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was an unexpected message from the crown for the sum of 500,000l. to discharge the debts of the civil list, incurred to that amount during the space of three years. His majesty had formerly pledged himself to retrenchments, but now declared that he had found them impracticable, and that the necessities of his government had involved him in some 66 extraordinary expenses,' which he hoped his loyal commons would believe had been employed for the honour of the crown and the interest of the people. Pulteney, who held the office of cofferer of the household — a post unworthy of his great talents-objected to this demand, wondered how such debts could have been contracted, and hinted that the civil list was appropriated to the benefit of those who were so eager to supply its deficiencies. The vote, however, was carried by an overwhelming majority, and Pulteney was dismissed. He immediately joined the opposition, and was at once recognised as their leader.* The only remaining event that disturbed the tranquillity of the legislature was the impeachment of the earl of Macclesfield, lord high chancellor, for the sale of places, and for the abuse of his trust as guardian of children and lunatics. After a patient trial of twenty days, he was sentenced to pay a fine of 30,000%., and to be confined in the Tower until it was discharged. The session ended on the 31st May, 1725.

The perplexed web of European politics called the king again to Hanover immediately after he dismissed the parliament. The recent death of Peter the Great had devolved the crown of Russia upon his consort, the empress Catherine, who, determining to maintain the articles of the treaty of Stockholm, rigorously demanded

* Pulteney long enjoyed the title of the "Great Commoner" before he was tempted to merge his influence in a peerage. He was the most powerful of all the opponents of Walpole, who used to say of him, that he feared his tongue more than another man's sword. Speaker Onslow describes him as having the most popular parts for public speaking of any man he ever knew." His eloquence was an era in the senate; but he carried his opposition to the factious extremity of plunging England into the calamities of a war, for the sole purpose of counteracting the pacific policy of Walpole.

of Denmark the restitution of Sleswic, or an equivalent, evidently signifying the disputed tracts of Bremen and Verdun. In vain the senate remonstrated against the vast armament she was preparing to enforce her demand, entreating her to try the effect of a peaceful negotiation in the first instance. She desired them not to dare to offer her such mean-spirited counsel; reminded them that the duke of Holstein, who had been fraudulently stripped of his possessions, and had taken sanctuary in her country, was contracted to her daughter, and that she was bound to see justice done to him. "It is for my interest and glory," she added, "as well as yours, to convince the world that I have power to see justice done to my family, and that I am resolved to make use of it." Negotiations, however, were entered into, which suspended her resolution throughout the summer; but she still insisted upon the unconditional surrender of Sleswic, or a solid equivalent.

In the meanwhile a tempest was brooding over the affairs of Spain and France, which threatened to descend speedily upon the whole surface of Europe. The young king of France had been attacked by a dangerous fever, and this circumstance awakened the nation, for the first time, to the dangers of a disputed succession. It was consequently resolved soon after his recovery, with a view to the early marriage of his majesty, that the infanta of Spain, then only five years of age, and actually residing at Paris, should be sent back to Madrid, with a respectful explanation of the causes of her dismissal. The king of Spain, indignant at this abrupt breach of contract, declared his determination to separate from France for ever, protesting that blood enough could never be shed to avenge so gross an insult. He further ordered his plenipotentiaries at Cambray to reject the mediation of France, and to submit the final settlement of the points in dispute between him and the emperor to the king of England. But this was too dangerous an honour, to be accepted. The alliance of France was essential to the interests of England; and, although the hand of the

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French king, proffered to one of the daughters of the prince of Wales, was declined by the advice of the administration, the most cordial sentiments of friendship were exchanged between the court of Great Britain and cardinal Fleury, who had just taken the duke of Bourbon's place at the helm of the French government. The wishes of the nation, disappointed of a marriage with an English princess, were happily accomplished in July, by the union of the king of France with the princess Maria of Poland.

The refusal of the king of England, to accept the mediation at Cambray, provoked unbounded resentment at Madrid. The congress was immediately broken up, and the emperor, entering at once into the views of his catholic majesty, concluded a treaty in April, known by the name of the Treaty of Vienna, by which the two sovereigns confirmed the articles of the Quadruple Alliance, and Philip became guarantee of the Austrian succession according to the Pragmatic Sanction, or imperial edict, ratified by the diet of the empire, which declared the dominions of that house to be a perpetual and indivisible feoffment, limited to the heirs-general of the emperor. The validity of the Ostend company's charter was also recognised by this treaty; and it was presumed that it entertained secret articles, providing for intermarriages between the two royal families, for the forcible restitution of Gibraltar, and the restoration of the pretender. That such secret articles, however, had any real existence, may now be reasonably doubted; but they were so currently believed at the time, as to inspire the most serious apprehensions in England. A defensive alliance and mutual guarantee was immediately entered into at Hanover between the ministers of Great Britain, France, and Prussia, to which Denmark and Holland afterwards acceded, having for its object a distinct opposition to the treaty of Vienna.* All disguise was now

