i. and set up the
Commonwealth. Whatever the crimes committed by the French
people, France was permeated with that patriotic enthusiasm
which made her sons ready to pour out their blood like water
in her defence. The Republic offered advancement to any one
who proved himself worthy of it so long as his loyalty was un-
impeachable, and her forces were soon under the command of
men chosen on Cromwell's principle of demanding only that
they understood their work thoroughly, and had, mutato nomine,
' the root of the matter ' in them. The organisation fell into the
hands of a consummate master with an unfailing eye for ability,
Carnot. Inefficiency, or any suspicion of inefficiency, met with
an exceedingly short shrift, and incompetence once displayed
was allowed no chance of redeeming itself. The result was that
the republican armies, instead of being routed by troops who
were treated as machines and led by noble amateurs, drill-
sergeants, or men whose abilities were paralysed by traditional
conventions, were habitually victorious.
The Allies, on the other hand, suffered in the first place from
the almost unfailing defect of coalitions, the lack of unity in
Weakness of design, and of co-operation in execution. Each
the Allies. wanted the spoils which were to be its own par-
ticular share to be the primary objective upon which it directed
its own individual energies. None of them grasped the great
principle upon which both Marlborough and William in. had
always striven to act, of concentrating their common energies
Features of the War 433
upon crushing the common foe instead of dissipating them upon
the individual pursuit of their separate interests. Prussia was
thinking more about Poland than about France, and Austria
could not afford to withdraw her own attention from the same
quarter. In the second place, while the rank and file of the
allied armies were without enthusiasm, their commanders were
chosen from the aristocratic circles, regardless of their incapacity.
Those of them who had military experience were hidebound by
the traditions of the Seven Years' War, when Frederick's fighting
machine had been an extremely successful innovation. They
forgot that Frederick's men fought with enthusiasm under a
captain who never hesitated to take terrific risks, and they
transformed the rules of thumb into principles of the military
art. Consequently, when they were faced by generals who dis-
carded the rules of thumb whenever they interfered with the
carrying out of an effective stroke, they found themselves
surprised, outmanoeuvred, and defeated.
Moreover, Pitt in England was very far from being a great war
minister. In two respects, indeed, the mighty Chatham was
reincarnated in his son. The younger Pitt, like his Rtt and
father, was a patriot who prized the national honour ^ father,
above all other things. Nothing would make him desert an ally
or yield upon any point in which the national honour was con-
cerned. And, like his father, he could and did imbue others
with the patriotic passion and the courage of his own indomitable
personality, and with a convinced reliance upon him as a leader.
But here the resemblance ceased. The elder Pitt was the
greatest of war ministers because he grasped the great strategic
principles, made the whole of the operations concerted parts
of a great scheme, taught his subordinates and colleagues that
what must be done could be done, and because he ignored every-
thing but fitness in the appointment of the men entrusted with
the task of carrying out his plans, who in their turn were left
by him the largest possible freedom of action in their operations
compatible with the part played by those operations in the
main scheme.
But as an organiser of war the younger Pitt was altogether
Innes's Eng. Hist.— Vol. in. 2 E
434 **£ War with the French Republic
out of place. Great peace ministers, such as he and Robert
Walpole, prepared the country to bear the strain of long and
Pitt and costly wars by fostering the development of the
Walpole. national wealth. Pitt, indeed, differed essentially
from Walpole, in that he fought his very hardest when he found
war forced upon him ; but, like Walpole, he had failed to utilise
the years of peace for bringing up to a fighting standard the
organisation which the last war had proved to be so disastrously
inefficient.
Nor did he understand its needs. His father had taken into
his own hands the supreme control of every department, as well
The army as the planning of the whole system of operations,
and navy. f^g younger Pitt was devoid of the strategical
grasp which could plan a system of operations, and he did not
attempt to bring the departments under his personal control.
The War Office was left virtually in the hands of Henry Dundas,
who in this field was an entirely incompetent amateur ; and no
change was made in the system which made birth and influence
the sole considerations which controlled military appointments.
The salvation of the country lay with the navy, with its infinitely
superior tradition of regarding capacity as a better qualification
for command than birth. Unlike the army, the navy was from
the outset efficient, though even here there was plenty of room
for improved organisation, and it was deprived of half of its
effective power for a long time by the lack of any strategical
direction at headquarters. From these preliminary considera-
tions we may turn to the story of the struggle itself.
II. THE FIRST COALITION, 1793-1797
We may open the story with a brief outline of the course of
events controlling the government within France itself. The
establishment of the Republic and the beheading
Course of of Louis xvi. had been the joint work of the literary
events in republicans called the Girondists, who were the
intellectuals, and of the extreme section of Jacobins
known as the Mountain, led by Danton, Robespierre, and Marat.
The First Coalition 435
Ever since the beginning of the Revolution, it had been the rule
that in each new Assembly the doctrines which in the last had
been counted extreme became the doctrines of the Moderates
of the centre. In the Legislative Assembly the Girondists had
been accounted as of the extreme party : in the new Convention
they soon found themselves occupying the position of the old
Constitutionalists as the party of moderation in rivalry with
the extremists of the Mountain. For some months there was a
struggle for supremacy. The Mountain succeeded in establish-
ing the small secret committee of supervision, known as the
Committee of Public Safety. In June 1793 the Mountain won
the upper hand, the Girondists were driven out of .
office, and the Committee of Public Safety, which Of Terror,
included Danton, Robespierre, and Carnot — Marat July 1793-
July 1794
had been assassinated — virtually formed the govern-
ment, with unlimited power. With the victory of the Mountain
set in the Reign of Terror, when suspects of every kind, sort,
and description were arrested and imprisoned by hundreds and
thousands ; and then month after month the tumbrils carried
to the guillotine what it is hardly an exaggeration to call a
daily hecatomb of victims condemned by the revolutionary
tribunal at Paris. Similar scenes took place in the provinces.
Danton began to incur odium as an ' indulgent ' ; yet the re-
volting excesses of the Hebertists caused Robespierre to join
with Danton in crushing them before he turned upon his nobler
colleague and established his own complete supremacy, in March
1794. Already, however, Paris and France were becoming
nauseated ; even within the Committee of Public Safety, no
man felt that his own head was safe on his shoulders. A plot
was organised at the end of July. Robespierre fell, and the
Reign of Terror was ended. The Convention re- 1794.
covered the control of the government. A year Thermidor.
later the executive control was placed in the hands of a com-
mittee of five, called the Directory, Carnot the ' organiser of
victories ' still being one of them. Again after another year
there was a struggle between the Directory and the Legislature.
The Directory called in to its aid the young artillery officer,
436 The War with the French Republic
Napoleon Bonaparte, and was secured in power by the
coup d'Etat of Vendemiaire in October 1796. Bonaparte estab-
1795-9. lished his own ascendency, though nominally as a
The servant of the Directory, by securing the supremacy
within that body to his own allies, in the coup
d'etat of Fructidor in September 1797.
When the war opened then, the Girondists had not yet been
overthrown ; officially they were still in the ascendent. Hitherto
the Republic had been at war only with Prussia, Austria, and
1793. Sardinia ; now Spain and Holland, where the
The first stadtholder was still at the head of the govern-
ment, followed the British lead. The Bourbon
king of Sicily also joined the coalition. While the Girondists
and the Mountain were struggling for the supremacy in the
French government, the French arms were not being successful.
Success of British troops joined the Austrians in the Nether-
the Allies. lands in May. The French were driven within
their own frontier, and Maintz was recaptured. A Spanish
army invaded Roussillon, Vendee was still in a flame of insur-
rection, and Brittany followed suit when the Girondists fell.
In the south Lyons and Toulon were both in revolt as Royalist
strongholds. ' A British fleet under Lord Hood was sent to
blockade Toulon ; which the Royalists surrendered, along with
the fleet in the harbour, on the promise that it was to be held
for ' Louis xvii.' — the young dauphin was still living a prisoner
— and was to be restored at the end of the war. But Louis,
count of Provence, the next brother of the late king, was not
permitted to enter the place. Great Britain was not committed
to a Bourbon restoration on the lines demanded by the emigres.
The campaign in the Netherlands opened the way to Paris ;
but the allies did not push their advantage. Austria wanted
Their to recover Alsace and Lorraine ; Prussia would
dissensions. not help her except at the price of her agreeing to
the Prussian theory of the partition of Poland, which was not at
all to Austria's liking. King George's second son, the duke of
York, who had been placed at the head of the British troops,
wanted to secure the British share of the spoils, and marched off
The First Coalition
437
to Dunkirk. But in the meantime, the French in spite of their
dissensions were answering the call to arms with enthusiasm.
In August a universal conscription was established, and Carnot
began his great work of military organisation. In September,
Houchard compelled York to raise the siege of
Dunkirk, and in October Jourdan drove back the the French,
Austrians at the battle of Wattignies. On the September'
Rhine also the French defeated the Austrians,
and the Prussians evacuated the greater part of the Palatinate.
In December, an English expedition was dispatched to support
the Vendean revolt, but the insurgents were unable to co-operate
and the expedition accomplished nothing. Before the end of
December, Toulon in the south was recovered for the Re-
public. Hood's squadron had for a long time rendered ineffec-
tive its siege on the land side by the republicans ; but a young
artillery officer, Napoleon Bonaparte, was allowed to carry out
a plan which enabled him to command the city with his guns.
Finding that the place had become untenable, Hood had to
content himself with taking off a large number of the royalists
on his ships, and destroying or carrying off something less than
half of the French fleet within the harbour, leaving the rest to
the Republicans.
At the opening then of 1794 the Allies had no reason to be
proud of themselves ; but the Reign of Terror was in full career,
and Pitt was supported by the country in re- 1794>
fusing to negotiate with the existing government Pitfwiilnot
of France, the course urged upon him by the Whigs. '
The view was that that government had put itself outside the
pale, and that it would still remain impossible to trust any
French government until one should be established which should
have at once a decent promise of permanency and a decent air
of acting upon the recognised principles of international morality.
The Opposition could muster only some dozen votes in the House
of Lords, and less than sixty in the Commons.
But the campaigning of the second year was no more creditable
than that of the first. Frederick William, who was thinking
much more about Poland than about France, would have with-
43 8 The IVar with the French Republic
drawn his troops altogether if the British, with some help from
the Dutch, had not agreed to pay for the sixty thousand men
Failure of who were eventually placed nominally at their dis-
tfco Allies. posal, but practically under orders to do nothing —
orders which they diligently obeyed. Austria made some show of
co-operation with the duke of York. The Allies were defeated
at Turcoing in May, and at Fleurus in June, and the French took
possession of Brussels. Then in answer to the British and Dutch
representations the Austrian minister remarked that the Nether-
lands were of importance to Great Britain and to Holland, but
of no use to his master. The Prussians took their pay and refused
to move. In the autumn the Austrians were driven over the
Rhine, the subsidy to Prussia was withdrawn, and both the
German powers gave their exclusive attention to Poland. York,
who was a very poor general, was driven back out of the Nether-
lands across the south of Holland, over the Maas, and then beyond
the Waal. Pitt, much to the king's chagrin, insisted that the
duke must be recalled, and the Anglo-Dutch armies placed under
a single control. York found better employment for his respect-
able abilities in the military administration at home, which
improved considerably under his management. In the south
the republican armies after the capture of Toulon had assumed
the aggressive against Sardinia on one side and Spain on the
other, forced the passes into Piedmont, and crossed the Pyrenees
into Catalonia.
In the whole year there was only one substantial success to
record. The British fleet maintained its tradition. The practical
Howe's value of the capture of three or four islands in the
victory, West Indies was small, because, whenever the backs
of the British were turned, the inhabitants resumed
their French allegiance. Hood in the Mediterranean captured
Corsica ; but the most notable event was Howe's victory of ' the
Glorious First of June/ off Ushant. The French were expecting
a great convoy of provision ships from America, of which they
were sorely in need, the country having suffered from bad
harvests. The admiral who was placed in command of the
Channel fleet — he was now not far short of seventy — sailed in
The First Coalition
439
May, primarily with the intention of cutting off the convoy. A
French fleet of about equal numbers sailed from Brest to protect
it. Howe succeeded in forcing two partial actions with the
French admiral, whose business was primarily to see that the
provision ships got to port. Then on ist June he brought on a
general engagement, and won a complete victory, capturing six
ships and sinking a seventh, while the remainder escaped for the
most part in a desperately crippled condition. A myth long
prevailed concerning the Vengeur, the ship which was sunk. It
was proclaimed in France that her crew had preferred death to
surrender, and had gone to the bottom with her, refusing to
strike the flag. As a matter of fact she did strike her flag,
though it was only after she had been hopelessly crippled in a
heroic contest ; and the bulk of her crew were taken off by the
British, though there was not time to rescue them all. The
British victory was a very grave disaster for the French fleet,
but the specific object with which Howe had sailed was not
attained, since the provision ships got safely to port. Still the
victory had the immense additional value of preserving the
national self-respect, which was being endangered by the futility
of the performances in the Netherlands. To the French, how-
ever, the moral value of the Vengeur myth was hardly less.
Very shortly afterwards the group known as the Portland
Whigs, who had broken with Fox long before without becoming
avowed supporters of the government, definitely
attached themselves to the ministry. Portland whigs
himself was appointed to a third secretaryship of Join the
, ,, . government,
state ; and other members of the group were given
office, Wyndham becoming secretary at war, while Earl Spencer
took the place of Pitt's elder brother, the earl of Chatham, at
the admiralty.
At the close of 1794 the Republic was triumphing over its
enemies everywhere except on the seas. Even in the insurgent
districts in La Vendee, Brittany, and Normandy, Winter:
order was being restored by the wisdom, justice and Spain and
firmness of Hoche, the most brilliant of the Repub- ]
lican generals, and perhaps the most entirely admirable figure
440 The War with the French Republic
among all the persons who came into prominence in the course
of the Revolution. The Spanish court, guided by the influence
of Godoy, paramour of the infamous wife of the imbecile king,
Charles IV., was already negotiating for the transfer of the
Spanish alliance to France. During the winter, when Holland
became ice-bound, Pichegru overran the country while the
Anglo-Dutch troops could offer no resistance, and got possession
of the ice-bound fleet at the Texel. The stadtholder took flight
to England, where of his own authority he conveyed temporarily
to Great Britain the possession of the Dutch colony at the
southern extremity of Africa, lest it should fall into the hands of
the French.
A little later, after a merely formal resistance, Cape Town was
occupied by the British — an acquisition of very substantial value
1795. The because of its position on the route to India. But
coalition for France it only meant that the Cape remained
dissolved. ag ^ j^ keen ^efQTe^ jn hostile hands. The
practical effect of the overrunning of Holland was that the
republican anti-Orange party became completely predominant,
and transformed the ally of Great Britain into the ' Batavian
Republic ' under the aegis of republican France, which had by
this time absorbed the acquiescent Netherlands as a portion of
French territory. The Tsarina completed the final partition of
Poland, to her own satisfaction at least, and to that of Prussia,
while Austria was at the most conciliated by the share allotted
to her. In April Prussia gave up the pretence of continuing the
French war, and signed the Treaty of Basel : for ten years to
come she persisted in the attitude of neutrality, for which she
paid the penalty at Jena. The Treaty of Basel was shortly
followed by a formal treaty between France and Spain. Only
Austria returned to a more active participation in the war,
persuaded thereto by the huge subsidies from Pitt, British gold
being no longer diverted to Prussia.
There were no counteracting successes. A final attempt
was made on behalf of the Vendeans by a force of French
emigres who were carried to Quiberon Bay by a British flotilla.
The attempt was an ignominious failure : the emigres were
The First Coalition 441
overwhelmed by Hoche, and most of the prisoners were
put to death by the order of Hoche's civilian colleague,
though a number of emigres and insurgents were Tne Quiberon
allowed to escape on the British ships. La Vendee expedition,
ceased to be a serious menace to the republican government.
Even by sea the British failed to make effective use of their
ascendency. Admiral Hotham in the Mediterranean considered
that he had ' done very well ' in capturing a couple inactive
of French ships when the indignant Commodore fleets.
Horatio Nelson declared that the whole Toulon fleet ought to have
been destroyed. Hood's brother, Lord Bridport, commanding
the Channel fleet, had lost his former brilliancy and vigour, and
allowed the Brest fleet to escape him in June. Naval energies
were in fact being frittered away in a futile capture of sugar
islands in the West Indies, a meaningless business which in the
course of the war cost tens of thousands of lives and swallowed
up a vast amount of money for no practical purpose. Pitt was
still suffering from his persistent conviction that France was on
the verge of a financial collapse which would force her to sub-
mission. Yet in fact the establishment of the Directory in
October gave promise of a firmer and more enduring government
than she had enjoyed since the beginning of the Revolution.
The revived activities of Austria were attended with some
success, and the French armies of Pichegru and Jourdan which
crossed the Rhine in the autumn were pressed back again ; but
in North Italy the Austrian arms met with a serious reverse at
Loano, in November.
The coup d'Etat of Vendemiaire had one result on which no one
could have calculated. The services of Bonaparte were re-
warded, though he was only six-and-twenty, by 1796
his appointment to the command of the French Bonaparte
army in Northern Italy, at the opening of 1796. lnltajy-
The amazing achievements of his Italian campaign at once
raised him to the foremost place among living commanders, and
prepared the way for his personal domination of France. Bona-
parte's triumphs in Italy provided the principal feature of the
war in 1796. By a victory at Montenotte he prevailed upon
44 2 The War with the French Republic
Sardinia to withdraw from the alliance to which it had hitherto
adhered. His victory at the Bridge of Lodi gave him possession
of Milan, and drove the Austrians into Mantua. Naples was
frightened into neutrality, and all the North Italian ports were
closed to the enemies of France. The Austrians made gallant
and persistent attempts to recover ground ; but only to suffer
repeated defeats at the hands of Bonaparte ; and the battles of
Arcola in November and of Rivoli in January 1797 drove them
back out of Italy. This disastrous campaigning was, however, to
some extent redeemed by the success of the Archduke Charles, who
foiled a converging movement of Jourdan and Moreau directed
upon Vienna, and compelled those generals to fall back behind
the Rhine.
The British Mediterranean fleet was materially improved,
when its command was entrusted to Admiral Jervis in place of
The Mediter- the incompetent Hotham. But its operations were
ranean restricted by the closure of the Italian ports, and
jvacua e . «n August ^he situation was changed when Spain
followed up the treaty of 1795 by an offensive and defensive
alliance with France, whereby the Spanish as well as the Dutch
fleet was placed at the French disposal. In the face of this
imminent danger, Jervis, before the end of the year, was ordered
to evacuate the Mediterranean itself, and Corsica was abandoned.
Through the year, Pitt had been making overtures for peace.
The captures effected by the fleet gave Great Britain something
Peace nego- to offer, and it was possible to treat the Directory
tiations fail. as a responsible government. There were, indeed,
some grounds for nervousness lest the French successes should
induce Austria to make separate terms for herself ; but Pitt's
overtures did not mean the desertion of his allies, for the essential
condition put forward was the restoration of the Netherlands
to Austria, to be purchased by the restoration of what Great
Britain had won. Negotiations broke down through the mutual
distrust of the two governments, neither of which believed that
the other was sincere in its proposals ; nor is it easy for the
British historian to come to any conclusion save that the real
responsibility for the failure lay with the French, although Fox
!
The First Coalition 443
and the Opposition in England took a different view. In fact,
it was anticipated in France, as it was feared in England, that
Great Britain would be deprived of the command of the sea by
the combination of the French, Spanish, and Dutch fleets, when
the last of these should be ready to take the sea. More blows
to Austria, such as those which Bonaparte had been dealing,
would bring her to her knees ; and before the negotiations were
actually broken off the death of the Tsarina Catherine and the
accession of Paul I. removed the immediate possibility which
was then threatening that Austria would be reinforced by
Russian troops. In these circumstances it is not surprising
that the Directory preferred going on with the war to surrender-
ing the Netherlands.
The depression in England was perhaps greater at this point
than at any other moment of the war. The order for the evacua-
tion of the Mediterranean implied on the part 1797.
of the government a consciousness of insecurity Battle of
which was of itself extremely alarming. Happily, vincent,i4th
however, confidence was restored by the brilliant February,
action fought by Admiral Jervis off Cape St. Vincent on i4th
February. A Spanish fleet of twenty-seven sail of the line
sailed from Cartagena for Cadiz. After they had passed the
Straits, they were sighted by Jervis, who was cruising off Cape
St. Vincent with only fifteen ships. If the Spanish fleet should
succeed in forming a junction with the French at Brest, the
united forces might well be overwhelming. It was imperative,
therefore, to break up the Spanish fleet at once, if the thing
could be done. Ten of the Spaniards were well to leeward of
the other seventeen, running for port. Jervis, whose fleet was
in first-rate order, under first-rate officers, attacked the main
fleet. A portion of it tried to get away and join the leeward
squadron : Nelson on the Captain disregarded the signal, left
the line of battle, headed off the retiring ships, engaged them,
and supported by Troubridge on the Culloden, threw the whole
Spanish line into confusion, and captured two of their ships.
Although the leeward squadron and several other ships suc-
ceeded in making their escape, the victory was decisive, because
444 The War with the French Republic
it proved that the Spanish fleet, however numerous, was of very
small account for fighting purposes. The admiral's approval
of his commodore's independent action was emphasised, when
Nelson was gazetted a rear-admiral at the same time as Jervis
himself was created Earl St. Vincent.
A few weeks earlier, fortune, not skill, averted a very grave
danger. Ireland, loyal as it had been in the last war, had since
Hoche's become extremely disaffected. Irish disaffection
Irish provided a fertile soil for the seeds of the French
on* revolutionary propaganda. Half the country was
in fact ripe for rebellion. The Directory designed an invasion
of Ireland with a large force under the command of Hoche
himself. A powerful fleet sailed from Brest ; Bridport, in com-
mand of the Channel fleet, was not on the watch ; all went well
with the expedition till it was nearing Bantry Bay, when a gale
set in ; the ships were driven off, the landing was effectually
prevented, and more than a third of the whole squadron was
lost, the remainder struggling back to Brest in a badly battered
condition. It is to be remarked, however, that contrary to all
expectation, the Irish made no sign, either in Munster or in
Dublin, of any inclination to insurrection when the French
fleet was off the Irish coast.
Nevertheless the crisis was by no means passed. The Spanish
fleet at Cadiz was still too large to be left unblockaded. Brid-
port had failed to intercept the fleet from Brest, either on its
The mutiny waY t° Ireland or on its return. The Dutch fleet
at Spithead, in the Texel was believed to be in a forward state
April. Q£ preparation, which made it necessary for a
squadron under Duncan to remain on the watch in the North
Sea. Bonaparte had driven the Austrians out of Italy, and was
himself over the Austrian border in Carinthia moving toward
Vienna. At this critical moment the fleet at Spithead mutinied.
The mutiny was nothing more or less than a very thorough!]
organised strike, conducted with remarkable discipline anc
order. The men suffered under intolerable grievances, which the
had long been doing their best to get remedied in a perfect!)
legitimate manner. Their complaints were ignored, and the
The First Coalition 445
were the more disgusted because the corresponding grievance in
regard to the pay of soldiers had been recognised and remedied.
At last, in despair, the men, acting completely at one, altogether
declined to obey their officers, and took the control of the ships
into their own hands. The admiralty took alarm and sent a
commission to meet the men's delegates, who stood firmly by
their demands, which were in themselves absolutely reasonable.
The government yielded on all points, and although there was
a delay long enough to excite the men and cause a fresh mutiny,
discipline was thereafter perfectly restored. The only dubious
question was as to the wisdom of yielding to the men's demand,
that a number of officers who had been guilty of flagrant tyranny
should be removed.
But the mutiny at Spithead, which began in the middle of
April and ended in the middle of May, was followed by a second
mutiny on the ships at the Nore. In this case it The mutiny
appears clear that an element was at work, much at the Nore,
more dangerous than that which had inspired the May'
movement at Spithead. The crews, mainly made up by the
pressgangs, included a large number of disaffected Irishmen,
gaol-birds, and the lowest class of seafaring men ; and among
them were educated or half-educated propagandists of the ideas
of the French Revolution. In short, the lawless element at
Spithead had been held very thoroughly under control by the
men themselves ; at the Nore it was in danger of predominat-
ing ; the cooler and more respectable of the men were dragged
into the mutiny a good deal against their will ; two of the ships'
crews only joined under compulsion. Again the admiralty
commissioners met the mutineer delegates to inquire into the
grievances, and found the men's leaders making impossible
demands, affecting not their own status but that of the officers,
to the serious detriment of discipline. All but two of the vessels
of Duncan's squadron at Yarmouth joined the mutineers at
the Nore. It is not easy to guess what would have happened
at this juncture if the Dutch fleet had come out of the Texel.
Duncan with a fine audacity sailed off with his two ships to
watch the Texel, and to produce by elaborate signalling the
446 The War with the French Republic
impression that the rest of his fleet was just below the horizon.
Whether his attempted deception succeeded or not, the Dutch
fleet did not come out. The government presented an obstinate
front to the mutineers ; the shore forts were prepared to give
the men a hot reception. It was made clear that no terms
would be offered. The crews from Spithead, now thoroughly
loyal, denounced the conduct of the mutineers. On one ship
after another, the loyal section gained over adherents till they
were in the decisive majority, and one after another returned
to its obedience. Finally, the ship which had the ringleader,
Parker, on board surrendered itself at Sheerness. The govern-
ment was wise enough to act on the assumption that the men
had been for the most part led astray ; and in the end less than
twenty of the ringleaders were put to death. The men had
submitted exactly two months after the beginning of the first
mutiny at Spithead.
In the meantime, Bonaparte's advance upon Vienna had
caused the Austrians to agree to preliminaries of peace at Leoben
in April. Pitt, in spite of strong opposition within
Camperdown .
and campo the cabinet, opened negotiations for a separate
Formio, peace with the Directory, upon terms which
October. , , . ., ... r f .. „
amounted to the recognition of the French sove-
reignty in the Netherlands, and the restoration of all British
conquests, except the Cape and Trinidad. The Directory was
divided. But the fate of the treaty was sealed when the
coup d'Etat of Fructidor in September secured the power of
the trio hostile to Britain, and the actual ascendency of
Bonaparte. The negotiations collapsed. A few weeks later,
the Dutch fleet at last came out of the Texel ; and Duncan,
with a fleet now thoroughly loyal, shattered it in a stubbornly
fought battle at Camperdown, on nth October. The naval
crisis was at an end. But within a week later the isolation of
Great Britain was completed by the definitive Treaty of Campo
Formio.
Pitt, Bonaparte, and Welles ley 447
III. PITT, BONAPARTE, AND WELLESLEY, 1797-1802
At the close of 1797, the French Republic might well have
been proud of the success which it had achieved. It had passed
through the days of the Terror. It had little to The BTlcces8
fear from the monarchists within its own borders ; of the French
the last coup d'Etat had struck a decisive blow Eepul
against the small group of able men whose loyalty to the Re-
public was doubtful. It was as yet unconscious of its approach-
ing overthrow and the coming establishment of Csesarism by
the man who had just confirmed the supremacy of the Directory.
The old dream of the old monarchy, the dream of extending
French territory to the natural boundaries, was practically
accomplished ; what had been the Austrian Netherlands were
now a part of France. So also was Savoy. Moreover, beyond
her own borders, France had established in practical depend-
ence upon herself the Batavian Republic in Holland, and the
Cisalpine Republic in Northern Italy, while the Swiss Republic
was hardly more independent. She was in possession of Corfu
in the Adriatic ; the goodwill of Austria had been more or less
secured in the treaty by the appropriation to her of Venice ; and
French influence was supreme in the minor German princi-
palities of the Rhineland. Only one power was still in arms
against her, Great Britain ; and the prostration of Great Britain
was the object upon which the Directory and Bonaparte were
bent.
Ostensibly, then, for many months after the Treaty of Campo
Formio, the energies of the Republic were directed in accord-
ance with the whole series of precedents to pre- 1797. Apian
parations for a great invasion of England. The of invasion,
destruction of the Dutch fleet at Camperdown as a matter of
fact made the plan impracticable ; but, again, in accordance
with precedent, the threat compelled the British to retain their
fleet in full strength in the Channel, while Jervis had to keep
watch over the large if not otherwise formidable Spanish fleet
in Cadiz. As yet ships could not be spared for a fleet in the
Mediterranean.
448 The War with the French Republic
By Bonaparte, however, the preparations for an invasion
were intended as a mask to cover his real designs. He had con-
1798 ceived the project of an Asiatic conquest which
The masked should make Asia the base for the domination of
Europe, while the base for the Asiatic conquest
itself was to be Egypt. Egypt was to be the key to India, and
the overthrow of the British power in India would involve the
overthrow of the British power everywhere by cutting off the
main source of British wealth. The scheme presented itself as
practicable, on the hypothesis that Britain was not mistress
of the Mediterranean ; a hypothesis which at the time was
actually true in fact. Great Britain, having her own shores
threatened by invasion, could not afford to spare a great fleet
to dominate the Mediterranean. Bonaparte's own plan was
not at first submitted to the Directory. The great naval pre-
parations which went on through the winter and spring had
no other apparent object than the proposed invasion. But
when at last Bonaparte brought forward his scheme for the in-
vasion of Egypt, it was welcomed by the Directory, which was
beginning to feel by no means unwilling to see its alarmingly
powerful young general engaged at a distance from the shores
of France. The ships which were being made ready at Toulon,
Marseilles, Genoa, and Civita Vecchia, were to convey an army
across the unguarded Mediterranean to the East.
But in the spring of 1798, the admiralty was seeing its
way to detaching a Mediterranean squadron. St. Vincent was
instructed that eight more ships were to be sent to
sails for him, so that he might send Nelson with a dozen
Egypt, ships into the island sea. Before those ships
arrived, Jervis had already sent Nelson to watch
Toulon with three ships. But Nelson's ships were disabled by
a storm, whereby Bonaparte was enabled to start from Toulon,
without being discovered, on igth May. On 24th May, St.
Vincent's new ships arrived, and he at once dispatched Captain
Troubridge with nine ships to join Nelson, with whom he effected
his junction on 7th June. Nelson had no knowledge of Bona-
parte's movement, and unfortunately the storm had deprived
Pitt, Bonaparte, and Wellesley 449
him of the frigates on which a battle fleet depended for scouting
purposes. Bonaparte had already captured and garrisoned
Malta before Nelson had any news of him ; and the English
admiral only learnt that Malta had already been captured on
the day after Bonaparte had sailed thence for Egypt.
There was nothing whatever to indicate the direction of Bona-
parte's expedition. Nelson guessed that Egypt was his destina-
tion, and sailed straight for Alexandria. Bonaparte, Nelson ^
however, took an indirect route ; Nelson reach- chase, June
ing Alexandria on 28th June found neither a andjuly-
French fleet nor news of French ships. He at once sailed away
again to hunt for his enemy. Three days later Bonaparte
reached Alexandria, disembarked his troops, and set about his
immediate business of mastering Egypt. Egypt, under the
Mameluke government, was a dependency of Turkey, with which
the Republic was not at war ; but its dependence was so nominal
that the French expected to procure Turkish acquiescence in
their proceedings.
For a month Nelson was making his circuit of the Eastern
Mediterranean in search of the lost French fleet, of which nothing
could be seen or heard. On ist August he was back Battle of tne
before Alexandria, when one of his ships discovered Nile,
that a French war fleet was lying in Aboukir Bay.
It was already late in the afternoon when Nelson bore down
upon the French, who were anchored in line from north-west to
south-east, with shoals on their left or western side. Nelson
took his place with his flagship the Vanguard, sixth in the British
line. The five leading British ships, on the hypothesis that
where there was room for French ships to swing there was room
for British ships to sail, passed down on the left of the French
between them and the shoals, and engaged four of the five ships
in the French van. Nelson instead of following led the rest of
the line down the right of the French ships, until the five French
leaders were being pounded to pieces by the fire of eight British
ships. The wind was from the north, so that the French rear
could not come up to take part in the engagement. It was
already almost sundown when the first shot was fired. Through
Innes's Eng. Hist.— Vol. in. 2 F
45O The War with the French Republic
half the night the battle raged ; when the French van had been
crushed, the centre met with a like fate ; at ten o'clock the
French flagship the Orient blew up. In the morning the French
Mediterranean fleet had ceased to exist. Out of their thirteen
sail of the line, nine were captured, two blown up or burnt, and
only two made their escape. The French casualties numbered
Battle of
THE NILE
I st. August 1798
Blach = French Ships
White = English Ships
A b o u h i r
BAYOFABOUKIR
showing- site of •
the Battle «ou*/r/
Bay of Abouhir
liter Ltd. >c.
three thousand five hundred, the British not quite nine hundred.
No praise could be too high for Nelson himself or for the captains
and the men who served him so magnificently. The French
fought heroically, but when Nelson's plan of attack developed,
a plan which had appeared to them absolutely impossible of
execution, they never had a chance. The victory was decisive
and overwhelming. Six months earlier the British had not
even a Mediterranean squadron ; after the battle of the Nile or
Pitt, Bonaparte, and Welles ley 451
Aboukir Bay, the Mediterranean was a British lake. Bonaparte
in Egypt was so completely severed from his base, that scarcely
even a word of news from France, much less men or supplies,
could reach him.
Meanwhile, Europe had been growing uneasy. The princes
in the Rhine provinces found that their territories were being
in effect handed over to France with the connivance Europe
of Prussia, which proposed to compensate them by uneasy,
the secularisation of ecclesiastical territories elsewhere ; a
process not at all to the liking of orthodox Austria. Bonaparte
had already set up a second North Italian republic called the
Valtelline. As soon as he was out of the way, the Directory, which
was anti-papal, attacked the Papacy, and transformed the
papal states into the Roman Republic. In Switzerland the
Helvetic Republic was established in closer dependence on
France. The Bourbon king of the Two Sicilies, Ferdinand,
began to tremble for his kingdom. The Russian Tsar Paul, who
had hitherto stood neutral, except that he had offered naval aid
to Great Britain at the moment of the mutinies, took umbrage
at the seizure of Malta by Bonaparte, since that neutral island
belonged to the Knights of St. John, whom he regarded as being
under his own special protection. Also he looked upon the
French incursion into the East as a menace to Russia. For
these reasons he began actively to urge the formation of a new
coalition against France ; especially when the battle of the Nile
gave such a coalition renewed promise of success. The strength
of Great Britain, too, had just been confirmed by the suppres-
sion of a rebellion in Ireland.
Matters were precipitated by the ill-advised action of Ferdinand
of Naples. Encouraged by Nelson, who visited Naples with
some of his ships, he declared war on France, but Naples,
with the result that his troops were routed, and he himself with
his queen had to hurry on board Nelson's ship to be conveyed
to Sicily in safety. The French entered Naples, and trans-
formed Southern Italy into the Parthenopean Republic, while
Ferdinand continued to reign in Sicily, in effect under British
protection.
452 The War with the French Republic
The efforts of Russia, energetically supported by Pitt and
promises of British subsidies, produced at the turn of the year
1799 the second coalition. Frederick William in. of
The second Prussia, who had succeeded his father in the Prussian
coalition. kingdom in 1797, refused to join the coalition to
which, however, Austria was persuaded to adhere. General
hostilities were renewed at the beginning of March 1799.
The French advance against Austria from the Upper Rhine
was beaten back by the Archduke Charles. In April, an army
of Austrians and Russians was in North Italy under
renewed: the command of Suvarov. The French were
French driven out of Lombardy, the king of Sardinia was
reverses. , . . . J .
restored in Piedmont, and in June and August two
severe defeats were inflicted on the French at the Trebbia and
at Novi. In Naples, a monarchist revolution was effected by
methods which are the one serious blot on Nelson's career.
Under the influence of Lady Hamilton, herself a favourite of
the queen of Naples, Nelson became a violent personal partisan
of the Bourbons. In very unsatisfactory circumstances the
capitulation of certain fortresses held by the Republicans was
voided, and large numbers of the rebels who had surrendered
were put to death. Technically, Nelson's action in the matter
was warranted ; morally it does not appear possible to justify
it, since the voiding of the capitulation was in effect his doing.
