1729. OBSTINATE TEMPER OF THE KING. 149 plicit reply to the demand respecting the marriages of the two archduchesses to the two infantas of Spain, produced such a feeling of resentment on the part of Philip, as to render him desirous of renewing his former connections with Great Britain. These differences were of the last importance to the interests of England; and as no advance had been made towards obtaining the emperor's sanction of the Hanoverian acquisition, it was considered advisable to draw still more closely the bonds of union with Spain and France. In the meanwhile, the parliament, which opened on 1729. the 21st January, was besieged with petitions from the mercantile interest, complaining of the losses and obstructions inflicted upon trade by the depredations of the Spaniards in the West Indies; and a committee was appointed to investigate the subject. The result of its labours was a resolution justifying the instructions given to admiral Hosier, and another declaring that the Spaniards had violated the treaties subsisting between the two crowns. An address was accordingly presented to his majesty, hoping that he would obtain reasonable satisfaction for these injuries; and another was adopted in the lords, and subsequently agreed to by the commons, expressing entire reliance on his majesty, that he would take effectual care to assert his undoubted right to Gibraltar and Minorca. The avidity of the king to procure money, and his obstinacy in adhering to any resolution he had once formed, frequently placed Walpole in circumstances of embarrassment, from which it taxed his utmost powers to extricate himself with credit. Such a dilemma arose during this session upon a motion, made by Scrope, secretary to the treasury, that a sum of 115,000l. be granted to his majesty, not as a deficiency on the civil list, for it appeared that there was none, but as an arrear. The bill was passed by the commons, and carried in the face of a protest, and a strenuous resistance in the lords. Walpole had exerted all his influence with his majesty to prevail upon him to abandon the demand. His reluctance to force such a fraud upon parliament was not unknown to the tories, who made private proposals to the king, that if his majesty would dismiss Walpole they would not only ensure the sum required, but enlarge it by 100,000l. Walpole was consequently reduced to the painful alternative of supporting the vote contrary to his judgment, or tendering his resignation. He chose the former course, and was heavily, and not unjustly, charged by his enemies with corrupt motives. In other matters of inferior moment he was exposed to similar vexations by the wilfulness and stubborn temper of the king. He solicited the office of president of the council, for his friend the duke of Devonshire, and was refused; and had the mortification of seeing it bestowed upon lord Carleton, who rarely voted with the whigs. He desired, also, to have Charles Stanhope appointed a lord of the admiralty; but the king, having discovered a paper written by Stanhope, containing a proposal to remove him from the country when he was prince of Wales, declared that no consideration should induce him to assign to Stanhope any place of trust or honour, and expressed some resentment against the minister for recommending him. In this resolution the king was hardly blameable on personal grounds; but, agreeably to the spirit of a limited monarchy, it is impossible for a minister to discharge his responsibility with advantage to the country, or justice to himself, if the sovereign permit private animosities or individual influences to intercept and thwart the counsels of his constitutional advisers. The proceedings of parliament terminated on the 14th of May, and his majesty, leaving the queen sole regent in his absence, went to Hanover. The unbounded confidence he reposed in her equity, vigilance, and discretion was fully justified by the integrity of her conduct. Cunha, Portuguese minister at the Hague, speaking of her government during the occasional absence of the king, says in a letter to Azevedo, "It is certain neither Da 1729. AFFAIRS OF MECKLENBURG. 151 the king will do anything without the queen, nor the queen without the king; and therefore, in point of dispatch of business, London is Hanover and Hanover is London." The joint policy of Walpole and Fleury was avowedly pacific; and the recent breach between Spain and the emperor enabled them to act upon it with decision and success. A circumstance which at this crisis occurred to increase the jealousy subsisting between the courts of London and Vienna, assisted very materially, although unexpectedly, to bring about the desired pacification. George I. had been intrusted with the execution of some imperial decrees against the duchy of Mecklenburg, which entailed a considerable expenditure upon him, for the repayment of which he held a mortgage upon the duchy. In this affair the duke of Wolfenbuttel was associated with his majesty. In consequence, however, of certain alleged acts of tyranny and contumacy, the reigning duke of Mecklenburg was deposed by the emperor and the aulic council, and the duke Christian Louis appointed to the administration of the duchy in his place. But George II. refusing to part with the mortgage, which devolved upon him on the death of his father, insisted upon holding the revenues of the duchy in sequestration, and warned duke Christian to be cautious how he accepted the office