*This treaty was regarded at the time, and continues to be so interpreted, as involving the sacrifice of British to Hanoverian interests. Lord Chesterfield said that it enabled "Hanover to ride triumphant on the shoulders of

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at end. The great powers had openly taken their stand upon intelligible principles. The British ambas-sador at Madrid was treated with contempt; jacobite airs were played at court; the partisans of the pretender were received with honours; a plan of invasion was handed in by Ormond; and the Austrian minister haughtily declared that his master would give laws to Europe.

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Having accomplished the only alternative left to him in these circumstances, the king returned to England, encountering a violent storm on the way, and opened the parliament on the 9th of January, 1726. The " troubles and disturbances in Europe were cautiously touched upon in the royal speech, and Walpole silently laid the treaty of Hanover upon the table of the house of commons, leaving his brother, who was more skilled in the art of diplomacy, to delineate its history, and de

England;" and the great lord Chatham described it as "a treaty, the tendency of which is discovered in the name; a treaty by which we disunited ourselves from Austria, destroyed that building which we now may perhaps endeavour without success to raise again, and weakened the only power which it was our interest to strengthen." Coxe, alone, finds something in it to admire. He says, that instead of being favourable to Hanover, it was directly the reverse, since it exposed the electorate to the vengeance of the house of Austria; and that the king was secretly afraid to enter into it from the dread of being put under the ban of the empire. The answer to all this is in the simple fact, that by this treaty, the king secured an amount of protection for Hanover, which he could not have procured by any other means, and which he did not want for any other purpose. The contracting parties mutually stipulated to furnish, in case of an attack, England and France respectively, 8000 foot and 4000 horse, and Prussia 3000 foot and 2000 horse, or the value in ships and money. If the king risked an invasion of Hanover, by entering into such a treaty in self-protection against the Ostend company and the Spanish and German alliance, it must be granted that he established at the same time a very effectual means of repelling it. As to the fears about the pretender, they were not entitled to any consideration as an actuating motive; Walpole always thought they were exaggerated, and Coxe himself admits, that that able minister never wholly approved of the treaty. The best proof of the advantage it was to Hanover is that, so far from producing an aggression on the part of the emperor, it led to the very opposite results, the emperor endeavouring to conciliate the Hanoverians in consequence of this very treaty, instead of levying war upon them, as, under other circumstances, he would unquestionably have done. This conviction of the necessity of avoiding hostilities was so strong, that the empress condescended to correspond with the duchess of Kendal, for the purpose of engaging her influence to infuse pacific sentiments into the mind of the king. Now if Hanover had really been endangered by the treaty, it is not very likely that the empress of Germany would have considered it necessary to propitiate the intercession of the king's mistress for the preservation of peace:

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fend its provisions. Horace Walpole, in an harangue of great length and extraordinary ingenuity, recapitulated the intricate narrative of events that had led to this proceeding; pointed out the dangers that were likely to accrue from the treaty of Vienna, the injuries to the English trade and commerce from the establishment of the India company at Ostend, the threats impending over his majesty's dominions in Germany, the perils that encompassed Minorca and Gibraltar; the ambition of the house of Austria to preserve the imperial dignity hereditary in their family, and the obvious inference to be drawn therefrom of a meditated marriage, which might ultimately produce a union under one crown of the vast dominions of Austria, and the entire monarchy of Spain and its appendages, to the total destruction of the balance of power in Europe. The reply of the opposition was simple and concise: treaty, represented to be so wise, so just, and so good, would eventually engage England in a war for the defence of the king's German dominions, in express violation of the act of settlement. But such arguments were thrown away upon the administration. The eloquence

that this

of Walpole had reduced the chaos of treaties to such a form of harmony, that the house voted an address to his majesty, with an overwhelming majority, expressing their full approbation of the treaty of Hanover, and their unfeigned gratitude for the sagacity with which his majesty had disappointed the machinations of the emperor and the king of Spain. The same majority completed the triumph of his majesty's foreign policy, by voting an extraordinary supply and an increase of seamen, and the parliament was prorogued on the 24th of May, after having accorded munificent means to the administration for carrying on those measures of active hostility for which extensive preparations were now rapidly set on foot.

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The first movements were directed to the North, where the danger was most urgent. A powerful fleet was dispatched to the Baltic under the command of sir