102

MOTION TO REMOVE WALPOLE.

[1741. the death of Frederick William, king of Prussia, on the 31st of May of this same year, became Frederick II. We reserve, for another chapter, the consideration of the events that gave the first indication that England would be forced into a long and exhausting war-a war not so capable of adjustment as her commercial disputes with Spain would have been, if those differences had been managed with temper and common sense.

The threatening aspect of European affairs produced no moderation in the conduct of parties. Agreeing very slightly upon principles of government, or utterly disagreeing, there was one bond of union for some men of all sides-hatred of Walpole. Notice was given to sir Robert by Mr. Sandys, a member of no great mark, that he intended to bring forward articles of accusation against him. On the 13th of February the motion of Mr. Sandys for an address to the king to remove sir Robert Walpole from his majesty's presence and councils for ever, was prefaced by a speech in which the whole course of his administration, for a long series of years, was animadverted upon as a series of national calamities. The mover said, that he imputed every public evil to one person, because that one person had grasped in his own hands every branch of government; had attained the sole direction of affairs; monopolized all the favours of the crown, was the dispenser of all honours and preferments. It was proposed that during the debate sir Robert should retire from the House. The unfair attempt was overruled. Walpole was bitterly attacked by some; was sincerely but feebly defended by others. Shippen, his old Jacobite adversary, said this motion was only a pretence for turning out one minister, and bringing in anotherhe should not trouble himself with such a matter. He left the House, followed by a strong body of his friends. Walpole spoke last, and he spoke admirably. Some of the expressions of his bitter contempt of his adversaries have been preserved: "Gentlemen have talked a great deal of patriotism. A venerable word, when duly practised. I am sorry to say that of late it has been so much hackneyed about, that it is in danger of falling into disgrace. The very idea of true patriotism is lost, and the term has been prostituted to the very worst of purposes. A patriot, sir! Why, patriots spring up like mushrooms! I could raise fifty of them within the four-and-twenty hours. I have raised many of them in one night. It is but refusing to gratify an unreasonable or an insolent demand, and up starts a patriot. I have never been afraid of making patriots; but I disdain and despise all their efforts. This pretended virtue proceeds from personal malice and disappointed ambition. There is not a man among them whose particular aim I am not able to ascertain, and from what motive they have entered into the lists of opposition." He went, step by step, through the various charges against him. More impartial judges than his accusers-those who calmly review the history of their country after a century has intervened,-will acknowledge that the great merit which, in the conclusion of his speech, he claimed for himself, is justly his due: "If my whole administration. is to be scrutinised and arraigned, why are the most favourable parts to be omitted? If facts are to be accumulated on one side, why not on the other? And why may not I be permitted to speak in my own favour? Was I not called by the voice of the king and the nation to remedy the fatal effects of the South Sea project, and to support declining credit? Was I not placed

1742.]

WALPOLE RESIGNS.

103

at the head of the Treasury when the revenues were in the greatest confusion? Is credit revived, and does it now flourish? Is it not at an incredible height, and if so, to whom must that circumstance be attributed ? Has not tranquillity been preserved both at home and abroad, notwithstanding a most unreasonable and violent opposition? Has the true interest of the nation been pursued, or has trade flourished?" The motion of Mr. Sandys was negatived by a majority of 290 against 106. A similar motion made by lord Carteret in the House of Lords was also rejected.

