1722]

BISHOP ATTERBURY'S PLOT

955

every day more and more, and yet no effectual step will or can be taken to shake it." The great South Sea Scheme also seemed to him a difficulty. "That body of men, who have increased their capital by £40,000,000, begin to look formidable. They cannot but be the governors of the kingdom." He therefore urged instant action before the Whig settlement had time to ripen or the financial plans to be brought to successful conclusion. Even a few years later the Earl of Orrery wrote, "It is not an extravagant computation that four out of five of the whole nation wish well to you." Nevertheless all these Jacobite writers were obliged to confess, even after the failure of the scheme, that the united Whigs were too powerful, and the general prudence of all classes too great, to allow of any successful movement without assistance from abroad. It is plain also that there were numerous sections and much want of discipline in the Jacobite camp. Atterbury's influence was disapproved of by many; Gower had a band of followers of his own; and James was so alive to this source of weakness that he earnestly pressed for the election of a responsible head, naming the Earl of Oxford as the fittest person for the purpose. These divisions, and the want of self-reliance in the face of the powerful Government, constantly prevented the Jacobites from obtaining success; their agents were Failure of perpetually soliciting foreign countries for help, and the conspiracy. the chain of foreign diplomacy which Stanhope had wrought was so close, that such ill-advised requests could scarcely fail to reach the ears of the English ministry. Thus a determination to take advantage of the confusion caused by the South Sea Scheme, by the death of Stanhope, which was supposed to have broken the link with France, and by the new election for Parliament, was brought to Walpole's knowledge. The Regent had been asked to supply 5000 men, but Dubois was not likely to overthrow the diplomatic edifice he had so carefully built up. He at once informed the English minister at Paris. And at the opening of the new Parliament George was able to give a short summary of the conspiracy, involving an expedition headed by James and Ormond from Spain and Italy, the seizure of the Tower, the Bank and the Exchequer, and the declaration in London of King James; and at the same time he could state that some of the chiefs, especially the Bishop of Rochester, were already under arrest.

The superiority of the Whig party was now shown in the Bills that were passed relative to this conspiracy. The Habeas Corpus Act was suspended for a whole year, the longest time on record;

Quarrel between
Carteret and

Walpole.

sums were granted for an increase of the army; a tax of £100,000, to be collected from all Nonjurors, was enacted; and as the evidence was scarcely sufficient to go before a Court of Law, Bills of Pains and Penalties were introduced against some of the subordinate agents, and against Atterbury himself, who was forced to leave the kingdom. At Calais he met Bolingbroke, who had just received his pardon and was returning to England. He had been dismissed by the Pretender after the failure of 1715, and had vowed never again to serve so ungrateful & master. None the less did he continue for the rest of his life to hamper by his intrigues the Whig party. The chief cause of his irritation was that his overtures were rejected by Walpole, who already began to show that thirst for power and jealousy of men of great talents which was one of his marked characteristics, and which was the ultimate cause of his fall. Carteret, who with Townshend was now Secretary of State, was his first victim—a man of the most brilliant parts and of unrivalled knowledge of foreign affairs. He had succeeded to much of the influence as well as to the views of Stanhope. Abroad he was inclined to plunge England into the complications of Hanoverian policy. It was in fect natural that with his great knowledge of foreign affairs he should be led to consider them more important than other English statesmen, who then as now were inclined towards a policy of isolation. At home, too, his views were less exclusively those of a Whig partisan than those of his fellow ministers. He feared probably less than the occasion demanded the strength of the Jacobites. He looked upon the sole possession of power by the Whigs on the Hanoverian succession as a necessary but only temporary evil. He was desirous of a far larger admission of the Tory element, and would willingly have admitted Bolingbroke and those Tories who would have accompanied him among the ranks of the ministry, or at all events among the ranks of the ministerial supporters. But to Walpole such views were exceedingly distasteful. He well knew Bolingbroke's ability and feared him as a personal rival. He felt also that if Bolingbroke were instrumental in destroying the Tory opposition, the King could not but feel under considerable obligations to him, and that his own exclusive influence would be shaken. Bolingbroke's overtures were therefore most coldly received, and he withdrew again to Paris, where an intrigue was going on, in which he took a prominent part, and which ended in the fall of his friend Carteret. The intrigue itself was of a very despicable character, and

1724]

QUARREL of carterET AND WALPOLE

957

was connected with the marriage of a daughter of Madame de Platen, sister of the King's mistress, the Countess of Darlington. To coun- teract Carteret, who was employing the English ambassador in the Countess's interest, Townshend sent Horace Walpole as his agent to Paris. The existence of two rival ambassadors, one only properly accredited, brought matters to a crisis. The King, in spite of a strong personal friendship for Carteret, was obliged to yield to the influence of Walpole, and his rival had to withdraw to the Lord Lieutenancy of Ireland.

