1727.

DEATH OF GEORGE I.

139

was complied with, but before they could accomplish the last stage, his majesty expired. On their arrival at the palace, he was bled, but life was extinct.

Intelligence of the event was instantly forwarded to the duchess of Kendal, who had remained at Delden. Upon hearing what had taken place, it is related of her that she tore her hair, and took the road to Brunswick.

Lord Townshend, who followed the king, finding on his arrival at Osnaburg that his majesty was dead, wrote a letter of congratulation to his successor, and returned to England.

George I. died just as he was about to wind up all the tortuous policies of a reign that took place in England for the benefit of Hanover. His personal character, deducting the profligacy of his private life, which he inherited in his blood, was more respectable and less objectionable than his public reputation. He was essentially good-humoured, strong-hearted, and weakheaded. In matters of business he was punctual but dull, of a very circumscribed capacity, and deficient not only in comprehensive views but in political knowledge. To his friends he was generally honest and kind; but in England the better qualities of his nature laboured under the disadvantage of wanting a vent. He knew nothing of the language, and never cared to acquire it. Coming late to the throne, and totally ignorant of the constitution and usages of the country, it was not to be expected that he could have entered freely into the spirit of institutions so entirely opposed to the petty routine of the narrow sphere in which he was educated. He was, therefore, little more than an instrument in the hands of his advisers, and they, in order to conciliate his favour, and secure their places, indulged his German predilections, to the manifest cost and injury of Great Britain. Utterly destitute of taste in literature or the arts, he resigned himself to sensual enjoyments and mean pursuits. Mistresses, punch, and money were his predominant and habitual passions. He was so avaricious, that the leading whigs were obliged to

advance the necessary means for purchasing the aid of influential auxiliaries, who could not otherwise be won over to support the succession.* But amidst all his defects and errors, it must be recorded to his honour that he was a consistent and earnest advocate of the rights of conscience. He was in advance of his time in the desire he always displayed to establish civil and religious liberty in his dominions, in which he would, probably, have succeeded but for the bitter prejudices left rankling in the public mind by the events of the revolution. If his reign conferred no permanent blessings upon the country, it removed some impediments to the diffusion of liberal principles. He endeavoured to rule England beneficially, but his hands were tied by Hanoverian cords, and whenever he attempted to move he was dragged in that direction. Thus treaties were violated, solemn engagements disregarded, and the national honour sullied. Thus England was entangled in continental alliances, ruinous subsidies, and financial troubles, for objects in which she had no interest whatever. But the inherent and resilient life within her rebounded from his grave, and redeemed her ancient glory.

* Lord John Russell's Memoirs of the Affairs of Europe, vol. i. p. 301.

1727.

ACCESSION OF GEORGE II.

141

CHAP. VII.

1727-1731.

ACCESSION OF GEORGE II.—STRUGGLE FOR OFFICE. WALPOLE'S CABINET RETAINED. THE KING ADOPTS THE POLICY OF HIS FATHER. PROCEEDINGS OF THE OPPOSITION. SCRUTINY

INTO THE PUBLIC EXPENDITURE. REPORT OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE SINKING FUND. PRELIMINARIES OF PEACE WITH SPAIN. CONGRESS AT SOISSONS. PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE ON THE COMMERCIAL REPRISALS OF SPAIN.MINISTERIAL DIFFICULTIES WITH THE KING. DEPARTURE FOR HANOVER.PACIFIC POLICY OF WALPOLE AND FLEURY.DIFFERENCES WITH AUSTRIA. TREATY OF SEVILLE. SPECIAL PLEADING OF BOLINGBROKE AND HIS FRIENDS. VIOLENT MEASURES RECOMMENDED BY TOWNSHEND. BILL FOR PREVENTING LOANS TO FOREIGN POWERS. -SUBSIDIES VOTED. INCREASING STRENGTH OF THE OPPOSITION. PENSIONS' BILL. DISCUSSION ON THE HARBOUR OF DUNKIRK. — RENEWAL OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY'S CHARTER. THE CRAFTSMAN.-RESIGNATION OF TOWNSHEND. -QUARREL WITH WALPOLE. NEWCASTLE AND HARRINGTON AT THE FOREIGN OFFICE. FOREIGN POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN.COMPREHENSIVE VIEWS OF WALPOLE. PROTRACTED NEGOTIATIONS AT VIENNA. DISCONTENT OF SPAIN. POSITION TO THE ADDRESS ON THE OPENING OF PARLIAMENT. -DIPLOMATIC DILEMMA OF THE AMBASSADOR IN AUSTRIA. SECOND TREATY OF VIENNA.-ITS NATURE AND CONSEQUENCES. -POPULARITY OF THE ADMINISTRATION AT THE CLOSE OF THE SESSION.