But the Austrians and Russians were quarrelling because
Suvarov had declared for the reinstatement of Charles Emmanuel
The coalition of Sardinia in Piedmont, whereas Austria wanted
tottering. Piedmont for herself. The British also in the course
of the summer met with a reverse. An expedition to the Texel
captured the Dutch fleet without much difficulty, because the
sailors were of the Orange party, and the ships were carried off
to Yarmouth ; but the further land operations, under the
nominal command of the duke of York, were so badly managed
that the duke and his troops were obliged to capitulate, though
on terms which allowed them to withdraw from the country on
condition of the liberation of some thousands of French and
Dutch prisoners, in October. More serious, perhaps, was the
Pilt, Bonaparte, and We lies ley 453
complete defeat at Zurich, by Massena, of a second Russian army
under Korsakoff at the end of September — a blow which entirely
foiled Suvarov's plan of campaign. To stop the dissensions
between Austrians and Russians, it had been arranged that the
Austrians should proceed against Savoy and that Suvarov should
join Korsakoff in Switzerland. But when Suvarov had forced his
way into Switzerland, Korsakoff was not there to join him. Prac-
tically from that time Russia ceased to take part in the war.
Meanwhile Bonaparte had been carrying on his isolated
operations in the East. In Egypt he overthrew the Mameluke
government, and thence proceeded with his project Bonaparte
for the conquest of Syria. Here, however, he found in tne East-
himself opposed by an insuperable obstacle. Urged by the Tsar
and by Pitt, the Porte with full justification had declared war
against France. Before Bonaparte could proceed to the in-
terior, it was necessary for him to secure the fortress of St. Jean
d'Acre, which would otherwise serve as a gateway through
which the French could be attacked on the flank. But Acre
offered a stubborn resistance, largely through the help given
by the British admiral Sir Sidney Smith ; who arrived with a
small squadron, threw himself into the place, and defied Bona-
parte's attack. The French were obliged to fall back into
Egypt ; when Bonaparte received intelligence from France
which decided him that the time had arrived when he must
himself return thither and seize the control of the government.
Leaving Kleber in command of the army in Egypt and at the
head of the government which he had organised, he himself with
a few chosen companions stole on board ship, slipped across the
Mediterranean undetected, landed on the French His return
coast, hurried to Paris, and in November effected to France,
the coup (TEtat of Brumaire, which made him virtu-
ally the absolute ruler of France with the title of First Consul.
Bonaparte at once used his new position, first to pacify the
districts where disturbances had again been growing 1800
active, and to permit the return of those emigres Negotiations
who were willing to recognise the Republic, and whi
secondly to pose as the advocate of peace. It does not, however,
454 The War with the French Republic
appear that he had any intention of making peace upon terms
acceptable to Great Britain or Austria. Also if his peaceful
intentions were genuine, he acted very unwisely in discarding
the recognised diplomatic channels and addressing a personal
letter to George in. The letter was answered by Pitt's cousin
and foreign minister, Lord Grenville, in a tone which was cer-
tainly not calculated to further negotiations. Pitt was still of
opinion that France was now in such a state of exhaustion, that
she would be willing to come to satisfactory terms if a firm front
were shown. Austria did not expect satisfactory terms under
the present conditions, and hoped to get something better by
continuing the war, subject to the receipt of an adequate supply
of British gold, which was duly promised. Both the powers
engaged not to sign a separate peace.
In the spring of 1800, the Austrians conducted a successful
campaign in Northern Italy, where Massena was shut up in
Bonaparte Genoa ; but on the other hand, Moreau from
in Italy. Alsace pushed the Austrians back to Ulm ; and in
May Bonaparte himself appeared unexpectedly in North Italy
with a force which he had brought over the great St. Bernard,
and entered Milan two days before Massena was forced by
starvation to capitulate at Genoa. The Austrian commander
Melas turned to face the invader, but met with a shattering
defeat at Marengo, a battle which was lost and won through
the unexpected arrival on the field, at the critical moment, of
an unlooked-for French column. By the Convention of Aless-
andria, the Austrians were obliged to evacuate Northern Italy.
A few days later the hostilities in Germany were suspended.
Bonaparte returned in triumph to Paris. The emperor refused
Negotiations to be tempted into a separate negotiation for
again fail. peace, but proposed a congress. Pitt was willing
enough ; but the First Consul demanded a general armistice.
Now as matters stood, a British fleet was blockading Malta,
which was on the point of surrender. An armistice would mean
supplies for Malta and supplies for Egypt ; neither of which it
had been hitherto possible to send. Compliance with the pro-
posal would merely have meant that negotiations would be kept
Pitt, Bonaparte \ and Welles ley 455
going until both Egypt and Malta were made secure, when they
could be dropped. Pitt refused the armistice, and Austria still
declined to negotiate separately.
To that power the consequences were disastrous. No sooner
had the armistice come to an end than Moreau advanced, and
on 3rd December inflicted a crushing defeat upon Hoheniinden
the Austrians at Hoheniinden. The victory was JJ5feL^".
decisive. Austria could no longer resist, and the ruaryisoi.
second coalition was finally dissolved by the Treaty of Luneville
(gth February 1801).
Malta had surrendered to the British in September. At the
moment when the Treaty of Luneville was being signed, Sir
Ralph Abercromby was on the point of disembarking at Aboukir
Bay to open the final campaign which put an end to the French
occupation of Egypt. But the treaty left Great Britain once
more in isolation, and in something worse, for the half-mad
Tsar Paul had entirely changed his attitude. Tsar Paul.
Republican France had been an abomination in his eyes ; but
Bonaparte seemed to him the incarnation of his own conception
of absolutism. The Corsican soldier who now ruled France as
an autocrat had become to him a hero. He was already dis-
gusted with Austria, and was becoming more and more irritated
with Great Britain. When the British captured Malta and
did not forthwith hand it over to him, the cup of his indignation
was filled. Twenty years before, the Baltic powers had united
in what was called the Armed Neutrality to resist the practices
of the ' Tyrant of the Seas ' in dealing with neutral vessels, seizing
enemy's goods carried in neutral bottoms, and interfering in the
trade of neutrals at enemy's ports. Paul now set about reviving
the Armed Neutrality, and a treaty of the Baltic powers was
signed three weeks before the Treaty of Luneville.
In the British view, Paul's treaty meant in effect that the fleets
of the Baltic powers were on the point of being placed at the
service of France. The treaty did not in itself pro- The Battle
vide a legitimate casus belli ; but the British govern- of the Baltic,
ment could not afford to wait and allow the Baltic 2nd Apnl*
powers to strike in at their own convenience. A fleet was dis-
456 The War with the French Republic
patched to the Baltic under Sir Hyde Parker, with Nelson as his
second in command. The Danes were required to surrender their
fleet, which was to be held in pledge by the British. The Danes
refused ; whereupon Nelson forced his way into the harbour of
Copenhagen, and after a furious battle, in which he took care
not to see his senior officer's signal to retire, he forced the Danes
to submission. The engagement is best known as the battle of
the Baltic. It decisively broke up the new alliance, for the
Swedes had no mind to meet the same fate as the Danes ; and
almost at the same moment the Tsar was assassinated and was suc-
ceeded on the throne by his son Alexander I., a young prince of no
small abilities and many enthusiasms, who was entirely opposed
to the strange views with which his father had become possessed.
Instead of continuing Paul's policy, the young Tsar immediately
set about establishing amicable^relations with Great Britain.
The battle of the Baltic was fought on 2nd April. Twelve
days earlier another battle of decisive importance had been
fought in Egypt. According to the plan of opera-
The French ' ,&J^ ,*^7
expelled tions three forces were to co-operate in that country
from Egypt, for the overthrow of the French : the Turks, the
expedition under Sir Ralph Abercromby, and
another expedition from India, under the command of Sir David
Baird. When Abercromby reached the eastern Mediterranean
early in February he found the Turks not prepared to move,
while the Indian expedition had not yet left Bombay. Some
time elapsed before he was able on 8th March to effect the
landing of his troops at Aboukir Bay, an operation performed
under extreme difficulties by raw troops with an admirable
courage and discipline in the face of the French veterans. The
French force was obliged to fall back as the British advanced
upon Alexandria, and the decisive engagement did not take
place till 2ist March. Abercromby himself was killed, but the
French were completely defeated, Alexandria was isolated, and
after two months the whole of the French forces in Egypt capitu-
lated and were sent back to France.
The struggle was already over when Baird joined Hutchinson,
on whom the command had devolved upon Abercromby's
Pitt, Bonaparte, and Wellesley 457
death. The debarkation at Aboukir Bay, and the overthrow
of the French by a British force actually somewhat inferior in
numbers, most of whom were new to war, was the Effects
sole striking military achievement of the British of the
throughout the whole of the war from 1793 to 1801.
In fact, since the Seven Years' War British troops had never
been given an opportunity of distinguishing themselves, and the
Mistress of the Seas was of no account as a military power. The
success in Egypt did not bring her into the ranks of the military
powers ; it had been accomplished by an army of only about fifteen
thousand men. But it absolutely ruined all that remained of
Bonaparte's dream of French power in the East ; and it gave to
the British that supreme confidence in the doggedness and disci-
pline of the rawest troops in the face of veterans to which they were
to owe many a victory in the struggle which was still to come.
Copenhagen and the conquest of Egypt were the last active
operations in the war. Pitt himself resigned in March on
account of his difference with the king on the ques- pitt»g
tion of Catholic emancipation. The Addington resignation,
ministry, which was formed with his somewhat arc '
lukewarm support, would have very much preferred to remain
under his guidance, as the Rockinghams would have preferred
to be led by the elder Pitt in 1765. As it was, it did its best
to do what Pitt would have done had he remained in office. But
before we turn to the formal conclusion of the war, we must
revert to contemporary affairs in India, where the brilliant
governor-general, best known by the title of the Marquess
Wellesley, bestowed upon him during the term of his office, had
been establishing the British domination.
When Cornwallis left India in 1793, he was succeeded in the
governor-generalship by Sir John Shore. Shore, though endowed
with many admirable qualities, including an imper- India.
turbable courage, lacked that indomitable self-con- sir J. shore,
fidence necessary for a ruler who must frequently 1793-8-
be called upon to act on his own personal responsibility at
moments of crisis. Moreover, he was not a soldier himself, and
had no real confidence in his commander-in-chief, Sir Robert
45 8 The War with the French Republic
Abercromby, brother of Sir Ralph. Imbued with Cornwallis's
belief that anything in the nature of aggression was to be avoided,
but lacking his power of perceiving the necessity of vigorous
action on occasion, Sir John failed to convince the native powers
that the British power was not to be trifled with. When the
Puna Mahrattas attacked the Nizam, Shore did not consider it
necessary to intervene for his protection. The result of this was
that the Nizam was on the one hand obliged to surrender terri-
tories to the Mahrattas, and on the other hand was led to regard
the British government as a broken reed ; consequently he
organised a force of his own on European lines under the com-
mand of a French officer, Raymond. The Mahrattas at the
same time came to the natural conclusion, shared by the still
more dangerous Tippu Sultan, that the British ascendency would
very soon collapse. In Oudh, Shore was more successful. A
disputed succession enabled him to secure the throne to the
legitimate heir, Saadat Ali, upon terms establishing a more
definite British suzerainty. The nawab was to be maintained
on the throne partly by a British contingent, for the maintenance
of which Allahabad was finally ceded to the British ; while the
nawab himself was to have no independent diplomatic relations
with other powers. But what finally decided the home authori-
ties on the recall of Shore was a mutiny of the European officers
of the Bengal army. Neither the governor-general nor the
commander-in-chief proved equal to the emergency, and the
mutineers compelled the government to accede to their demands.
Lord Mornington, the elder brother of Arthur Wellesley after-
wards duke of Wellington, was appointed to the governor-
generalship, and arrived in India in May 1798. The period of
Shore's rule was otherwise signalised by the capture of the
island of Ceylon from the Dutch in 1796.
Now it was precisely at this moment that Bonaparte was
Mornington developing his design of an Asiatic conquest. For
(Wellesley), the past five vears Great Britain had been at war
general, with France. It was not forty years since the
May 1798. French in India had been decisively beaten in their
duel with the British ; it was barely fifteen years since Suffren
Pitt, Bonaparte, and We lies ley 459
had been apparently on the verge of recovering the French
position, in alliance with Mysore. The native powers, each
desiring ascendency for itself, continued to look upon French
assistance as an available means of attaining their own ends.
The Nizam had Raymond's contingent in his own dominions.
Tippu had for a long time past been in communica- The native
tion with the French at Mauritius, and had been powers.
acclaimed in republican Paris as ' Citoyen Tippu/ Sindhia also
had a contingent of his own under a French commander, de
Boigne. Mornington, touching at the Cape on his way to India,
obtained tolerably complete information as to the state of affairs,
and learnt of the further complication that Zeman Shah, the
ruler at Kabul, who was believed to be an extremely powerful
monarch, was contemplating a renewal of the Afghan attack
upon Hindustan, in co-operation with the Mohammedan sultan
of Mysore. A month after Mornington's arrival in India a
proclamation issued by the French governor of Mauritius was
printed, in which French citizens were invited to take service
with Tippu.
Energetic and immediate action was obviously necessary. No
man could have been more prompt and energetic than Morning-
ton. Kirkpatrick and Malcolm were forthwith dis- Mornington
patched to the Nizam, who at once yielded to their deals with
_> , , , . the Nizam,
vigorous pressure. Raymond s corps was dis-
banded, and a British contingent was substituted on the usual
terms. The Nizam undertook to admit no Europeans to his
service without the British sanction. The Mahrattas were con-
veniently occupied with struggles among their own chiefs for the
ascendency.
The governor-general was thus enabled to concentrate upon
preparations for a war with Mysore, while he was urging Tippu
to adopt the alternative course of breaking off his Tippu to be
connection with the French, dismissing his French crushed,
officers, and receiving a permanent British Resident at his court.
No satisfactory replies could be extracted from the sultan, even
after the news of Nelson's victory of the Nile had reached India,
only three months after that success had been won. Mornington
460 The War with the French Republic
decided that Tippu must be crushed in a spring campaign. Only
his own versatility and energy made the thing possible; no
help could be looked for from the Mahrattas or the Nizam.
In spite of innumerable difficulties the Madras army, under
General Harris, was advancing into Mysore at the beginning of
The conquest March 1799. A second force under General Stewart
of Mysore. entered Mysore on the south-west. Tippu, a mighty
warrior, though not the equal of his father Haidar Ali, attempted
to annihilate Stewart, but was successfully repulsed. He turned
to the north to intercept Harris, who evaded him ; and he had to
fall back upon his great fortress capital, Seringapatam, itself.
The siege began in April ; Tippu refused the terms offered him
by the British general ; it was imperative that the town should
be captured at once, a prolonged siege being out of the question ;
and on 4th May Seringapatam was stormed. Tippu himself fell
fighting valiantly. The capture of Seringapatam and the death
of Tippu ended the war, and with it the power of Mysore.
It was some thirty years since the Mohammedan adventurer
Haidar Ali had deposed the legitimate raja and made himself
Treatment sultan of Mysore. The Hindu population had no love
of Mysore. for their Moslem rulers, who had forcibly converted
large numbers of them by a familiar process. The dynasty had
no title to its position save that which it had won by the sword.
Mornington took the perfectly legitimate course of restoring the
Hindu dynasty within its own old dominions, while the territories
annexed by Haidar and Tippu were annexed to the British
dominions. The restored raja was taken under British protection.
Theoretically the Mahrattas and the Nizam had been allies of
the British in the war ; actually the Mahrattas had done nothing
and the Nizam very little. Accordingly Mornington offered the
north-western portion of the conquered country to the Mahrattas,
subject to their acceptance of a treaty on very much the same
terms as those recently accepted by the Nizam. The Mahrattas
refused, and the region in question was divided between the
British and the Nizam. The Nizam also received a considerable
accession of territory on the north and north-west ; but all the
rest, except the limited region assigned to the Mysore raja, was
Pitt) Bonaparte, and We lies ley 461
taken under the direct British dominion. In the following year
the Nizam ceded his share, in return for the maintenance by the
British of a contingent of ten thousand men for his protection ;
and he at the same time agreed to submit all disputes in which
he might be involved to the British arbitration.
The governor-general was rewarded, very inadequately in his
own view, with the Irish title of Marquess Wellesley. He was
one of those very rare governors-general who acted weuesiey
upon the conviction that the acquisition of fresh and
territory under direct British administration was ornwa ls-
desirable whenever it could be effected in a lawful manner. It is
possible, though doubtful, that Cornwallis would have abstained
from appropriating so large a proportion of Tippu's territories.
It is more than probable that he would have avoided the acquisi-
tion of those portions originally appropriated to the Nizam but
ceded by him under Wellesley's subsidiary treaty. Almost
certainly he would have refrained from the next annexations
which we have to describe, not because Wellesley's action was
unjust or contrary to public law — if that term may be applied
to customs prevalent in India — but because as a matter of
expediency he did not wish to extend British responsibilities.
From Wellesley's point of view it was entirely to the advantage
of the native population to be brought under British administra-
tion, and also to the advantage of the British to add to the
territories under their control. Thus, wherever a question of
succession arose, as in Tanjore and elsewhere, Wellesley adopted
the principle, where the strength of the respective claims was in
doubt, of giving British support to the candidate who accepted
his terms. Those terms nearly always included the British
control of foreign policy at least, and usually, of administration.
The two most striking instances which fall within the compass
of the present volume are those of Arcot and Oudh. For years
past the nawab of the Carnatic had governed very 1801
badly. His subsidies, payable to the British in The Carnatic
return for their protection, were habitually in arrear, annexed-
and he was only able to pay them by becoming heavily indebted
to individuals among the British. In 1801 the reigning nawab
462 The War with the French Republic
died ; there was a disputed succession ; the governor-general
stepped in and recognised as nawab the claimant who was con-
tented to retain his dignity, his title, and a permanent provision
for himself and his heirs — resigning to the British the entire
management of the government, the revenues, and the business
of liquidating the debts, so far as they were reasonable and
legitimate.
The annexation of the Carnatic practically brought all India
south of the Nizam's dominions under British rule, except that
Weiiesley Mysore and Travancore were not under actual
and oudh. British administration. But in the north the posi-
tion of Oudh was extremely unsatisfactory. The maintenance
of a buffer between Bengal and the Mahrattas, or the Afghans
if they should invade India, was of first-rate importance. But
the nawab Saadat Ali was an incapable ruler. The British
contingent provided under the arrangement with Shore was
occupied not in the protection of the frontiers so much as in
controlling the great levies of the nawab's own army. Weiiesley
arrived at a conclusion more agreeable to him than to the nawab.
Oudh must be protected ; it could only be protected by British
troops ; the nawab's own army under existing conditions was
very much more dangerous than useful. Therefore the British
contingent must be largely increased and the nawab's own army
reduced. For the increase of the British contingent the nawab
must cede the district on the south and west lying in the angle
of the Ganges and the Jumna, called the Doab, and also Rohil-
khand ; whereby the whole south and west frontier of Oudh
would be covered by British territory. The nawab declined the
suggestion, and said he would abdicate. Weiiesley replied that
his youthful heir could not be as well fitted to govern as he,
and if it was beyond his own power the British must take posses-
sion. Apart from other considerations, without the cession
there was no security that the nawab would be able to pay the
subsidies in accordance with his existing obligations. Saadat
Ali argued but submitted. The territories were ceded, the army
was reduced, the contingent was increased, and a British Resident
was established at Lucknow to emphasise the British demand
Pitt, Bonaparte, and Welles ley 463
for decent administration within the borders of Oudh. Thus by
1801 Wellesley had already transformed the ascendency of the
British, as one among a group of more or less equal powers, into
a great dominion of which the only possible rival was the Mahratta
confederacy.
We may add the important note with regard to the French,
that Wellesley fully recognised the inconvenience and danger of
the French naval station established at Mauritius, Mauritius,
threatening communications and the trade route to the Cape.
He planned an expedition to seize the islands, but was foiled by
the obstinacy of Admiral Rainier, who refused to undertake
operations without direct orders from home. The record of the
rest of Wellesley's career as governor-general belongs to our
next volume.
Wellesley in India destroyed whatever prospect there had been
of the overthrow of British power by native powers with or with-
out French co-operation. The operations in Egypt Europe:
and in the Baltic in the spring of 1801, after Great peace in
Britain had been left isolated by the Treaty of Lune- sl^llt-
ville, gave the finishing stroke to the Eastern ambitions of the First
Consul, and confirmed British naval supremacy more decisively
than ever. Both Great Britain and France were weary of war.
The maritime power without active allies could not strike at
France on land ; France could not strike at the maritime power
on sea. Both, therefore, were willing to negotiate. It is im-
probable that Bonaparte either expected or desired a prolonged
peace, unless he should find himself able to reduce the British
power without engaging in a new war ; but at least he wanted
peace for the time, breathing space for recuperation, the oppor-
tunity for reorganising the administration of France. He could
easily afford to make peace, seeing that France, which nine years
before was in danger of being shorn of the territories won for her
by Louis xiv., was now established as unquestionably the first
military power on the Continent. As for Great Britain, the
annexation to France of the Austrian Netherlands and the
practical subjection of Holland to her were an actual/^ accompli,
which it was out of the power of the British to reverse. The
464 The War with the French Republic
prevention of this had in fact been the main British interest in
continental affairs. Outside the Continent Great Britain had
gained much and lost nothing. She, too, therefore, could afford
to make peace ; which she hoped and believed would be per-
manent, though she could not enter upon negotiations with any
real confidence that France had laid aside all designs of further
aggression.
It was unfortunate that the ministry which had taken the
place of Pitt's was a weak one. Pitt had been accompanied in
The Peace ^^s retirement by the ablest of his colleagues, Gren-
of Amiens, ville, Dundas, and Cornwallis among the seniors,
March 1802. Castlereagh and George Canning among the juniors.
Bonaparte dealt with Addington's government more dictatorially
than would have been possible had Pitt himself and the stiff-
necked and stiff-mannered Grenville been in office. But the
main thing was to obtain peace upon honourable terms, and
there was no disposition anywhere in England to be grasping.
Preliminaries were signed in October, and the definitive Peace
of Amiens on 27th March 1802. The settlement was one-sided
enough. Egypt was to be evacuated both by the French, who
had already been expelled, and by the British, who were in
possession, and was to be restored to the Porte as a province of
the Turkish empire, no longer under the virtually independent
rule of the Mamelukes. Great Britain was to retain of her
conquests only Ceylon and Trinidad. Malta was to be restored
to the Knights of St. John. The affairs of the European con-
tinent were ruled out of the negotiations altogether, except in
Italy, where the French were to evacuate the papal states.
France had emerged triumphantly out of her ten years' struggle ;
Great Britain was more powerful at the end of it than she had
been at the beginning. Yet the latter power had surrendered
some of the fruits she had won, while France surrendered nothing
at all. If French satisfaction with the treaty was complete, in
the United Kingdom it was somewhat tempered.
The British Isles and the Union 465
IV. THE BRITISH ISLES AND THE UNION, 1793-1802
In his earlier years the younger Pitt like his father had been
an advocate of parliamentary reform, and, speaking generally,
of liberal measures. But the Great Commoner had Pitt's change
always reposed his trust in the generous instincts of attitude,
and the intelligence of the people at large. He had gone out-
side the House of Commons to ascertain the national will. His
son had no such confidence in the people. Although he was
cool-headed enough to hold out for some time against the
alarmists when the French Revolution was in its first stage, he,
too, with many of his colleagues and of the Whigs, surrendered
to the later panic. After 1792, not only Tories and constitu-
tional Conservatives like Burke, but the bulk of the people in
every class, became convinced that any movement whatever
in the direction of reform, any alteration or extension of the
franchise, any limitation of the powers of the governing classes
as then constituted, would open the floodgates of revolution,
and that the scenes which had taken place in Paris would be
re-enacted in London. To be an advocate of reform at all was
to be condemned as a republican and a revolutionary.
The establishment of the French Republic, the death of
Louis xvi., and the declaration of war, initiated an era of re-
pression, of which, however, it cannot be denied public
that it was endorsed by the large majority of Pitt's opinion.
countrymen outside as well as inside parliament. The fear of
what would happen if a revolutionary party got the upper hand
blinded the majority of the public to the fact that there was no
prospect that it would get the upper hand. The conviction pre-
vailed that any expression of dangerous opinions must be sternly
repressed, in accordance with the common hypothesis that the
more dangerous an opinion is the more likely it is to be generally
adopted, if the public at large is permitted to hear arguments
in its favour as well as against it. The whole machinery of
social pressure, of judicial administration, of legislation, was
brought to bear in order to silence all protests against existing
Innes's Eng. Hist. — Vol. in. 2 G
466 The War with the French Republic
grievances ; and in adopting that policy the ministers had public
opinion behind them. It may, however, be fairly urged in
extenuation that no one knew what the amount of explosive
material in the country really was. The French Revolution
had taken the world by surprise ; all the received opinions with
regard to the social structure in general had been subjected to
a violent shock ; intelligent people whose emotions got the
better of them were using excited language ; the progress of
the industrial and agricultural revolutions was causing much
suffering in the lower strata of society, and hungry men are
easily led to desperate courses. It was not difficult to translate
popular murmurs into signs that the proletariat was ripe for a
revolution, to read a sinister meaning even into the language
of studied moderation, or to be convinced that any spark might
kindle a conflagration. It was easy to miss true perspectives
in the lurid light of the September Massacres and the Reign of
Terror. The ruling classes felt that their privileges were at
stake and were firmly convinced that those privileges were the
sole safeguards of social order. The middle classes were more
afraid of those below than of those above them. The masses
on the whole preferred the evils that they knew to the terrors
they imagined. And therefore they acquiesced in the policy
of repression.
The campaign began with the Traitorous Correspondence
Act, passed in March 1793. Grey's motion for parliamentary
Repressive reform was defeated in the House of Commons by
measures, six to one. The Act was followed up by a series
*~5' of prosecutions for seditious utterances attended
by monstrously disproportionate penalties — as in the judgment
which condemned an unfortunate bookseller to a heavy fine and
a long term of imprisonment for selling Tom Paine's Rights oj
Man. In 1794 the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended, and
some leading members of the societies which sympathised with
the French Revolution were arrested, though the jury were
sufficiently cool-headed to acquit them of treason when they
were brought to trial. The suspension of the Habeas Corpus
Act was renewed every year until 1801. In 1795 the Treason-
The British Isles and the Union 467
able Practices Act made it penal to write or speak against the
Crown, the government, or the constitution.
In Scotland matters were even worse than in England. In
that country the monstrous anomalies of parliamentary repre-
sentation had enabled Dundas to acquire a complete Scotland,
control, to bring from Scotland to Westminster a solid phalanx
of supporters who voted to order, and to keep in his own hands
the entire management of the executive. It was in the interest
of every one who had any voice in the government to preserve
this state of things, and Dundas had no intention of opening the
door to any changes. Among the proletariat on the other hand,
very much better educated than their brethren south of the
Tweed, and traditionally endowed with an exceedingly inde-
pendent spirit, there already existed a widely spread demo-
cratic sentiment, explicit and implicit in the poems of Robert
Burns, before a new impulse was given to it by the literature
of the French Revolution. The sanest and soberest among the
gentry — such men as Sir James Mackintosh and the historian,
Robertson — found themselves in sympathy, if not with the
Revolution itself, at least with the progressive ideas which lay
at its root.
There was, indeed, much more reason to fear a practical
application of revolutionary ideas in Scotland than in England.
In 1792, a year which was marked by grave distress, Braxfieid.
there were many disturbances in the country, and the society
who called themselves the ' Friends of the People ' were not
only disseminating their doctrines vigorously, but were inclining
to adopt an attitude more aggressive and more advanced than
in the southern country. Consequently when measures of repres-
sion were resolved upon, they were carried out more drastically
and more conspicuously in defiance of all the principles of justice
than in England. The chief instrument of the tyranny was
Judge Braxfieid, who held the office of Lord Justice-Clerk. Juries
were deliberately packed, and Braxfieid made it perfectly clear
that he was on the bench not to try but to sentence accused
persons. A young lawyer named Muir and a Unitarian preacher
named Fisher were sentenced to fourteen years' and seven years'
468 The War with the French Republic
transportation respectively, for using language and pressing
for reforms which in any other circumstances would have been
regarded as perfectly legitimate. Sentences of fourteen years'
transportation were passed upon three more victims early in
1794, mainly for advocating universal suffrage and annual
parliaments. It required an immense audacity on the part of
The any young man who joined the Scottish Bar to profess
Scottish Bar. anything in the nature of liberal ideas, since it
was at least generally believed that by so doing he would com-
pletely ruin his professional prospects. It is, however, remark-
able that the result of this state of things in 1796 was not to
suppress but to bring into vigorous association a number of
able men who concentrated their energies upon definite prin-
ciples of reform without laying themselves open to charges of
using language which even Braxfield could have distorted into
treason.
The virulence of the panic had by this time worked itself out
both in England and in Scotland ; the Reign of Terror had been
Continued over l°n£ enough to enable men's minds to resume
repression, something like their normal equilibrium. Repres-
sion did not cease ; but fair trials and penalties
approximately proportionate to the offence became the order
of the day. Yet more than thirty years were to pass before
governments ceased to tremble at the spectre of Jacobinism.
In 1795, the Seditious Meetings Act was passed, which forbade
the assemblage of more than fifty persons at any meeting unless
previous notice had been given to the magistrate, who in effect
could disperse it if he disapproved of its proceedings. Four
years later, unlicensed debating clubs were forbidden, and com-
binations of workmen were made illegal, not so much for the
protection of masters as from the fear that they would be
utilised for political ends.
How little way had really been made in England by red-
republican ideas is fairly demonstrated by the story of the
1797. The naval mutinies already narrated. There was no
mutinies. hint of any such ideas in the mutiny at Spit-
head, where the men demanded simply the rectification of
The British Isles and the Union 469
grievances which every reasonable man knew to be intolerable.
When those grievances were redressed, the men returned to
their duty and never again showed any sign of disaffection. It
was only at the Nore, among men who had been recruited by
pressgangs from the dregs of the population, with an infusion
of wastrels, better educated men who had fallen out of the social
rank in which they were born, and of Irishmen who were really
revolutionaries, that anything was heard of revolutionary
principles.
The presence of Irishmen on the fleet at the Nore helped to
give a comparatively revolutionary character to that mutiny,
because Ireland in a still greater degree than Ireland
Scotland supplied a more fruitful field than England for the
revolutionary propaganda. The democratic foundation of
Presbyterianism had prepared Presbyterians ever}'- The Presby-
where for a ready acceptance of advanced demo- terians.
cratic doctrine : there was a solid basis of truth in the favourite
aphorism of old King James I., ' No bishop no king.' In Ireland
as well as in Scotland, there was a substantial Presbyterian popu-
lation descended from Scottish settlers, and Cromwell's soldiery.
If these latter were comparatively few, they had the stern puritan
qualities of their republican forefathers. They had no love for
monarchy, and they were the descendants of the very men who,
against the will of the majority of their countrymen, had set
the precedent of beheading a king. Moreover, they lived in a
country where they were deprived of the political rights for
which their ancestors had fought. The more numerous Scots
were the seed of the Covenanters. It was small wonder that
the Irish Presbyterians were ready recipients of the new doctrines.
And it was also small wonder that the masses of the Catholic
peasantry, living in perpetual destitution and squalor, The catholic
under an alien land system, hated everything con- peasantry.
nected with the government, which to them was a mere tyranny,
and with the law, which seemed to have been created not to
protect but to oppress.
At first sight it appears somewhat of a paradox that the
Ireland which had shown itself so unexpectedly loyal to the
470 The War with the French Republic
British flag during the war of American Independence, when her
parliament was directly subordinated to the British Privy Council
and to the parliament at Westminster in which
theinde- she was unrepresented, became in the last decade
pendence of the century a hotbed of sedition and rebellion,
when she had acquired legislative independence
as well as the removal of most of those commercial restrictions
which in the past had throttled her economic development.
Primarily the explanation lies in the fact that although the con-
cession of legislative independence was a great step towards
political freedom it was only a step. There was no reform of
parliamentary representation ; the executive was not respon-
sible to the legislature ; Presbyterians as well as Roman Catholics
were still rigidly excluded from all public offices, and the Roman
Catholics, who were more than three-fourths of the whole popu-
lation, were still unenfranchised ; while the majority of the con-
stituencies still returned their members at the dictation of a
small number of individuals. In England, there was need
enough for the reform of the system of rotten boroughs, but in
Ireland the proportion of rotten boroughs was very much larger.
The practical effect was that while the Irish parliament was
theoretically independent of English control, it was actually
controlled by a small oligarchy intensely interested in preserv-
ing its own ascendency ; an oligarchy which could ordinarily
impose its will upon the executive head at Dublin castle.
Grattan, to whom more than to any other man Ireland owed
the recognition of her independent legislature in 1782, was him-
Grattan se^ an advocate of parliamentary reform, and the
and the removal of religious disabilities ; but Grattan did
not dominate the parliament which is called by
his name. The oligarchy did not want either parliamentary
reform or the removal of religious disabilities, because the com-
pleteness of its control of the legislature and of the executive
would thereby have been impaired if not destroyed. Grattan's
influence sank into the background.
Between 1782 and 1790 there was considerable improve-
ment in the material prosperity of the country, owing to the
The British Isles and the Union 471
removal of the trade restrictions. But by 1790, the French
Revolution was beginning to scatter its seeds broadcast. A
young Protestant lawyer, Theobald Wolfe Tone, The united
who was himself possessed with the new doctrines, Irishmen,
conceived the idea of bringing together Irish Protestants and
Catholics to demand reform and redress of grievances ; a new
departure, since traditionally the religious difference had con-
stantly served to promote antagonism, and to prevent com-
bination. In 1791, he founded the Society of United Irishmen,
starting as an association of Northern Protestants, who welcomed
the adhesion of Roman Catholics. Ostensibly it aimed at
reform, not revolution ; it received only a very dubious approval
from Grattan, who was essentially not a revolutionary but a
constitutionalist. By less cautious reformers and by the re-
volutionary element it was warmly welcomed.
It must be remarked, however, that no one viewed the French
Revolution with more alarm than the Roman Catholic gentry,
who saw the successive French assemblies attack- ,
,,„.,._ . . ., TheRevolu-
ing the Church in France, seizing its endowments, tionand
depriving it of its privileges, and finally in effect the Roman
., . ., , ,. . Catholics,
proscribing its doctrines. But so far as the religious
aspect of the question was understood at all by the Roman
Catholic peasantry, the hostility of the Revolution to the Church
appeared to correspond to their own hostility, not to the Roman
Catholic religion, but to the Anglican establishment. They
resented ecclesiastical domination, because the ecclesiastical
domination which they felt was a domination which trampled
upon their own religion, and which seemed to be part and parcel
of the same system which imposed upon them the agrarian
grievances.
During the next few years the Society of the United Irishmen
grew and spread. Wolfe Tone's first half-veiled hints that any
hopes of reform were really bound up with separa- increasing
tion from Great Britain were finding acceptance, disaffection,
and were becoming more open. When war was declared with
the French Republic in 1793 it appeared necessary to Pitt that
measures should be taken for checking Irish disaffection by
472 The War with the French Republic
conciliation. While he was stoutly opposing proposals for the
reform of English representation as untimely, he could not
become an advocate of similar proposals for Ireland, but pres-
Pitt's Relief sure was brought to bear upon the Irish oligarchy,
Act, 1793. whose leading spirit was the Lord Chancellor Fitz-
gibbon. An Act was passed removing many of the minor
disabilities under which the Catholics suffered, and admitting
them to the franchise. But it still excluded them from higher
public offices, and they were still excluded from parliament
itself. Consequently, the Catholic gentry, who would have been
the natural representatives of the Catholic population, were
still precluded from active participation in politics ; and virtually
the poorer sort acquired the vote, but were left to exercise it
without leadership.
After the Relief Act there was something of a lull, till the
waters again became troubled in 1795. The Portland Whigs
17Q5 had just joined the government in England, and
Fitzwiiiiam's one of their number, Fitzwilliam, was sent to
lord- Ireland as lord-lieutenant. He and every one else
lieutenancy. ,. , , , t. ;. . . it
supposed that a change of policy was implied in the
appointment, that there was to be a more wholehearted emanci-
pation of the Catholics, and that Fitzgibbon and the ascend-
ency party were to be deprived of their predominance. Fitz-
william's instructions were wanting in definiteness. He opened
negotiations with Grattan, allowed it to be thoroughly under-
stood that he was advocating Catholic emancipation, and dis-
missed one of the leaders of the Fitzgibbon party. The hopes
of Grattan's friends and of the Catholics ran high ; but the lord-
lieutenant had gone much further than was intended by the
government at Westminster. Even now, despite the independ-
ence of the Irish parliament, it virtually rested with the ministers
in Great Britain to decide the course of Irish legislation ; that is
to say, they were still able to coerce the government in Ireland,
at least when they had Irish public opinion on their own side.