But although the office given to Carteret was regarded as a retirement, in the present instance it promised to be no sinecure. Ireland was in a state of wild excitement, lashed to fury by the

Excitement

exceedingly able but untrue writings of Swift, who in in Ireland. his Drapier's Letters had by exaggeration and falsehood given an aspect of tyrannical misgovernment to a commonplace and legitimate financial act. There was great need of a new small coinage for Ireland, and Walpole had given a patent in 1722 to a certain William Wood, giving him power to coin farthings and halfpence to the value of £108,000. The contract and quality had been declared satisfactory by Sir Isaac Newton, Master of the Mint. The Irish Parliament declared that the patent would occasion a loss to the nation of one hundred and fifty per cent., an extraordinary assertion based upon the fact that a pound of rough copper in Ireland was worth twelve pence, while a pound of coined fine copper was to be worth thirty pence. But the mint in London gave eighteenpence a pound for its copper. The charge of coinage was fourpence, the duties upon copper imported into Ireland were twenty per cent., and the difference of exchange between England and Ireland rendered a slight diminution of the weight reasonable. Of course, however, it is certain that the patentee made something by the bargain, especially as the voracious Duchess of Kendal had been bribed to obtain it. But all facts and all reasoning were useless against the storm raised by Swift's Letters, and it was not till Walpole had exhibited his usual prudence in accepting inevitable defeat, and cancelling the patent, that Ireland was quieted.

It was not in Ireland only that the financial measures of Walpole met with opposition. For years the tax upon malt had been with great difficulty collected in Scotland. This tax had

Disturbances

1725.

been changed into a charge of threepence upon every in Scotland. barrel of ale. Edinburgh was in commotion, and the brewers refused to brew. Lord Isla, the Duke of Argyle's brother,

was acting as Walpole's agent in the matter. He prudently declined to interfere, certain that love of profit would speedily break up the combination. A public meeting, Walpole tells us, was held, and the question put by the chairman, "Brew or not brew?" He began by asking the man on his right hand. But he and many who followed him refused to vote, till at last one bolder than the rest refused to be bound by the majority and voted "Brew." The assembly broke up in some confusion, but before morning there were forty brewhouses hard at work in Edinburgh and ten in Leith.

The remainder of the reign offers but little of interest in domestic history, but before Walpole could enter unchecked on that course of peaceful policy which is the chief characteristic of his long tenure of office, he had yet one difficulty with Spain to overcome, while at home there was already springing up that opposition of discontented Whigs combined with the Tory party, which, under the fostering influence of Bolingbroke behind the scenes, and led in Parliament by the ability of Pulteney, formed the formidable opposition to

Spanish difficulties. 1725.

which Walpole ultimately succumbed. Since the adhesion of Spain to the Quadruple Alliance and the fall of Alberoni, a Congress had been sitting at Cambrai to arrange the details of the final settlement of Europe. The chief points at issue were the renunciation of the title of King of Spain, to which the Austrian Empire fondly clung, the Grand Mastership of the Order of the Golden Fleece, which the Emperor also claimed, and the restoration to their owners of certain Italian provinces of which the Emperor had taken possession. To gain these ends, Spain, absolutely renouncing the policy of Alberoni, attached itself closely to France and England, purchased the favour' of the latter country by a treaty of commerce, renewing the Assiento and the annual ship to the Spanish colonies, and of the former by a marriage-treaty. This marriage-treaty Orleans was induced to accept in pursuance of his plan for keeping continual hold of the regency; all views of ultimate succession were gradually fading from him as the young King improved in health. It was a threefold arrangement; the Infanta Mary Anne, then only three years old, was to marry Louis XV., the two daughters of the Regent were to marry the Prince of Asturias, heir to the Spanish crown, and Don Carlos, presumptive heir to Parma and Tuscany. Spain had thus done so much that she awaited with confidence the meeting of the Congress at Cambrai. But that Congress was very slow in its operations, and the hasty Queen of Spain and her ambitious husband began to weary of the

17251

INTRIGUES OF RIPPERDA

959

ill success of their concessions, and to think that perhaps after all matters might be brought to a more speedy termination by direct action, without mediators, at the court of Vienna. The Spanish Government was the more inclined to this step, because it had been persuaded that the Austrian court would lend no unwilling ear to direct negotiations.

This belief had been forced upon the King and Queen by a strange, adventurous, but very able foreigner, who was Intrigues of rapidly rising into somewhat the same position in Spain Ripperda. that Alberoni had held. This was the Baron Ripperda. A Dutchman by origin, a soldier by profession, he was unusually well versed in the details of business and of political economy. He had taken up all Alberoni's views as to the possible expansion of the resources of Spain, and, thinking there was more room for his ability in that country than in Holland, had had himself naturalized there. He followed the King during his temporary resignation of the Spanish throne, and returned with him on his son's death to the possession of full power. There seems little doubt that throughout Ripperda had been in the pay of the Austrian court, and it was chiefly at his instigation that the Congress at Cambrai was deserted and direct negotiations between the courts opened. He had set before the King and Queen very plausible reasons not only for a negotiation but for a change of policy, no less complete than an entire desertion of the mediating Powers and of the principle of the Quadruple Alliance, and a close friendship with the House of Austria. Spain would thus be freed from the constant encroachments of England upon her trade, and the interference of France, which had been very irksome to the Spaniards since the Bourbon accession, would be avoided. The old question of the Barrier Treaty was exciting the animosity of England and Austria; for Austria, in distinct contravention of the commercial articles of that treaty, which forbade to the Austrian Netherlands the trade of India, had established a great Ostend India Company. And there was another object very dear to the Emperor's heart towards which Spain could lend important aid. It could guarantee the Pragmatic Sanction, pledge itself, that is, to preserve the Austrian succession to the daughter of the Emperor, a pledge which in the case of Spain meant a great deal, as Spain had fair claims to a considerable portion of the succession on the extinction of the direct male line of the Austrian house. With these hopes and with these offers Ripperda set out for Vienna, with the intention of entirely destroying the present arrangements of Europe, of breaking the