OP

GEORGE II. ascended the throne in the 45th year of his age. Although he was nearly as ignorant of the language and constitution of England as his father, he had acquired, by a series of accidents, the favourable opinion of the nation. His English popularity sprang out of an

anecdote*, and was nourished by party spirit and the genius of his wife.†

His majesty was born at Hanover on the 30th of October, 1683, and educated under the direction of his grandmother the electress Sophia. Brought up in a military school, he became a strict disciplinarian, and carried his love of system and punctuality into all the affairs, public and private, in which he was engaged. The higher elements of a refined and liberal education were wholly neglected in his youth; and he grew to manhood, like his father, without a solitary sympathy for

* When he heard that his father had succeeded to the throne of England, he was so delighted that he exclaimed, "I have not one drop of blood in my veins which is not English, and at the service of my father's subjects." The observation was adroitly addressed to an English gentleman, and retailed in England with the customary embellishments, greatly, as may be supposed, to the prince's advantage.

The princess Caroline Wilhelmina was the daughter of the margrave of Anspach. She was fortunate in receiving her education under the superintendence of Sophia Charlotte, sister of George I., the most learned and elegant woman of her age. From her she imbibed that love of literature, and those sound and elevated principles, by which she was uniformly distinguished. She was possessed of great natural endowments, which her own good sense induced her to cultivate with assiduity. In her youth she was celebrated for her beauty, which afterwards suffered some blemish from the smallpox and a tendency to corpulency. Tickell, in his poem on "Kensington Gardens" apostrophises her charms in language which is said not to have exaggerated them.

"She, towering o'er the rest,
Stands fairest of the fairer kind confest,

Form'd to gain hearts that Brunswick's cause denied,
And charm a people to her father's side."

She completely controlled the irritable temper of her husband without-appearing to do so, and "bore her faculties," says Coxe, "so meekly, and with such extraordinary prudence, as never to excite the least uneasiness even in a sovereign so tenacious of his authority, but contrived that her opinion should appear as if it had been his own." She was the steady patroness of the distinguished men of her day, and nearly all the principal appointments in church and state were conferred by her recommendation. Her levees presented a strange intermixture of men of learning, courtiers, poets, divines, and politicians, and the conversation in her court partook of all those mingled characteristics. But she maintained the forms of royal etiquette (perhaps to please her husband) with scrupulous dignity. She would sometimes dine with sir Robert Walpole at Chelsea, but always preserving the strictest forms; sitting down to table with lady Walpole and the royal family, while sir Robert stood behind her chair, gave her the first plate, and then retired to another apartment, where dinner was served for him and the queen's household. See Coxe's Walpole, vol. i.

Lord Hervey described his majesty's regularity as a purely mechanical habit. "He seemed," observed that nobleman in a letter to Walpole, "to think his having done a thing to-day, an unanswerable reason for his doing it to-morrow."

1727.

STRUGGLE OF PARTIES.

143

literature, science, or art. Phlegmatic and precise, parsimonious and reserved, his natural inaptitude to conciliate the attachment of his friends was rendered still more prominent by an irascible, violent, and unforgiving temper. In person unprepossessing* and cold in manners, his personal and social disadvantages were felicitously counterbalanced by the influence of the beautiful and accomplished princess Caroline of Anspach, to whom he was married in 1705.

It was confidently anticipated on the death of George I., that an extensive change in the administration would take place. Bolingbroke and the tories had caballed at Leicester-house, supported by the private influence of Mrs. Howard, afterwards countess of Suffolk †, the new monarch's mistress. Bolingbroke, who had procured an audience of George I., shortly before he left England, through the intercession of Walpole ‡, laid a subtle train for undermining the cabinet; and Pulteney was indefatigable in his efforts to inflame the mind of George II. against his father's advisers, whom he represented as his

* His majesty is said to have had a pleasant expression of face, with prominent eyes, and a Roman nose. But the portraits and medallions convey a very different expression, displaying a countenance remarkable for feebleness of intellect, petty irritability of temper, and impoverishing selfishness and sensuality. His figure was so small as to incur the ridicule of a merry satirist in the well-known ballad on the "Seven Wise Men."

"When Edgecumbe spoke, the prince in sport
Laughed at the merry elf;
Rejoiced to see within his court

One shorter than himself.

I'm glad (cry'd out the quibbling squire)
My lowness makes your highness higher."

+ Mrs. Howard was the daughter of sir Henry Hobart of Norfolk, and married Charles Howard, afterwards earl of Suffolk, whom she accompanied to Hanover, where she was appointed bedchamber woman to the princess Caroline, attending her subsequently to England. She was a woman of very little talent, but of great beauty. The king's liaison with her was a mere accident. She was the confidante of his passion for miss Bellenden, and became his mistress when that lady proudly rejected him.

Walpole procured this interview to prove that he was superior to all feelings of jealousy concerning Bolingbroke, who believed, however, that he had made such an impression on his majesty, as led him to regard his death as an irreparable misfortune. "Though," he observed in a letter to sir William Wyndham, "the king durst not support me openly against his ministers, he would have plotted with me against them: it is, therefore, a satisfaction to me, that was not wanting to my friends, to my country, and to myself, in a conjuncture, the advantages of which were defeated by nothing but sudden death."