But as matters stood, Pitt's ministry instead of bringing pres-
sure to bear upon the oligarchy in effect repudiated Fitzwilliam's
actions and recalled him ; thereby thoroughly establishing the
The British Isles and the Union 473
conviction that the advocates of emancipation and of reform had
nothing to hope from them.
In the meantime, the ascendency party had become thoroughly
alarmed by the two demands for Catholic emancipation and
parliamentary reform, especially when they saw Revival of
the Protestant dissenters joining in one camp with reiig-ious
their old enemies of the Roman Catholic faith. hostlllty-
In the literature of the time, the name Protestant is curiously
enough restricted to the Protestants of the established Anglican
Church, who were entirely hostile to Presbyterians as well as
to Romanists. The old hostility between the Protestants in
this narrower sense and the Catholics was again fomented ;
Catholics formed themselves into societies which called them-
selves ' Defenders/ Protestants into societies who became known
as 'Peep o' day boys,' and afterwards as 'Orangemen'; and
between these two there were frequent collisions. But the
coalition of Presbyterians and Roman Catholics was not broken
up ; and in 1796, Wolfe Tone had become an open advocate of
rebellion, and betook himself to France to invite the interven-
tion of the French Republic. It was this mission of Wolfe Tone
which brought about the abortive attempt at invasion under
Hoche at the end of 1796.
The action or inaction of the Catholics of the south when the
French fleet was off the coast implies that Wolfe Tone had very
much overestimated the readiness of the population The In.
for rebellion. There were no risings, and there was surrection,
apparently much more inclination to join in repelling * 1796'
the invader than to help him to gain a footing on land. On the
other hand, the alarm of the government had already led to the
passing of an Insurrection Act, in effect bestowing arbitrary
powers upon the executive. Fitzwilliam's successor, Lord
Camden, was practically a puppet in the hands of Fitzgibbon, on
whom the earldom of Clare had been conferred. The arbitrary
powers of the executive were exerted in the employment of
the Protestant yeomanry, in effect to hunt down the pre-
sumably disaffected Catholic peasantry in a search for concealed
arms.
474 The War with the French Republic
In England the general election in 1796 made no change in the
position of parties in parliament. Although the normal revenues
England: °f tne country were, as always, wholly inadequate
Sinking: Fund to maintain the heavy annual burden of the war, it
6 ' apparently took comfort and derived confidence in
its own stability from Pitt's persistent maintenance of the Sinking
Fund, although new and heavy loans were repeatedly required
which it would have been less costly to restrict by stopping the
contribution to the Sinking Fund. That is, if the annual million
had not been paid into the fund for clearing the debt, a million
less would have needed to be borrowed, whereas the accumulating
interest on that million was much less than sufficient to pay the
cost of borrowing it. The fund served as a sedative to the
popular mind, and therefore in Pitt's view it was worth paying
for, simply as a check upon panic. Taxes increased and multi-
plied, but were borne with stubborn endurance.
At the beginning of 1797, however, when the French fleet had
just been threatening the Irish shores, when rumours of invasion
were rife, and the British fleet had evacuated the
Suspension Mediterranean, a financial panic seemed imminent.
of cash jn face of the prospect of a run upon the Bank of
payments. . , , _ . r
England the government in February 1797 sus-
pended cash payments by the bank, a suspension which was
endorsed by Act of Parliament in May. The confidence and
patriotism of the commercial community was displayed by its
ready acceptance of the bank-notes at their nominal value ;
though they would not, or at least might not, become con-
vertible into cash until the end of the war. As a matter
of fact the suspension of cash payments was continued until
1819. Nevertheless the exchange value of bank-notes was
hardly affected until 1808. The operation itself at the time
was without doubt greatly facilitated by Jervis's victory at
Cape St. Vincent.
In Ireland throughout 1797 the repression of the Catholics by
1797-8. the Protestant magistracy and yeomanry, on the
Ireland. pjea that Catholics were arming and drilling for in-
surrection, revived the old religious animosities in their bitterest
The British Isles and the Union 475
and fiercest form, but without any reconciliation of the Presby-
terians to the government. Innumerable outrages of the most
repulsive kind were committed on both sides. The government
troops were empowered to act without civil authority ; over the
troops themselves very inadequate control was maintained. Sir
Ralph Abercromby as commander-in-chief was so shocked by
the condition of affairs which he found that he issued 1798.
on his own responsibility an order requiring the soldiery to act
only with the civil authority ; the Irish government replied by
a fresh proclamation establishing martial law, and thereupon
Abercromby resigned, to be succeeded by General Lake (March
1798). In the meanwhile Lord Moira in the British parliament
made a spirited protest, but the British government refused to
interfere. In March 1798 the kish government Repressive
arrested several of the leaders of the United Irish- action,
men, one of whom, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, died March-
of wounds he received in resisting arrest. The blow destroyed
the possibility of an organised insurrection, which was certainly
in preparation. Whatever the wrongs of the Irish people, how-
ever complete any justification they might have offered for armed
rebellion, it was obvious that in the face of the danger of such
a rebellion, supported by troops of a European power with which
the country was at war, no government could without stultify-
ing itself have avoided the employment of strong repressive
measures. But the repressive measures of the government in
Ireland, if they fell short of the old methods of Alva in the
Netherlands, were akin in their licentious savagery to the
dragonnades of Louis xiv. and the harrying of the Scottish
Covenanters ; methods calculated to implant the spirit of rebellion
in the heart of the people, however effective they might be in
breaking overt resistance.
In Ulster, Connaught, and Munster every sporadic attempt at
insurrection was crushed before it could make head ; but in
Leinster rebellion flamed out. In the counties of Tfcein-
Wicklow and Wexford it took the form of what was surrection
practically a religious struggle between Catholics '
and Protestants. Unorganised as they were, and led largely by
476 The War with the French Republic
Catholic priests, the rebels achieved some successes signalised
by massacres ; but they were finally and decisively crushed by
Lake at the fight of Vinegar Hill (2ist June) — a victory signalised
in its turn by still more savage excesses. Vain as the struggle
was, insurrection still smouldered ; a French expedition under
Humbert landed in the west of Ireland in August ; but after it
had routed a force of militia in the runaway engagement known
as the Race of Castlebar, no very long time elapsed before it was
overwhelmed by the government forces and compelled to
surrender.
On the day before the battle of Vinegar Hill Cornwallis arrived
in Ireland as lord-lieutenant and commander-in-chief to take up
corn-wains a task which conspicuously required to be handled
in Ireland. by a strong man, fearless, sympathetic, and abso-
lutely trustworthy. No better choice could have been made ;
but it took time even for Cornwallis to bring under control
the savage forces which had been let loose under the recent
regime. Cornwallis was swift to see that a policy of con-
ciliation and restraint was imperative ; and in this it must be
noted that he was strongly supported by the chancellor, Lord
Clare. Before the end of July an Act of Amnesty was passed
with certain specified exceptions. By slow degrees order was
restored.
But ever since 1785 Pitt had been inclining to the belief that
the solution of the Irish problem would have to be found in an
A new policy, incorporating union. The rebellion of '98 con-
firmed him in that belief, which was thoroughly endorsed by
Cornwallis. The government of Ireland by a Protestant oli-
garchy had proved to be a complete failure ; so also had the pre-
vious government, which had vested all real control in Great
Britain through the subordination of both legislature and execu-
tive ; while Ireland still remained a separate province unrepre-
sented in the British parliament. No one in England, and few
Protestants, at least in Ireland, could view with equanimity the
idea of an independent Irish legislature in which the Protestant
ascendency had passed away. There remained the alternative
of an incorporating union, accompanied according to Pitt's view
The British Isles and the Union 477
by Catholic emancipation. The admission of Catholics to politi-
cal equality would not in such circumstances carry with it the
same danger of reprisal as in an independent Irish legislature.
The religious grievance would disappear, and the racial grievance
as well ; since Ireland would enter the union on the same footing
as Scotland.
There can be no doubt that both Pitt and Cornwallis regarded
Catholic emancipation as essential to making the legislative union
a success. But in England, where there was no Hostility to
hostility to the idea of a legislative union, there was be overcome,
an element of Protestant hostility to Catholic emancipation.
That sentiment reigned with concentrated force in the bosom of
King George, who was moreover developing a conscientious con-
viction that he could not give his assent to it without breaking
his coronation oath. In Ireland among the governing class there
was hostility both to the whole idea of an incorporating union
and to Catholic emancipation. Opposition to the Pitt-Cornwallis
idea ran upon exceedingly complicated lines. Grattan and his
friends, who had won for Ireland an independent legislature,
believed that the true solution of the problem lay in Catholic
emancipation, reform, and the continued independence of the
legislature. Yet there were probably few Protestants who shared
Grattan's faith in the public spirit and loyalty of the Romanists.
Grattan, like Chatham, believed in appealing to the better side
of men's natures. He believed in an independent parliament
because he did not believe in the unfitness of Roman Catholics
to take their share of the responsibilities of full citizenship.
Believing in the capacity of Ireland to govern herself, he was
intensely opposed to the surrender of her legislative independence.
The ascendency party, on the other hand, were ill-disposed to an
incorporating union which would deprive them of the supreme
power which at present lay in their own hands ; most of them
were still more opposed to Catholic emancipation, which would
still further diminish their influence on the representation at
Westminster.
Pitt's plan, then, was certain to meet with an almost insuper-
able resistance in the Irish parliament. He therefore resolved
47 8 The War with the French Republic
to separate the two measures. Grattan's support was out of
reach, but Grattan's command of votes was small. A parlia-
Uniontopre- mentary majority might be gained in Dublin in
cede emanci- favour of a legislative union, leaving the Catholic
question to be dealt with by the parliament of
the United Kingdom. But outside parliament it was necessary
to conciliate Catholic opinion. There was no escaping the fact,
so forcibly illustrated in 1706, that whatever reason might say,
the national sentiment of the smaller country would be prima
facie hostile to absorption in the larger state. The Catholics,
however, would be conciliated, and would at least acquiesce
in a union if they were satisfied that it would offer a better pros-
pect of their own emancipation than continued independence.
Thus it appeared to Pitt, that in order to achieve his ends it
was necessary to carry the legislative union through the Irish
parliament, which could not be accomplished unless it was
separated from the Catholic question ; to secure the acquies-
cence of the Catholics, who were the larger part of the popula-
tion, by satisfying them that emancipation would follow ; and
only to deal directly with the Catholic question after the inde-
pendent Irish parliament had ceased to exist.
There was the double problem then of obtaining a majority
in the Protestant parliament and of satisfying the Catholics
Hopes held outside parliament without submitting the Catholic
out to the question to parliament. On the other hand,
Catholics. nothing seemed more certain than defeat if the
present parliament were dissolved and a new one elected. The
measure must be carried without a dissolution. Cornwallis,
therefore, was instructed in the first place to inform the Catholics
that there was no hope whatever for Catholic emancipation
so long as the Irish parliament remained independent, and in
the second place to hold out prospects of the satisfaction of their
desires as the probable outcome of the Union. No positive
pledge was given, but ministers, who invited active support on
the basis of the expectation, though not the promise, that certain
results would follow, appeared at least to have pledged them-
selves to do their utmost to secure those results. The govern-
The British Isles and the Union 479
ment by these representations obtained the support of the
Catholics.
But the attitude of parliament was unpromising. The question
was raised in the address on the opening of the Irish parliament
in 1799 ; on the vote the government found them- The per,
selves in a minority of five. Lord Castlereagh, suasion of
the chief secretary, was the principal agent for the Parliament-
conversion of that minority into a majority. The methods
were familiar, though they had never been practised before with
quite the same profusion. The county members represented a
free electorate ; they were practically outside the reach of
corruption. But all but a very few of the boroughs were in
effect private property, constituencies whose owners could
ensure the return of their own nominees. The union of parlia-
ments would of necessity abolish the existing distribution of
constituencies ; the borough owners would be deprived of a
valuable property ; therefore they did not want to see the
parliaments united. Long before, Pitt had advocated at West-
minster the buying out of the owners of rotten boroughs in
England ; in Ireland he applied the principle with The borough-
equal openness, and bought them out with £15,000 owners,
apiece. But the transaction was legitimate enough on the
generally accepted hypothesis that such boroughs were actually
property. The purchase did not involve that the borough-
owner would support the Government Bill, but it at least re-
moved the personal objection which would otherwise have in-
duced him to oppose it. It does not appear that money or at
least any large amount of money passed. But Honours,
twenty new peers were created and a score of peers places, and
were promoted. Places and pensions were distri- pensic
buted, in accordance with innumerable precedents ; the seats
in the House of Commons which were vacated were carefully
filled with supporters of the government. A government
majority was duly manufactured, not by paying people to
surrender their convictions, but by transferring the personal
interest, which alone guided them, from the side of Opposi-
tion to the side of Government. The whole affair was highly
480 The War with the French Repiillic
unsavoury, to be defended only on the ground that the end was
a necessity of State, which could not be attained by any other
means. In the debate on the address in 1800 the government
minority of five had become a majority of forty-two.
The Articles of Union were carried in the Irish parliament,
The Act received the royal assent on ist August, and the first
isoo. Act parliament of the United Kingdom met in January
of Union. i8oi. The Act of Union gave Ireland a hundred
members for the new House of Commons, her population at
that date being about half that of England. In the Upper
House she had twenty-eight peers, appointed for life ; the rest
of the Irish peers were eligible to the House of Commons for
British constituencies. Great Britain and Ireland were for
commercial purposes thenceforth to be treated as a unit. The
established Church was united with the Church in England, and
was represented by four spiritual peers. The financial relations
were dealt with in clauses whereof the practical interpretation
has ever since been a continual source of controversy.
The Union between England and Scotland had been carried
certainly against the will of the majority of the Scottish people,
The Unions not without corruption, but by the efforts of men
compared. who Were in the main firmly convinced that the
measure was necessary to the prosperity of Scotland. Even
the majority who passed that measure in the Scottish parliament
approved the thing in itself, and stood out for their price only
because they were sure they could get it. In Ireland it cannot
be denied that most, though not all, of the men who were both
disinterested and intelligent were opposed to the Union alto-
gether. Outside parliament the support or acquiescence of the
Catholic majority was obtained, not altogether with conscious
dishonesty, by a misrepresentation. Pitt had abstained from
taking the necessary steps to ensure that his whole design should
be carried through as well as the one fragment contained in the
Act of Union. Catholic emancipation was essential to its com-
pleteness ; and it was the expectation that Catholic emancipa-
tion would follow which had made it possible to get the Act of
Union accepted.
The British Isles and the Union 481
Shortly after the measure had been passed, Pitt laid before
the cabinet his proposals for the removal of Catholic disabilities,
the commutation of tithes, and provision for the catholic
Roman Catholic clergy. Then he found himself emancipation
faced by an insuperable obstacle. The king flatly re^ectcd-
refused to concede Catholic emancipation. His conscientious
objections had been strengthened by the chancellor Lough-
borough, and by the archbishops of Canterbury and Armagh.
Several members of the cabinet declared themselves in opposi-
tion to Pitt's view. Pitt took the only course open to him as a
man of honour, and declared that he must resign if he were
forbidden to act upon the moral pledges which he had given.
Addington accepted the task of forming a new administration ;
Pitt resigned, and with him went Dundas and pitt't
Grenville, Spencer and Cornwallis, as well as George resignation.
Canning and Castlereagh. Addington could only collect a
cabinet of mediocrities. Pitt himself is fairly open to reproach
for having given his virtual pledges to the Catholics without
having made sure that he would be able to carry them out. He
may have imagined that George would give way, himself not
realising the intensity of George's conviction in the matter.
Now he had to realise that nothing would make the king give
way — that even if he refused his countenance to the new govern-
ment, the king would hold fast though the skies should fall.
Therefore, lest the skies should fall, he did give a grudging
countenance to Addington, and himself returned to office before
his death. On one great and crucial question, Pitt knew that
he was beaten by George's vis inertiae. It might perhaps have
been more heroic if he had refused to recognise that he was
beaten, but the fact would not have been altered.
Inncs's Eng. Hist.— Vol. HI. 2 H
CHAPTER XI. IN THE REIGN OF GEORGE III.
I. LETTERS, 1760-1798
IT is easy to recognise though not so easy to define the strong
distinction between the literary eras in which the two charac-
A change teristic names are those of Alexander Pope and
of spirit. Samuel Johnson respectively. Something was re-
asserting itself in the second period which was antagonistic tc
the Pope convention, to the divorce between intellect anc
emotion. It did not yet take shape in the revival of a grea:
emotional poetry. The supply tarried, but the demand was
making itself felt ; Pitt in one sphere and Wesley in anothei
had revived the capacity for enthusiasm. It was the vitalit}
of the nation which was reasserting itself, and seeking to fine
artistic expression, though with but a limited measure of success
So far at least as verse was concerned, the poets could not shake
themselves free from the canons imposed by the refinement:
upon refinements of a century of intellectualism.
Between the death of Pope in 1744 and the publication o
the Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge in 1798, th«
The poets. output of verse in England calls for the considera
tion of few names. All belonged to men in whom the new spin
was stirring, but only for two can it be claimed by their warmes
admirers that they accomplished any poems at all to which th
epithet ' great ' can be applied, William Collins and Thoma
Gray ; to both of whom reference was made in an earlier chapter
The poetry of Johnson, like the poetry of Gray and Collins, wa
written while George II. still occupied the throne ; and although ai
occasional couplet of his survives as a familiar quotation, posterity
if it reads those poems at all, does so because it is interested 11
Samuel Johnson, not because it admires them as poetry.
482
Letters 483
In 1770 died by his own hand in a garret, before the comple-
tion of his eighteenth year, a poet of extraordinary promise,
Thomas Chatterton, the harbinger of the coming Chatterton.
day. Instinct with poetic imagination, the boy had turned
away from all the recognised models and had chosen antique
patterns for imitation, since a boy must imitate. The wonder
of Chatterton, however, does not lie in the ingenuity which
taught him to produce sham antiques, and to palm them off
as genuine upon the Jonathan Oldbucks of the time, but in the
completeness of his escape from conventions and his marvellous
ear for the magic of rhythms and the music of words. Yet
great as was his promise, his achievement was after all only the
achievement of an extraordinarily brilliant boy. At the moment
he was a unique phenomenon ; Coleridge was not born till two
years after his death, and before Coleridge there was none who
showed a like perception of magic and music save William
Blake. Chatterton and Blake in their own day Blake.
seemed to be little more than literary curiosities ; though later
generations have not failed to do ample justice to their poetical
work. Besides their names only three others claim attention.
The first is Oliver Goldsmith, whose natural in- Goldsmith,
stincts were too strong for his theoretical orthodoxy, and com-
pelled him to be charming when he intended to be didactic.
The attraction of the Deserted Village is derived entirely from
the loving hand with which he drew and certainly idealised his
' Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain/ Such humble
themes were accounted as fit poetic material only when they
were de-vitalised in a conventional Arcadia, or turned to account
for equally conventional moralisings upon the innocent joys of
contented poverty — one of the sentimentalisms which Dr.
Johnson cudgelled with characteristic good sense. But Gold-
smith's Auburn is not a tinsel Arcadia, nor are his moralisings the
things that matter ; what does matter is the tender human
sympathy which sees something worth recording in the humble
and commonplace, even while infusing into it qualities born
largely of the author's own kindly imagination.
Cowper and Crabbe also take their place among the poets as
484 In the Reign of George III.
the forerunners of a new poetic age, because they ignored con-
ventions, and treated as subjects for poetry aspects of life and
Cowper manners which had been held to be beneath the
and Crabbe. dignity of verse. Crabbe painted ' the Village '
as he saw it — and by no means as Goldsmith saw it, or as the
writers of the conventional pastorals pretended to see it. Cowper
wrote of nature to please himself and his friends, not the literary
critics, and it was from the study of Milton, not of Pope, that he
learnt the structure of his verse. Goldsmith fancied himself
to be a literary conservative ; Cowper and Crabbe certainly
never thought of themselves as leaders of a literary revolution ;
but all three were in fact the outcome of the slow awakening of
the general consciousness to the need of sincerity, to the arti-
ficiality of the bonds which had been forged for the poetic art.
It is, perhaps, just because he was the solid incarnation of
this demand for sincerity that Samuel Johnson stands out as
Doctor the representative figure of the period. Johnson
Johnson. himself was sincere to the point of brutality. He
delivered his opinions without any consideration for the feelings
of his interlocutors. He had rampant prejudices which were
sometimes extremely unreasonable ; but the thing he said was
the thing he meant, and he meant it because he believed it.
He obeyed no convention because it was a convention. It was
not the brilliancy of his writing nor the profundity of his learn-
ing which gave him his dominant position ; the bulk of his
actual contributions to literature had already been published
before the accession of George in., while his supremacy belongs
to the period between 1760 and his death in 1784. It was the
personality of the man, not the author, which made him a power ;
and he remains vividly known to us, not because he wrote
Rasselas and the Vanity of Human Wishes, edited Shakespeare
and compiled the Dictionary, but because the man has been
painted for us in the most masterly of all biographies. The
favourite old paradox, perpetuated by Macaulay, that Boswell's
Boswell. book was great just because James Boswell himself
was very, very small has been sufficiently exploded. Macaulay's
Boswell could neither himself have appreciated Johnson nor
Letters 485
have held the place in the great man's affections which the real
Boswell beyond all question did hold. The work is great because
Boswell appreciated Johnson, because Johnson loved Boswell, and
because Boswell had an exceptionally high literary gift ; and let
us add, because he, as became the friend of Johnson, painted an
absolutely sincere portrait of his idol, extenuating nothing ; a thing
which no man can do without being absolutely sincere himself.
The same revival of broad human sympathies, the same
demand for reality in the place of conventions, were responsible
for the creation of the novel in the hands of Richard- The novelists,
son and Fielding, for the rough humours of Smollett, and in
part for the freakish, fascinating irresponsibility of Laurence
Sterne. Yet that group had no immediate masculine successors
of importance, except Oliver Goldsmith, who was the literary
offspring neither of Fielding nor of Richardson. The Vicar of
Wakefield stands by itself redolent of freshness and sweetness,
qualities by no means characteristic of the time, any more than
was that delightful simplicity which belongs to Goldsmith
almost alone. It may, however, be remarked that the true
precursor of Dr. Primrose was the ' Man in Black ' of Goldsmith's
own Citizen of the World, and the ' Man in Black ' was the literary
offspring of Sir Roger de Coverley. There were, indeed, many
other novelists, but only one of mark. Fanny Burney with her
Evelina was not the first woman novelist ; but the novels written
by other women had been remote from real life, women
works of exaggerated sensationalism. Fanny Burney novelists,
was no great artist, but she set the example to women who could
look upon life with a humorous enjoyment which they could
impart to their readers. It was not till the last year of the
century that a woman proved herself a past mistress of character
delineation, in the Castle Rackrent of Maria Edgeworth. The
nineteenth century was already some years old before the decisive
achievements of Jane Austen in this field, and before Walter
Scott finally established the novel in that pride of place which
it has retained ever since. In the eighteenth century the young
aspirant to literary honours generally came up to London with
the manuscript of a tragedy in his pocket ; in the nineteenth
486 In the Reign of George ///.
century he generally carried the heavier burden of a manuscript
novel.
The tragedies, however, were short-lived enough. But
comedy again achieved a sudden brilliancy, without any of the
The stage. indecencies of the Restoration, in the hands of
Oliver Goldsmith and Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the last of
whom was also one of the two or three most brilliant parliamen-
tary orators of the time. The stage, in fact, played no small part
in preparing the way for that literary revolution which is com-
monly called the Romantic Revival ; but this was in truth the
doing not of the playwrights but of the actors. David Garrick,
who was a leading figure, and for a long time very much the
leading figure, on the stage, from 1741 till his last appearance in
1776, and Mrs. Siddons, who first appeared as Lady Macbeth
in 1785, educated the mind of the public to that appreciation
of the Shakespearian drama which it was impossible to reconcile
with the eighteenth-century convention of so-called Classicalism.
As usual, however, in such cases, it is not easy to distinguish the
interaction of cause and effect. Revolt against conventions of
all sorts was in the air ; Garrick was partly one of its expressions,
partly one of the causes of its development. It received its
most tremendous development and its most terrific expression
in the French Revolution ; but in England the reaction in the
political field perhaps helped it to concentrate in the field of
literature and so produced the revolution inaugurated in 1798.
The return to Shakespeare was one aspect of a general disposi-
tion to turn to a past more or less remote, but at any rate very
Back to different from the present, for relief from the bond-
the past. age of immediate convention. Its oddest exemplifi-
cation, perhaps, is to be found in Chatterton's Rowley Poems \
oddest, not because the young poet himself was attracted by the
antique, but because his productions appealed to the not very
penetrating critics mainly on the score of their hypothetica
antiquity. Even in the very early years of the century, Addisor
had reminded the public of the trumpet-note that rings in th<
ballad of Chevy Chase, a poem than which nothing can b<
imagined more remote from the classical convention. Allai
Letters 487
Ramsay in Edinburgh had gathered together the Scottish songs
of the countryside. In 1762 James Macpherson created a furore
lor pristine Celtic literature by the publication of Fingal, a work
which professed to be the translation of a Gaelic epic composed
in the dim past by the bard Ossian, and handed down by oral
tradition in the Scottish Highlands for a thousand years and
more. How much of Macpherson's Ossian was really based upon
fragments of immemorial antiquity and how much was his own in-
vention no one will ever know. Johnson's cudgel was applied to
it in the doctor's most sledge-hammer fashion ; but the popularity
of the work was a significant symptom. Still more significant
was the publication in 1765 of Bishop Percy's Reliqnes of Ancient
English Poetry, ballads which had been collected in a manuscript
volume early in the seventeenth century. A great impulse was
thereby given to the study of ballad poetry, and the study of
ballad poetry was one of the powerful influences of the literary
revolution.
While England was still hidebound by the Augustan literary
canons and seeking diversion therefrom in a recurrence to the
literature of a pre-critical age rather than in the Scotland.
development of a new creative impulse, there was growing up in
Scotland the greatest of that Scottish school, if it may so be
called, of poets who had never ceased to sing since the days of
William Dunbar. English ballad literature had died a natural
death ; in Scotland flowers of song continued to blossom by the
wayside, spontaneous products of the soil, not cultivated by the
hands of any literary gardeners, and only in a few cases rescued
from oblivion by such appreciative collectors as Allan Ramsay.
Culture was obliged to conform to the canons ; it was in the
countryside that the country folks themselves went on obeying
their own impulse to sing in their own vernacular tongue of
familiar sights and sounds, giving utterance to the emotions and
passions which stirred them in their daily lives. Robert Burns
was not an innovator, though in England he has Burns.
the appearance of the founder of a new school. He went on
doing what folk of his own class had been doing for generations
and were doing still, though he did it better than any of them ;
488 In the Reign of George III.
not a few of his own songs were primarily fragments of his
predecessors' work. He set at naught the literary conventions
of England, not because he was in conscious rebellion against
them, but because they hardly touched him ; when he was
beguiled into attempts to write in English instead of in his native
tongue he himself became their victim. He was a democrat not
as a result of the French Revolution, but because the democratic
spirit of the Revolution was in his bones, as it was in the bones
of many of his fellow-countrymen. He used the language of the
people, bringing out all its capacities, because it was the language
natural to him. But because he gave free play to his own
unfettered individuality, which was the thing most sternly for-
bidden by the dying convention, and the thing which lay at the
root of the dawning movement in England, he appears in some
sort as an originator of that movement, though it may be doubted
whether any one of the great poets connected with it was in-
fluenced by him in any material degree.
We shall not here discuss the poetic revolution itself. It had
quite definitely begun before the century closed, even though
The it may be insisted that its beginning must not be
landmark. identified with any particular year ; the publication
of the Lyrical Ballads in 1798 is at any rate a landmark which
signifies unmistakably that a new era had opened. But it belongs
to the new century, and will be treated in the story of the new
century.
There is none among English poets, and among British poets
none save Burns, who during this period is decisively entitled to
Prose. be numbered among the great. Great is also a word
which cannot without hesitation be applied to comedies even so
brilliant as those of Sheridan, because with all their wit and
charm they suggest only a very superficial criticism of life.
Johnson was a great man chiefly because he was a great and
occasionally a profound critic of life, not because he wrote great
books. The conventions which fettered poetry did not attach
to prose ; and while a permanent place in literature was achieved
by others than those already named — by the histories of Robert-
son, by the invectives of Junius, who, according to almost uni-
Letters 489
versally accepted belief, was Sir Philip Francis, the enemy of
Hastings — there are three names which overshadow the rest,
and a fourth, the bearer of which achieved, though not immedi-
ately, a very remarkable influence upon the development of
political thought.
The first of our group is Edward Gibbon, whose Decline and
Fall of the Roman Empire established him as the greatest of
English historians, a position from which he has Gibbon,
never been deposed. It was a criticism of Sir James Mackintosh,
who himself, as an apologist for the French Revolution, ventured
to measure swords with Edmund Burke, that ' Gibbon might
have been cut out of a corner of Burke's mind without Burke
noticing it. ' If Mackintosh meant to belittle Gibbon the criticism
was absurd. If he meant merely to give rhetorical expression
to the immensity of his own admiration for Burke the phrase was
legitimate, for if Gibbon was great in his kind, it was a greatness
hardly comparable with Burke's. The greater intellectual quali-
ties of Burke were qualities shared for the most part only in a
quite minor degree by the historian, while the specific qualities,
lacking in Burke, which made Gibbon a great historian, did not
appeal to Burke's admirer.
The fire of Burke's eloquence, the splendour of his diction, the
richness of his illustration, would have sufficed to give to the
great Irishman's work a very high place in the litera- Burke,
ture of any age. But his intellectual supremacy, his permanent
importance as an influence, lay in the political philosophy which
he enunciated in an era of revolution. The principles of Con-
servatism, when that term is dissociated from its connection with
parliamentary politics, the principles of Liberalism, as distin-
guished from democratic theory, are enshrined in his pages, which
provide a storehouse of arguments and illustration for political
thinkers of every school except the real reactionary and the real
radical reformer. For Burke was the strenuous antagonist
alike of reaction and of radical reform. His statecraft would
have nothing to say to ideal schemes of government, though this
does not mean that he had no ideal of government. According
to his view, no scheme of government could be sound which was
Reign of George III.
not a natural development of a system which had been a natural
growth. Development is adaptation to new conditions ; you
cannot attain it by attempting to substitute something else for
the thing which has grown. The appeal is to be made to history.
These liberties have their roots in the remote past ; they must
not be tampered with. That authority has the sanction of ages ;
it must not be repudiated. We are not to be guided to recon-
struction by an abstract preference for a different kind of struc-
ture ; we are not to destroy an established custom in order to
establish something in its place logically consistent with some
other established custom ; abstract logic is the most dangerous
of all guides in practical affairs, because it is quite certain
to ignore material data which are of fundamental import-
ance. Innovation, whether Radical or Reactionary, is to be
abhorred.
Reactionary innovation, curtailing established liberties, en-
gaged Burke's hostility during the first five-and-twenty years of
Burke's his public career. Radical innovation, shattering
consistency, established authority, engaged it during the last
few. In the face of revolution Burke's dread of innovation
made him too ready to believe that developments which were in
fact both natural and logical were not developments, but innova-
tions ; it blinded him to the fact that an apparently natural
growth may be fundamentally rotten ; to some extent he mis-
applied his principles in particular instances ; but the principles
were always the same, and there was no inconsistency between
his earlier and his later attitude. Burke being dead yet speaketh.
He failed to persuade the king, the Grenvilles, and the Norths
to recognise his liberal principles, and we lost America ; to-day
those principles have triumphed in the overseas dominions of the
British empire. He, far more than any other individual, taught
Britain to set her face against revolutionary France, and by the
misapplication of his principles fostered reaction ; but his
permanent influence has been not reactionary, but conservative,
and in hardly less degree progressive.
Few books had so marked an effect in their own generation as
Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution ; very few have
Letters 491
been productive of such far-reaching effects on theory and
practice in one sphere, that of commercial activity, as Adam
Smith's Wealth of Nations. Published at the moment Adam Smith,
when the Americans had just declared their independence, it
laid bare the weaknesses of the mercantile theory which had
been in no small degree responsible for the severance of senti-
ment between the mother country and the colonies. It came
too late to affect that contest ; but it helped to establish the
principle in the future, of economic non-interference. It sub-
stituted for the old theory, that our neighbour's prosperity is our
own undoing, the doctrine that a prosperous neighbour provides
a better market than one on the verge of bankruptcy ; though
the outbreak of the French war deferred its practical applica-
tion, after Pitt's initial experiment. The book demolished the
other old doctrine of the balance of trade by demonstrating that
over the whole field the balance adjusted itself automatically.
It insisted that, speaking economically, State regulation is in-
jurious, and taxation is admissible only because, and so far as,
it is directed to the provision of revenue. It declared that the
maximum of wealth is attainable by the community through
the unfettered action of individuals ; the whole structure of
nineteenth-century individualism was based upon its doctrines.
It must not be forgotten, however, that Adam Smith himself
was careful to recognise that a political gain may be worth an
economic sacrifice, the notable instance in his own view being
that of the Navigation Acts, which, by artificially encouraging
the development of a powerful fighting fleet, had given to
Great Britain a security which she needed, and had thus
indirectly enabled her commerce to develop even while war
was going on.
The last name on our list is that of Jeremy Bentham, the
recognised founder of the utilitarian school in ethics and
politics. In the Fragment on Government (1776), Bentham.
and the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789), Bentham
rejected all the contractual theories of the origin and develop-
ment of the social order from Hobbes to Rousseau, all the theories
of natural rights which were in the air — as had just been empha-
49 2 In the Reign of George ///.
sised by the terms of the American Declaration of Independ-
ence— and proceeded to work out his formula that the end of
morals and legislation is to procure the ' greatest happiness of
the greatest number ' ; which he analyses as the excess of the
sum of pleasures over the sum of pains. But the more specific
development of his doctrine, in the theory that this end can be
attained only by the representative rule of the democracy,
belongs rather to the nineteenth century, when it was adopted
by the school of the ' philosophic Radicals/
II. THE INDUSTRIAL AND RURAL REVOLUTION, 1760-1800
Down to the middle of the eighteenth century, England, like
every other country, was in the main a land of agriculture with
more than three-fourths of its population dwell-
1760. The
industrial ing in rural districts. Manufactures were few :
state raw materials and textile fabrics were the principal
unknown. J . . . _TT ..
articles of export. We were a commercial nation
as well as an agricultural nation, more commercial than our
neighbours by reason of our great maritime traffic, and of the
demand for such goods as we did export. We were a nation
of shopkeepers as well as of agriculturists. But neither here
nor anywhere else was there an industrial State, a State in which
a substantial proportion of the population was engaged exclu-
sively upon manufacture of one kind or another. Our own
manufacturing, as observed in a previous chapter, was itself
very largely the by-employment of people whose main employ-
ment was agricultural.
By the end of the eighteenth century a great change had
already taken place. Machinery, driven first by water power
isoo An a then ky steam, had ousted or was ousting
industrial domestic handicrafts, had gathered or was gathering
state in colonies of machine hands into factories, on the
banks of streams or in the iron-fields and coal-
fields. Many of the yeomen had surrendered their holdings ;
they and the cottars had for the most part become farm hands,
T/ie Industrial and Rural Revolution 493
and nothing else. The relative densify of the population in
the northern and the southern counties was being, if it had not
already been, reversed ; more than one-third of the population
was already congregated in towns. The north of England and
the south of Scotland were already the first and as yet the only
home in the world's history of a large manufacturing popula-
tion. No other country had followed or attempted to follow
the example. Great Britain raced on so far in front of the
rest, that she presently came to regard her own supremacy as
an ordinance of nature ; though no such supremacy before had
ever been dreamed of.
Primarily there were three causes. First her inventors led
the field. In the second place, the soil of England produced
in vast quantities ready to hand the two materials The three
needed to turn the inventions to the fullest account, causes.
iron and coal. In the third place, the new methods of manu-
facture were hardly established in Britain when the European
war broke out ; and while those wars were going on the sea-girt
State enjoyed opportunities from which every continental State
was debarred. Her fleets secured to her alone the means of
obtaining an almost uninterrupted supply of the raw materials
which she required to import for the purposes of manufacture ;
and secured also to her alone immunity from invasion, and at
least comparative immunity from the absorption of her sons
upon European battlefields.