The Parliament was approaching its natural termination under the Septennial Act. Before it was dissolved a subsidy had been granted to the queen of Hungary, the determination having been distinctly avowed that his Britannic Majesty would support his guarantee of the Pragmatic Sanction. The measure was not unpopular in England; but Walpole's unpopularity went on rapidly increasing. Upon him was thrown the blame of the failure at Carthagena. The king had gone to Hanover, and without the knowledge of his English ministers had entered into a treaty of neutrality for his German states for one year, alarmed at those successes of Prussia against Austria which we shall have to relate. Walpole had to bear the blame of every event that appeared pregnant with danger. The ministry decidedly lost ground in the elections for the new Parliament. If we may judge from a passage in a letter of Horace Walpole, his father was sadly changed: “He who at dinner always forgot he was minister, and was more gay and thoughtless than all his company, now sits without speaking, and with his eyes fixed for an hour together." * The Parliament met on the 4th of December. Night after night were the old attacks renewed. The ministerial majority dwindled away. In one struggle upon an election petition there was only a majority of seven for the government. Walpole was pressed by his friends to resign. But he held on. After a great debate on the 18th of January he had only a majority of three, in the fullest House ever known. On the 28th of January, after another battle, he had only a majority of one. Sir Robert Walpole resigned on the 1st of February, 1742.

Immediately after his resignation, Walpole was created Earl of Orford. His fall from power did not abate the hostility of his enemies. When, in December, 1741, the ministerial majority was dwindling away, Horace Walpole wrote to Mann, "I look upon it now, that the question is Downingstreet or the Tower." Downing-street had been evacuated after a tenancy of twenty years; and a lodging was to be provided, where, said Horace, "there are a thousand pretty things to amuse you; the lions, the armoury, the crown, and the axe that beheaded Anna Bullen." On the 9th of March, 1742, a motion for a Secret Committee to inquire into the administration of sir Robert Walpole during the past twenty years, was made by lord Limerick. It was rejected by a majority of two. A second motion to limit the inquiry to the previous ten years was carried. There was doubtless some difficulty in obtaining evidence; but the wholesale corruption and misappropriation of the public money which had been alleged against Walpole, was not substantiated by the testimony before the Committee. No charge could be brought against

* Letter to Sir Horace Mann, October 19, 1741.

104 PARLIAMENTARY INQUIRY INTO WALPOLE'S ADMINISTRATION. [1742.

the minister that he was himself venal. In his great defence he exclaimed, "Have I ever been suspected of being corrupted? A strange phenomenon. A corrupter, himself not corrupt!" Secret and Special Services had amounted in ten years to nearly a million and a-half sterling. The Committee admit, "that no form of government can subsist without a power of employing public money for services which are in their nature secret, and ought always to remain so." But, with one exception, the application of this amount of a hundred and fifty thousand pounds per annum could not be traced so as to bring home the dealings of the Treasury with "the venal tribe" in parliament. As to another species of venality, the evidence was clear enough. During the ten years there had been paid by Mr. Lowther, no less a sum than £50,079 188. Od. to authors and printers of newspapers, such as 'Free Briton,' 'Daily Courant,' 'Persuasive to Candour and Impartiality,' 'Corn-cutter's Journal,' Gazetteers, and other political papers. Your Committee leave it to the judgment of the House, whether this particular sum was less under the direction of the earl of Orford than if it had passed through his own hands."* If Walpole ever took the trouble to compare the thing thus bought with the price thus given, he must have felt that the folly of his agents was quite on a par with the stupidity of his hacks. The Report of the Secret Committee was received with public contempt, according to Tindal. No proceedings were taken upon it. Lord Orford sat quietly in the House of Lords, where his great rival, Pulteney, soon afterwards sat, as earl of Bath. When they met in that House, Orford walked up to Bath, and thus congratulated him on his elevation: "Here we are, my lord; the two most insignificant fellows in England."

* Report "Parliamentary History," vol. xii. col. 814.

Maria Theresa-Her succession disputed-Claim of Frederick II. upon Silesia-He invades Silesia Battle of Molwitz-The French in Bavaria-Maria Theresa in HungaryElector of Bavaria chosen Emperor Prussia obtains Silesia-Change in the English ministry-Ascendency of Carteret-Hanoverian troops in English pay-The StuartsProjected descent on the British coasts-Battle of Dettingen-Administration of the Pelhams-Battle of Fontenoy-Statute against the sons of the Pretender-Jacobitism of England and Scotland-Charles Edward in France-Note on the Battle of DettingenTable of treaties.

