the national purse. The secret correspondence of the French ambassador with Louis XV justifies the belief that the Duchess was secretly employed and paid to betray to the French Court the State secrets learned by her from King George. De Broglie writes: "The king visits her every afternoon from five to eight, and it is there she endeavors to penetrate the sentiments of his Britannic Majesty ". Mr. Molloy says: "The marks of confidence bestowed on her in private for the maintenance of the union between the two countries must have been pretty considerable. But the French king was not the only foreign power which sought to keep this notorious woman in its favor. The Emperor of Austria, who was desirous that King George should renew the connexion between England and Austria, kept up a secret correspondence with her." The Countess of Darlington's figure may be judged from the name of Elephant or Camel popularly awarded to her. Horace Walpole writes: "I remember as a boy being terrified at her enormous figure. The fierce black eyes, large and rolling, between two lofty - arched eyebrows, two acres of cheeks spread with crimson, an ocean of neck that overflowed, and was not distinguished from the lower part of her body, and no part restrained by stays. No wonder that a child dreaded such an ogress." She died in 1724. Mahon says: "She was unwieldy in person, and rapacious in character". Phillimore declares that "George I brought with him from Hanover mistresses as rapacious, and satellites as ignoble, as those which drew down such deserved obloquy on Charles II. Bethman, Bernstoff, Robethon, and two Turks-Mustapha and Mahomet-meddled more with public affairs, and were to the full as venal as Chiffin, Pepys, and Smith." Mahon, who calls Robethon a "prying impertinent venomous creature", adds that "coming from a poor Electorate, a flight of hungry Hanoverians, like so many famished vultures, fell with keen eyes and bended talons on the fruitful soil of England". One of the earliest acts of the Whig aristocracy, under George I, was to pass a measure through Parliament lengthening the existence of that very Parliament to seven years, and giving to the King the power to continue all subsequent Parliaments to a like period. The Triennial Parliaments were thus lengthened by a corrupt majority. For the committal of the Septennial Bill there was a majority of seventy-two votes, and it is alleged by the Westminster Review "that about eightytwo members of the honorable House had either fingered Walpole's gold, or pocketed the bank notes which, by the purest accident, were left under their plates. . . . In the ten years which preceded the Septennial Act the sum expended in Secret Service money was £337,960. In the ten years which followed the passing of the Septennial Act the sum expended for Secret Service was £1,453,400." The same writer says: "The friends and framers of the Triennial Bill were for the most part Tories, and its opponents for the most part Whigs. The framers and friends of the Bill for long Parliaments were all Whigs, and its enemies all Tories." When the measure came before the Lords we find Baron Bernstoff, on the King's behalf, actually canvassing Peers' wives with promises of places for their relatives, in order to induce them to get their husbands to vote for the Bill. Another of the early infringements of public liberty by the Whig supporters of George I was the passing (1 Geo. I, stat. 2, c. 5) of the Riot Act, which had not existed from the accession of James I to the death of Queen Anne. Sir John Hinde Cotton, a few years afterwards, described this Act, which is still the law of England, as “An Act by which a little dirty justice of the peace, the meanest and vilest tool a minister can use, had it in his power to put twenty or thirty of the best subjects of England to immediate. death, without any trial or form but that of reading a proclamation". In order to facilitate the King's desire to spend most of his time in Hanover, the third section of the Act of Settlement was repealed. 66 Thackeray says: Delightful as London City was, King George I liked to be out of it as much as ever he could, and when there, passed all his time with his Germans. It was with them as with Blücher one hundred years afterwards, when the bold old Reiter looked down from St. Paul's and sighed out 'Was für Plunder!' The German women plundered, the German secretaries plundered, the German cooks and intendants plundered; even Mustapha and Mahomet, the German negroes, had a share of the booty. Take what you can get, was the old monarch's maxim." There was considerable discontent in the early years of George's reign. Hallam says: "Much of this disaffection was owing to the cold reserve of George I, ignorant of the language, alien to the prejudices of his people, and continually absent in his electoral dominions, to which he seemed to sacrifice the nation's interest. . . . The letters in Cox's Memoirs of Walpole' abundantly show the German nationality, the impolicy and neglect of his duties, the rapacity and petty selfishness of George I. The Whigs were much dissatisfied, but the fear of losing their places made them his slaves." In order to add the duchies of Bremen and Verden to Hanover, in 