The Industrial Revolution was a portent in the world's history,
not so startling, so dramatic, so terrific as the French Revolu-
tion, and the crashing of legions in the Napoleonic immensity
wars, but no whit less tremendous; for it was a of the
revolution which presently extended itself over all revolution-
Western Europe, creating a new type of proletariat, new con-
ditions of life, new political problems, new questions of the dis-
tribution of wealth, and of the means to happiness, moral as
well as material. It produced a new social cleavage, quite
distinct from the old caste cleavage between the landowner and
the peasant, the economic cleavage between capital and labour,
employers and employees, the labourers and the organisers of
494 IH the Reign of George III.
production. It would nardly be an exaggeration to say that
there was less fundamental difference between the Age of
Augustus in the Roman world and the Age of Walpole in
England than between the Age of Walpole and the twentieth
century.
There are three notable aspects under which the changes
and the conditions of life may be summarised; the changes
in the conditions of manufacture, of agriculture, and of
traffic.
Inventors of machinery have in view one of two objects : to
increase the output in relation to the amount of human energy
Manufacture: expended, or to give greater perfection to the
the new product of that energy. In 1764 Kay's fly-shuttle
machinery. had doubled the productive capacity of the weaver's
loom, and the spinning- jenny of Hargreaves enabled one cotton
spinner to do the work of eight. But the driving power of wind
and water had been brought into employment for little but the
working of corn-mills until, in 1760, James Smeaton evolved the
effective application of water-power to the blast furnace ; while
Newcomen's pump was the only steam-engine in use.
In 1769, the new power era was inaugurated by Richard
Arkwright, who invented a new cotton spinning- jenny, the water
Arkwright. frame driven by water-power, which produced not
only a much greater quantity, but a much finer quality of thread ;
upon which an advance was shortly made by Samuel Crompton's
'mule.' These inventions carried the productive power of the
spinner far ahead of the productive power of the weaver. Since
the worker with the new machinery could turn out a much
greater quantity of much better thread at a much lower price,
though he could only do so by planting his machinery where
water-power was available, there was no longer employment
for the spinning-wheel on the cottar's hearth. The balance
between the weaver and the spinner was restored when Edward
Cartwright. Cartwright set up a steam-power loom in 1789;
which was followed by a woolcomber, enabling one man to do
the work of twenty.
The power-loom struck at domestic weaving, just as the water
The Industrial and Rural Revolution 495
frame struck at domestic spinning. Spinning and weaving could
no longer be combined with agricultural avocations ; the
spinners and weavers could not set up machinery of Effect of
their own ; the owners of the machinery collected the the new
workers into settlements in the immediate neigh- macllinery'
bourhood of their machines. Since cotton employed a much
smaller number of workers than wool, and the first inventions
were applicable to cotton but not to wool, the disastrous effects
were not fully felt immediately. But wool was not long in
following cotton, and when that happened, the standing by-
employment of the small farmer and the cottar disappeared
altogether. Labour-saving machinery injures the labourer at
the outset, because until there is a corresponding increase in the
demand, a smaller amount of labour is required to meet it, and
unemployment results, with its concomitant of low wages. It
is only when the lower prices following upon reduced cost of
production have created an increased demand for goods that the
dislocation of labour becomes readjusted, and usually in the
long run an increased instead of a diminished demand for labour
is produced. The sudden advance in labour-saving machinery
from 1769 onwards was for the time extremely lucrative to the
owners of machinery, but was disastrous to the rural population,
which had hitherto relied upon spinning and weaving, if not for
subsistence, at least for the difference between bare subsistence
and some degree of comfort.
A somewhat different result attended the development of the
coal and iron industries. When coal and coke superseded char-
coal as fuel for blast furnaces, the charcoal and the coal versus
iron-fields of the south perished, but the coal-fields charcoal.
and the neighbouring iron-fields of the north became enormously
active. During the half century before the establishment of
Smeaton's blast furnaces at the Carron iron works (1760) the
imported iron went up from 15,000 tons to 50,000, about three
times as much as was being produced in England. By 1788 the
British output was 50,000 tons. In fact, what was needed for
the developing of the iron trade was fuel ; as soon as it was
found practicable to use coal for the fuel there was a supply avail-
496 In the Reign of George III.
able to meet any conceivable demand ; and, consequently, it
became possible to produce enough iron to meet any possible
Iron demand. Processes of treating iron and of casting
and steel. steel improved. The development of the use of
steam-power created a demand for machinery constructed of
iron and steel, and a new iron age was born. Men smiled at
John Wilkinson, and called him ' iron-mad,' for declaring that
iron was the proper material for building houses, bridges and
even ships ; nevertheless the Severn was actually bridged with
iron in 1779, and in 1790 an iron ship was actually launched.
The development in the production of iron and coal meant an
immediate increase in the demand for labour, and a disloca-
tion only in so far as the demand was created in new areas
at the expense of the old charcoal and iron areas such as
Sussex.
The development of the steam-engine was in no small degree
responsible for bringing about the increased demand for iron
steam: and steel. That development was mainly due to
James Watt, the inventive genius of James Watt, who, in 1763,
while engaged in the making of mathematical instruments,
applied himself to remedying the defects of Newcomen's steam
pump, a machine of which the working was extremely costly.
Thus he lighted upon the discoveries which made it possible to
utilise steam as the principal driving power for machinery. It
was some years, however, before the difficulty was surmounted
of obtaining exact workmanship in material sufficiently hard
and durable. Watt might design machines but he could not
make them. Four years after he began upon the Newcomen
pump, Roebuck of the Carron iron works became his partner ;
but it was not till 1776 that Watt, in conjunction with Wilkinson
and another iron master, Boulton of Birmingham, constructed
the first really successful steam-engine for Wilkinson's iron
works. Within ten years, Watt's machines were at work for
pumping, for blast furnaces, and for driving mills ; by the
end of the century, steam was established as the great driving
power, and the steam factory was already displacing the water
factory.
The Industrial and Rural Revolution 497
It is to be observed that though ultimately the new machinery
captured wool and flax, woollens and linen, it was cotton which
first profited by it and was carried from the plane cotton.
of the minor industries into the premier position. It was not
so much that cotton goods displaced other textile fabrics as that
the cheapness of production created an enormously increased
demand for textiles, and the bulk of the increased demand was
absorbed by cotton. Between 1775 and 1789 the import of the
raw material was multiplied by seven. We remark, then, that the
principal raw materials of the new manufacture were three — coal,
iron, and cotton ; that the conjunction of coal-fields and iron-
fields in Great Britain gave this country an enormous advantage
over foreign competitors in all iron manufactures ; and that
British maritime and commercial supremacy secured a practical
monopoly of cotton. To these facts primarily must be attri-
buted the completeness with which Great Britain outstripped
all competition.
The essential characteristic of the Industrial Revolution is
that it took the instruments of production out of the hands of
the workers and placed them under the control of capital
the capitalist or master. It was the master who and labour.
owned the machinery without which the worker could not work.
Formerly the weaver and the spinner, if they could get hold
of their raw material, might take their worked-up goods into
the market ; they were not dependent upon a particular employer.
But under the new conditions, the raw material was of no use
to them ; what they had to take into the market was not goods,
but labour. The capitalist owned both the raw material and
the machinery, and so long as the supply of labour exceeded
the demand, the master could compel the operative to accept
his own terms. The autocracy of the master could not be
checked except by legislation or by combinations of the work-
men. If the employees could strike in a body they might
compel the master to close his works, and then the battle would
become simply one of endurance. Even in that case the odds
were all on the side of the master, because to the men the sus-
pension of wages meant imminent starvation, whereas to the
Innes's Eng. Hist.— Vol HI. 2 I
498 In the Reign of George III.
master, though suspension of production meant interruption,
and if prolonged perhaps ruin, to his business, it did not mean
immediate starvation.
As yet, however, the operative was cut off from both remedies.
Adam Smith's doctrine that the individual should be left to
No help in go his own way without State interference was in
legislation. possession. The old laws empowering magistrates
to regulate wages had fallen into desuetude or were generally
interpreted as conveying an authority to fix only a maximum
wage which was not to be exceeded. The legislature was in the
hands of the employing class, and legislation for the protection
of the employed was no more to be looked for than legislation
for the protection of employers in a legislature controlled by the
employed. But beyond this, parliament in the last years of
the century was possessed with the fear of Jacobinism, and
Combination was disposed to regard the unenfranchised classes
penalised. as presumably revolutionaries. Any combinations
among working-men were alarming ; even if their ostensible
objects were not political, who could tell that they would not
be covertly diverted by revolutionary agitators to political ends ?
In the last two years of the century combinations were forbidden
by statute. The combination statutes had about them an air
of evenhanded justice which probably deceived the legislators
themselves. They forbade masters to combine no less than
workmen. But the prohibition mattered nothing to the masters ;
a lock-out, the closing by a master of his own works, required
no combination between him and other employers ; but a strike
of operatives without combination, without pre-arrangement,
was virtually impossible. Consequently, the immediate effect
of the new machinery was to place absolutely at the mercy of
the capitalist the labour of which the supply was as yet greatly
in excess of the demand ; and so to force down wages to the
lowest possible level. And it must be observed that matters
were made worse because the average master was ready to
Women and employ women and children whenever the thing
children. could be done profitably; while the working-men
themselves were too short-sighted to see that though the parti-
The Industrial and Rural Revolution 499
cular household might manage in consequence to earn a very
few additional shillings or pence in a week, the employment of
women and children made it more difficult for the men to earn
a living wage.
A second feature of the period was the development of traffic.
In the matter of facility of communication the British islands
were not progressive. Till the last quarter of the Traffic:
eighteenth century, the roads were villainously bad, roads.
even the main roads, in spite of the institution of turnpikes.
In the country districts, even near the end of the century, no
superlatives of disgust were sufficient to express Arthur Young's
sentiments on the subject in his peregrinations. But without
facilities of transport, the means for bringing goods to market
in bulk, an immense increase in the production of goods is of
very little advantage. The Industrial Revolution was effective,
because it was accompanied by an enormous development of
canals. Packhorses and wagons could carry only small quan-
tities of goods, and that very slowly over atrocious Canals,
roads. But with the establishment of water-ways, an immensely
greater bulk of goods could be carried upon barges. Down to
the middle of the eighteenth century, England, though a well-
watered country, had made the smallest possible use of her
streams for traffic ; in this respect she was far behind, not only
Holland, where canal construction was a sheer necessity, but
also France.
The beginning of canal construction in England was due to
the duke of Bridgewater, who wanted to convey the coal to
Manchester from his pits at Worsley by a less expensive method
than one which required eight horses to carry a ton of coal.
The duke discovered and employed an uneducated engineer of
extraordinary genius, James Brindley. In spite of Brindiey.
the gibes of the orthodox, Brindley constructed a canal seven
miles long, of which the most startling feature was an aqueduct
which carried the water-road forty feet overhead across the
Irwell. The cost of transport was so enormously reduced that
the duke was able to sell his coal in Manchester at half the pre-
vious price. This canal was opened in 1761. Within the next
500 In the Reign of George III.
ten years, Brindley had made the plans for more than three
hundred and fifty miles of canals himself, and the example was
being followed all over the country. Some of the later outcries
against railways were anticipated at this time. It was said
that canals would ruin the coasting trade, destroy the breed of
horses, and absorb land which ought to be devoted to agricul-
ture. Neither the coasting trade nor the breed of horses suffered,
and agriculture like everything else benefited by the increased
ease with which goods could be supplied, and by the* lower prices
consequent upon the diminished cost of carriage. As concerned
such heavy goods as coal and iron, the change was of immense
importance ; while the gain was also especially marked in the
potteries, which were vigorously developing in the hands of
Josiah Wedgewood and others, since fragile goods could be
carried on the canals with much less risk of breakage than by
road. The canals came in between haulage by road and steam
haulage by rail very much as water power came in between the
hand machine and the steam-engine.
Intimately associated with the industrial revolution is the
rural revolution, which was proceeding apace during the same
The rural period. The meaning of the change which took
revolution. place in the second half of the eighteenth century
in the rural districts was analogous to the change which took
place in the relations of labour and capital. At the beginning
of the period a substantial part, if not the greater part, of the
country under cultivation was in the hands of small holders ;
the average agricultural labourer was a cottar with a small plot
of his own, or at any rate with a right to keep live stock and
gather fuel on the village common. The yeoman, the copy-
holder, the small tenant-at-will, also enjoyed the common rights.
Nearly all of them were supplementing what they got from the
soil by weaving or spinning, which gave additional occupation
to the women. Half the land which was under the plough was
still cultivated under the open-field system. By the end of the
century the cottars and a substantial proportion of the yeomen,
copyholders, and small tenants, were absorbed in the ranks of
agricultural labourers with nothing to offer in the market but
The Industrial and Rural Revolution 501
their own labour, and nothing to live upon but their wages.
The new machinery had annihilated their looms and their
spinning-wheels. Their commons were enclosed ; their open
fields were enclosed and redistributed, generally in the shape of
comparatively extensive enclosed farms. Machinery and enclo-
sures between them had given to rural England a new social
structure ; in effect substituting the landlord, the big tenant
farmer, and the landless labourer, for the squire, the yeoman, and
the cottar.
The story is pathetic enough. Under the old conditions,
before machinery came, the yeoman and the cottar plodded
along in the old ways, earning a sufficient subsistence, The doom of
with neither natural inclination nor external incen- the old order.
tive to enterprise or improvement, but in decent material comfort
and with a consciousness of personal independence. The coming
of machinery would in any case have robbed them of the by-
employments which represented the margin between tolerable
comfort and dire penury. They would probably have been
crushed out in any case ; but their doom was sealed by the
landlords, and the economists were solid on the side of the land-
lords. The land was not being turned to full account. It was
still producing enough to support the population, but with a
margin too narrow to be satisfactory in time of war when foreign
supplies might be cut off. It could be made much more produc-
tive, but not under the open-field system ; the common wastes,
too, absorbed much soil which could be brought under cultivation.
It would be infinitely better for the community at large if cultiva-
tion were in the hands of enterprising people who could and
would turn the soil to the best account. Enclosure was the way
to progress, the way to awaken rural England from its inertia,
the only way to provide the country at large with a really suffi-
cient supply of home-grown food-stuffs. The time was still far
off when the country would be forced to make up its mind that
no human power could deliver it from the necessity of obtaining
food-stuffs from other lands, for the simple reason that the
British Isles were incapable of growing enough for their rapidly
increasing population.
502 In the Reign of George III.
Moreover, the average landlord, being an average man, wished
to make for himself the profit which he saw that he could make
The if only he could enclose commons and open fields.
landlords. He had no difficulty in believing, what was often
doubtless absolutely, true, that the existing system encouraged
the cottar to idleness because he could get along without working
very hard ; or, what was not true, that enclosure would open up
additional employment which would give him ample opportunity
for really earning a better livelihood. So the landlords set about
enclosing with energy, as soon as they realised how profitable
it might be. It is quite superfluous to attribute their conduct to
merciless and unsparing greed. Self-interest had very much the
same share in their actions as in the actions of other men, but so
also had the honest desire to benefit the community at large, and
the honest belief that they were benefiting the rural community in
particular. But they had it in their power to do the thing which
was very emphatically in their own interest, and they did it with-
out allowing the other parties concerned any voice in the matter.
They had it in their power because the regular procedure was
to procure an Enclosure Act of parliament for the particular area.
The The promoters petitioned for an Act, the opponents
procedure presented counter-petitions, the bill was introduced,
reported on by a committee, and was then very
nearly as a matter of course passed. The promoter was always
a big landlord ; unless there was another big landlord among
the opponents it was practically assured that the committee
which sat upon the bill would consist entirely of persons with a
strong a priori disposition in its favour. For all practical pur-
poses, if there was anything like a consensus of the big proprietors,
objections on the part of the small proprietors and cottars were
virtually unheard ; first, because they were as sheep having no
shepherd, not knowing how to present their case ; secondly,
because they could not afford to pay an expert to put the case
for them ; and thirdly, because they had no means of influencing,
gaining the attention of, the members of a House consisting
mainly of landlords with a strong predisposition to assume that
enclosure was extremely desirable.
The Industrial and Riiral Revolution 503
When the Act had been passed, commissioners were sent down
to carry out the allotment of the common waste to be enclosed
under the bill, or the re-allotment of the open fields. The pro.
The commissioners might be actuated by a pure cedure under
sense of equity, but their natural bias was inevitably the Act*
in favour of the landlord. There was a legal hypothesis with a
very dubious historical basis, that the common lands were really
the landlord's property, and that rights of common were privi-
leges conceded by him. When commons were enclosed, and the
rights of common thereon abolished, landlords and tithe owners
received an extremely substantial share by way of compensation;
and the separate scraps allotted to the several cottars, in lieu of
their common rights in the whole, were hardly of service to them ;
besides which the cottar was required to fence his scrap at his
own cost. The practical result was that the cottars' scraps were
absorbed by the landlord, and in the end the cottar only got
some very infinitesimal compensation. Arthur Young, an
enthusiast for enclosure as an economic necessity, pleaded in
vain for a fairer provision for the cottar. Approximately the
same thing applied to the small patches allotted to yeomen and
copyholders. Again, when open fields came under the bill and
were re-allotted, so that each proprietor, instead of having a
number of scattered strips, had a single enclosed farm, the
yeoman or copyholder might or might not get his fair share ; but
in any case the expense of fencing was thrown upon him, and he
was practically certain to find himself on the whole a good deal
worse off than he had been before. Unable any longer to make
both ends meet, he was easily induced to surrender his holding
at little cost to the landlord, and himself swelled the ranks of
the wage-earning labourers.
Even if the landlords and commissioners had shown a super-
human readiness to concede everything possible to the small men,
the small men would have been superhuman if they The effects,
had rejected the conviction that they were being badly treated.
But the landlords, their agents, and the commissioners showed
no such disposition ; and the actual fact was obvious that the
result of the whole transaction was to crush the yeoman and the
504 In the Reign of George III.
cottar, and to make the landlord and the big farmer, who rented
a group of the small farms, flourish exceedingly. A large farm
with a long lease, with clauses in the agreement requiring the
farmer to adopt progressive methods, offered every inducement
to enterprise, and there can be no question that the methods of
agriculture improved immensely. But the price paid by the
country was the extinction of the yeoman class.
The war hastened the change. It raised the prices of the
produce which the yeoman could send to market, but it increased
Effects of still more the cost of living, and made it still harder
the war. for him to make both ends meet. For whatever
reason, population was at the same time increasing at an un-
precedented rate. As the class of men living entirely on their
wages was swelling year by year, without an equivalent increase
in the demand for labour, there was no rise in wages corresponding
to the rise in the cost of living. Migration to the regions where
there was an increasing demand for labour would in any case
have been difficult ; and was artificially made the more so by
the Restoration Law of Settlement, which allowed every parish
to refuse admission to new-comers.
And here legislation stepped in with the best intentions and
the worst results. Gilbert's Acts in 1782 sought to develop the
Gilbert's combination of parishes into Unions, a quite desir-
Acts, 1782. akie object which had been aimed at earlier by the
Workhouse Act of 1723. But at the same time that earlier Act
was amended detrimentally by permitting the local authorities
to give relief outside the workhouse. Moreover, a dangerous
discretion was allowed to the magistrates, including authority
for applying rates to supplement wages.
This proved to be the most fatal clause in Gilbert's Act ; for
by 1795 the enclosures, the disappearance of domestic spinning
Speenham- and weaving due to machinery and the war, had
land, 1795. between them made the distress in the rural dis-
tricts acute. At Speenhamland in Berkshire the justices met and
adopted a plan of relief which was quickly taken up by their
benevolent fellow-justices in other parts of the country. They
might have exercised their powers to fix a compulsory rate of
The Industrial and R^tral Revolution 505
wages regulated by the price of bread. They did not so use those
powers, though they earnestly appealed to the farmers to raise
wages — an appeal to which the farmers were deaf, with good
reason. For they went on to take the fatal step of applying
rates to supplement wages. Where the wages were not high
enough to provide the labourer and his family with a livelihood,
relief was to be given from the rates in proportion to the size of
the labourer's family. With the gallon loaf at a shilling, the
labourer was to receive three shillings a week for himself and
half as much for each member of the family dependent upon
him. For each extra penny on the loaf he was to have three-
pence extra for himself and a penny for each member of the
family. If his wages did not cover that amount the margin was
to be made up out of the rates. The obvious result was, that
the farmer had no inducement to grant, and the labourer no
inducement to demand, a living wage, when the balance was
made up by the parish. The labourer had no incentive to earn
more by good work, no incentive to thrift, and every incentive
to increase his family ; while the spirit of independence was
sapped when he was living consciously upon charity. How
disastrous was the outcome we shall see in another volume.
506 England and the British Empire
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NOTES
I. CONCERNING THE ARMY AND NAVY
A STANDING army only came into existence with the Great Rebellron.
The New Model army, created in 1645 by tne parliament for the pur-
poses of the Civil War, was not disbanded until the Restoration ; and at
the Restoration the king was still allowed to retain the troops which had
accompanied General Monk from Scotland. These troops formed the
nucleus of the standing army. From time to time during the reign of
Charles II., additional regiments were raised for foreign service or to
garrison Tangier. The king succeeded in avoiding the disbandment of
these regiments, even when Tangier itself was evacuated, with the result
that James II. had, in fact, a standing army of some 16,000 men in
England. As yet, however, there was no statutory power of controlling
and keeping the troops under special discipline in time of peace, the
regulations being issued arbitrarily by the royal authority, and being of
extremely doubtful legality.
In 1789 the maintenance of a standing army in time of peace as a
recognised institution obtained what was in effect its first permanent
legal sanction with the first Mutiny Act, of which the annual renewal
became a matter of course. The annual budget made provision for the
maintenance of such a supply of troops as parliament deemed neces-
sary, and the annual Mutiny Act confirmed the power of the military
authorities for the preservation of discipline, as distinct from the
enforcement of the ordinary law by civil authorities upon all citizens
civil and military alike. In the course of years these powers were
immensely elaborated by the provision of statutory definitions and
statutory penalties, limiting the arbitrary powers of officers and of
courts-martial.
The troops were engaged upon a long-service system, and were liable
for service in any part of the world where they might be required.
There was no system of rotation, and when a regiment had once been
dispatched and retained to garrison a place in some distant quarter of
the globe, such as a West India island, its claims to be relieved were
511
512 England and the British Empire
apt to be forgotten, so that it might remain in exile for a long term of
years. The recruiting for each regiment was the business of the officers
of that regiment, who frequently found it an extremely expensive burden,
though, on the other hand, the colonel's financial control often made
his position highly lucrative. Commissions and promotions were mainly
a matter of purchase.
The long French wars necessitated the multiplication of regiments.
Marlborough in 1702 had only about 18,000 British troops. In the
course of the war not only were the troops under his command raised
to 25,000, but a similar number was required for service in the Spanish
peninsula. It is estimated that at the highest the total of the British
army may have amounted to as much as 70,000. The new regiments
would be raised for short terms of service, sometimes as little as three
years, and were generally disbanded when the war was over. But when
regiments were multiplied, the ordinary attractions of service in the
ranks were not sufficient to draw in recruits, especially for service in
unpopular regions. Marlborough himself was extremely careful of the
comfort of his own troops, but elsewhere generals were less careful, and
even if they happened not to be, it was extremely difficult for them to
induce the government to listen to their demands. Hence, besides the
ordinary voluntary enlistment, the ranks were largely recruited from the
gaols, convicts being offered enlistment as a way of escape from the legal
penalties incurred by their crimes. In this connection, however, it must
not be forgotten that the English penal code was frightfully merciless,
and that the crimes for which men had been condemned to death were
often little more than wild escapades, or offences which would now be
reckoned as extremely trivial.
There was also another method of enlistment which was without any
voluntary element. Masterless men who were without ostensible means
of support could be handed up by the local authority to the recruiting
officer and compelled to enter the ranks willy nilly. Such, in general,
were the methods by which the army was swelled in time of war from
the humble proportions to which it sank in time of peace, owing to the
intense aversion of parliament and of the people at large, partly to the
idea of an army which could be used by the government for domestic
coercion, and partly to the expenditure on costly military establishment
when there was no fighting actually going on.
Besides the standing army liable for foreign service, there existed the
old institution of the militia, liable only for home defence and for the
suppression of rebellion. The futility of this body was emphatically
demonstrated in the Jacobite risings, when the government could place
no reliance upon it, but had to supplement its own regular troops by
hiring the soldiery of mercenary German princes. Theoretically, persons
Concerning the Army and Navy 513
who owned a certain amount of property were required either to appear
in arms themselves if called upon or to provide substitutes. But there
was no system of training, and such haphazard collections of untrained
men with arms in their hands could not be employed in opposition to
trained troops. It was the necessity of having a force for home defence,
which could liberate regular troops for foreign service, that caused the
elder Pitt to lay so much stress upon the Militia Bill which was passed
in 1757, a bill which has been discussed in its place in this volume.
Every county was to provide its quota, making up in the aggregate a
force of 32,000 men, to which the 60,000 originally demanded by Pitt
was reduced by the peers. The parochial authorities provided the
lords-lieutenant with lists of men fit for service, from which lists the
requisite numbers were drawn by ballot, the men so drawn being liable
for three years' service, during which they had to attend drill on one day
a week from April to October. Thus there was, at any rate after that
date, a force of 30,000 men in the country with a rudimentary training,
which could always be called up for home defence. Such efficiency,
however, as it attained during Pitt's regime quickly fell away after the
fall of the inspiring great man ; and 1779 witnessed the first volunteer
movement, the raising of companies of volunteers for home defence, of
which the most remarkable manifestation at that time was in Ireland,
though it was immensely developed in England and Scotland on the
renewal of the war with France after the Peace of Amiens, in 1803.
Of the navy, it is to be observed that there was never any popular
opposition to its adequate maintenance. The navy was never feared as
an instrument which might be utilised by the Crown for the establish-
ment of arbitrary power, a fear which always lay at the root of the
hostility to a standing army, a military dictator being even more an
object of dread than a legitimate sovereign with an army at his disposal.
The discipline of the navy was regulated by a statute in the early days
of Charles IL, which, after periodical amendments, was displaced by a
new Act in 1749, the Act under which the unfortunate Byng suffered.
The ranks of the men were filled up by forcible recruiting to a much
greater extent than was the case with the army, though curiously enough
the terms ' impressment ' and ' pressgang ' originally had nothing to do
with the employment of force, being derived from the ' imprest,' the cash
in advance paid down to sailors on enlistment. The practice of com-
pelling men to serve in the royal ships seems to have dated from the
earliest times, though it would appear never to have been either estab-
lished or abrogated by statute. It is probably to be regarded as a royal
prerogative. By custom at least it was supposed to apply only to the
impressment of mariners, and did not warrant the impressment of lands-
men. The pressgang could only act under a warrant in the hands of a
Innes s Eng. Hist.— Vol. in. 2 K
514 Notes
commissioned officer. It is, however, certain that no great care was
taken, in effecting captures, to distinguish between mariners and lands-
men, and that it was by no means easy for a landsman to obtain a
hearing to his demands for release.
II. LORD PETERBOROUGH IN SPAIN
The Spanish war has been dealt with at no great length, on account
of the singular futility of the operations in general within the peninsula.
Apart from what has been narrated in the volume it possesses a single
interest, that associated with the extraordinary personality of the earl of
Peterborough, Charles Mordaunt. Unfortunately nobody knows, or
probably ever will know, with any certainty what Peterborough really
did in Spain. The Peterborough probably known to the majority of
readers is the hero of Macaulay's essay, of Lord Stanhope's history, and
of Walter Scott ; who was created by the professedly autobiographical
author of the Memoirs of Captain Car let on. If the Carleton memoirs
had never been written, Peterborough would probably never have been
elevated into the character of a brilliant hero, and Colonel Parnell would
not have thought it necessary to devote the iconoclasm of his History
of the War of Succession in Spain to proving that Peterborough was the
villain of the piece, a braggart, a liar, and a coward. The plain fact is
that the Carleton memoirs must be put entirely on one side. There was
a Captain Carleton who served in Spain, who may have written his
memoirs twenty years afterwards, when he was nearer eighty than
seventy. But if he did, his recollections were tempered by a lively and
unscrupulous imagination, and the total result is entirely untrustworthy.
The probabilities are that some ingenious friend of Peterborough's got
hold of the man, and used his reminiscences as material for con-
cocting a Peterborough myth under the plausible veil of a realistic
autobiography.
But after all, to dismiss Carleton is not quite the same thing as to wipe
out our Peterborough ; out of the material which survives we can at any
rate construct an extremely picturesque figure. Dr. John Freind, a
distinguished medical man, was with him in Spain, and Freind's records
are our real authority for the favourable view of his talents and charac-
ter. After making all due allowance for the personal equation, the
doctor's readiness to attribute to the general every possible merit which
could conceivably be found in him ; after assuming that he took Peter-
borough's own highly coloured versions of his own proceedings and of
the proceedings of his neighbours au pied de la lettre with superfluous
trustfulness ; we are still left with the conviction that Peterborough
On Some Offices of State 515
really did some of the very remarkable things attributed to him ; that he
carried the art of succeeding by sheer audacity to a very high perfec-
tion ; that his strokes were distinguished by their ingenuity and unex-
pectedness ; that he was reckless of risks in carrying out any device
which pleased him ; and that he had an elvish capacity for outwitting
his enemies. These are the qualities which render him fascinating. But
whenever we find Peterborough attempting to co-operate with anybody
else, we see him appropriating to himself the credit of everything credit-
able, attributing every failure to some one else's crass stupidity or worse,
and generally proving himself a quite impossible colleague. No contem-
porary military criticism recognises him as a great soldier, though there
was an attempt on the part of the Tories to play him off against Marl-
borough. And it would seem that his persistent jealous belittlement of
Galway has deprived that gallant and able officer of the appreciation
which was his due, in his resolute struggle with a wholly impracticable
task.
III. ON SOME OFFICES OF STATE
Until the accession of the House of Hanover, there was no Prime
Minister in England, although until that time the minister highest in the
confidence of the Crown usually held the appointment of Lord
Treasurer. After 1714 that office disappears ; the Treasury is placed in
commission, and commonly, though not necessarily, the leading minister
is First Lord of the Treasury, and often at the same time either Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer or a Secretary of State. Walpole and Henry
Pelham throughout their administrations held the two offices of First
Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. So did Stan-
hope for a short time before them, but though he might almost have been
called Prime Minister from 1714 to 1721, he held the office of Secretary
of State, not Chancellor, during the whole of that time except for one
year. While Townshend and Walpole were together, Townshend was
Secretary of State. Passing by the brief Newcastle administration, 1754
to 1756, when Newcastle was First Lord of the Treasury only, William
Pitt the elder was a Secretary of State from 1756 till his resignation in
1761, while Newcastle remained First Lord of the Treasury. Bute was
First Lord of the Treasury only ; so was Rockingham ; George Gren-
ville combined the office with the chancellorship. From 1766 to 1770
Grafton was the nominal head of the administration, as First Lord of the
Treasury ; North again combined the office with the Chancellorship of
the Exchequer. So finally did the younger Pitt from the time he took
office in 1783, a year and a half after North's resignation. From the
time of Townshend's retirement in 1730 the practical rule emerges that
5i6 Notes
the titular head of the administration is always First Lord of the
Treasury. The controlling personality, whether or no he happens to be
titular head and First Lord of the Treasury, is always either Chancellor
of the Exchequer or one of the two Secretaries of State.
In the nineteenth century the number of the Secretaries of State was
multiplied. During the greater part of the eighteenth century there were
only two actual Secretaries of State, for what were called respectively the
northern and southern departments. The functions of the two secre-
taries overlapped considerably. Home affairs belonged to both of them.
For foreign affairs the secretary of state for the southern department had
to deal with France and the Mediterranean countries, the colonies also
falling in his department. The secretary for the northern department
had to deal with Germany, Holland, and the Baltic powers. There was
no rule by which one was subordinate to the other, and consequently we
find in the reign of George I. serious differences arising between Stan-
hope and Townshend, and afterwards between Townshend and Carteret.
After Townshend's retirement, Newcastle and Harrington shared the
secretaryships without friction until 1746; but in fact the secretaries
remained subordinate members of the government until Pitt took office
in 1756. In 1768 a third secretaryship was instituted for the colonies,
which were taken out of the hands of Shelburne, who resigned in the
same year. In 1782 the Colonial Secretaryship was again cancelled ; but
for practical purposes from this time the division into the northern and
southern departments was transformed into the division between Home
and Foreign affairs, the colonies falling within the Home department.
In 1794 Dundas was appointed the first Secretary of State for War ;
and in 1801 the colonies were transferred from the Home Office to this
department. Throughout the eighteenth century there was a ' Secretary
at War,' an important person, but not in the cabinet — not a ' Secretary
of State.' This ministerial office was continued beside the Secretary-
ship for 'War and the Colonies' until the middle of the nineteenth
century.
IV." THE ARMED NEUTRALITY
It may be convenient to summarise the main points in dispute as to
the maritime rights of belligerents and neutrals. It was obviously in the
interest of the dominant naval power to prevent an enemy from pro-
fiting by neutral traffic so far as that end could be attained. It was
agreed upon all hands that no neutral ships might attempt to enter a port
which was in a state of blockade ; and that no neutral ships might carry
'contraband of war' to any port of a belligerent. The ships of a belli-
The Armed Neutrality
517
gerent were free to seize neutral ships seeking to enter a blockaded port,
and to search ships sailing under a neutral flag. But the British defini-
tion of a blockaded port and the British definition of contraband of war
were more inclusive than the definitions put forward by neutrals or by
weaker maritime powers when at war with Great Britain, though the
latter were ready enough to adopt the British practice when they were
themselves at war with weaker maritime powers. Further the British
claimed the right of searching neutral ships for enemy's goods as well
as for contraband. The neutrals denied that claim, and asserted especi-
ally the immunity of neutral merchantmen from search when under the
convoy of neutral men-of-war. The neutrals also on their side claimed
additional compensation, over and above damage done and loss incurred,
for the searching of neutral vessels which were found not to be carrying
forbidden goods.
INDEX
ABERCROMBY, General James, 227, 231.
Sir Ralph, 455 ; in Ireland, 475 ;
killed at the battle of Alexandria, 456.
Sir Robert, commander-in-chief in
India, 458.
Aberdeen, Cumberland marches on, 189.
Aboukir Bay, battle of (Nile), 449-450;
landing at, 456.
Absenteeism (Ireland), 317-318.
Absentee Tax, the, 373-374.
Acadia, ceded to Britain by the Treaty of
Utrecht, no, 163; French stir up
revolt in, 204.
Acre, siege of, 453.
Acts of Parliament : —
Alien, 84, 85, 86.
Amnesty (Ireland), 476.
Articles, Committee of the, abolition of
(Scotland), 13.
Attainders : by Dublin parliament of
James II., 20; of Sir John Fenwick,
40.
Augmentation (Ireland), 322.
Bill of Rights, 5.
Calendar Reform, 206.
Commission of Inquiry into grants of
land (William in.), 43, 47.
Comprehension Act, proposal for, 6.
Conventicle Act, cancelled, 6.
Corporation Act, 6.
Declaratory Act (Rockingham's), 292,
300; Irish, 380, 381.
Election Petitions, 325.
Enclosure Acts, 270, 502-503.
Episcopacy, abolition of (Scotland),
*3-
Five Mile Act, cancelled, 6,
Grace, Act of, 29.
Habeas Corpus, suspended, 466.
Indemnity, Annual, for breaches of the
Test Act, 148.
India (Pitt's), 391, 406.
Insurrection (Ireland), 473.
Libel, 398.
Marriage (Hardwicke's), 206, 207.
Mutiny Act, 6.
Occasional Conformity, 105 ; repeal of,
129.
Octennial (Ireland), 321.
Presbyterianism, restoration of (Scot-
land), 13.
Regency (George ill.), 287, 397.
Regulating Acts (North's), 358.
Relief (Pitt's), 472.
Renunciation, 382.
Resumption (William in.), 47.
Royal Marriages (1772), 327.
Schism (Bolingbroke), 114; repeal of,
129.
Security (Scotland), 83, 84.