conferred upon him. The emperor immediately issued an imperial rescript requiring the king of Great Britain to suspend his claims until they could be settled by an amicable adjustment, on the grounds that the course of proceeding he adopted would embarrass the present government of the duchy. But his majesty returned an answer in the negative, and at the same time wrote to the king of Prussia, requiring that prince to concur with him in the maintenance of the rights of the empire. A conference was held at Hanover, in June, between lord Townshend and the count Kinski, the imperial ambassador, but it ended dissatisfactorily on both sides; and in the October following, Townshend declared that “his measures were so arranged as to facilitate any views his majesty might have upon any part of the country of Mecklenburg." Thus the mutual alienation of the courts of Madrid and London from that of Vienna, gave them a mutual interest in the combination so much desired by Walpole; and through the mediation of Fleury, they entered into a definitive treaty or convention at Seville in the following November, by which peace was completely restored between them, and all former treaties were renewed. The treaty of Seville consisted of fourteen articles, with two additional articles for the confirmation of former treaties, and the restoration of seizures. The only new feature it contained was a stipulation for the introduction of 6,000 Spaniards, instead of neutral troops, as specified in the quadruple alliance, into Tuscany, Parma, and Placentia, for the purpose of securing to Don Carlos the eventual succession to those duchies, in case the reigning sovereign should die without male issue; and it was further provided that forcible means should be employed for effecting their proposed object, in the contingency of any resistance being offered to it by the emperor. This article gave occasion to an extraordinary clamour amongst the opponents of the government in England. They affected to consider it not only injurious to the national honour, but eminently calculated to produce a general war, instead of laying the foundations of a solid, lasting peace. It was urged that the introduction of Spanish, instead of neutral troops into the Italian duchies, would eventually provoke discontent, and perhaps resistance, on the part of the reigning dukes, and that the emperor's interests were directly compromised by the establishment of garrisons in the neighbourhood of his possessions, who would have, in reference to the future succession, so strong a temptation to meddle in the political and civil affairs of the government. All this was meant to shew that the introduction could not be effected without disturbances which, in the end, would precipitate a war; and it was hoped that the prophecy of such disasters would have some influence in actually 1729. TREATY OF SEVILLE. 153 bringing them about. It was also asserted, that as neutral troops might have been amicably admitted, and the Spanish troops would probably be opposed, the deviation from the terms of the quadruple alliance would, in all likelihood, involve the necessity of maintaining seven times the force that would have been otherwise required. Another point insisted upon was, that there was no stipulation in the treaty of Seville (as there was in the quadruple alliance) that the Italian duchies should never be in the possession of any prince who should at the same time be king of Spain; and that, therefore, it admitted the very possible contingency that these dominions might become ultimately united under the crown of Spain. As to Gibraltar and Minorca, it was boldly affirmed that they were not secured to England by this treaty, because no reference whatever was made to them-a circumstance which was regarded on the other side as a tacit renunciation of all claim to them on the part of Spain.* * The arguments against the treaty, such as they were, will be found at great length in successive numbers of the "Craftsman," which was principally managed by Pulteney and Bolingbroke, especially in the appendix to vol. v. printed in 1730. The pen of Bolingbroke is frequently to be detected in the irony and rage of these papers, the principal merit of which is, that they afford some exquisite specimens of special pleading. Walpole was the main object of the virulence of these writers. They assailed him in prose and verse, and left no scandal or falsehood unattempted to bring him into popular contempt and odium. They pretended that his parliamentary majorities were against the sense of the nation, and that he sustained himself in office by corrupt votes. This is plainly hinted at in the fag end of an epigram on a debate on the national debt: "Yet as it stands now, if the world judge aright, Another such triumph would demolish him quite; In a ballad, called "The Progress of Patriotism," Walpole's seduction of the members is delineated in the story of a country knight, who is no sooner elected into parliament, than the minister seizes upon him, flatters his rustic vanity, asks him to dinner, and gains him over to the court. The satirist admits that no man knew better how to waylay the foibles of others: "The statesman (who, we must agree, And knows exactly how to flatter And further thus his oil instilled." The obvious answer to all this was, that the tories when they were in power did exactly the same thing; but Walpole incurred their implacable hatred for doing it much more successfully. |