MARIA THERESA, queen of Hungary, is wedded to Francis, grand duke of Tuscany. The heiress of Charles VI. is twenty-three years of age. Her subjects cheerfully acknowledge the validity of her title, guaranteed as it had been by nearly all the European powers. The Elector of Bavaria first disputed the succession of the young queen. He had a prior claim, he maintained, under the will of the emperor, Ferdinand I.,-a somewhat antiquated document. France and Spain supported this claim, happy in a chance of lowering the House of Austria. England and Holland adhered to the guarantee which they had given to the late emperor. The German Electors were compared to the humbler English electors-they thought it a proper opportunity to make the most of their votes. Whilst other sovereign princes were devising some decent pretext for breaking up the peace of the world, that they might each clutch something in the affray, one prince, stronger and bolder than the rest, dashed into hostilities. Frederick II., king of Prussia, according to most historians "availed himself of the emperor's death to revive some obsolete claims to certain duchies and lordships of Silesia." The king of

Lord Mahon-vol. iii. p. 117,

VOL. VI.

I

106

MARIA THERESA-SILESIA INVADED BY FREDERICK II. [1741. Prussia "demanded of the court of Vienna part of Silesia, by virtue of old treaties of co-fraternity which were either obsolete or annulled." * The claim was a somewhat "obsolete" one, dating from the time of the Thirty Years' War, when certain territories, including the castle of Jägerndorf, were seized by Ferdinand II.; and no subsequent Kaiser "would let go the hold." The claim was attempted to be "annulled" in 1686, by "a plan actually not unlike that of swindling money-lenders to a young gentleman in difficulties, and of manageable turn, who has got into their hands." The father of Frederick II. growled over the thought of his ravished territory. The "sharp little man, little in stature, but large in faculty and renown,”—who found himself, in 1740, something higher than a Crown Prince who had endured manifold beatings in the hope that his own good time was coming,-opened the strong boxes that had been filled during twenty-eight years of royal savings, and led thirty thousand of the well-drilled Prussian grenadiers to the invasion of Silesia. It was not a very chivalrous movement. He pro-" posed to Maria Theresa that he would support her claim to the succession generally, if she would cede to him the one province which had been taken from his ancestors. Whilst a Prussian soldier is on Silesian ground, replied the spirited queen, I will enter upon no terms. Frederick knew that he should not be without friends in an attack upon the Austrian power. He took the cool view of his position which was to be expected from his nature and his rough training in kingship. To the French ambassador at Berlin he said (if Voltaire reports him rightly) as he set out with his invading army, “I am going, I believe, to play your game; and if I should throw doublets, we will share the stakes." The royal philosopher who thus knows his trade at twenty-eight, will certainly keep the world stirring in his time, for good or for evil.

Frederick encountered little opposition in Silesia. The Austrian troops retreated into Moravia, whilst the Prussians had secured the greater part of the territory which they invaded, with the exception of three fortified towns. The Austrian general, Neipperg, returned to Silesia, with an army of twentyfour thousand men. On the 10th of April, 1741, a great battle was fought at Molwitz, near the fortified town of Brierg. The Austrian cavalry routed the Prussian cavalry; and Frederick himself was driven far beyond the field of action. A charge of cowardice has been raised against the king of Prussia for his conduct on this occasion. It rests upon a relation of Maupertuis, the French mathematician, who was in his suite. When his attendants seemed in danger from the attack of an Austrian outpost, he rode off, exclaiming, "Farewell, my friends, I am better mounted than you all are." The Prussian infantry redeemed the temporary defeat, and won the battle. Frederick, in his own history of his time, says that Molwitz was the school of himself and his troops, and that he afterwards reflected deeply upon the errors which he had committed. He said that Neipperg and himself had been trying which could commit the most faults. But Prussia had won; and France was now ready to make common cause with the victor. England, as we have seen, abided by its old engagements; and voted a subsidy to the queen of Hungary. But Walpole still tried the effect

* Smollett-book ii. chap. vii.

Carlyle-vol. i. p. 341. Ibid., vol. i. p. 365.