Seditious Meetings, 468.
Septennial, 121.
Settlement (1701), 50-51.
Stamp, 287; repealed, 292.
Supremacy, repealed in Scotland, 13.
Test Act, 6.
Toleration Act, 6.
Traitorous Correspondence, 466.
Treasonable Practices, 466-467.
Treasons (1696), 38.
Union, Scotland, 88 ; Ireland, 480.
Adams, John, delegate to Howe, 339.
Samuel, 335.
Addington, Henry (Viscount Sidmouth),
administration of, 457.
Addison, Joseph, 259-260, 486.
Afghans, the, 166, 239 ; defeat the Mah-
rattas at Panipat, 308-309.
Agriculture, 269 et seg., $ooetsey.', (Ire-
land), 317 et seq.
Ahmed Shah Durani, incursions of, in
north-west India, 239 ; defeats the
Mahrattas at Panipat, 308-309.
Aislabie, chancellor of the exchequer,
corruption of, in connection with the
South Sea Bubble, 133-134.
Aix-la-Chapelle,Treatyof, 196-197; French
dissatisfaction with, 210.
Akbar, 167.
Alberoni, Giulio, Cardinal, Spanish
statesman, 124 ; Jacobite schemes of,
126-127 ; expelled from Spain, 128.
Alciphron, Berkeley's, 265.
Alessandria, Convention of, 454.
Alexander I., Tsar of Russia, 456.
Alexandria, battle of, 456.
619
526 England and the British Empire
Ati Vardy Khan, 240, 241.
Alien Act, English, Scottish address for
repeal of, 85 ; repealed, 86.
Allan, Ethan, 335.
Allegiance, Oath of, imposed on office-
holders and members of parliament
(Ireland), 23.
Almanza, battle of, 91.
Alsace, assigned to France by the Treaty
of Utrecht, 109 ; Austrian desire to
recover, 436.
Ambur, battle of, 202.
Amelia, daughter of George n., pro-
SDsed marriage of, to Frederick the
real, 150.
America, British struggle with Spain and
France in, 159 et seq. ; British and
French in, 163-164 ; the Anglo-French
struggle in (1748-1754), 204 et seq. ;
Anglo-French contest (1754), 213 ; do-
mestic politics of, and relations with
the mother-country, 276 et seq. ; resists
Grenville's policy, v&^etseq. ; extension
of the Mutiny Act in, 289 ; Townshend's
taxes, 299, repealed, except the tea tax,
323 ; increasing estrangement of, 330 ;
prepares for war, 332; the Declaration of
Rights, 333 ; the War of Independence,
334 et seq. ; Declaration of Indepen-
dence, 338 ; Saratoga, 342 ; treaty with
France, 342-344 ; North's final attempt
at conciliation, 344 ; capitulation of
Yorktown, 352 ; peace concluded with,
355 ; the United States of, 412 ; the
affair of Nootka Sound, 416 ; effect on
France of the War of Independence,
420-421.
Amherst, Jeffery, first Baron, takes Louis-
bourg, 226-227 ! succeeds Abercromby
in Canada, 231-232 ; completes the
conquest of Canada, 237.
Amiens, Peace of, 432, 464.
Amin Chand, 242.
Amnesty, Act of (Ireland), 476.
Analogy of Religion, Butler's, 265.
Andre", Major John, capture and execu-
tion of, 349.
Anglesey, earl of, 116.
Anglicanism, hostility to Puritanism, 6 ;
in Ireland, 471, 473.
Angria, piratical confederacy of, de-
stroyed by Clive, 239.
Anne and the succession, 2-3; quarrels
with Mary, 31 ; political position of,
after the death of Mary, 37 ; accession
of, 64 ; reign of, 64-115 ; Tory and
High Anglican sympathies of, 76 ; her
dislike of the Hanoverian succession,
113 ; death of, 115.
Tsarina of Russia, death of, 163.
Anson, George, Lord, 171 ; at Finisterre,
195 ; his view of the Minorca affair,
215 ; and the diversions on the French
coast, 226.
Antwerp, Marlborough's schemes for the
capture of, thwarted by the Dutch, 67 ;
capture of, by the allies, 75 ; taken by
Saxe, 195 ; in relation to France and
the Scheldt, 427.
Anwar ud-Din, 197, 198, 201 ; killed at
Ambur, 202.
Arcola, battle of, 442.
Arcot, capture and defence of, by Clive,
202-203 1 Wellesley and the nawab,
461.
Argyll, John Campbell, duke of, high
commissioner in Scotland, 85 ; helps
to overthrow Bolingbroke, 115; ap-
pointed commander-in-chief in Scot-
land, 116 ; dispatched against Mar,
119; at Sheriffmuir, 120; and the
Porteous riots, 151.
Arkwright, Richard, his spinning-jenny,
494-
Armed Neutrality, the, 350, 455 ; (note
on), 516-517.
Army, Standing, and the Bill of Rights,
5 ; the Mutiny Act, 6-7 ; Tory dislike
of the, 77 ; Pitt's Militia Bill, 218 ; Pitt
the younger, and, 434 ; (note on), 511
et seq.
Ami, battle of, 203.
Arnold, Benedict, 335 ; at Quebec, 336 ;
joins the British, 349 ; Clinton's junc-
tion with, 352.
Articles, Committee of the, abolished, 13.
Lords of the, 9.
of Grievance, Scottish, 13.
Aryans, invasions of India by, 165.
Asafud-Daulah, 361 ; Hastings and, 364.
Aschaffenburg, Lord Stair at, 177.
Assiento, the, transferred from France to
Great Britain by the Treaty of Utrecht,
no, 131, 157.
Association, the, for the protection of
William HI., 39.
of Ideas, doctrine of, 265.
Atholl, 87.
Atterbury, Francis, bishop of Rochester,
Jacobite plot of, 141.
Augmentation Bill (Ireland), 321.
Augsburg, the League of, 25-26 ; war of
the, 37 et seq.
Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, Princess, married
to Frederick, Prince of Wales. 150.
Augustan Age (of English Literature),
258-259.
Augustus the Strong, king of Saxony
and Poland, 153; joins the league
against Austria, 174.
Index
521
Aurangzib, Mogul, ejects East India Com-
pany from Hugli, 55 ; and the Mah-
rattas, 167-168.
Austen, Jane, 485.
Australia, Captain Cook's voyage to,
413 ; annexation of, 413-414.
Austria, in the League of Augsburg, 26,
41 ; claims to the Spanish succession,
43-49 ; the Grand Alliance, 52 ; in the
war of the Spanish succession (see
Eugene), 65-76, 91-94, 97-99, *°4. 105 ;
the Treaty of Utrecht, 109 ; importance
of friendly relations with, to George I.,
123, 124; and the Triple Alliance, 125;
Charles vi. and the succession of Maria
Theresa, 135-136 ; relations with Spain
in regard to Italy, 136 ; Walpole's di-
plomacy with, 140; Prussian adherence
to, 150; war of the Polish succession,
153-154 ; the Pragmatic Sanction, 161-
163; war of the Austrian succession,
172-183, 194-196; alliance with France,
209 et seq. ; secret treaty with Russia
against Prussia, 216-217 ; the Treaty
of Versailles, 216, (ii) 220 ; in the Seven
Years' War, 217, 220-222, 224, 227,235,
237 ; and the Peace of Paris, 254-255 ;
Treaty of Hubertsburg, 255 ; position
of, in 1784, 414, 415 ; relations with
Holland, 415 ; France declares war
on (1792), 423 ; in the first coalition,
436-438, 440-442, 446 ; and the partition
of Poland (ii), 440 ; Pitt's subsidies to,
440 ; makes peace with France, 446 ;
in the second coalition against France,
452-455'
Austrian succession, the (table), 509 ; war
of the, 172-182, 194-196.
BABAR, conquest of Hindustan by, 167.
Baillie, William, defeated by Haidar Ali,
370.
Baird, Sir David, 456.
Baker, and the defence of Derry, 18.
Balaji Rao, 309.
Balance of Power, the, relation of the
Spanish succession to, 44 et seq. , 104.
Balance of trade, 112, 399-400.
Ballad literature, 486, 487.
Balmerino, Arthur Elphinstone, Lord,
executed, 191.
Baltic, the, ejection of Sweden from,
123-124 ; Russia secures predominance
in, by the Treaty of Nystad, 129 ; free-
dom of British shipping in, 129 ; Russia
and the, 414, 417 ; battle of the, 455-
456-
Bank of England, creation of the, 35, 61
et seq. ; a Whig corporation, 131 ; sus-
pension of cash payments by, 474.
Bantry Bay, battle of, 21, 27.
Barcelona, Louis Xiv.'s designs on, 35;
capture of, 41 ; captured by Peter-
borough, 74 ; besieged by the French
and relieved by Leake and Byng,
75-76.
Barclay's plot, 38-39.
Barre", Colonel, and the Wilkes affair,
284 ; protests against Grenville's
Stamp Act, 287.
Barrier Treaty, the, 97-98.
Barrington, Admiral, in the West Indies,
348.
Barwell, Richard, 359.
Basel, Treaty of, 440.
Bassein, offered by Ragoba in return for
British help, 367 ; retained by Britain,
37i'
Bastille, the, wrecking of, 421.
Batavian Republic, the, 440, 447.
Bath, earl of. See Pulteney.
Battle of the Books, Swift's, 260.
Battles : —
Aboukir Bay, 449-450 ; 456.
Aghrim, 22.
Alexandria, 456.
Almanza, 91.
Ambur, 202.
Arcola, 442.
Ami, 203.
Athlone, 22.
Baltic, 455-456.'
Bantry Bay, 21, 27.
Barcelona, 74.
Beachy Head, 21, 27.
Belleisle(Hawke), 195.
Bergen, 228.
Blenheim, 71-72.
Boyne, 21.
Brandywine Creek, 341.
Brest, 36.
Bunker Hill, 335.
Burkersdorf, 253.
Buxar, 312.
Camperdown, 431, 446, 447.
Castlebar, 476.
Clifton, 189.
Colt Brig, 186.
Copenhagen, 456.
Cork, 22.
Cowpens, 351.
Crefeld, 225.
Culloden, 190.
Derry (siege), 18-19.
Dettingen, 177-178.
Dogger Bank, 351.
Dominica, 349.
Dunkeld, 12.
Falkirk, 189.
Finisterre, 195.
522 England and the British Empire
Battles — continued.
Fontenoy, 181-182.
Fort Duquesne, 213.
' Glorious First of June/ the, 438-439.
Great Meadows, 204.
Gross- Jagersdorf, 224.
Guildford Court House, 351.
Hastenbeck, 223.
Hochkirchen, 227.
Hohenfriedberg, 182.
Hohenlinden, 455.
Jemappes, 427.
Kaveripak, 203.
Killiecrankie, 12.
Kinsale, 22.
Kolin, 221.
Kunersdorf, 236.
La Hogue, 32.
Lagos, 229.
Landen, 33.
Lauffeldt, 195.
Leuthen, 225.
Lexington, 334-335-
Liegnitz, 237.
Lille (siege), 94.
Limerick (siege), 22.
Lobositz, 217.
Lodi, 442.
Malaga, 73.
Malplaquet, 98-99.
Marengo, 454.
Maxen, 236.
Minden, 228.
Mollwitz, 173.
Montenotte, 441.
Neerwinden, 33.
Newton Butler, 19.
Nile, 449-45°-
Novi, 452.
Panipat, 309.
Passaro, 127.
Plassey, 222, 244.
Prague, 221.
Prestonpans, 186-187.
Pultawa, 91.
Quiberon, 230-231.
Ramillies, 74-75.
Raucoux, 195.
Rivoli, 442.
Rossbach, 225.
St. Vincent, 443.
Saints, the, 354.
Schellenberg, 71.
Sheriffmuir, 120.
Steinkirk, 32-33.
Ticonderoga, 227.
Torgau, 237.
Toulon, bombardment of, 92.
Trebbia, 452.
Turcoing, 438.
Battles — continued.
Turin, 74,
Ushant, 347, 438-439.
Valmy, 426.
Vinegar Hill, 475.
Wandewash, 237, 248.
Wattignies, 437.
Wellinghausen, 251.
Wynendael, 94.
Zorndorf, 227.
. Zurich, 453.
Bavaria, Joseph, electoral prince of, and
the Spanish succession, 44-45 ; death
of, 46 ; Max Emmanuel, elector of,
supports Louis xiv., 49; joins Louis
xiv., 66, 67 ; ravaged by Marlborough,
71; French alliance with, 174; alliance
of, with Austria, 180, 181. See Max
Emmanuel, Charles Albert, Maximilian,
Joseph.
Beachy Head, battle of, 21, 27.
Beckford, William, lord mayor of
London, attacks the king and the
government, 325.
Bedford, John Russell, fourth duke of,
ally of Bute, 255 ; refuses to join
Grenville's ministry, 281 ; accepts
office, 282 ; and the king, 290, 291 ;
and the Grafton ministry, 301 ; and
the American crisis, 302.
Begums, the Oudh, 361 et seq.
Behar, 240 ; invasion of, by Shah Alam
and Shuja Daulah, 248 ; British
dominion in, 310.
Belleisle, Fouquet de, 173, 174.
capture of, 251 ; Minorca restored
in exchange for, 254.
Benares, the insurrection of, 362, 363,
364. 370.
Bengal, 240 ; Clive's conquest of, 241
etseq., 308; British dominion in, 310
et seq. ; maladministration of the East
India Company and famine in, 356-
357; reorganisation, 358 et set/.;
Warren Hastings, governor of, 357,
360 ; Cornwallis's permanent land settle-
ment in, 410-411.
Bentham, Jeremy, 491-492.
Bentinck, William. See Portland.
Berar Raja, the. See Bhonsla.
Berg, duchy of, the Emperor Charlesvi.
and Frederick William's claim to, 172.
Berkeley, George, bishop of Cloyne, 265.
Berlin, Austrian cavalry raid to, 224-225.
Bernard, governor at Boston, 301, 302.
Berry, duke of, 118.
Berwick, James, duke of, sent to conspire
with the English Jacobites, 39 ; re-
pulsed by earl of Galway in Spain, 76;
defeats Galway at Almanza, 91, 93.
Index
523
Bhonsla, the, 168, 240, 314, 315, 367 ;
Hastings' relations with, 368, 370.
Black Friday, 188.
••• Hole of Calcutta, the, 240, 241.
Sea, Russia and the, 414.
— — Watch, the, 193.
Blair Atholl, castle of, 12.
Blake, William, 483.
Blenheim campaign, the, 69-71.
Bohemia, possession of, regained by
Austria, 177 ; attacked by Frederick
the Great, 179, 180.
Boigne, de, commander of Sindhia's
forces, 459.
Bolingbroke, Henry St. John, viscount,
joins the ministry, 79 ; in opposition,
96 ; aspires to the leadership, 103-104 ;
and the peace negotiations with Louis
XIV., 107-108; aggressive Toryism of,
109; intrigues for the leadership, 113,
114-115 ; carries the Schism Bill, and
triumphs over Oxford (Harley), 114-
115 ; overthrown by the Whigs, 115 ;
dismissal of, 116; flight and impeach-
ment of, 118 ; dismissed by James
Stuart, 121 ; returns to England, 135.
Bombay, 308.
Bonaparte, Napoleon, afterwards French
emperor, 305, 431 ; at Toulon, 437 ;
in Italy, 441-442 ; ascendency of,
446; his Asiatic schemes, 448; Egyptian
expedition, 448 ; in Syria, 4.53 ; returns
to France and becomes First Consul,
453 I permits return of the tmigrts,
454 ; crosses the St. Bernard, 454 ;
Marengo, 454 ; Peace of Amiens, 464.
Borrowing, government, 59 et seq.
Boscawen, Admiral Edward, dispatched
to India, 196 ; besieges Madras, 199 ;
pursues the French fleet to the St.
Lawrence, 213 ; at Louisbourg, 227 ; at
Lagos, 229.
Boston, leads the opposition to the Stamp
Act, 289 : tea tax riots at, 301 ; the
'Boston Massacre,' 323; the ' Boston
tea-party,' 328-329, 330-332, 334-336;
evacuated by Howe, 337.
Boswell, James, 484-485.
Botany Bay, 414.
Bouchain, capture of, 105.
Bouffiers, Marshal, the marquis of,
baffled by Marlborough, 66.
Bougainville, Louis Antoine de, 233.
Boulton, Matthew, 496.
Bourbon, Louis, duke of, 135, 139.
Bourbons, the, and the Spanish succes-
sion, 43 et seq. , 48 ; the menace of the,
49 ; Whig opposition to their claim to
Spain, 96, 105 ; the Family Compact (i),
IS3-I54 J their struggle for European
supremacy, 159 et seq. ; the Family
Compact (ii), 179; and Italy, 194-195 ;
and the Hapsburgs, 208 - 209 ; the
struggle with, 353, 378 ; Britain's
domestic unity in the face of the danger
from, 379; the Bourbon Monarchies
(table), 510.
Boyle, Robert, father of modern chem-
istry, 264.
Boyne, battle of the, 21.
' Boys, ' the, 150, 175.
Brabant, the French expelled from, by
Marlborough, 75; Marlborough com-
pletes conquest of, 94.
Braddock, General Edward, his disas-
trous campaign in America, 213.
Brahminism, 165-166.
Brandenburg, 161-162.
Brandywine Creek, battle of, 341.
Braxfield, Robert Macqueen, Lord, 467-
468.
Bremen, 126, 129.
Breslau, Treaty of, 176, 179 ; captured by
Austria, 225.
Brest, failure of English attack upon, 36;
Hawke's watch over the French fleet
at, 229.
Bribery and corruption, Walpole's, 146-
147 ; Danby the originator of, 147 ;
Newcastle's view of, 147, 392.
Bridgewater, Francis Egerton, duke of,
499-
Bridport, Alexander Hood, Viscount, 441.
Brindley, James, canal constructor, 499-
500.
Bristol unseats Burke, 377.
Brittany, royalist insurrection in, 436;
Hoche restores order in, 439.
Broad-bottomed administration, the, 181,
205 et seq.
Broglie, Victor Fran9ois, Marshal, the
due de, 228.
Browne advances on Pirna, 217.
Bruce, 370.
Bruges, capture of, 75.
Brumaire, the coup d'etat of, 453.
Brunswick-Bevern, duke of, 224-225.
Brussels, captured by the allies, 75 ; by
Saxe, 195.
Buckingham, John Hobart, earl of,
viceroy of Ireland, 379.
Budget, Pitt's 1784, success of, 403.
Bullion, and the balance of trade, 112.
Bunker Hill, battle of, 335.
Buonaparte. See Bonaparte.
Burgoyne, General John, 335, 341 ; sur-
render of, at Saratoga, 342.
Burgundy, duke of, joint-commander of
the French forces in Flanders, 92 ; de-
feated at Oudenarde, 93 ; death of, 107.
524 England and the British Empire
Burke, Edmund, 292, 293 ; protests
against the French annexation of
Corsica, 305 ; condemns the govern-
ment's American policy, 333 ; opposes
the Absentee Tax, 373 ; his Economic
Reform Bill (i), 376 ; loses his seat for
Bristol, 377 ; associated with Fox, 378 ;
his Economic Reform Bill (ii), 378 ;
at the trial of Warren Hastings, 408 ;
opposes Pitt's foreign policy, 418 ; and
the French Revolution, 421 ; his
Reflections on the French Revolution,
423-424; dissociated from Fox, 426;
literary work of, 489 et seq.
Burkersdorf, battle of, 253.
Burney, Fanny, 485.
Burns, Robert, 262, 467, 487-488.
Bussy, marquis of, defeats Anwar ud-
Din, 202 ; influence of, with the Nizam,
239, 241 , 245 ; taken prisoner at Wande-
wash, 248; lands in India, 371.
Bute, John Stuart, third earl of, his influ-
ence with George III., 249-250; un-
popularity of, 253 ; breaks up the
Whig connection, 275 ; resigns, 280.
Butler, Joseph, bishop of Durham, 265.
Buxar, battle of, 312.
Byng, Admiral Sir George (Viscount
Torrington), reinforces Leake for relief
of Barcelona, 75 ; defeats the Spanish
fleet off Cape Passaro, 127.
— — Admiral Sir John, aoandons Port
Mahon, 214; brought home under
arrest, 215; trial and execution of,
218.
Byron, Admiral, 348.
CABINET, the, inception of, 34; and
George I., 117; developments of, 149.
Cadiz, Rooke's unsuccessful attack on,
66-67 ! Jervis and the Spanish fleet at,
447-
Caermarthen, Thomas Danby, marquess
of. See Danby.
Coesarism, 447.
Calcutta, East India Company's factory
at, 55, 169 ; the Black Hole of, 222,
240-241.
Calendar, the reform of, 206.
Calicoes, Act forbidding the wearing of,
144.
Calliaud, Colonel, 248.
Cambrai, conference of, 136-137.
Camden, Charles Pratt, first earl of, and
the Wilkes case, 281-282 ; his defence
of the Corn Order in Council, 298 ; and
the American crisis, 302, 303-304 ; and
the law of libel, 326.
John Pratt, second earl, lord-lieu-
tenant of Ireland, 473.
Cameron of Lochiel, Donald, 185.
Cameronians, the, opposed to the Union,
87, 89.
Campbell, Captain, 15.
Camperdown, Adam Duncan, Viscount,
at the Texel, 445-446.
battle of, 431, 446, 447.
Campo Formio, Treaty of, 431, 446, 447.
Canada, 163-164; British and French in,
182, 204 ; the Anglo-French contest for,
215, 224 ; Wolfe and Amherst, 231 et
seq. ; under Murray and Carleton, 276;
the Quebec Act, 331-332; American
invasion of, 336 ; the Franco-American
alliance and, 344 et seq. ; affairs of, and
the Canada Act, 413.
Canals, development of, 499.
Canning, George, retires with Pitt, 464.
Cannon, Colonel, 12.
Cape Town, British occupation of, 440.
Capital and labour, relations of, 497.
Carleton, Sir Guy, governor of Canada,
276; and the Quebec Act, 331-332;
prepares for a siege, 336 ; superseded by
Burgoyne, 340.
Captain, his memoirs", 514.
Carlisle, Frederick Howard, fifth earl of,
viceroy of Ireland, 380.
trial of Scottish Jacobites at, 120;
captured by Charles Edward, 187.
Carlos, Don, 137, 140, 152; proclaimed
king of Naples and Sicily, 154 ;
neutrality of, in the war of the Austrian
succession, 176; becomes Charles in.
of Spain, 236.
Carnatic, the, 168, 201, 202, 203 ; Lally-
Tollendal in, 245; collapse of Lally-
Tollendal in, 247-248 ; invasion of, by
Haidar Ali, 369-370; annexation of, by
Britain, 461-462.
Carnot, Lazare Nicolas Marguerite, 432,
Caroline, Queen, supports Walpole, 139,
145, 146; death of, 151.
Carrickfergus, landing of William III. at,
21.
Carron ironworks, the, 495, 496.
Carstares, 13.
Cartagena, siege of, 171.
Carteret, John (afterwards Earl Gran-
ville), secretary of state in the Towns-
hend and Walpole ministry, 134, 135;
policy of, defeated in the cabinet, 138 ;
favourite of George II., 139; becomes
foreign secretary, 175, 176 ; success
of his policy, 176 ; and the Hanau pro-
ject, 178-179; resignation of, 180-181.
Cartwright, Edward, introduces steam-
power loom, etc., 494.
Caste, 165.
Index
525
Castle of Indolence, Thomson's, 262.
Castle Kackrent, Edgeworth's, 485.
Castlebar, race of, the, 476.
Castlereagh, Robert Stewart, viscount
(afterwards marquis of Londonderry),
464, 479.
Catalonia, Louis Xiv.'s operations in,
foiled, 36; accepts Charles m., 74;
Britain's desertion of and Philip v.'s
revenge on, in.
Catherine, Tsarina of Russia, 252 ; and
the first partition of Poland, 324 ; makes
alliance with the Emperor Joseph II.,
417, 418 ; death of, 443.
Catholic emancipation. 472, 477 et seq.
Catholicism, Roman, in Ireland, 469-470.
Cavaliers (Scottish parliamentary party),
and the Union, 82 et seq. ; dissensions
of, 87.
Ceylon, held by the Dutch, 169 ; captured
from the Dutch, 458 ; and the Peace of
Amiens, 464.
Chanda Sahib, 201, 202 ; murder of, 203.
Chandernagur, French trading-station
at, 169, 197 ; capture of, 241.
Charlemont, leader of reforming party in
Irish parliament, 375 ; and the volun-
teers, 379, 393.
Charles Edward Stuart (the Young
Chevalier or Pretender), 141, 179 ;
prepares for his attempt, 184 ; lands at
Moidart, 185 ; raises his standard at
Glenfinnan, 185 ; proclaims James
Vill. at Perth and Edinburgh, 186 ;
Prestonpans, 186 ; holds court at
Holyrood, 187; the march to Derby,
187-188 ; the retreat to Glasgow, 188-
189 ; to the Highlands, 189-190 ;
Culloden, 190 ; escapes to France,
191.
Charles VI., emperor (Archduke Charles
of Austria), accepts the terms of
Utrecht, 109 ; and the Austrian succes-
sion, 135-136 ; his agreement with
Spain, 137; and the Pragmatic Sanc-
tion, 152 et seq. ; gains of, from the War
of the Polish succession, 155; his bad
treatment of- Frederick William i. of
Prussia, 162 ; death of, 163.
Charles vil., emperor (Charles Albert of
Bavaria), death of, 180.
Charles u. of Spain, 42, 43; arrange-
ments for the succession in the will of,
48 ; death of, 49.
Charles in. of Spain, his hatred of
England, 236. See Carlos, Don.
Charles iv. of Spain, 440.
Charles Albert, elector of Bavaria, and
the Pragmatic Sanction, 152, 163; his
claims to the empire and the Hapsburg
inheritance, 172, 173, 174 ; elected
Emperor Charles vn., 176.
Charles Emmanuel of Savoy, joins the
Bourbon Alliance, 154.
of Sardinia, and Piedmont,
452-
Charles XII. of Sweden, 90-91 ; successes
and disasters of, 111-112; British rela-
tions with, 124 ; death of, 128.
Charles, Archduke, of Austria (i), and the
first Partition Treaty, 45-46 ; and the
second Partition Treaty, 46 ; the allies
propose to make him king of Spain, 67,
68 ; at Lisbon, 72 ; proclaimed at
Madrid by the earl of Galway, 76; be-
comes empe:or of Germany, 104. See
Charles VI., emperor.
Charles, Archduke (ii), repulses the
French, 442, 452.
Charleston, capture of, 349.
Charlestown, 335.
Chatterton, Thomas, 483, 486.
Chauth, levied by the Mahrattas, 240.
Chesapeake Bay, De Grasse at, 352.
Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope,
fourth earl of, 138 ; dismissed from the
cabinet by Walpole for opposing the
Excise Bill, 149; and Carteret's
ministry, 175 ; reforms the calendar,
206 ; letters of, 266.
Cherbourg, British attack on, 226.
Lhcvy Chase, the ballad of, 486.
Cheyt Singh, Hastings and, 363, 364.
Children, employment of, 498-499.
Chin 3U_ ah, Dutch trading-station at, 169;
Clive's collision with the Dutch at, 247.
Choiseul, Etienne Fran9<->is, due de, 228 ;
plans an invasion of England, 229 ; his
diplomatic moves, 236; dismissed, 324.
Christian of Baireuth, 92.
Church, the, Act of Security for, 89 ;
spirit of, in the eighteenth century, 262
et seq.
Churchill, Arabella, 39.
Admiral George, 95, 96.
John. See Maryborough, duke of.
Cider tax, the, 280 ; repealed, 294.
Cisalpine Republic, the, 447.
Citizen of the World, Goldsmith's, 485.
Claim of Rights, Scottish, n.
Clan system, the, in Scotland, 192-193.
Clare, John Fitzgibbon, earl of, 472,
476.
Clarendon, Henry Hyde, earl of, im-
plicated in Preston's plot, 30.
Clarissa Harlowe, 261.
Claverhouse, John Graham of. See
Dundee.
Clavering, General Sir John, member of
the Bengal Council, 359, 360; ap-
526 England and the British Empire
pointed governor-general, but dies,
362.
Clergy, the, non-jurors, 4.
Scottish, fear restoration of Prelacy
from the Act of Union, 87.
Clifton, battle of, 189.
Clinton, General Sir Henry, 335, 339 et
seq. ; succeeds Howe, 347 ; at New
York, 352.
Clipping of coinage, practice of, 62-63.
Clive, Robert, Lord, takes Arcot, 202-203 '<
victory at Plassey, 222 ; returns to
England and enters parliament, but is
unseated, 239 ; returns to India, 239 ;
destroys piratical confederacy at
Gheriah, 239 ; takes command of
Fort St. David, 239 ; the conquest of
Bengal by, 240 et seq. ; in Bengal, 312
et seq. ; his triumph over a proposed
vote of censure, 357 ; his policy, 365.
Coal, 271, 492, 495.
Coalition ministry of North and Fox, 382
et seq. \ defeat and dismissal of, 384-
385-
the, against France (i), 431 et seq.,
434etseg.', (ii), 451.
Colbert, Jean Baptiste, minister of Louis
XIV., organiser of French maritime
development, 27.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 482, 483.
Collier, Jeremy, 257.
Collins, William, 262, 482.
Colonies, relations with the mother-
country under George III., 276 et seq.
Colt Brig, canter of, 186.
Combination, statutes against, 498.
Comedy in the eighteenth century, 486.
Commerce, progress of, during the reign
of William III. , 54 et seq. ; of Scotland
and Ireland during the reign of William
in., 57; ad verse effect of English policy
on, 58, 80, 8 1 ; relations of England
and Scotland, 86, 87; treaty with
France (1713), 112 ; Alberoni's con-
cessions to Great Britain, 124, 126;
Scottish, 143 ; Ireland's grievances,
375 ; Pitt's proposed treaty with Ire-
land, 394 <?/5^/. ; French treaty, 404.
Commission of Inquiry Bill (William in.),
43. 47-
Committee of the Articles, abolition of,
J3-
of Public Safety, the (France),
Commons, House of, resolutions on the
flight of James II., 2.
Commune, the, captured by Danton and
Robespierre, 425.
' Compact of the Escurial,' the, 153.
Comprehension Act, proposal for, 6.
Compton, Sir Spenser (Wilmington).
See Wilmington.
Conciliation Bills, North's, 347.
Conflans, Admiral, defeated by Hawke
at Quiberon, 230.
Congreve, William, 259.
Connaught, Jacobitism in, 21 ; insurrec-
tion in (1798), 475.
Consols, establishment of, 205-206.
Constitutional monarchy, principle of,
established by the Revolution, 54.
Contades, Marshal the marquis de, in the
Minden campaign, 228.
Continental Congress, the, 332-333, 335.
Convention of 1689, the, 2.
• Scottish (1689), 10-11.
• of Klosterseven. See Klosterseven.
of Wargam, 368, 369.
of Westminster, 212.
Conway, General, and the Wilkes affair,
284; and the American crisis, 302.
Cook, Captain, voyages of, 413-414.
Coote, Sir Eyre, at Wandewash, 248,
360, 370, 371.
Cope, Sir John, marches to Inverness,
185-186 ; defeated at Prestonpans, 186-
187.
Copenhagen, Nelson at, 456.
Corfu, 447.
Cork, captured by Marlborough, 22.
Corn, exportation of, forbidden by Order
in Council, 298.
Cornwallis, Charles, first marquess, in
America, 348, 349 ; governor-general
of Bengal, 406 et seq. ; retires with Pitt,
464 ; in Ireland, 476 et seq.
Corruption, parliamentary, 392.
Corsica, annexed by France, 30^, 323;
captured by Hood, 438 ; abandoned,
442.
Cotton trade, the, growth of, 267-269,
497-
Country party, the, and the Scots parlia-
ment (1702), 81, 82 ; and the Union,
82-83, 85,
Court party, the, and the Cavaliers, 82-
83-
Covenanters, the, 9 ct seq.
Cowpens, battle of, 351.
Cowper, William, 483-484.
Crabbe, George, 483-484.
Crefeld, battle of, 225.
Cromartie, Lord, pardoned, 191.
Crompton, Samuel, 494.
Crosby, lord mayor of London, and the
publication of the debates of the House
of Commons, 327.
Crown, proposal of Fletcher of Saltoun
to limit the power of, in Scotland, 83,
85 ; and the people, 387-389.
Index
527
Crown lands, opposition of parliament to
disposal of, by William in., 38.
— — - Point, Canadian outpost, 164 ; cap-
tured by Amherst, 232 ; by Allan and
Arnold, 335 ; seized by Carleton, 339.
Culloden, battle of, 190.
Cumberland, William, duke of, his valour
at Dettingen, 178 ; his attempt to re-
lieve Tournay, 181 ; at Fontenoy, 181 ;
evaded by Charles Stuart's army, 188 ;
pursuit by, 189 ; his victory at Culloden
and subsequent butchery, 190-191 ; re-
sumes command in the Netherlands,
195 ; political importance of, increased
by the death of Frederick, Prince of
Wales, 207; obtains Pitt's dismissal,
219 ; at Hastenbeck, 223 ; at Kloster-
seven, 223 ; Pitt's magnanimity to, 224 ;
opposed to the desertion of Frederick
the Great, 252 ; endeavours to help
George in,, 291 ; death of, 292.
Currency, reform of the (William III.),
38; issue of new (1695), 62-63.
Customs treaties, simplification of, by Pitt,
^4°5-
Cutts, 'Salamander,' at Blenheim, 72.
DALHOUSIE, JAMES, marquis of, 308.
Dalrymple, James, Viscount Stair, 14.
John, earl of Stair, 177.
• Sir John, master of Stair, 13-16.
Danby, Thomas Osborne, earl of, and
the accession of William in. and Mary,
2 ; made lord president of the Council,
8 ; made marquis of Caermarthen and
duke of Leeds, 30 ; alienated by
James II., 31; retains office in spite of
Whig ascendency, 34 ; accused of cor-
ruption in connection with the East
India Company and retires, 37 ;
originator of parliamentary corruption,
147.
Danton, Georges Jacques, 425, 435.
Darien Scheme, the, 57-58.
Dartmouth, secretary of state, under
Anne, 103.
Dashwood, Sir Francis, chancellor of the
exchequer, 280.
Daun, General, 221-222, 224 ; defeats
Frederick the Great at Hochkirchen,
227 ; inactivity of, 236.
Davenant, Charles, 56, 142.
Debates of the House of Commons,
publication of, 326-327.
Deccan, the, 165 et seq, ; Bussy, Clive,
and the, 241.
Declaration of Independence, America,
338.
of Right, 3 et seq.
Declaratory Act, the, 144, 293 ; effect of,
in America, 294 ; the Irish Act, 380,
repealed, 381.
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
the, Gibbon's, 489.
' Defenders' (Ireland), 473.
Defoe, Daniel, pilloried for his Shortest
Way with Dissenters, 78-79 ; works of,
260-261.
De Grasse, Franpois Joseph, Admiral
Comte de, in the West Indies, 351 ; at
Chesapeake Bay, 352 ; returns to the
West Indies, defeated and captured by
Rodney at the Saints, 354.
Democracy, the Whigs and, 130.
Denmark, alliance with Russia against
Sweden, 417.
Derby, Charles Edward Stuart at, 188.
Admiral, 351.
Derry, siege of, 18.
Derwentwater, James Radcliffe, earl of,
Jacobite leader in the 'Fifteen,' 119;
executed, 121.
Deserted Village, the, 483.
D'Estaing, Admiral Comte, at Sandy
Hook, 347 ; in the West Indies, 348.
Dettingen, battle of, 177-178.
Devon, coast of, raided by French fleet, 22.
Devonshire, William Cavendish, fourth
duke of, ministry of, 215.
Dictionary, Johnson's, 484.
Dinwiddie, governor of Virginia, 213.
Directory, the (France) 435, 441, 442-443,
446, 447; and Napoleon, 448.
Dispensing power, restriction of, by the
Bill of Rights, 5.
Dissenters, Tory attack on (1702), 78-79 ;
Walpole's attitude towards, 147-148.
Diwani, 314, 360-361.
Doab, the, Wellesley and, 462.
Dogger Bank, battle of, 351.
Dominica, capture of, 251 ; battle of, 349.
Dorchester, Lord. See Carleton, Sir Guy.