1716, the King, as elector, made a treaty with Denmark against Sweden. This treaty proved the source of those Continental wars, and the attendant system of subsidies to European Powers, which have in the main created our enormous National Debt; Bremen and Verden being actually purchased for George I, as the Elector of Hanover, with English money. Great Britain, in addition, was pledged by George I to guarantee Schleswig to Denmark. Sweden and Denmark quarrelling-and George I as Elector of Hanover having, without the consent of the English Parliament, declared war against Sweden-an English fleet was sent into the Baltic to take up a quarrel with which we had no concern. In addition, we were involved in a quarrel with Russia, because that Power had interfered to prevent Mecklenberg being added to George's Hanoverian estates. The chief mover in this was the notorious Baron Bernstoff, who held some village property in Mecklenberg. In all these. complications, Hanover gained, England lost. If Hanover found troops, England paid for them, while the Electorate solely reaped the benefit. Every thoughtful writer admits that English interests were always betrayed to satisfy Hanoverian greed. The King's fondness for Germany provoked bitter expressions of hostility, and amongst the various squibs issued, one in 1716, from the pen of Samuel Wesley, brother of John Wesley, represents a conversation between George and the Duchess of Kendal: "As soon as the wind it came fairly about, "Quoth he, 'My dear Kenny, I've been tired a long while, With living obscure in this poor little isle, And now Spain and Pretender have no more mines to spring, I'm resolved to go home and live like a king'.' The Duchess approves of this, describes and laughs at all the persons nominated for the Council of Regency, and concludes: "On the whole I'll be hanged if all over the realm There are thirteen such fools to be put to the helm ! I chose them for my regents and you for my wench. For the devil won't take you if I turn you away'." It was this same Duchess of Kendal who, being the King's mistress, was publicly accused of having received enormous sums of money from the South Sea Company for herself and the King, in order to shield from justice the principal persons connected with those terrible South Sea frauds, by which in the year 1720, so many families were reduced to misery. When the "South Sea Bill", was promoted in 1720, wholesale bribery was resorted to. Transfers of stocks were proved to have been made to persons in high office. Two members of the Whig Ministry, Lord Sunderland and Mr. Aislabie, were so implicated that they had to resign their offices, and the last-named, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer, was ignominiously expelled the House of Commons. Royalty itself, or at least, the King's sultanas, and several of his German household, shared the spoil. £30,000 were traced to the King's mistresses, and a Select Committee of the House denounced the whole business as "a train of the deepest villainy and fraud with which hell ever contrived to ruin a nation". Near the close of the reign Lord Macclesfield, Lord Chancellor and favorite and tool of the King, was impeached for extortion and abuse of trust in his office, and, being convicted, was sentenced to pay a fine of £30,000. In 1716 Mademoiselle Schulenberg, then Duchess of Munster, received £5,000 as a bribe for procuring the title of Viscount for Sir Henry St. John. In 1724, the same peeress, bribed by Lord Bolingbroke, successfully used her influence to pass an Act through Parliament restoring him his forfeited estates. Remusat says that the Duchess was paid for this £11,000, and that she obtained a promise from the King which Walpole dared not, or could not, make the King retract. Lady Cowper tells us that Mr. Chetwynd, in order to secure his position in the Board of Trade, paid to another of George's mistresses £500 down, agreed to allow her £200 a year as long as he held the place, and gave her also the fine brilliant earrings she wore. In 1717, Mr. Shippen, a member of the House of Commons, was committed to the Tower for saying in his place in the House that it was the "infelicity of His Majesty's reign that he is unacquainted with our language and constitution". Lord Macaulay tells us how Lord Carteret, afterwards Earl Granville, rose into favor. The king could speak no English; Carteret was the only one of the Ministry who could speak German. "All the communication that Walpole had with his master was in very bad Latin." The influence Carteret wielded over the King did not, however, extend to every member of the Royal Family. The Princess of Wales afterwards described the Lords Carteret and Bolingbroke as men she had "long known to be two as worthless men of parts as any in the country, and who I have not only been often told are two of the greatest liars and knaves in any country, but whom my own observation and experience have found so ". Under pressure from George I our standing army was nearly doubled by the Whig Ministry, and this when peace would rather have justified a reduction than an increase. The payments to Hanoverian troops commenced under this king, a payment which William Pitt afterwards earned the enmity of |