D'Orvilliers, Admiral, 347.
Doutelle, the, voyage of, 185.
Drake, governor of Fort William, 240.
Drama, the, in the eighteenth century,
257, 486.
Drapier Letters, Swift's, 144, 261.
Dravidians, the, in India, 165.
Dresden, Treaty of, 182 ; occupied by
Frederick the Great, 217; retaken, 236.
Dryden, John, 257 et seq.
Dublin, proceedings of the Irish parlia-
ment summoned by James n. at, 19.
Dumbarton's regiment, mutiny of, 7.
Dumouriez, Charles Franpois, 425, 426;
defeats the Austrians at Jemappes, 427.
Dunbar, William, 487.
Duncan, Adam. See Camperdown.
Dundas, Henry (afterwards Viscount
528
England and the British Empire
Melville), his India Bill, 383, -406 ;
president of the Board of Control
(India), 407 ; and the impeachment of
Warren Hastings, 408 ; his incom-
petence at the War Office, 434 ; retires
with Pitt, 464.
Dundee, John Graham of Claverhouse,
viscount, lo-n ; evades arrest and
arouses the Highlands, 11-12 ; killed at
battle of Killiecrankie, 12.
Dungannon, Irish volunteer meeting at,
381.
Dunkeld, repulse of Jacobites at, 12.
Dunkirk, dismantling of, no, 125;
Great Britain and, 429 ; besieged by
Frederick, duke of York, 436-437.
Dunning, John (afterwards Lord Ash-
burton), his resolution, 304, 377.
Dupleix, Francois Joseph, 160 ; his en-
deavours to establish French supremacy
in India, 197 et seq. ; recalled to France,
203.
D'Usson, 22.
Dutch, the, trade of, with India, 169 ; at
Chinsurah, intrigue with Mir Jafar,
247. See Holland.
Duties, reduction of, by Pitt, 402.
EAST INDIA COMPANY, Danby accused
of corruption in connection with, 37 ;
development of, during reign of
William in., 55-56; economic attacks
on, 56 ; a Whig corporation, 131 ; pro-
gress of, 160, 197 et seq., 239, 245 ; con-
duct of the servants of, 311 ; effect on
America of the disposal of its tea, 328 ;
and Bengal, 356 et seq.
Dutch, 136, 169.
French, 197 et seq.
Economic Reform Bill, Burke's (i), 376 ;
(H), 378.
Economics, 54-63, 266-272, 398-405, 492-
5°5-
Edgeworth, Maria, 485.
Edinburgh, popular hostility in, to the
Union, 88 ; riots at, over the malt tax,
143; the Porteous riots at, 151 ; Charles
Edward Stuart at, 186-187.
Egremont, Charles Wyndham, Lord,
282.
Egypt, Napoleon's campaign in, 448 et
seq. ; and the Peace of Amiens, 464.
Eleanor of Neuberg, wife of Leopold i.,
connection of, with the question of the
Spanish succession, 44.
Election petitions, 175 ; treatment of, by
the House of Commons, 325.
Elections, struggle for freedom of, 275.
Eliott, George Augustus (afterwards Lord
Heathfield), 237 ; his defence of Gib-
raltar, 354-355.
Elizabeth, the, voyage of, 185.
Elizabeth Farnese, queen of Spain, 123,
140, 152, 153, 155 ; loses her power,
194.
Tsarina, her animosity to Frederick
the Great, 209 ; death of, 252.
Ellis, head of the British factory at Patna,
,311-
Emigre's, the, 421, 422, 436; efforts in
Vendee crushed by Hoche, 440-441 ;
Napoleon permits the return of, 453.
Ernsdorf, battle of, 237.
Enclosure, 269 et seq., 500 et seq.
Enquiry concerning the Human Under-
standing, Hume's, 265.
Enquiry concerning the Principles of
Morals, Hume's, 265.
Episcopacy, abolition of, in Scotland, 13.
Essay on the Human Understanding,
Locke's, 265.
Essay on Man, Pope's, 258.
Essay on Woman, by John Wilkes, 282-
283.
Estrdes, Louis Charles Le Tellier, due
d', 223.
Eugene of Savoy, Prince, opposes the
French in North Italy, 65 ; retreats
from Italy, 67-68 ; at Blenheim, 71 ;
Italian campaign of 1706, 74 ; and the
invasion of France, 90, 91, 92.
Europe, definite entry of England into
the politics of, 54 ; affairs of, 1784-
1793, 414 et seq.
Evelina, 485.
Excise, 142-143; Walpole's Bill (1733),
148-149 ; revised by Pitt, 405.
Expenditure, national, increase of, during
the reign of William in., 58-59.
FALKIRK, battle of, 189.
Falkland Islands, dispute with Spain in,
323-324-
Family Compact (Bourbon), the, 153-154,
179 ; Choiseul's endeavours to renew,
250-251 ; broken by the French Revolu-
tion, 417.
Federal union, proposal of, by the Scots,
86 ; by Franklin, 204.
Fenwick, Sir John, attainder of, 40.
Ferdinand VI. of Spain, 194; death of,
236.
Ferdinand I., king of the Sicilies, 451.
Ferdinand of Brunswick, 224 ; his suc-
cesses against the French, 225 ; defeats
the French at Minden, 228 ; defeated by
tha French at Bergen, 228 ; renewed
success of, against the French, 237,
251. 253.
Index
529
Field deputies (Holland), Maryborough
hampered by, 65, 66, 67.
Fielding, Henry, 261, 485.
'Fifteen,' the, 119-121.
Finance, reorganisation of, under William
"I., 55-
land taxes, 33, 59, 299.
National Debt, 33, 60, 86, 129, 131-132,
250, 284, 401, 403, 474.
Bank of England, 35, 61 et seq., 131,
474-
Land Bank, 62.
South Sea Bubble, 132 et seq.
Consols, 205-206.
Fingal, Macpherson's, 487.
Fisher, Braxfield's sentence on, 467-468.
Fitzgerald, Lord Edward, 475.
Fitzgibbon, John. See Clare, earl of.
Fitzwilliam, William, fourth earl, 472.
Flanders, the French expelled from, by
Marlborough, 75.
Fleet prison, the, runaway marriages in
the precincts of, 206.
Fletcher, Andrew, of Saltoun, proposes
limitation of the powers of the Crown
in Scotland, 83, 85.
Fleurus, battle of, 438.
Fleury, Cardinal, minister of Louis XV.
of France, 140; supports Stanislaus of
Poland, 153 ; and the Family Com-
pact, 154; policy of, 155-156; 161, 173.
Flood, Henry, leader of Opposition
in Ireland, 373 ; accepts office, 375 ;
joins in Grattan's demands, 379 ; de-
mands Renunciation Act, 382; demands
Irish parliamentary reform, 393.
Florida, dispute with Spain as to boun-
daries of, 157, 160 ; exchanged by
Spain for Havana, 254.
Fontainebleau, Treaty of, 415.
Fontenoy campaign, the, 181 ; battle of,
181-182.
Forbes, Duncan, lord president, 143,
191, 192, 193.
Forde, Colonel Francis, at Masulipatam,
246.
Forster, Thomas, Jacobite leader, 119.
Fort Augustus, captured by Charles
Edward Stuart, 189.
*— Chartres, 164.
Duquesne, French expel the British
from, 204; Braddock's disastrous
attempt on, 213 ; captured by Amherst
and renamed Fort Pitt, 227.
Niagara, 164.
Pitt, 227.
St. David, 169 ; French attacks on,
199 ; Clive at, 239 ; captured by Lally,
245-
St. George, 169.
Fort William, East India Company's
factory at, 55, 169 ; taken by Suraj-ud-
Daulah, 240 ; recaptured by Clive, 241.
(Scotland), 14, 189.
Forty-five, the, 183 et seq.
Fox, Charles James, and the law of
libel, 326; antagonism of George in.
to, 328; his proposals for parliamentary
reform, 376; his quarrel with Shel-
burne, 378 ; coalition with North, 382
et seq. ; his India Bill, 383 et seq. ; Pitt's
treatment of, 391 ; opposes Pitt's Par-
liamentary Reform Bill, 392 ; denounces
Pitt's proposed commercial treaty with
Ireland, 395, and with France, 405 ;
and the Regency Bill, 397; carries the
Libel Act, 398; at the trial of Warren
Hastings, 408 ; opposes Pitt's foreign
policy, 418; and the French Revolu-
tion, 421 ; dissociated from Burke, 426 ;
and the French Revolution, 430 ; and
the peace negotiations with France,
442-443.
Henry (afterwards Lord Holland),
in office, 208 ; resigns, 215 ; ally of
Cumberland, 219 ; supports Bute, 253.
Fragment on Government, Bentham's,
491.
France: the struggle with Louis XIV.,
25 et seq., 30 et seq. \ the Peace of
Ryswick, 41 ; the Spanish succession
and the partition treaties, 42 et seq, ;
war renewed under command of Marl-
borough, 65 et seq. ; Treaty of Utrecht,
109, no; the Triple Alliance, 125;
allianceof, with Spaintorestore Bourbon
ascendency in Europe, 134; relations
with Britain and Spain, 134 ; and the
Pragmatic Sanction, 152 et seq. \
friendly relations with Spain, 152-153;
war of the Polish succession, 153-154 ;
the struggle for India, 160; alliance
of, with Prussia and the Emperor
Charles VII. , 179; the Family Com-
pact (ii), 179; Prussia withdraws her
alliance with, 182 ; attitude towards
Jacobitism, 183; the war with
(George n.), 194 et seq., 208 et seq. ;
alliance with Austria, 209 et seq. ; de-
signs for invasion of England, 213-
214; alliance wfth Austria, 220; and the
Falkland Islands, 324; alliance with
America, 342 et seq. \ attacks in the
West Indies, 348 ; peace concluded
with, 356 ; and Ireland, 378-379 ; Pitt's
commercial treaty with, 396, 404-405;
exhaustion of, at 1754, 414; maintains
the closure of the Scheldt, 415 ; rela-
tions with Spain, ^ibetseq. ; the Revolu-
tion, 421 et seq. ; declares war on
Innes's Eng. Hist. — Vol. in.
2L
530 England and the British Empire
Austria, 423 ; the September Massacres
and proclamation of the Republic, 426;
the Republic's war with Great Britain,
427 et seq. ; the powers and the Republic,
430 et seq. ; immense resources of, 432 ;
and the invasion of England, 447-448 ;
success of the Republic, 447 ; the native
powers of India and, 459 ; her position
in 1801, 463 ; the Peace of Amiens, 464.
Francis I., emperor, elected, 182; death
of, 297-298.
Francis n., emperor, 418.
Francis, duke of Lorraine (afterwards
emperor), 152; gives up Lorraine for
Tuscany, 153 ; candidate for the em-
pire, 163 ; becomes Emperor Francis I. ,
182 ; death of, 297.
Sir Philip, 359, 360, 362, 488-489.
Frankfort on the Maine, 228, 426.
Franklin, Benjamin, urges federation of
the American colonies, 204 ; and the
Stamp Act, 287; and the Hutchinson
letters, 329 ; delegate to Howe, 339 ;
conducts the peace negotiations for
America, 355.
Frederick I., king of Prussia, 162.
Frederick n., the Great, proposed mar-
riage of, to Amelia, daughter of
George n. 150, 162-163; the Silesian
war, 172-173 ; the Treaty of Klein-
Schnellendorf with Austria, 174; his
campaign in Moravia, 176 ; the Treaty
of Breslau, 176-177 ; attacks Bohemia,
179, 180 ; alliance of Saxony and Austria
against, 181 ; and the Peace of Aix-la-
Chapelle, 196 ; Russian hostility to,
209 ; decides upon alliance with Britain,
211 ; campaign in Saxony, 216-217 ; his
generalship, 221 ; Prague and Kolin,
221 ; Pitt's support of, 222 ; Rossbach
and Leuthen, 224 ; campaign in Mor-
avia, 227; the year 1755, 228; defeated
at Kunersdorf, 235-236 ; friendliness of
Peter in. of Russia towards, 252 ; and
the Peace of Paris, 254; Peace of
Hubertsburg, 255; rejects Pitt's over-
tures for a northern alliance, 297 : the
partition of Poland (i), 324 ; policy of,
after the Seven Years' War, 414-415 ;
death of, 416.
Frederick William I., king of Prussia,
162; tricked by the emperor of his claim
to the duchy of Berg, 172.
Frederick William II. of Prussia, 416; and
Poland, 417 ; Pitt's relations with, 418 ;
and the declaration of Pilnitz, 422 ;
and the war with France, 437-438.
Frederick William III. of Prussia, refuses
to join the second coalition against
France, 452.
Frederick William, the Great Elector,
161-162.
Frederick, Prince of Wales, his antagon-
ism to the king and queen, and associa-
tion of the Opposition with, 150-151 ;
death of, 207.
duke of York, his mismanagement,
452-
Frederikshalle, siege of, 128.
Free Trade, 394, 395, 401.
Freind, Dr. John, and Lord Peter-
borough, 514.
French Revolution, the, 398; 421-427;
the declaration of Pilnitz, 422; the
Legislative Assembly, 422-423 ; the
British attitude and Burke's Reflections,
423 et seq. ; and public opinion in
Britain, 465 et seq. ; impetus of, to
English drama, 486.
' Friends of the People,' 426, 467.
Fructidor (1797), the coup d'Etat of,
436.
Funded debt, the, 61.
Fiirstenlund, the, 415.
GAEKWAR, the, 168; Colonel Goddard
and, 368.
Gage, General Thomas, governor oi
Massachusetts, 330, 333, 334, 335.
Galway, retirement of the French from,
22.
Ruvigny, earl of, 42 ; his campaign
in Spain, 76 ; defeated at Almanza,
9i. 93, SIS-
Garrick, David, 486.
Gaspee, the, burning of, 328.
Genealogical tables : the British succes-
sion from James I. and VI., 506 ; tht
House of Hanover, 507 ; Hapsburg
and Bourbon intermarriages (Spanish
succession), 508 ; Austrian succession
509 ; Bourbon monarchies, 510.
General warrant, in the Wilkes affair
281 ; pronounced illegal, 282.
Genoa and Corsica, 305 ; capitulation o
Masse"na at, 454.
George I., accession of, 116; domestit
affairs of, and character, 116-117 ; am
foreign affairs.- 122 ; aversion of, t<
Russian predominance in the Baltic
129 ; supports Townshend agains
Carteret, 135 ; death of, 138 ; his policy
r38-i39-
George n. , as elector of Hanover, 92 ; a
Oudenarde (as electoral prince o
Hanover), 93 ; (as Prince of Wales
and the opposition to Stanhope, 125
129 ; accession of, 139 ; his loyalty t<
Walpole, 151-152 ; and the war of th
Index
S3'
Austrian succession, 175; takes com-
mand in the field, 177 ; his valour at
Dettingen, 178 ; France and Spain
declare war, 179; the 'Forty-five, 183
ct seq. • the struggle with France for
India, 197 et seq. ; subsidises Hesse
and Russia for troops for the defence
of Hanover, 212 ; his antagonism to
Pitt, 215 ; recognises the great qualities
of Wolfe, 231 ; death of, 238.
George in., becomes heir-apparent, 207 ;
his training, 248-249 ; his advantages,
249 ; the aim of, 273 ; colonial prob-
lems, 276 et seq. • relations with Gren-
ville and Bedford, 290, 291 ; mental
derangement of, 290 ; tricked over the
Regency Bill and appeals to Pitt, 291 ;
gains the ascendency, 304 ; Irish policy
of, 321 et seq. \ refuses to receive the
Olive Branch petition, 336; accepts
North's resignation, 353 ; and Dun-
ning's resolution, 377 ; and the coali-
tion, 382; and Fox's India Bill, 384-
385 ; his relations with Pitt the younger,
385 et seq.\ insanity of, 396-397; ic-
covery of, 398 ; Napoleon's personal
letter to, 454 ; and Catholic emancipa-
tion, 477, 481.
George iv. , as Prince of Wales, his disso-
lute character, 396 ; alliance with Fox,
397-
George of Denmark, Prince (husband of
Anne), withdraws his support from the
Occasional Conformity Bill, 79 ; as Lord
High Admiral, 95-96.
Georgia, dispute with Spain as to the
boundaries of, 157, 160.
Germaine, Lord George. See Sackville.
Gertruydenberg, failure of the peace con-
ferences at, 99.
Ghent, capture of, by the allies, 75 ; fall
of (1745), l82-
Gheriah, given to the Mahrattas, 239.
Gibbon, Edward, 489.
Gibraltar, capture of, 73 ; ceded to Britain
by the Treaty of Utrecht, i to ; restitu-
tion of, demanded by Spain, 136, 137,
140; siege of, 348-349, 35*. 354-355-
Gilbert s (Thomas), Acts, 504.
Gilds, trade, 268.
Ginkel, General, commander in Ireland,
22-23.
Girondists, the, 423, 434 et seq.
Gladsmuir (Prestonpans), 187.
Glasgow, popular hostility in, to the
Union, 88 ; riots at, over the malt tax,
143-
Glencoe, massacre of, 15 et seq.
Glenfinnan, Charles Edward Stuart raises
his standard at, 185.
'Glorious First of June,' the, Howe's
victory of, 438-439.
Gloucester, duke of, death of, 48.
Goddard, Colonel Thomas, 368, 370.
Godeheu, successor of Dupleix, 238, 239.
Godolphin, Sidney, first earl, effect of
James II. 's proclamation on, 31 ;
minister of William in., 34; intrigues
of, with James n. disclosed by Fen-
wick, 40 ; recalled to office, 50 ; alliance
of Marlborough with, 64 ; ar.d the
Whigs, 77 ; and the Occasional Con-
formity Bill, 79 ; antagonism of, to
Nottingham, 79 ; attitude of the Whigs
towards, 100; Dr. Sacheverell's allusion
to, in Perils from False Brethren, 101 ;
dismissed, 103.
Godoy, Don Manuel de, 440.
Goldsmith, Oliver, 483-484, 485, 486.
Goldsmiths, the, opposition of,- to the
Bank of England, 61-63.
Gordon, Lord George, leader of the ' No
Popeiy' riots, 396.
Goree, surrendered by Britain, 254 ; ceded
to France, 356.
Gortz, George Henry, Baron, Swedish
minister, conspires for the Stuart
restoration, 126.
Government, Locke's treatise on, 265.
Bentham on, 491.
Grace, Act of (William in.), 29.
Grafton, Augustus Henry Fitzroy, third
duke of, in the Rockingham ministry,
291 ; ministry of, 295 et seq. ; and the
American crisis, 302-303 ; resigns, 303-
3°4-
Graham, John, of Claverhouse. See
Dundee.
Grammont, the duke of, his error at
Dettingen, 177-178.
Granby, John Manners, marquess of, 237,
251, 253; resigns, 304.
Grand Alliance, the, 26, 29, 41, 52, 53,
104 ; the minor German principalities
and, 66.
Grand Cyrus, 261.
Grantham, Thomas Robinson, Baron. See
Robinson.
Granville, John Carteret, earl. See Car-
teret.
Grattan, Henry, 375 ; Grattan's parlia-
ment, 378 et seq. • demands free trade
and relief of Protestants from the Test
Act, 379 ; and parliamentary reform,
395 ; and Pitt's proposed commercial
treaty with Ireland, 396 ; and the oli-
garchy, 470, 471 ; Fitzwilliam and, 472;
and Catholic emancipation, 477.
Graves, Admiral Lord Thomas, 350, 352.
Gray, Thomas, 262, 482.
532 England and the British Empire
Great Meadows, Washington capitulates
at, 204.
Grenada, captured by D'Estaing, 348.
Grenville, George, in the Devonshire
ministry, 216, 252, 253 ; succeeds Bute,
280-281 ; and the taxation of America,
?&\etseq. ; relations with George in.,
290, 291 ; his Act for the trial of elec-
tion petitions, 325.
William Wyndham, first earl, in
Pitt's cabinet, 418 ; and Napoleon, 454 ;
retires with Pitt, 464.
Gretna Green, 207.
Grey, Charles, afterwards second earl, his
motion for parliamentary reform, 466.
Gross-Jagersdorf, battle of, 224.
Guadeloupe, capture of, 251 ; surrendered
by Britain, 254.
Gudalur, captured by Suffren, 371.
Guichen, Admiral, in the West Indies,
349. 35°'
Guildford, earl of. See North.
Guildford Court House, battle of, 351.
Gujerat, 368.
Gulliver s Travels, 261.
Guntur Sirkar, the, 411.
Gsvalior, captured by Popham, 370.
Gyllenborg, Swedish ambassador, arrested
in connection with the conspiracy for
the Stuart restoration, 126.
HABEAS CORPUS ACT, Irish demand for,
320, 321 ; suspension of, 466.
Haddock, Admiral, 171.
Haidar Ali, 309-310 ; East India Com-
pany's treatment of, 315 ; invades the
Carnatic, 369 et seq. ; battles with
Coote, and death of, 371.
Halifax, George Savile, marquis of, made
Lord Privy Seal, 8; effect of James ii.'s
proclamation on, 31.
Charles Montague, earl of, inventor
of the National Debt and the Bank of
England, 41 ; Tory attack on, 43 ;
resigns, 47 ; impeachment of, 51 ; and
the ministry, 95.
George Montague, earl of, and the
Wilkes affair, 281, 282 ; Wilkes wins
his suit against, 307.
Hamilton, duke of, commissioner of
William Hi. in Scotland, 13 ; leader
of the Scottish opposition to England,
83 ; dissensions with Atholl, 87 ; refuses
to support Jacobite address, 88.
Lady, Nelson and, 452.
Hanau, project of, 178.
Hancock, John, 335.
Hanover, George i. in, 125; Treaty of, 137;
and the war of the Austrian succes-
sion, 175 ; payment of Hanoverian
troops by Great Britain, 176 ; as a
factor in the alliance of Britain with
Prussia against Austria and France,
209 ; influence of, on continental
politics, 209 et seq. ; British subsidies
to, 225 ; House of (genealogical table),
5°7-
Hanoverian dynasty, British prosperity
under, 183.
succession, the, attitude of Scotland
towards, 82, 83, 84, 86 ; Scottish reluct-
ance to accept, 88 ; Harley and the,
108-109 ; France pledged by the Treaty
of Utrecht to recognise, no, 113-114;
effect of, on foreign affairs, 122 ;
Ireland and the, 143-144.
Hanoverianism, opposition to, 178, 180,
181.
Hapsburgs, the, and the Spanish succes-
sion, 43 et seq. , 48 ; Spanish and
Austrian, 104 ; the contest for the
Hapsburg inheritance, 152-153 ; and
the Bourbons, 208-209 ; intermarriages
with the Bourbons (table), 508.
Harcourt, Simon, first earl, viceroy of Ire-
land, 373, 374-
Hardwicke, lord chancellor, his Mar-
riage Act, 206 ; resigns, 215.
Hargreaves, James, his spinning-jenny,
271, 494.
Harley, Robert, joins the ministry, 79;
his intrigues against the Whigs, 95;
dismissal of, 96 ; supports Sacheverell,
102 ; intrigues with Mrs. Masham, 102 ;
chancellor of the exchequer, 103 ; Whig
distrust of, 103 ; attempt on his life,
104 ; becomes earl of Oxford, 104 ;
secret peace negotiations with Louis
XIV., 104-105 ; and the negotiations for
peace, 106 et seq. ; intrigues for Whig
support, 108 ; his attitude towards
Jacobitism, 108-109 ; dismissal of, 114;
impeached, 118, 129.
Harris, George, Lord, 460.
Hartley, 370.
Hastenbeck, battle of, 223.
Hastings, Francis Rawdon, marquess of.
See Moira, earl of.
Warren, 356 et seq., 359 et seq. \
censured and resigns, 364 ; wins
Sindhia's goodwill, 370; leaves India,
372 ; assailed by public opinion, 372,
383 ; impeachment of, 396, 408-409.
Havana, capture of, 253 ; exchangee
with Spain for Florida,' 254.
Haviland, General, 238.
Havre, bombarded by Rodney, 229.
Hawke, Edward, Admiral Lord, defeats
the French off Belleisle, 195; the
Rochefort expedition, 224 ; destroy:
Index
533
French transports at Rochefort, 227 ;
victory at Quiberon, 229.
Hawley, General Henry, defeated at
Falkirk, 189.
Heathfield. See Eliott.
He"bertists, excesses of the, 435.
Heinsius, Antoine, grand pensionary of
Holland, confidant of William in., 42.
Helvetic Republic, the (Switzerland), 451.
Henry of Hesse-Darmstadt, Prince, holds
Gibraltar, 73.
Henry, Patrick, 289.
Herbert, Admiral, 27.
Hereditary right, the Tories and the
principle of, 4.
Hervey, Lord, 266.
Hesse, George II. petitioned to import
troops from, 214.
High Court, India, and the Bengal
Council, 359-360, 362-363.
Highlands, Dundee's operations in, 10 et
seq. ; settlement of, under William III.,
14 ; Jacobitism of the clans, 185 ; new
conditions in, after Culloden, 192-193.
Highland regiments, raised by Pitt, 218.
Hill, Abigail. See Masham, Mrs.
Hillsborough, Lord, and the taxation
of America, 302.
Hinduism, 165.
Hindustan, 165 et seq.
History of England, Hume's, 266.
History of the Great Rebellion, Claren-
don's, 266.
History of the War of Succession in Spain,
Colonel Parnell's, and Lord Peter-
borough, 514.
Hobbes, Thomas, influence of, 265.
Hoche, General Lazare, 439, 440-441 ; his
expedition to Ireland, 444, 473.
Hochkirchen, defeat of Frederick the
Great at, 227.
Hohenfriedberg, battle of, 182.
Hohenlinden, battle of, 455.
Holburne, Admiral Francis, 224.
Holkar, 168 ; (Takoji), 367 ; defeated by
Colonel Goddard, 368.
Holderness, Robert D'Arcy, earl of,
secretary for the northern department,
216.
Holland, in war of the Augsburg League,
25-3S» 41 1 in. war of Spanish succes-
sion, 65-69, 73-75, 92, 97 ; Barrier
Treaty, 97 ; and the Treaty of Utrecht,
109-110; effects of the struggle with
Louis Xiv. on, in ; importance of
friendly relations with to George I.,
123, 124 ; and the Triple Alliance, 125 ;
war with, 350 ; peace concluded, 356 ;
relations with Austria, 41=; ; the Triple
Alliance, 416; joins the coalition against
France, 436 ; overrun by Pichegru, 440 ;
converted into the Batavian Republic,
440 ; battle of Camperdown, 446.
Holland, Henry Fox, Lord. See Fox.
Holmes, at Quebec, 233.
Holyrood, rioting in, 10 ; Charles Edward
Stuart holds court at, 187.
Hood, Alexander, Admiral, Viscount
Bridport, 441.
Samuel, Admiral, Viscount, in the
West Indies, 350-351 ; at Chesapeake
Bay, 352 ; returns to the West Indies,
354; blockades Toulon, 436, 437;
captures Corsica, 438.
Hotham, Admiral, in the West Indies,
348, 441.
Houchard, General, at Dunkirk, 437.
Houghers, the. See Whiteboys.
Howe, Richard, first earl, admiral, 336
et seq. ; insufficiency of his squadron,
346 ; at New York, 347 ; relieves Gib-
raltar, 355 ; victory of ist June, 438.
General Sir William, supersedes
Gage, 336 et seq. ; inaction of, 340 ;
the Philadelphia campaign, 341 ; his
mismanagement, 346 ; recalled, 347.
Hubertsburg, Treaty of, 255.
Hudson Bay Territory, the, ceded to
Britain by the Treaty ot Utrecht, no,
163.
Hughes, Sir Edward, 371.
Hugli, East India Company ejected from,
by Aurangzib, 55.
Huguenots, introduction of industries by,
267, 269.
Humbert, Jean Joseph Amable, General,
his expedition to Ireland, 476.
Hume, David, 265-266.
Hungary, supports Maria Theresa, 174.
Hutcheson, 265, 266.
Hutchinson, General Lord John (after-
wards earl of Donoughmore), 457.
governor of Boston, 328.
— letters, the, 328.
Iliad, Pope's translation of, 260.
Impey, Sir Elijah, 359, 362-363.
Indemnity, Act of, for relief of Noncon-
formists, 6 ; annual, for breaches of the
Test Act, 148.
Independence, Declaration of (American),
338.
India, British struggle with France in,
1 60 ; heterogeneity of, 165 ; Aryan
invasions, 165 ; Brahminism or Hindu-
ism and caste, 165-166 ; Mohammedan
conquests, 166-167 ; the Mughal
dynasty, 167 et seq. ; Aurangzib and the
Mahrattas, 167 et seq. ; European
trade with, 169-170 ; the struggle with
534 England and the British Empire
France for, 197 et seq. , 238 et seq. ;
conquest of Bengal, 240-244 ; restora-
tion by Britain of trading-stations in,
254 ; the problem of, 276 ; end of the
French ambitions in, 307 ; British posi-
tion in (1760), 307-308 ; ascendency of
the Mahrattas before and after Panipat,
308 et seq. ; oppression of the servants
of the East India Company, 311; Mir
Cassim, 311-312; Buxar, 312; Clive's
reforms in Bengal, and policy in Oudh,
312 et seq. ; misrule and mismanage-
ment after Clive's final departure, 314 ;
maladministration of the East India
Company, and famine in Bengal, 356-
357 ; Warren Hastings, 357 et seq. ;
North's Regulating Acts, 358 ; Fox's
bill for the government of, 383 et seq. ;
Pitt's bill, 391 ; Pitt's Act, 406-407 ;
under Cornwallis, 409 et seq. ; under
Shore, 458 ; under Wellesley, 458 et seq.
Industry, 266 et seq. \ in Ireland, 317 et
seq. ; the revolution of, 401, 492 et seq.
Ingolstadt, siege of, 71.
Insurrection Act (Ireland), 473.
Interlopers, the, 55.
Invention, in the eighteenth century,
271, 493 et seq.
Inverness, occupied by Charles Edward
Stuart, 189.
Ireland, the revolution in, 17; William
III. takes command in, 20 ; the Boyne
campaign, 21 ; flight of James II. from,
21 ; Limerick, 22; Penal Laws, 23;
and the Hanoverian succession, 143-
144 ; Wood's half-pence, 144-145 ;
a survey, 316 ; penal disabilities of
Roman Catholics and Nonconformists,
316; restricted powers of the Irish
parliament, 317; agricultural and
industrial conditions and absentee
landlordism, 317-319; the Whiteboys,
318-319; the Undertakers, 319-320;
demands of the Irish parliament, 320
et seq. ; under Townshend, 373; Har-
court and the absentee tax, 373-374 ;
effect of the American war on, 375 ;
the volunteers, 379 ; commercial and
other concessions, 379 ; Giattan's par-
liament established, 381 ; Pitt's pro-
posed commercial treaty with, 394 et
seq. ; and the regency of the Prince
of Wales, 398 ; Hoche's expedition to,
444 ; and the French Revolution, 469
et seq. ; religious strife in, 473, 474
et seq. ; Orangemen, 473 ; rebellion of
'98, 475 ; the scheme of Union, 476-
480 ; Act of Union passed, 480 ;
Catholic emancipation refused, 481 ;
the United Irishmen, 491.
Iron industry, the, 271, 492, 495-496.
Iroquois, the, allies of Britain, 164.
Islay, 143.
Italy, suspension of Louis Xiv.'s hostili-
ties in, 40; Louis XI V.'s troops in, 65;
Eugene's operations in, 67 ; Eugene's
successful campaign in (1706), 74;
Austrian possessions in, 125-126, 128;
Bourbons established in the Sicilies,
154 ; Maria Theresa's struggle with the
Bourbons in, 194, 196 ; French cam-
paign in, 454 ; evacuation of the papal
states by France, 464.
JACOBINS, the, 421, 426, 434 et seq.
Jacobinism, 468 ; fear of, in England at
the close of the eighteenth century, 498.
Jacobitism, 8 ; in Scotland, 10 et seq. ; in
Ireland, 17 ; attitude of Whigs and
Tories towards, 28-29 • recrudescence of
conspiracies after the death of Mary,
37; plan for invasion of England by
French troops, 38-39 ; Sir John Fen-
wick informs against notable intriguers,
40 ; in Scotland, 81-83, 87. 88 et 3e1- \
attempted invasion by James (the Old
Pretender), 96 ; Harley and, 108-109 ;
in England, 113 et seq., 117; lack of
organisation, 118; the 'Fifteen,' 119;
scheme of Sweden and Spain for Stuart
restoration, 126-127; in England, 140-
141 ; Atterbury's plot, 141 ; decay of,
141-142 ; French expedition under
Saxe, 179-180 ; the ' Forty-five,' 183 et
seq.
James II., situation caused by the flight
of, i et seq. ; state of Scotland under,
9-10; in Ireland, 12; his operations in
Ireland, 18 et seq. ; improvement of the
navy by, 26 ; plans an invasion of
England, 30-31.
Stuart, the Old Pretender, or Cheva-
lier, Tory excuse for exclusion of, 4 ;
attainted, 53 ; Scottish hostility to bill
for the abjuration of, by office-holders,
81 ; assumes the title of James vin.,
81 ; at Oudenarde, 93 ; attempted in-
vasion by, 96 ; expelled from France,
no ; refuses to abjure his religion, 113,
117 ; in Scotland, 120.
'James vin.,' proclaimed at Perth and
Edinburgh, 186.
Jassy, Peace of, 418.
Jemappes, battle of, 427.
Jenkins's ear, 157.
Jervis, Admiral Sir John (Lord St. Vin-
cent), 442, 443. 444. 448-
Johnson, Samuel, 257, 482,484, 485, 487,
488.
William, takes Oswego, 213.
Index
535
Joseph I., emperor, and Charles XII., 91 ;
makes a private agreement with Louis
XIV., 91, 92 ; death of, 104.
Joseph II., emperor, 298; ideals and
ambitions of, 414-415 ; alliance with
Catherine of Russia, 417 ; death of,
417.
Joseph, electoral prince of Bavaria, and the
Spanish succession, 44-45 ; death of, 46.
Joseph Andrews, 261.
Jourdan, Marshal, at Wattignies, 437;
441, 442.
Journal of the Plague Year, Defoe's, 260.
Judges, Ireland demands English rule as
to removal of, 321.
Junius, Letters of, 326, 488-489.
Junto, the, 41, 95.
KATWAR, Clive at, 243.
Kaunitz, Wenceslas Anton, Prince, 209-
210.
Kaveripak, battle of, 203.
Kay, John, inventor of the fly-shuttle,
271, 494.
Kenmure, Lord, executed, 121.
Kent, duke of, dismissed by Anne, 103.
Kentish petition, the, 51.
Keppel, Augustus, Viscount, at Ushant,
347.
Killiecrankie, battle of, 12.
Killigrew, Admiral, succeeds Russell in
command of the fleet, 33 ; dismissed,
Kilmarnock, William Boyd, fourth earl
of, executed, 191.
Kinsale, captured by Maryborough, 22.
Kirke, Colonel, relieves Deny, 18-19.
Kirkpatrick, 459.
Kle"ber, General Jean Baptiste, in Egypt,
453-
Klein-Schnellendorf, Treaty of, 174, 175.
Klosterseven, convention of, 223.
Knox, Captain, 248.
Kolin, battle of, 221.
Konigsegg, Marshal, 181.
Korsakoff, General Alexander Rymski,
defeated by Masse'na at Zurich, 453.
Kshatryas, the, 165.
Kunersdorf, battle of, 235.
LABOUR, capital and, relations of, 497.
La Bourdonnais, Mahe" de, Bertrand
Fran9ois, takes Madras, 198.
La Clue, Admiral, commander of the
Toulon fleet, 229.
Lafayette, 421.
Lagos, Boscawen at, 229.
La Hogue, battle of, 32.
Lake, Gerard, Viscount, suppresses insur-
rection in Ireland, 475-476.
Lally-Tollendal, Baron, in the Carnatic,
245 ; hopeless position of, 247 ; de-
feated at Wandewash, 248.
Land Bank, Tory rival to the Bank of
England, failure of, 62.
— — tax, 33; under William III., 59;
Charles Townshend's proposed, 299.
Landen, battle of, 33.
Landlords, the, and enclosure, 502 et seq.
Latitudinarians, 262-263.
Lauffeldt, battle of, 195.
Lauzun, commander of the Jacobite forces
in Ireland, defeated at the Boyne, 21.
Law, John, 131.
Lawrence, Major Stringer, 202, 203.
Leake, Admiral Sir John, at Gibraltar,
73 ; relieves Barcelona with Byng,
75-76.
Lecszynski, Marie, married to Louis xv.
of France, 136.
Stanislaus, of Poland. See Stanis-
laus.
Leeds, Thomas Osborne, duke of. See
Danby.
Legislative Assembly, French, 423, 426.
Lehwald, General, defeated at Gross-
Jagersdorf, 224 ; repulses the Swedes,
225.
Leinstcr, rebellion in, 475.
Leopold I., emperor, signs the Treaty
of Ryswick, 41 ; and the Spanish suc-
cession, 44-45; rejects the second Par-
tition Treaty, 46, 48, 49.
Leopold ii., emperor, 417; and the de-
claration of Pilnitz, 422 ; death of, 418.
Letters of Junius, the, 326, 488-489.
Leuthen, battle of, 225.
Lewis of Baden, 68, 69 ; death of, 92.
Lexington, skirmish at, 334-335.
Libel, Lord Chief-Justice Mansfield and
the law of, 326 ; Charles James Fox's
Act relating to, 326, 398.
Liberalism, 390.
Liegnitz captured by Austria, 225 ; battle
of, 237.
Lille, siege of, 94.
Limerick, siege of, 22 ; terms of capitula-
tion disregarded, 22-23.
Linz, capture of, 174 ; recaptured by
Austria, 176.
Literature: eighteenth century to 1760,
Z^T et seq. ; 1760-1798, 482 et seq.
Loans: Dashwood's, 280; North's, 377;
Pitt's (younger), 402-403.
Lobositz, battle of, 217.
Locke, Join, 265.
Lodi, battle of, 442.
Lombardy, 452.
London, attack by the city on the govern-
ment, 325.
536 England and the British Empire
' London Correspondence Society,1 426.
Londonderry, Robert Stewart, marquess
of Londonderry (Castlereagh), 464.
Longwy, captured by Prussia, 425.
Lords, House of, resolutions of on the
flight of James II., 2; exclusion of
Roman Catholic peers from, by the
Bill of Rights, 5; Scottish Peers in,
89; Sunderland's Peerage Bill, 130;
Irish peers in, 480.
Lords of the Articles, the, 9.
L'Orient, British attack on, 195.
Lorraine, Austrian desire to recover,
436.
Loudoun, John Campbell, earl of, in
America, 224 ; recalled, 226.
Loughborough, Alexander Wedderburn,
Lord, his attack on Franklin, 329 ;
opposes Catholic emancipation, 481.
Louis xiv. of France, antagonism of
William ill. to, supported by the
Whigs, 7; and the Irish campaign of
James II., 18 j neglects his naval ad-
vantage over William in., 21 ; Wil-
liam's struggle with, 25 ; gives James
II. the assistance of the French fleet,
31 ; concludes Treaty of Ryswick with
William in., 41 ; and the Spanish
succession, 42, 43 et scq. ; blunders of,
52-53 ; promises to recognise James
Stuart as king of England, 52 ; negoti-
ates with the Dutch, and offers them
separate treaty, 90 ; private agreement
with the emperor, Joseph I., 91,92 ; his
precarious position in 1709, 94 ; desires
peace, 97; Harley's secret peace ne-
gotiations with, 104-105 ; death of, 118.
Louis xv. of France, 118, 123, 134 ; be-
trothed to the Spanish Infanta, 136 ;
marriage to Marie Lecszynski, 136 ; end
of his minority, 139; Austria and, 211.
Louis xvi., a virtual prisoner, 421 ; flight
of, from Paris, 422 ; escapes from the
Tuileries, 425 ; tried and guillotined,
427.
Louis xvii. of France, 436.
Louis, duke of Bourbon, 135.
of Burgundy. See Burgundy.
Louisbourg, capture of, 182 ; exchange
of, for Madras, 197, 204; failure of
Loudoun at, 224.
Louisiana, 164 ; resigned to Spain, 254.
Louvois, Michel Le Tellier, minister of
war under Louis xiv., 27, 37.
Lovat, Simon Fraser, Lord, executed,
191.
Loyal Association (William in.), 39.
Lundy, 18.
Lundville, Treaty of, 455.
Luttrell, Colonel Henry Lawes, 306,
Luxembourg, due de, French marshal,
defeats William in. at Steinkirk, 32 ;
death of, 37.
Lyons, royalist insurrection at, 436.
Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth and Cole-
ridge, 482, 488.
Lyttleton, 150.
MACARTNEY, LORD, seizes Negapatam
and Trincomali, 370, 407.
Macdonald, of Clanranald, 185.
of Sleat, urges Prince Charles to
withdraw, 185.
Machinery, development of, 492 et seq. ;
effect of on rural conditions, 500, 501.
Mackay, General, 10 ; defeated by Dundee
at Killiecrankie, 12.
Maclan, 14 et seq.
M'Intosh, Jacobite general, 119.
Mackintosh, Sir James, 467, 489.
Macleod of Macleod, urges Prince Charles
to withdraw, 185.
Macpherson, James, 486, 487.
Sir John, 372, 409.
Madhava Rao Sindhia, 368-369.
Madhu Rao, 310, 367.
Madras, 169 ; exchange of, for Louisbourg,
197; taken by La Bourdonnais, 198;
restored, 199 ; autonomy in, 308 ; war
with Mvsore, 310.
Madrid, Galway enters and proclaims
Charles in., 76.
Marie", French trading-station at, 169;
seizure of, 369.
Mahmud of Ghazni, his incursions into
India, 166.
Mahrattas, the, 167-168; capture Chanda
Sahib, 201; obtain Gheriah, 239;
growing strength of, 240, 243 ; ascend-
ency of, before and after Panipat, 308
et seq. \ war with, 363, 365 ; Madhava
Rao Sindhia aims at the leadership of,
368 et seq. ; Hastings makes peace with,
370-371 ; war with Mysore, 409 ; attack
the Nizam, 458 ; internal struggles for
ascendency, 459; Wellesley and, 460.
Maintz, captured by the French, 426 ; re-
captured, 436.
Malaga, battle of, 73.
Malcolm (Sir) John, 459.
Malplaquet, battle of, 98, 99.
Malt, tax on imposed on the Scots, 109 ;
resistance to, 143.
Malta, captured by Napoleon, 449 ; re-
captured, 454, 455 ; at the Peace of
Amiens, 464.
Manilla, capture of, 253 ; restored, 254.
Mansfield, William Murray, Lord Chief-
Justice, 215 ; his sentence on John
Wilkes, 305 ; and the law pf libel, 326,
Index
537
Manufactures, growth of, 267 ct seq., 492
et seq.
Mar, John Erskine, earl of, displaced by
Montrose, 116; heads the Jacobite
rising of 1715, 119; at Sheriffmmr,
120.
Marat, Jean Paul, 434.
Marengo, battle of, 454.
Margaret, wife of Emperor Leopold I.,
and the Spanish succession, 44.
Mardyke, dismantling of, 125.
Maria Amelia, 136.
Antonia, position of, in regard to
the Spanish succession, 44, 45.
Spanish Infanta, betrothed to
Louis XV., but rejected by France,
136-137.
Theresa, wife of Louis XIV. , and
the Spanish succession, 43, 44.
daughter of Emperor Charles VI. ,
and the Austrian succession, 136 ;
and the Pragmatic Sanction, 152 et
seq. \ accession of, 163 ; her position
challenged by Ch a rles Albert of Bavaria,
172 ; refuses to treat with Frederick the
Great, 173 ; British sympathy with,
174 ; recaptures Linz, 176 ; the Treaty
of Breslau, 176-177 ; the Treaty of
Worms, 179 ; and Maximilian Joseph,
elector of Bavaria, 180 ; and the Peace
of Aix-la-Chapelle, 196, 197.
Marie Antoinette, insulted by the mob,
425-
Marlborough, John Churchill, earl of,
3, 8 ; takes Cork and Kinsale, 22 ; dis-
graced and dismissed, 31 ; relations
with James II., ibid. \ distrusted by
William III., 37; intrigues with
James II. disclosed by Fenwick, 40 ;
restored to William Iii.'s favour, 48;
appointed commander of the English
troops, 52, 53 ; difficulties of his military
position, 65 ; ascendency over Anne
and policy of, 64 ; captures the forts on
the Meuse, 66 ; made duke, 66 ; the
Blenheim campaign, 69^ seq. ; and the
Dutch generals, 74 ; Tory suspicions
of, 77-78 ; and the Occasional Confor-
mity Bill, 79 ; and the Toulon scheme,
91 et seq. ; Oudcnarde, 92-93 ; pro-
poses to march on Paris, 93-94 ; takes
Lille, 94 ; and the Whigs, 95 ; and the
peace negotiations (1709), 97 ; and the
Barrier Treaty, 98 ; and the Whigs,
100 ; and party politics, 103; supports
Nottingham's attack on the peace pre-
liminaries with Louis xiv., 105; cap-
tures Bouchain, 105 ; disgraced, 106 ;
reinstated, 116; decline of, 135.
Sarah, duchess of, influence over
Anne, 64, 95 ; quarrels with Anne,
IOO-IOI.
Marriage Act (Lord Hardwicke's), 206-
207.
Marsin, comte de, Marshal, 68, 71.
Martial law, 5, 6.
Martin, Commodore, and Don Carlos,
176, 236.
Martinique, capture of, 253 ; surrendered
by Britain, 254.
Mary, declines to be crowned without
William, 2-3; death of, 37 ; her char-
acter, ibid.
Masham, Mrs., Harley intrigues with,
95 ; influence with Anne, 100, 102 ;
and Bolingbroke, 114.
Massachusetts, opposition of, to the Stamp
Act, 289 ; and Townshend's taxes,
302 ; suspension of the charter of, etc.,
330 ; organises a militia, 333. See
Boston.
Massdna, Andre1, due de Rivoli, defeats
Korsakoff at Zurich, 453 ; capitulation
of, at Genoa, 454.
Masulipatam, Colonel Francis Forde at,
246.
Matthews, Thomas, Admiral, cashiered,
179.
Maurice of Saxony. See Saxe.
Mauritius, 169 ; Wellesley and, 463.
Max Emmanuel of Bavaria, joins Louis
XIV., 66, 67 ; ejected by the Tyrolese,
68 ; at Blenheim, 71 ; restored to his
dominions by the Treaty of Utrecht,
no.
Maxen, battle of, 236.
Maximilian Joseph, elector of Bavaria, re-
cognises the Pragmatic Sanction, 180.
Meadows, General, 412.
Mecklenburg, occupied by Peter the
Great, 126.
Mediterranean, the command of the, 35-
36, 37 ; recall of the English fleet from
the, 39 ; Marlborough and the, 66, 68,
72 ; Marlborough's plans for campaign
in, 90 et seq. , 94 ; Minorca and Gibraltar
ceded to Britain by the Treaty of
Utrecht, no, in ; Matthews' engage-
ment with the French and Spanish
fleets in, 179 ; dominance of Britain
in, 182 ; Boscawen breaks up the
Toulon fleet, 229; Jervis ordered to
evacuate, 442, 443.
Medmenham Brotherhood, the, 282.
Melas, General Michael, Baron, defeated
at Marengo, 454.
Melville, Lord, commissioner of William
in. in Scotland, 13.
Memoirs of a Cavalier, 261.
Memoirs of Captain Carleton, 514.
538 England and the British Empire
Mercantile theory, the, 399-400.
Messina, siege of, 127-128.
Methuen Treaty, the, 112.
Methodism, rise of, 263-264.
Middlesex elections, the, John Wilkes
and, 3o$etscq., 325.
Militia Bill, Pitt's, passed by the
Commons, but rejected by the Lords,
214 ; the second bill passed, 218.
Minden, battle of, 228.
Ministers, relation of, to parliament
under William ill., 35 ; joint responsi-
bility of, 125.
Minorca, capture of, 94 ; British claim
to, resented by Prussia and Austria,
98 ; ceded to Britain by the Treaty of
Utrecht, no; Spanish demand for
restitution of, 137 ; restored in ex-
change for Belleisle, 254 ; fall of, 353 ;
retained by Spain, 356.
'Minute Men,' the, 333.
Mirabeati, 421-422.
Mir Cassim, 311.
Mir Jafar, 242 et seq. , 246, 247 ; deposed
and restored, 311-312.
Mississippi, the, traced by French ex-
plorers, 164 ; the French plant forts
along, 204.
Mogul, the, 165, 168, 239, 246; (Shah
Alam), concessions obtained from,
by Clive, 314, 358.
Mohammed AH, 202, 203.
Mohammedanism in India, 166-167.
Mohun Persad and Nuncomar, 361.
Moira, Francis Rawdon, earl of, 475.
Moidart, the seven men of, 185 ; Charles
Edward Stuart lands at, 185.
Mollwitz, battle of, 173.
Moll Flanders, 261.
Money bills, House of Lords unable to
amend, 47 ; the Irish parliament and,
320, 321.
Mons, captured by Marlborough, 99 ; by
Saxe, 195.
Monson, George, member of the Bengal
Council, 359, 360 ; death of, 362.
Montague. See Halifax.
Lady Mary Wortley, 266.
Montcalm, marquis of, captures the forts
of Oswego and Ontario, 215 ; successes
of, 224 ; at Quebec, 232 et seq.
Montenotte, battle of, 441.
Montreal, capitulation of, by the French,
238 ; captured by the Americans, 336.
Montrose, duke of, secrerary of state in
Scotland, 116.
Moravia, Frederick the Great's campaign
in, 176, 227.
Mordaunt, General Sir John, failure of,
at Rochefort, 224.
Moreau, General Jean Victor, 442, 454,
455-
Mornington. See Wellesley, Marquess.
Morse, governor of Madras, 198.
' Most favoured nation' principle, 112.
Mountain, the, 434, 435, 436.
Mughals, the, 167.
Muir, Braxfield's sentence on, 467-468.
Mulk, the Nizam ul, 168.
Munro, Major Hector, defeats Shuja
Daulah at Buxar, 312 ; defeated by
Haidar Ali, 370.
Munster, Jacobitism in, 21 ; insurrection
in (1798), 475.
Murray, Lord George, 186.
of Broughton, James, secretary of
Charles Edward Stuart, 186; turns
informer, 191.
General James, at Quebec, 237 ; his
successful administration in Canada,
276.
Mutiny Act, the, 5 ; extension of, in
America, 289 ; Irish, 380, 381.
Muzaffar Jang, 201, 202.
Mysore, military prestige of, 309-310 ;
campaigns of Cornwallis in, 412 ; con-
quest of, 459-460 ; treatment of, 460.
NABOBS, the, 357.
Nadir Shah, 169.
Nagpur. See bhonsla.
Namur, captured by the French, 32;
captured by William in., 38.
Nanda Kumar. See Nuncomar.
Naples, assigned to Austria by the Treaty
of Utrecht, 109; Elizabeth Farnese and,
153 ; Don Carlos proclaimed king of,
154; succeeded by Ferdinand I., 236;
monarchist revolution in, 452 ; cap-
tured by the French, 452.
Napoleon. See Bonaparte.
Nasir Jang, 201, 202.
National Assembly, French, 417, 421,422.
Convention, the, 426, 427, 435.
Debt, origin of, 33 ; creation of,
60 ; question of English and Scottish
in regard to the Union, 86 ; creation of
Walpole's Sinking Fund, 129; the
South Sea Company and the, 131-132 ;
growth of, 250, 284 ; Pitt and, 401, 403 ;
and Pitt's Sinking Fund, 474.
Nationalists (Scotland), opposed to the
Union, 82-83; (Ireland), 381.
Natural boundaries, Carnot and the, 473.
Navigation Acts, effect of, on Scottish
and Irish commerce, 57 ; effect of, on
colonial trade, 278 ; inclusion of Ire-
land in, 375, 399.
Navy, the, superiority of French in 1689
over English, 26 et seq. ; England's
Index
539
recovery, 27 ; English supremacy estab-
lished, 32 ; command of the Mediter-
ranean, 36, 54 ; development of, 125,
156, 170, 195 ; deciding factor in the
struggle for India, 199-201 ; in the
Anglo-French contest for America,
204 ; reduction of the navy by Pelham,
205 ; British supremacy, after Quiberon,
230-231 ; poor condition of, in 1778,
346-347 ; prestige of, restored by
Rodney, 354 ; Pitt the younger and,
434; (note on), 511 et seq.
Neerwinden, battle of, 33.
Negapatam, Dutch trading-station at,
169 ; surrendered by Britain, 356 ;
seized by Macartney, 370.
Nelson, and the Toulon fleet, 441 ; at
St. Vincent, 443-444; in pursuit of
Napoleon's Egyptian expedition, 448-
449 ; the battle of the Nile, 449-450 ;
and Lady Hamilton, 452 ; at the battle
of the Baltic, 456.
Netherlands, William m.'s campaign in,
30 ; struggle of William in. with
Louis XIV. in, 39-40; Marlborough's
operations in (1705), frustrated by the
Dutch generals, 74 ; revolt in the, 92 ;
assigned to Austria by the Treaty
of Utrecht, 109 ; debarred from East
India trade, 136 ; France and the, 180,
181, 182 ; Saxe's campaign in, 195, 196;
Austria's schemes in, 415 ; revolt in,
against Austrian supremacy, 417 ;
French invasion of (1792), 425 ; repulse
of the French from, 436; France and
the, 442-443 ; French sovereignty in,
446, 447.
Neutrality, the Armed, 350, 455 ; (note
on), 516-517.
New Brunswick, plantation of United
Empire Loyalists in, 355-356.
New France, colony of, 163.
New Jersey, Washington's success in,
340-34L
New Orleans, 164.
New South Wales, Captain Cook pro-
claims the British sovereignty of, 413.
New Theory of Vision, Berkeley's, 265.
New York, 163 ; congress of the American
colonists at, 289-291 ; and Townshend's
taxes, 301, 302; evacuated by Wash-
ington, 339 ; Clinton at, 341, 347-
348.
Newcastle, Thomas Pelham Holies, first
duke of, and parliamentary corruption,
147, 194; his jobbery and corruption,
208 ; procures the defeat of Pitt's
Militia Bill, 214; resigns, 215; and
the Minorca affair, 215 ; coalition with
Pitt, 219-220 ; resigns, 252 ; and the
Whig system, 249, 274, 275 ; in the
Rockingham ministry, 292.
Newcomen's pump, 494.
Newfoundland, ceded to Britain by the
Treaty of Utrecht, no, 163; fishing
rights in, no, 254.
Newgate, burnt in the ' No Popery* riots,
376.
Newton, Sir Isaac, 264.
Newton Butler, battle of, 19.
Niagara, captured by Prideaux, 231.
Nile, battle of the, 449.
Nizam, the, 168, 201, 202, 203 ; French
influence with, 239 ; relations with
Bussy, 245-246 ; seeks British aid, 310 ;
dive's policy towards, 315 ; Hastings
and, 369, 370; Cornwallis and, 409,
411 ; attacked by the Mahrattas, 458 ;
Wellesley and, 459, 460-461.
Noailles, Mauiice de, Marshal, 177.
Nonconformists, relief of, 6, 78, 79, 129,
147, 148 ; political disabilities of, in
Ireland, 316 et seq.
Non-jnrors, the, 4.
Nootka Sound, quarrel with Spain over,
416-417.
' No Popery' riots, 375-376.
Nore, the mutiny at the, 445-456, 469-470.
Normandy, Hoche restores order in, 439.
North, Frederick, Lord (afterwards earl of
Guildford), 273 ; chancellor of the
exchequer, 300-301 ; his administra-
tion, 304 et set/., yi-^etseq. ; his Con-
ciliation Bill, 334 ; last attempt to con-
ciliate America, 344, 347 ; resignation
°f> 353 1 his Regulating Acts, 358 ;
incompetence of his ministry, 372-373 ;
fall of, 377 ; coalition with Fox, 382
et seq.
North Briton, the, John Wilkes and, 281.
Northern department, secretary of
state for (note on), 516.
Northern Sirkars, bestowed on France by
the Nizam, 239, 245, 246.
Norris, Admiral Sir John, 180.
Nottingham, Daniel Finch, earl of, and
the Revolution settlement, 4; made
secretary of state, 8; alienated by
James II., 31; quarrels with Russell,
33 ; resigns, 34 ; disavows the war with
France, 64-65 ; Godolphin's triumph
over, 79 ; removed from the Privy
Council, 95 ; and the Whigs, 105 ;
unites with the Whigs in attack on the
ministry, 114; and George I., 116.
Nova Scotia, ceded to Britain by the
Treaty of Utrecht, no, 163; plantation
of United Empire Loyalists in, 355-
356.
Novel, the, rise and growth of, 261.
540
England and the British Empire
Novelists, eighteenth century, 485.
Novi, battle of, 452.
Nuncomar, execution of, 361.
Nystad, Treaty of, 129.
OAK BOYS. See Whiteboys.
Occasional Conformity, 6.
Bill, the, 78-80 ; Whig compact
with Nottingham as to, 105 ; the repeal
of, 129.
Octennial Act (Ireland), 321.
Office-holders, narrow defeat of bill to
exclude from parliament (1692-1693),
33. See Place Bills.
Offices of state (note on), 515-516.
Ohio, the, discovered by the French,
164 ; French occupation of the basin of,
204.
Oligarchy, the Irish, and Grattan, 470,
472.
Olive Branch petition, the, 336.
Oliver, Alderman, and the publication of
the debates of the House of Commons,
327^
Oliver, Chief Justice, and the Hutchinson
letters, 328.
Omichund plot, the, 242 et seq.
Open-field system, the, 269 et seq., 500.
Ontario, fort of, captured by Montcalm,
215. _
Opposition, the, weakness of, during the
broad-bottom administration, 205 ;
Ireland, 373 et seq. ; England, 376 ;
unpatriotic conduct of, in the war with
the French Republic, 430.
Orange, restored to William by the
Treaty of Ryswick, 41.
Prince of, at Malplaquet, 99.
Orangemen, the, 473.
Or ford, earl of. See Wai pole.
Edward Russell, earl of. See Russell.
Orissa, Clive obtains zemindari rights in,
Orleans, Philip, duke of, regent of
France, 118, 125; Alberoni's plot
against, 128 ; death of, 135.
Ormonde, James Butler, second duke of,
at Cadiz, 67 ; made commander in the
Netherlands, 108 ; supports the Jaco-
bites, 114 ; dismissed, 116; impeached,
118 ; attempted invasion by, 119 ; leads
Spanish expedition to invade England,
128.
Ossian, Macpherson's, 487.
Ostend, capture of, 75 ; fall of (1745),
182.
East India Company, the, 136, 137,
140.
Oswego, captured by Johnson, 213 ; cap-
tured by Montcalm, 215.
Oudenarde, capture of, 75 ; battle of, 92-
93; fall of (1745), 182.
Oudh, and the Mahrattas, 168 ; under Saf-
dat Ali, 240 ; Clive and, 244 ; the wazir
of, plans invasion of Bengal, 246 ;
Munro's campaign in, 312 ; Clive's
policy towards, 314-315 ; Hastings and,
361 e t seq. ; annexes Rohilkhand, 365;
Shore and, 458 ; Wellesley and, 461.
Oxford, Robert Harley, earl of, im-
peached, 118, 129. See Harley.
PAINE, TOM, his Rights of Man, 466.
Palatinate, the, Louis Xiv.'s invasion of,
25-26 ; evacuated by the Prussians, 437.
Pamela^ 261.
Pamphleteering, 260.
Panipat, battle of, 308-309.
Papacy, the, and the French Republic,
45*-
Paper money, introduction of, 62.
Pardo, convention of, 157.
Paris, the Peace of, 253-255 ; denounced
by Pitt, 280.
Parker, Admiral Sir Hyde (i), defeats the
Dutch off the Dogger Bank, 351 ; (ii),
at the battle of the Baltic, 455-456.
Parker, ringleader of the mutiny at the
Nore, 446.
Parliament, emergency, summoned by
William in., i ; convention, of 1689,
2 et seq. ; claims of, in the Bill of
Rights, 5 ; bill for limitation of, to
three years vetoed by William in., 33 ;
compels William in. to revoke grant of
crown lands to Portland, 38; stiained
relations of, with William in., 42-43;
Whig tenet of the supremacy of, 130;
attack on the freedom of the electorate,
274-275; the Wilkes affair, 281 et seq.,
305 etseq. ; the House of Commons and
election petitions, 325 ; and criticism,
325-326 ; and the publication of debates,
326-327 ; and the East India Company,
357 et seq.
- Irish, summoned at Dublin by
James II., 19, 23, 144 ; restrictions
of, 317; demands of, 320 et seq.\
Grattan's, 378 ; claims independence,
379 et seq. ; demands parliamentary re-
form, 393; invitation of, to the Prince
of Wales to assume the regency, 398 ;
and reform, 469 et seq. ; Pitt and the,
476 et seq.
Scots, William in. and the, 13 ;
Anne's relations with, 81 ; and the
Union, 87-89.
Parliamentary Reform Bill, Pitt's, 383,
391 et seq.
advocacy of, by Chatham
Index
and Pitt, 465. See also Whigs and
Tories.
Parma, duchy of, 126, 128; passes to
Austria, 154 ; ceded to Don Philip,
196.
Parnell, Colonel, on Lord Peterborough,
5r4-
Parthenopean Republic, the, 451.
Partition Treaty (i), 42-43; (ii), 46; im-
peachment of Somers, Russell, and
Halifax for their share in, 51.
Party system, development of the, 34-35.
Passaro, Cape, Byng destroy s the Spanish
fleet off, 127.
Passarowitch, Treaty of, 127.
Passive obedience, decline of, 184-185.
Paterson, William, originator of the Bank
of England, and the Darien scheme,
57, 61.
Patna, relieved by Clive, 246 ; massacre
of the British at, by Mir Cassim, 311.
Patriot King, Bolingbroke's, 248.
' Patriots,' the, 150.
Paul I. , Tsar of Russia, 443 ; urges the
second coalition against France, 451-
452 ; and Napoleon, 455 ; assassinated,
456-
' Peep o! Day Boys,' 473.
Peerage Bill, Sunderland's, defeated, 130.
Peers, Scottish, 87, 88.
Pelham, Henry, succeeds Wilmington,
178 ; his administration, 181 ; resigna-
tion and return to office, 194 ; adminis-
tration of, 205 et seq. ; death of, 207 ;
his parliamentary skill, 208.
Thomas. See Newcastle.
Pension Parliament, the, 147.
Percy, Bishop, 487.
Perils from False Brethren, Dr. Henry
Sacheverell's sermon, 101.
Perth, occupied by Mar, 119 ; proclama-
tion of James vm. at, 186.
duke of, 186.
Peshwa, the, 168. See Balaji, Madhu
Rao, Ragonath Rao, Baji Rao, Mah-
rattas.
Peter the Great, in, 126.
Peter in., Tsar, restores East Prussia,
252 ; murdered, 252.
Peterborough, Charles Mordaunt, earl of,
captures Barcelona, 74 ; brilliant ex-
ploits of, in Spain, 75 ; tries to divert the
relief of Barcelona, 75-76 ; recalled,
76 ; Tory attempt to make him Marl-
borough's rival, 96 ; in Spain (note on),
5I4-5I5-.
Peyton, his indecisive action with La
Bourdonnais, 198.
Philadelphia, the continental congress
at, 332-333; occupied by Howe, 341.
Philip v. of Spain, duke of Anjou, 48 ;
accepts the Spanish succession, 49, 50 ;
and the French succession, 107, 123 ;
refuses to surrender the crown of
Spain, 108; submits to the Quadruple
Alliance, 128 ; death of, 194.
Philip, Captain Arthur, takes possession
of Australia for the British crown, 414.
Don, 195, 220.
duke of Orleans, regent of France,
118, 125.
Philippines, capture of, 253 ; restored to
Spain, 254-255.
Philosophy, eighteenth century, 265.
Piacenza, ceded to Don Philip, 196.
Pichegru, General Charles, overruns Hol-
land, 440.
Piedmont, Austria opposes reinstatement
of Charles Emmanuel, 452.
Pilnitz, Declaration of, 422.
Pirna, Frederick the Great at, 216.
Pitt, William (Chatham), joins the Oppo-
sition, 150 ; incurs the displeasure of
George n. by supporting Frederick,
Prince of Wales, 150-151 ; denounces
the Convention of Pardo, 157 ; pay-
master of the forces under the Pelham
administration, 194; supports Austria,
194 ; opposes the reduction of the
navy, 205 ; returns to opposition, 208 ;
his Militia Bill defeated in the Lords,
214; refuses to join the Newcastle
ministry, 215 ; head of the Devonshire
ministry, 216 ; his Militia Bill passed,
218 ; dismissal of, and coalition with
Newcastle, 219-220 ; relations with
George n. , 222 ; bis war policy, 222 ;
complete ascendency of, 236-237 ;
George in.'s dislike of, 248, 249, 250;
resigns, 251 ; abstains from attacking
the government, 253; George in. and,
274-275 ; denounces the Peace of Paris,
280; George Iii.'s appeal to, 291 ; op-
posed to the Stamp Act, 292 ; to the De-
claratory Act, 293 ; his return to office,
294 et seq. ; accepts earldom of Chat-
ham, 295 ; plans a northern league,
297 ; overtures rejected by Frederick
the Great, 297 ; illness of, 298 ; resigns,
302 ; hostility to the Grafton ministry,
303 ; his sympathy with the demands
of Ireland, 320; opposes the govern-
ment's American policy, 333 ; and the
American War of Independence, 344-
345 ; death of, and its effect, 345 ; his
attitude towards Ireland, 374.
the younger, 356 ; enters
parliament, 377 ; and the Rockingham
ministry (ii), 377; and parliamentary
reform, 378 ; chancellor of the ex-
542 England and the British Empire
chequer, 378 ; in Opposition with Shel-
burne, 382; his first ministry (1783),
385 et seq. ; his methods and policy,
389-390 ; his India Bill, 391 ; his treat-
ment of Fox, and parliamentary re-
form, 391 et seq. ; his proposed com-
mercial treaty with Ireland, 394 et seq. ;
the Regency Bill, 397; his finance, 398
etseq. ; at the trial of Warren Hastings,
408 ; attitude in the early stages of the
French Revolution, 423^/^,7. ; and the
war with the French Republic, 428 et
se.q. ; comparison with his father, 433 ;
with Walpole, 433-434; overtures for
peace with France, 442, 454-455 ; re-
signs, 457; in retirement, 464 ; and the
relief of Roman Catholics in Ireland,
471-472 ; and Ireland, 476 et seq. ; and
Catholic emancipation, 457, 481.
Pittsburg, 227.
Place Bills, 33; vetoed by William in.,
35 ; rejected by parliament, 36.
Plassey, battle of, 244.
Pocket boroughs, 392.
Poetry, eighteenth century, 257 et seq.,
482 et seq.
Poland, War of the Succession, 153 ; par-
tition of (i), 324, 414, 415 ; partition of
(ii), 426, 433, 436, 438, 440.
Pompadour, Antoinette Poisson, mar-
quise de, her influence on the politics
of France, 210-211.
Pondichery, French trading-station at,
169 ; headquarters of the French East
India Company, 197, 245 ; capture of,
248, 251.
Poor Law, modifications of, 272.
Relief, 504-505.
Pope, Alexander, 257 et seq., 482.
Popham, Major William, 368 ; captures
Gwalior, 370.
Port Mahon, capture of, 94; captured
by the French, 214.
Porteous riots, the, 151.
Portland, William Bentinck, duke of,
William in.'s grant of Crown lands to,
opposed bv parliament, 38 ; diplomatic
agent of William in., 42; third duke
of, nominal head of the coalition, 382 ;
joins Pitt's ministry, 439.
Porto Bello, blockade of Spanish treasure
fleet at, 137; captured by Admiral
Vernon, 171, 172.
Portugal, supports the Grand Alliance,
67; the Methupn Treaty with, 112;
trade of, with India, 169 ; attacked by
Spain, 251 ; Spaniards expelled from,
253-
Pragmatic Army, 178.
Sanction, the, 136, 137, 140, 152
etseq., 161, 172, 173, 178; recognised
by Maximilian Joseph of Bavaria,
1 80.
Prague, capture and evacuation of, by the
French, 177; besieged by Frederick the
Great, 221.
Pratt, Charles, Chief Justice of the Com-
mon Pleas. See Camden.
Prelacy, Scottish demand for abolition of,
ii ; Scottish clergy's fear of, 88.
Prerogative. See Royal Prerogative.
Presbyterianism, 13; Presbyterians ex-
eluded from holding office in England,
89; in Ireland, 469, 470.
Preston's plot, 30.
Prestonpans, battle of, 186-187.
Pretender. See James and Charles
Stuart.
Preventive system, the, Scottish hatred
of, and the Porteous riots, 151.
Prideaux, General John, captures Niagara,
231.
Principia, Newton's, 264.
Principles of Morals and Legislation,
Bentham's, 491.
Privateers, French, molestation of English
commerce by, 96.
Privilege, of the House of Commons,
and the publication of criticism or its
debates, 325-327.
Privy Council, the English, and the Irish
parliament, 317, 320, 321.
Irish, 321 ; control over Irish
parliament abolished, 381.
Protection, 401.
Protestantism, in Ireland, 473.
Provincial Congress, the, 333.
Prussia, adherence of, to Austria, 150 ; her
struggle to become a first-class power,
159; rise of, 172,173; alliance of, with
France and the Emperor Charles vn.,
179 ; withdraws her alliance with
France, 182 ; and the Peace of Aix-la-
Chapelle, 196, 197 ; alliance with
Britain, 209 et seq. ; secret treaty be-
tween Austria and Russia for dis-
memberment of, 216, 217 ; Pitt's policy
towards, 250, 251 ; relations with,
during the administration of Pitt the
younger, 414 et seq. \ the Triple
Alliance, 416; in the war with the
French Republic, 422 et seq. \ France
declares war on, 425 ; the partition of
Poland, and the war with France, 433.
Pultawa, battle of, 91.
Pulteney, William, earl of Bath, 135 ;
in opposition, 138, 175 ; in office, 194.
Punjab, conquest of the Arabs in, 166.
Purandar, Treaty of, 367.
Puritanism, 6, 256, 257.
Index
543
QUADRUPLE ALLIANCE, the, 126, 128.
Quebec, capture of, 231 et seq. ; French
attempt to recover, 237, 238 ; the Quebec
Act, 331-332; siege of (1775), 336.
Queensberry, marquis of, high commis-
sioner for Scotland, 81 ; leader of the
Court party, 83, 85, 87, 88.
Quiberon Bay, Hawke's victory over the
French fleet at, 230, 231 ; the effect of,
on the contest for America, 235 ; ex-
pedition to (French Emigres}, 440,
441.
RACE OF CASTLKBAR, the, 476.
Ragoba, 309, 367; Hastings' relations
with, 368, 371.
Ragonath Rao, 309. See Ragoba.
Rajputs, the, 165, 166.
Ramillies, campaign and battle of, 74, 75.
Ramsay, Allan, 262, 486, 487.
Rape of the Lock, 258.
Rasselas, Johnson's, 484.
Rastadt, Treaty of, 109, 122.
Rationalism, 256, 257.
Raucoux, battle of, 195.
Raymond, commander of the Nizam's
forces, 458, 459.
Reason in religion, 264.
Reflections on the French Revolution,
Burke's, 423-424, 490.
Regency Bill, the (George III.), 291.
Regulating Acts, North's, 358.
Reign of Terror, the, 430, 435, 466, 468.
Relief Act, Pitt's (Ireland), 472.
Poor, 504-505.
Religion, reason in, 264.
Reliques of Ancient English Poetry,
Percy's, 487.
Renunciation Act, 382.
Representation, taxation and, 293.
Repression, political, in Great Britain,
following the French Revolution, 465
et seq.
Resolutions, parliamentary, on the suc-
cession after the flight of James if., 2.
Restoration Law of Settlement, 272, 504.
Resumption Bill (William in.), 47.
Revenue, hereditary, voted to William
and Mary. 29 ; difficulties of Bute and
Grenville in raising, 284.
Revolution, the, I et seq. ; in Scotland, 9 et
seq. ; in Ireland, 17 et seq.
Rhine, the, Marl borough's operations on,
65, 66, 67 ; French campaigns on, 452.
Richardson, Samuel, 261, 485.
Richelieu, Marshal the duke of, 223.
Richmond, Charles Lennox, third duke
of, 345 ; and parliamentary reform, 376-
377. 382-
Right, D -claration of, 3.
Rights, Bill of, 5.
Scottish claim of, n.
Rights of Man, Tom Paine's, 466.
Ripperda, Spanish minister, plans Jacobite
restoration, 137.
Rivoli, battle of, 442.
Roads, badness of, 499.
Robertson, William, historian, 467, 488.
Robespierre, Maximilien, 425, 434, 435.
Robinson, Sir Thomas (afterwards Baron
Grantham), leader of the House of
Commons, 208.
Robinson Crusoe, 260.
Rochambeau, Marshal comte de, 349,
352-
Rochefort, failure of Mordaunt and
Hawke at, 224 ; destruction of French
transports at, by Hawke, 227.
Rochester, Lawrence Hyde, earl of, dis-
favours the war with Louis XIV. , 64-
65 ; removed from the Privy Council,
95-
Rockingham, Charles Wentworth, mar-
quess of, ministry of (i), 291 et seq.',
and the Grafton ministry, 301 ; and the
American war, 345 ; ministry of (ii),
353 > opposes the absentee tax, 373,
374; ministry of (ii), 377; death of,
377-378.
Roderick Random, 261-262.
Rodney, Lord George, admiral, bom-
bards Havre, 229 ; at Dominica, 349 ;
captures St. Eustatius, 350 ; pursues
Guichen, 350 ; defeats and captures De
Grasse at the Saints, 354.
Roebuck, Dr. John, 496.
Rohilkhand, Wellesley and, 462.
Rohillas, the, 240.
Rohilla war, the, 365-366.
Roman Catholicism, and the Bill of
Rights, 5 ; the Revolution and, 17 ;
predominance of, in James ii.'s Dublin
parliament, 19-20 ; penal laws against
(Ireland), 23-24 ; political disabilities
on, in Ireland, 316 et seq. ; in Canada,
and the Quebec Act, 331-332 ; Scot-
land opposed to, 375 ; relief of Eng-
land, 375, 398 ; relief of Ireland, 375 ;
in Ireland, 469 et seq. , 470, 471.
Roman Republic, the, 451.
Romantic Revival, the, 486.
i Rooke, Admiral Sir George, 32 ; the
disaster of the Smyrna fleet, 34 ; his
failure at Cadiz, and success at Vigo,
66-67 » sent against Toulon, 72 ; cap-
tures Gibraltar, 73 ; dismissal of, 95.
Rossbach, battle of, 225.
Rotten boroughs, the, 392, 470.
Roussillon, Spanish invasion of, 436.
Routledge, delegate to Howe, 339.
544 England and the British Empire
Rowley Poems, Chatterton's, 486.
Royal Marriages Act (1772), the, 327.
Prerogative, the, 36 ; curtailment
of, in the Act of Settlement (1701), 50-
51 ; Whigs' jealousy of, 130.
Rural population, decrease of, during the
eighteenth century, 272.
revolution, the, 500 et seq.
Russell, Edward, Admiral, relations of,
with James II., 31 ; defeats Tourville,
32 ; resigns, 33 ; quarrels with Notting-
ham, 33 ; reinstated, 34 ; dispatched
to the Mediterranean, 36 ; intrigues of,
with James II. disclosed by Fenwick,
40 ; becomes earl of Orford, 41 ; Tory
attack on, 43 ; retirement of, 47 ; im-
peachment of, 51 ; member of the
Junto, 95.
Russia, becomes a power under Peter the
Great, in ; Carteretand, 135; supports
Augustus of Poland, 153 ; and the
Pragmatic Sanction, 163 ; in conflict
with Sweden, 174 ; hostility of, to
Prussia, 209 ; troops of, subsidised by
Britain for the defence of Hanover,
212 ; secret treaty with Austria against
Prussia, 216-217; naval ambitions of,
414, 417 ; and the second coalition
against France, 451-452 ; defeat of Pitt's
policy towards, 418 ; and the partition
of Poland (ii), 440; operations of, in
the second coalition against France,
452 et seq.
Rutland, viceroy of Ireland, 394.
Ruvigny. See Gal way, earl of.
Ryswick, Peace of, 41 ; effect of, on the
king's position, 42.
SAADAT ALI, nawab of Oudh, 458, 462.
Sacheverell, Dr. Henry, his sermon
attacking toleration, 101 ; impeach-
ment of, 102.
Sackville, Lord George, at Minden, 228 ;
gets Sir Guy Carleton superseded, 340.
Safdat Ali, nawab-wazir of Oudh, 240.
St. Bernard, crossed by Napoleon, 454.
St. Eustatius, captured by Rodney, 350.
St. Jean d'Acre, 453.
St. John, fort of, captured by the Ameri-
cans, 336.
St. John, Henry. See Bolingbroke.
St. John, Knights of, 451, 464.
St. Kitts, no.
St. Lawrence, intended British expedi-
tion to, 195. See Canada, and Louis-
bourg.
St. Lubin, French adventurer, 367.
St. Lucia, surrendered by Britain, 254 ;
seized by Barring ton, 348.
St. Malo, British attacks on, 225, 226.
St. Ruth, General, defeated by Ginkel at
Athlone and Aghrim, 22.
St. Vincent, captured by D'Estaing, 348.
battle of, 443.
— — Lord. See Jervis.
Salabat Jang, 202.
Salsette, acquired by Britain, 367 ; and
retained, 371.
Salt monopoly, East India Company's,
SIS-
Sandwich, John Montague, earl of, 282.
Sandys, Edwin, 175.
Santa Lucia. See St. Lucia.
Santiago, failure of Wentworth's attack
on, 171.
Saratoga, surrender of Burgoyne at, 342.
Sardinia, assigned to Austria by the Treaty
of Utrecht, 109, 126 ; captured by
Spain, 127; transferred to Savoy, 128;
and the war of the Austrian succes-
sion, 174; alliance with Austria, 179;
and the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, 196 ;
and France, 425 ; attacked by France,
438 ; withdraws from the alliance against
France, 440-441.
Sarsfield, Patrick, holds Limerick, 22.
Saunders, governor of Madras, 202-203 5
compact with Godeheu, 239.
Admiral Sir Charles, at Quebec, 232
et seq. ; resigns from the Admiralty,
296 ; protests against the French an-
nexation of Corsica, 305.
Savoy, alliance of, with Louis xiv. , 39 ;
annexed by France, 426, 447. See
Victor Amadeus.
Saxe, Marshal (Maurice of Saxony), pro-
posed invasion of England by, 180;
besieges Tournay, 181-182 ; captures
Brussels, Antwerp, and Mons, 195 ; in
the Netherlands, 195, 196.
Saxony, supports Austria, 181 ; Frederick
the Great's campaign in, 216-217.
Scheldt, the, Austria's attempt to force
the opening of, 415 ; France declares
the opening of, 427, 429.
Schellenberg, battle of, 71.
Schism Act, Bolingbroke's, 114; repeal
of, 129.
Schomberg, Frederick Hermann, duke of,
commands the forces in Ireland, 20;
killed at the battle of the Boyne, 22.
Schweidnitz, captured by Austria, 225.
Science, eighteenth century, 265.
Scotland, the revolution in, 9 et seq. ;
and the Darien Scheme, 57-58 ; parlia-
mentary parties of, and the Union, 80
et seq. ; the Act of Security, 83-84 ;
National Debt of, 86 ; compensated for
losses through English trading com-
Index
545
panics, 86-87 J irritation at the imposi-
tion of the tax on malt, demand for the
repeal of the Union, 109 ; the Porteous
riots, and aversion to the Union, 151 ;
Jacobitisra in, 184 ; the clan system,
192-193 ; attitude of, towards the
French Revolution, 467-468 ; literature
in, 487.
Scott, Sir Walter, 485.
Scraggs, involved in the South Sea
frauds, 134.
Sea power. See Navy.
Seasons, the, 262.
Security, Act of (Scotland), 83-84, 88 ;
for the Church of England, 89.
Seditious Meetings Act, the, 468.
Senegal, 254 ; ceded to France, 356.
Sepoys, use of, by Dupleix, 198-199.
September Massacres, the, 425-426, 429,
, 430, 466.
Septennial Act, the, 121-122.
Bill, Irish demand for, 320, 321.
Seringapatam, capture of, 460.
Settlement, Act of (1701), 50-51 ; repeal
of clause in, forbidding the king to go
abroad without permission of parlia-
ment, 124-125.
Restoration law of, 272, 504.
Seven Years' War, the, 208 et scq.
Seville, Treaty of, 140.
Shaftesbury, third earl of, 265.
Shah Alam, 246, 248, 313 ; and Sindhia,
365-
Shahzada. See Shah Alam.
Shakespeare, revival of, in the eighteenth
century, 486.
Shelburne, William Petty, earl of, supports
Pitt, 282 ; dismissed, 301 ; in office
with Rockingham, 377 ; becomes prime
minister, 378 ; overthrown by the
coalition of North and Fox, 382.
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, associated
with Fox, 378 ; 486, 488.
Sheriffmuir, battle of, 120.
Shipping, Spanish claim of right to search
British, 156 et seq.
Shore, Sir John (Teignmouth), governor-
general of India, 412, 457-458.
Shortest Way with Dissenters, the,
Defoe's, 78, 260.
Shovell, Sir Cloudesley, sent against the
Brest fleet, 72 ; joins Rooke at Cape
St. Mary, 72, 90, 91.
Shrewsbury, Charles Talbot, earl and
afterwards duke of, made a secretary
of state, 8 ; resigns, 30 ; effect of James
II. 's proclamation on, 31 ; succeeds
Nottingham, 34; intrigues of, with
James II. disclosed by Fenwick, 40;
appointed Anne's chamberlain, 103 ;
defeats Bolingbroke's schemes, 115;
minister of George I., 116.
Shuja Daulah, Nawab-wazir of Oudh,
244-246, 248, 312, 314; and Hastings,
365. 366.
Sicily, obtained by Victor Amadeus
under the Treaty of Utrecht, 109;
passes to Austria in exchange for
Sardinia, 128 ; Elizabeth Farnese and,
153 ; Don Carlos proclaimed king of,
154. See Naples.
Siddons, Elizabeth, 486.
Sidmouth, Henry Addington, Viscount.
See Addington.
Silesia, conquest of, by Frederick the
Great, 172-173 et seq. ; confirmed by
the Treaty of Dresden, 182 ; Austrian
successes in, 251 ; Frederick the Great
regains his mastery of, 253.
Silk industry, the, 269.
Sindhia (Madhava Rao), 168, 365, 367 ;
defeated by Colonel Goddard, 368 ;
relations with Sir John Macpherson,
409 ; (Daulat Rao), 459.
Sinking Fund, Walpole's, 129; Pitt's,
396, 403-404, 474.
Sir Charles Grandison, 261.
Sirkars, the, 239, 245, 246 ; Clive obtains
the cession of, 314.
Sivaji creates the Mahratta confederacy,
167.
Slave-trade, the, 390, 396, 398.
Small holder, the, 270, 500 et seq.
Smeaton, James, improves the blast
furnace, 271, 494, 495.
Smith, Adam, 390 ; his Wealth of
Nations, 398-399, 400, 491.
Admiral Sir Sidney, at Acre, 453.
Smollett, Tobias, 261-262.
Smuggling, in Scotland, 57, 402.
Smyrna fleet, disaster of the, 33-34.
Sobieski, Clementina, wife of James
Stuart, 141.
Social conditions, in Britain and France,
419-421, 493, qyjetseq.
Solms, 22.
Somers, John, Lord, becomes one of the
Whig leaders. 41 ; attack on, by the
Tories and the Commons, 47; im-
peachment of, 51 ; and the Union, 86;
relations with Marlborough, 95, 96-97,
116.
Somerset, duke of, 103.
Sons of Liberty, the, 287.
Sophia of Hanover, 5 ; recognised suc-
cessor after Anne, 50 ; Scots willing to
accept her as Anne's successor, 82.
of Zell, wife of George I., 117.
Soubise, Marshal the prince of, 224 ; de-
feated at Rossbach, 225.
Inoes's Eng. Hist.— Vol. in.
2M
546 England and the British Empire
South Sea Bubble, the, 132 et seg.
— — Company, the, 129, 131 et seq. ;
Spanish claim against, 157.
Seas, trading rights in, acquired by
Britain under the Treaty of Utrecht,
no.
Southern department, secretary of state
for (note on), 516.
Spain, Louis xiv.'s attempts on, 35-
36 ; Louis xiv. reopens his attack on,
39 ; Spanish succession question, 43-
49 ; Spanish succession war, 65-109 ;
Peterborough's military exploits in, 74,
75-76 ; Philip V. refuses to surrender
the crown of, 108 ; Philip V. excluded
from the throne of France by the Treaty
of Utrecht, 109; relations with, 124,
125, 126 ; Alberoni's schemes for the
Stuart restoration, 126-128; alliance of,
with France to restore Bourbon ascend-
ency in Europe, 134 ; demands restitu-
tion of Gibraltar, 136, 137 ; difficulties
with Austria in regard to Italy, 136 ;
demands the restitution of Gibral-
tar, quarrels with France, 136-137 ;
rapprochement with France, 152-153 ;
grievances of against Britain, and
Jenkins's ear, 156-157; war with, 159,
170 et seq. \ in the war of the Austrian
succession, 176 ; the Family Compact
(ii), 179 ; withdraws from the war in
Italy, 195; accession of Charles III.,
236 ; Pitt's attitude to, 251 ; declares
war and attacks Portugal, 251 ; Choi-
seul's efforts to make an ally of, 250-
251 ; expelled from Portugal, 253 ;
alliance with France against Britain
(1779)1 34-6 ; war with, 348 et seq. \ the
siege of Gibraltar, 348-349, 351 ; peace
concluded with, 356 ; quarrel with, over
Nootka Sound, 416; dispute with, in the
Falkland Islands, 324 ; joins the coali-
tion against France, 436 ; invasion of,
by the French, 438 ; in alliance with
France, 442.
Spanish Netherlands, Marlborough's
operations in, 65 el seq.
• succession, the, 42 et seq. ; war of,
65-109; negotiations for peace (1709),
97.
Spectator, Addison's, 259-260.
Speenhamland, 504-505.
Spinning and weaving, 268 et seg., 494-
495-
Spithead, the mutiny at, 444-445, 469-
470.
Squadrone Volante, the, supports the
Union, 85, 87.
Stair, James Dalrymple, Viscount, 13-14.
John Dalrymple, master of (after-
wards earl), and the massacre of Glen-
coe, 14 et seq.
Stair, Thomas Dalrymple, earl of, com-
mands the auxiliaries in Flanders, 177 ;
resigns, 178.
Stamp Act, Grenville's, 287 et seq. ;
repeal of, 292 et seq. , 302-303.
Standing Army and the Bill of Rights,
5 ; the Mutiny Act, 6-7 ; opposition to,
42.
Stanhope, General James, first earl, cap-
tures Minorca, 94 ; becomes secretary
of state under George I., 116; foreign
policy of, 124 ; Whig opposition to,
125, 129; death of, 133.
Stanislaus Lecszynski, 136-137 ; attempts
to regain the throne of Poland, 153 ;
becomes duke of Lorraine, 154.
State, some offices of (note on), 515-516.
States-General, the, of France, 398, 421.
Statute of Apprentices, the, 268.
Steam-engine, development of, 496.
Steel, improvement and increase in the
production of, 496.
Steele, Sir Richard, 259.
Steinkirk, battle of, 32-33.
Stephen, Sir Fitz-James, on the Nun-
comar affair, 362.
Sterne, Laurence, 262.
Stewart, General, 460.
Stirling, besieged by Charles Edward
Stuart, 189.
Strasburg, in possession of the French,
65; assigned to France by Treaty oi
Utrecht, 109.
Stuart Restoration, French expeditior
under Saxe, 179-180. See Charles
Edward, James, and Jacobitism.
Subsidies, replaced by land tax, 59.
Succession, the : William and Mary, 2 e.
seg.; Tory endeavour to use the Sue
cession Act against the Whigs, 78
Scotland and, 84 ; attitude of Ann<
and the parties towards, 113-114.
British (tables) : from James I. am
vi. , 506 ; the house of Hanover, 507.
Austrian (table), 509.
the French, 123.
Spanish (table), 508.
Succession, History of the War of, in Spain
Colonel Parnell's, and Lord Peter
borough, 513.
Sudras, the, 165.
Suffren, Admiral Bailli, 353; battle
with Hughes, 371.
Sunderland, Robert Spencer, second ear
of, 29 ; alienated by James n., 31 ; ant
the beginning of party ministries
34 ; publicly admitted to the ministry
41 ; Whigs and Tories annoyed bj
Index
547
William in.'s reliance on, 42 ; retire-
ment of, 47.
Sunderland, Charles Spencer, third earl
of, secretary of state, 95 ; dismissed from
office, 103, 116; his Peerage Bill, 130;
ruined by the South Sea Company,
133-
Supremacy, Act of, repealed in Scotland,
I3-
— — Oath of, imposed on office-holders
and members of parliament (Ireland),
23-
Suraj-ud-Daulah, massacres the British
in Culcutta, 222 ; and the Black Hole
of Calcutta, 240-241 ; murdered, 244.
Surat, Treaty of, 367 ; Goddard's dash
on, 368.
Suspensory power, abolition of, 5.
Suvarov, Alexander Vassilivitch, Count,
418 ; in Italy, 452 ; in Switzerland,
453-
Sweden, rise and fall of, under Charles
XII., in ; and the Baltic powers, 123-
124, 129 ; war with Russia, 174 ; inter-
vention of the Triple Alliance on behalf
of, against Russia and Denmark, 417.
Swift, Jonathan, Dean, 144-145, 260-261.
Swiss Guard, the, of Louis xvi., 425.
Republic, the, 447.
Syria, Napoleon's proposed conquest of,
453-
TACKING, of Resumption Bill (1706),
47 ; opposed by Anne, 79 ; attempted
in the case of the Occasional Conformity
Bill, 80.
Tale of a Tub, Swift's, 260.
Tallard, Marshal, 68 ; at Blenheim, 71.
Talmash, General, killed at Brest, 36.
Tanjore, attacked by Lally, 245.
Tariffs, commercial, reduction of, by
Walpole, 142.
Tarleton, 351.
Tatler, the, 259.
Taxation, parliamentary control over, 4 ;
under William in., 59; representation
and, 293 ; and trade, 401.
Tea tax, American resistance to the, 299
et seq.
Teignmouth, Baron, See Shore, Sir
John.
Temple, Richard Grenville. Earl, 216 ;
resigns, 251, 281 ; declines to take
office with Pitt, 291.
Terror, Reign of, the, 430, 435, 466.
Tesse", saves Toulon, 92.
Tests, religious, 89 ; Walpole refuses to
raise question of the repeal of, 147.
Texel, the, British policy and, 429 ; the
fleet in, falls into the hands of the
French, 440 ; capture of the Dutch fleet
in, 452.
Thomson, James, 262.
Thurlow, Edward, Lord Chancellor, 378.
Ticonderoga, Abercromby repulsed at,
227 ; captured by Amherst, 232 ; cap-
ture of, by Allan and Arnold, 335.
Tippu Sultan, 371, 409, 411, 457 e/j^.,
460.
Tobago, ceded to France, 356.
Toleration Act, 6.
Tone, Theobald Wolfe, 471 ; rebellion
of, 472.
Tonnage and poundage, granted to
William and Mary, 29 ; renewed to
William in., 36.
Tor Bay, Hawke's base, 230-231.
Torgau, battle of, 237.
Tories, attitude of, towards the Revolu-
tion, 2 et seq. ; policy of William in.
towards, 7 et seq. \ Jacobitism among,
28; annoyed by William in.'s reliance
on Sunderland, 42 ; William in.'s rela-
tions with, 50; renew their attacks on
Somers, Russell, and Halifax, 51 ; the,
and the East India Company, 56-57;
the, antagonism of, to the Bank of
England, 61 ; lukewarm support of
Marlborough by, 64-65 ; favoured by
Anne, 76 ; attitude of, towards the
struggle with Louis XIV., 77 ; endeavour
to use the Succession Act against the
Whigs, 78 ; and the Union with Scot-
land, 84 ; and Marlborough, 95-96 ;
attack the Admiralty, 95-96 ; and the
Barrier Treaty, 98 ; accusations of,
against Marlborough, 100; and the
Hanoverian succession, 113-114; Whig
victory over (1715), 117; George III.
and the, 273.
Toulon, failure of proposed attack on, 72 ;
Marlborough's designs on, 90-91 ;
failure of the attack on, by Eugene and
Shovell, 92; blockade of, 176; surren-
dered by Lord Hood, to be held for
Louis XVII., 436 ; recovered by
Napoleon, 437.
Toulouse, Admiral, 73.
Tournay, capture of, 98 ; siege of, 181-
182.
Tourville, Admiral, defeats English fleet
off Beachy Head, 21 ; defeated by
Russell, 32.
Towns, increase in the population of,
during the eighteenth century, 272.
Townshend, Charles, second viscount,
appointed diplomatic colleague of Marl-
borough, 97; becomes secretary of
state, 116 ; disagreement with Stanhope
and dismissal of, 125 ; secretary of
548 England and the British Empire
state, 134 ; Townshend and Walpole,
I35'I38 ; accompanies George I. to
Hanover, 138 ; retirement of, 138 ;
rupture with Walpole, 145 ; and agri-
cultural improvements, 270.
Townshend, Charles, chancellor of the ex-
chequer, 299; taxes America, 299;
death of, 300.
George, first marquis, viceroy of
Ireland, 320 et seq. ; corrupt methods
of. 373-
Trade, Scottish demand for modification
of English regulations, 86 ; Scots com-
pensated for losses in English com-
panies, 86-87 ; balance of, 112 ;
restrictions on, reduced by Walpole,
146; Anglo-Spanish conflicts over, 156
et seq. ; expansion, etc., of, 266 et seq. ;
restrictions on the Colonies, 278-279 ;
relaxations demanded by Ireland, 375 ;
balance of, 399 et seq. See Commerce.
Traitorous Correspondence Bill, the, 466.
Transubstantiation, the king's rejection
of, required by the Bill of Rights, 5 ;
enactments against (Ireland), 23.
Travancore, attacked by Tippu Sultan,
411.
Treasonable Practices Act, 466-467.
Treasons Bill (1696), 38.
Treatise on Government, Locke's, 265.
Treatise of Human Nature, Hume's,
265.
Trebbia, battle of, 452.
Trichinopoli. 202, 203.
Triennial Bill, vetoed by William III.,
33 ; defeated (1694), 35 ; receives
assent of William in., 36.
Trincomali, held by the Dutch, 169 ;
seized by Macartney, 370 ; captured by
Suffren, 371.
Trinidad, 446 ; and the Peace of Amiens,
464.
Triple Alliance, the, 125 ; (1788), 416.
Tristram Shandy, 262.
Triumvirate, the (India), 360 et seq., 367.
Troubridge, Captain, at St. Vincent, 443,
449.
Tuileries, sacking of the, 425.
Tullibardine, marquis of, joins Mar,
119; death of, 191.
Turcoing, battle of, 438.
Turin, relieved by Eugene, 74, 76, 90.
Turkey, war with Austria, 124, 127 ; wars
with Russia, 414, 417, 418.
Turks, establish military supremacy over
the Hindus, 166-167.
Tuscanv, duchy of, 126, 128, 154.
Tweeddale, marquis of, commissioner in
Scotland, sanctions the charter of the
Darien Scheme, 57 ; dismissed, 58. 85.
Tyrconnell, Richard Talbot, earl of, 17,
18, 20, 22.
UL MULK, the Nizam, 168.
Ulster, insurrection in (1798), 475,
Undertakers, the, 319-320.
Unemployment, attempts to deal with,
272.
Union of England and Scotland, the, 58,
Soetseg. ; Act of, 88 ; petitions against,
88 ; unpopular in Scotland, 89-90 ;
demand for the repeal of, 109* breach
of the Act of, by trial of Scottish
Jacobites at Carlisle, 120 ; Scottish
aversion to, 151, 185.
of Great Britain and Ireland, 476-
480.
Unions (poor-law), established by Gil-
bert's Acts, 504.
United Empire Loyalists, the, 355-356.
Irishmen, Society, 471.
States of America, the, 412.
Ushant, battle of, 347 ; Howe's victory
over the French off, 438-439.
Utrecht, peace conferences at, 107 ;
Treaty of, 108 et seq. ; British gains by,
iio-ni ; results of, 122.
VAISYA, the, or agricultural caste, 165.
Valmy, battle of, 426.
Valtelline, the (North Italian Republic),
451.
Vanity of 'Human Wishes, the, 484.
Vansittart, Henry, 310-311, 357.
Varennes, capture of Louis xv i. at, 422.
Vendee, royalist revolt in, 426, 436. 437,
439, 440-441.
Vende'miaire (1796), the coup d'Etat of,
436, 441.
Vendome, Philippe, General, ducde, 66;
his operations against Eugene in Italy,
67, 68, 92, 93.
Ven^eur, the, 439.
Venice, ceded to Austria, 447.
Verden, 126, 129.
Verdun, captured by Prussia, 425.
Vergennes, Charles Gravier, Comte de,
supports America, 343 et seq.
Vernon, Admiral Edward, captures
Porto Bello, 171 ; failure of, 173.
Versailles, Treaty of (i), 212, 216; (ii),
217, 220 ; (iii), 356.
Veto, Royal, exercises of, by William III.,
vfcarof Wakefield, the, 485.
Victor Amadeus, duke of Savoy, supports
Louis xiv., 49, 65; breaks with the
French, 68, 90, 91-92; obtains Sicily,
Index
549
by the Treaty of Utrecht, 109; becomes
king of Sardinia, 128 ; supports
Austria, 176.
Vienna, Villars' plan for the capture of,
67-69; Treaty of, 154.
Vigo, destruction of Spanish treasure
fleet at, by Rooke's expedition, 67.
Villars, Marshal, plans attack on Vienna,
67-68 ; the Tournay campaign and
Malplaquet, 98 ; outmanoeuvred by
Maryborough, 105.
Villeroy, Marshal, succeeds Luxembourg,
37 ; commands the French forces in
Italy, 65 ; defeat of, at Ramillies, 74-75.
Vinegar Hill, battle of, 476.
Virginia, Braddock dispatched to, 213 ;
and the War of Independence, 332.
Volunteers, the Irish, 378-379, 380, 381.
WADE, GENERAL GEORGE, 178 ; incom-
petence of, 187, 188 ; resigns, 189.
Wages, depression of, with growth bf
machinery, 498.
Walker, and the defence of Derry, 18.
Wai pole, Sir Robert, becomes secretary
at war, 96 ; answers Tory accusation
of peculation by the Whigs, 104 ;
charged with peculation, 106 ; favours
severity against Jacobites, 120; resigns,
125; leads the Opposition Whigs, 129;
carries through his scheme for a Sinking
Fund, 129 ; opposes Sunderland's Peer-
age Bill, 130 ; and the South Sea Com-
pany, 133-134; becomes chancellor of
the exchequer, 134 ; supremacy of, 139-
140 ; his commercial policy, 142-143 ;
rupture with Townshend, 145 ; ascend-
ency of, 146 et seq. ; growth of material
prosperity under, 146 ; parliamentary
bribery and corruption, 146-147 ; atti-
tude towards dissenters, 147-148 ; his
Excise Bill (1733), 148-149 ; dismisses
Chesterfield, 149; and the demands of
Frederick, Prince of Wales, 150 ; and
the war of the Polish succession, 154;
and the Family Compact, 155-156 ; the
war with Spain, 157 et seq. \ resignation
refused by George n., 157; and the
war with Spain, 170-171 ; made earl of
Oxford, 175 ; resigns, 175 ; and the
colonial trade, 278 ; his economics,
399, 400; comparison of Pitt with,
433-434-
Horace, 266.
Walton, Captain, 127-128.
Wandewash, battle of, 237, 248.
Warburg, battle of, 237.
Warburton, Bishop, 282-283.
Wargam, convention of, 368, 369.
Warren, Commodore Sir Pettr, captures
Louisbourg, 182; defeats the French
off Cape Finisterre, 195.
Washington, George, capitulation of,
at Great Meadows, 104 ; deprecates
separation, 330, 332 ; appointed com-
mander-in-chief, 335; at Boston, 337;
driven from New York and across the
Delaware, 339 ; jealousy of, 340 ; in
New Jersey, 341 ; defeated at Brandy-
wine Creek, 341; captures Yorktown,
352.
Watson, Admiral Charles, at Gheriah,
239 ; and the Omichund plot, 242.
Watt, James, 496.
Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith's, 398-
399, 400, 490-491.
Weaving, 494-495.
Webb, General, defeats the French at
Wynendael, 94.
Wedderburn, Alexander, solicitor-
general. See Loughborough.
Wedgewood, Josiah, 500.
Wellesley, Richard Colley, first marquess
of, 308 ; governor-general of India,
458-463.
Wellinghausen, battle of, 251.
Wentworth, General, 171 ; failure of,
*73-
Wesley, Charles, 263-264.
John. 263-264.
West, Admiral, at Minorca, 214, 215.
•i Indies, failure of Vernon and Went-
worth in, 171-172, 173, 175 ; and the
Peace of Paris, 254 ; naval war in, 348-
35X» 354 > wasted naval energies in,
441.
Westminster, convention of, 212.
election, affair of the (Pitt and Fox),
Treaty of, 177.
Westphalia, Treaty of, 161-162, 175.
Wexford, religious strife in (1798), 475.
Weymouth, Thomas Thynne, Lord, and
the Middlesex election riots, 305.
Wharton, Thomas, marquess of, 41 ; dis-
trusted by William in., 47; member
of the Junto, 95.
Whateley (George Grenville's private
secretary), and the Hutchinson letters,
28, 329.
icier, 360.
Whigs, attitude of, towards the Revolu-
tion, 2 et seq. ; policy of William HI.
towards, 7 et seq. ; correspondence of,
with James II. (1690), 20; attitude of,
towards Jacobitism, 28 ; ascendency
of, under William III., 34-35, 37;
William iii.'s relations with, 37, 38;
advance of, under William in., 40-41;
annoyed by William in.'s reliance on
Wh«
550 England and the British Empire
Sunderland, 42 ; the, and the East
India Company, 56-57 ; the, and the
Bank of England, 61 ; support Marl-
borough, 64-65 ; Tory endeavour to
use the Succession Act against, 78 ;
and the Cavaliers, 82-83 ; and the
Union with Scotland, 84 ; ascendency
of, under Anne, 95 ; fall of the (1710-
1712), too et seq. ; accused of pecula-
tion by the Tories, 104; defeat the
commercial treaty with France, 112 ;
and the Hanoverian succession, 113-
114 ; triumph of (Anne-George I.), 115
et seq* ; the split among the, under
George I., 125, 129 ; Newcastle and the
Whig system, 249 ; George in. and
the, 273 et seq. ; vindictive treatment
of, by Bute, 280; and the French
Revolution, 426 ; the Portland group,
426, 439.
Whiteboys, the, 318-319.
Whitefield, George, 263.
Wicklow, religious strife in (1798), 475.
Wilkes, John, his attack on the king's
speech and arrest, 281 ; released, 282 ;
his Essay on Woman, 282 ; outlawed,
283 ; the Middlesex elections, 305-306 ;
wins his suit against Halifax, 307 ; and
the Middlesex elections, 325 ; and the
publication of the debates of the House
of Commons, 327.
Wilkinson, John, 496.
William in. , becomes King of England,
3, and Scotland, 10 ; accepts De-
claration of Right, 3 ; policy of Tolera-
tion, 6 ; attitude to parties, 8; in the
Glencoe affair, 14-16; Boyne campaign,
21 ; his domestic and foreign states-
manship, 25 et seq. ; policy of, towards
the Whigs and Tories, 28-29 ; the
Netherlands campaign, 30; defeated
at Steinkirk, 32; defeated at Neer-
winden, 33 ; vetoes bill limiting parlia-
ment to three years, 33 ; tonnage and
poundage renewed to, 36 ; his relations
with Anne and Marlborough, 37 ;
appoints Lords Justices administrators
during his absences, 37 ; the first Par-
tition Treaty, 42-43; popular irritation
against, after the Peace of Ryswick,
42-43 ; grants to his favourites opposed
by parliament, 43, 47; popular reaction
in favour of, 51, 52-53 ; death of, 53;
the chief features of his reign, 54 et
seq. ; anxious for union of England and
Scotland, 58.
Wilmington (Sir Spencer Compton), first
lord, 139, 175 ; death of, 178.
Window tax, the, 402.
Wolfe, James, and William, duke of
Cumberland, 190 ; second in command
of Amherst's expedition, 226; and the
capture of Quebec, 231 et seq.
Woman, Wilkes1 Essay on, 282-283.
Women, employment of, 498-499.
' Wonderful Year,' the, 228.
Wood's half-pence, 144-145.
Woollen trade, the, 267-269.
Wordsworth, William, 482.
Workhouse Act, the, 272.
Worms, Treaty of, 178-179.
Wycherley, William, 259.
Wyndham, joins Pitt's ministry, 439.
Wynendael, battle of, 94.
YORK, FREDERICK, duke of, besieges
Dunkirk, 436-437 ; recalled. 438.
Yorke, Charles, Chancellor, 304.
Yorktown, capitulation of, 352.
Young, Arthur, 499, 503.
Chevalier, or Pretender.
Charles Edward Stuart.
See
ZEMAN SHAH, 459.
Zemindari rights, obtained by Clive in
Orissa, 314 ; Hastings and, 360 ;
Cornwallis and, 410-411.
Zurich, battle of, 453.
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Jolm.BartliDlxnn«vr& Co..Ed-in.T
HISTORICAL WORKS
By ARTHUR D. INNES
A SKETCH OF GENERAL POLITICAL HISTORY
FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES.
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CONTENTS
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The European Convulsion : to 1815 A.D. — The Modern Nations.
* Any one who masters the manual which Mr. Innes has given us will have
made a fair start in historical study.' — Spectator.
'An altogether admirable sketch which should be of great value to the
student of history.' — Aberdeen Journal.
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ENGLAND'S INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT:
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is beyond question.' — Aberdeen Daily Joiirnal.
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the sea-power that enabled her to import all other raw material unmolested,
became at the end of the eighteenth century an industrial community instead of
an agricultural one. ' — Pall Malt Gazette.
* "A preliminary sketch-map which may assist the explorer," is Mr. Innes's
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mend Mr. Innes's manual.'— Spectator.
LONDON: RIVINGTONS
AN OUTLINE OF BRITISH HISTORY.
Crown 8vo. One Vol. , 45-. 6d. , or in Two Parts : —
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To 1558 — Political Outline to 1327 — The Anglo-Saxon System — Feudalism
— The Growth of Towns — The Rural Population — The Expansion of Industry
and Commerce under the later Plantagenets — Agrarian and Commercial Changes
under the Tudors, 1485-1588— The Great Transition— Medieval English
Literature.
1558-1763. — Political Outline — Imperial Expansion — Ireland — Scotland —
Capital and Commerce — Town and Country, and the Poor Law — National
Finance — The Elizabethan Age — The Age of Puritanism — The Era of
Rationalism.
1760-1910. — Political Outline — Ireland, 1760-1869 — Colonial Expansion —
India — The Industrial Revolution — Laissez Faire — State Intervention — Com-
bination— Literature under George in. and George IV. — The Victorian Era.
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task, but he has done it well. The book is well arranged, clear and compre-
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'The leading idea has been well conceived and skilfully carried out.'
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' Mr. Innes has a rather unusual gift of neat arrangement and lucid expres-
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JUNIOR BRITISH HISTORY.
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CONTENTS
Before the Norman Conquest : 1066 — The Making of a Nation — National
Growth— The Tudor Period— Under the Stuarts— The Georgian Era— From
George iv. to George v.
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cognisance of (a) literature, (b) social conditions.' — Preparatory Schools Review.
'The treatment is concise, yet clear and methodical, with helpful lists of
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Scotch teachers is that the History of Scotland is not altogether neglected as
is so often the case in such text-books.' — Aberdeen Daily Journal.
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. . . He even finds space to devote to English literature, and each section is
followed by some useful notes. The little volume will be of more service than
many more expensive and bulky manuals.' — Saturday Review.
' It is really an interesting and concise history, well adapted for juniors,
carried out on the same lines as the author's "Outline of British History."
There is good reason for thinking it will be acceptable to junior class-rooms.'
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