1719.

TREATY WITH SWEDEN.

89

tion, and a British fleet in the Baltic broke it off. Sweden, deluded into the belief that England would assist her in the recovery of Livonia and the other provinces that had been subjugated by Russia, readily acquiesced in the proposals of lord Cartaret, the minister who had been selected for this perfidious mission by the court of St. James's. This vaccillation on the part of Sweden, vibrating, in her own intrinsic weakness, between the attractive offers of two great sovereigns, and embracing that which promised to rescue her from the encroachments of her ambitious neighbour, was resented on the part of the czar by a fresh invasion. Sending a powerful armament into the gulf of Bothnia, he penetrated Sweden at several points, overruning the country with 40,000 men, and laying waste numerous towns and villages, on his track of desolation. Sweden was now at the mercy of English diplomacy; and, trembling at the ruin which impended over her, was induced without difficulty to sign a provisional treaty in the month of July, by which Bremen and Verdun -the prize for which all this bloodshed and treasure was expended, and the grave of the honour of England were ceded to Hanover at a cost of a million of rixdollars; a sum infinitely above the value of the whole revenue of the electorate. By this memorable treaty, negotiated by a Hanoverian minister in the name of the king of England, Sleswic was guaranteed to Denmark, in direct contravention of a former treaty, and in open and shameless violation of the national faith. Having succeeded so far in propitiating Denmark, and disabling Sweden in a masquerade of pacification, the king of England mediated a suspension of arms between the kings of Poland, Prussia, and Denmark. This preposterous farce of Hanoverian aggrandisement was wound up with treaties of peace, recognising the right of the king of Poland to his crown, which was all he got in the scramble, disposing of Stetin and Eastern Pomerania to Prussia, at the price of two millions of rix-dollars, and confirming Sleswic to Denmark, on the

restitution of Western Pomerania and the province of Wismar, the last reliques of the splendid acquisitions of Gustavus Adolphus. The real object of the intervention of Great Britain was now accomplished, and Sweden was left to shift for herself. After having been tricked into a settlement which defrauded her of one portion of her realm under a solemn pledge of assisting her in the recovery of the remainder, she was literally thrown at the feet of the Russian bear. The czar hung upon her frontiers, sacked her ports, and harassed her by repeated invasions; while the king of England, who had brought her into these difficulties, regarded her misfortunes with a degree of indifference utterly irreconcilable with the lowest notions of justice or vulgar integrity.

But the character of the transactions in which his majesty had been occupied abroad did not interfere, upon his return, with that self-complacency which usually distinguished his declarations from the throne. At the opening of the parliament on the 23d November, the people were congratulated in the royal speech upon the great success that had attended his majesty's negotiations in the recess, "the hand of God being visibly with his majesty in all his undertakings."

stead of shrinking from a reference to the state of Sweden, the ingenious, but audacious, expedient was resorted to, of exulting in the benefits that had been bestowed upon her. "One protestant power," we quote the words of the speech in allusion to Sweden, "has already been relieved by our seasonable interposition; and such a foundation is laid by our late treaties for a union amongst other great protestant powers, as will very much tend to the security of our holy religion." A collection of king's speeches, illuminated by running notes, describing simply the actual progress of contemporaneous events, would furnish a strange and suggestive commentary upon the policy of cabinets. This particular speech passed away without discussion. Parliament appeared to be too well pleased with the prospect

1719.

PEERAGE BILL RESUMED.

91

of peace to demur at the interest which Heaven was asserted to have taken in the transfer of Bremen and Verdun,

The king plainly indicated, in this document, his determination to persevere with the peerage bill; and no means were left untried by the minister, even to the grossest bribery and corruption, to secure its success. In the recess, a paper war drew out the talents of Addison in favour of the measure, and of Steele and Walpole against it *; and the country was thrown into a ferment upon a question which was at first introduced under the auspices of the court, and which finally degenerated into a nominal excuse for a trial of party strength. The administration affected to regard it as a whig test, and the sanguine and overbearing Sunderland did not scruple to denounce its opponents as being secretly favourable to the return of the tories to office. His menaces and bribes were not wholly inoperative. The whigs in opposition wavered and became irresolute. Walpole alone was firm and uncompromising. He reprobated the measure in the most vehement terms, and produced such an effect upon the minds of his friends at a meeting at Devonshire house, that after vainly attempting to dissuade him from his purpose, they at last came over to his opinions, and agreed to make an united stand against the bill in the lower house.† The conse

* Steele published a pamphlet called the Plebeian, in which he endeavoured to show that the tendency of the peerage bill was to introduce an aristocracy, which, so limited, would be despotic and irresistible. Addison replied under the title of an old whig, which drew a rejoinder from the Plebeian. Addison answered him a second time, and mixed a little personality with the controversy, by an allusion to "little Dicky, whose trade it was to write pamphlets." Steele, more delicate in the conduct of the argument, satisfied his resentment by a quotation from Cato. Here the contest ended. Addison died before the fate of the measure was accomplished.

+ Walpole's speech on this question was a masterpiece of eloquence and cogent argument. Speaker Onslow describes it as being full of natural eloquence and genius. "His topics," he observes, "were popular, and made for those he hoped to bring over. He talked of the honours of the peerage as the constitutional reward of great qualities and actions only in the service of the commonwealth, and to be kept open for that purpose: that the usual path to the temple of honour has been through the temple of virtue; but by this bill it was now to be only through the sepulchre of a dead ancestor, without merit or fame." This is not very accurate criticism, but it shows what was thought of the speech at the time. The figure of the temple of honour was not so loosely employed as it is in Onslow's description; on the contrary, it appears to have been carefully premedi tated, and indeed the whole oration bears evident marks of study. Wal

1720.

quence was, that although it passed the lords, it was thrown out of the commons by an overwhelming majority.

The next subject of importance that occupied the attention of parliament, was a bill, which, without any mystification as to its object, was frankly entitled a bill for securing the dependency of Ireland upon the crown of Great Britain. During some centuries before, it might have been supposed that the dependency of Ireland was made clear enough by the oppression which had uniformly distinguished the English government of that country but this bill was framed for the purpose of confirming that dependency in a distinct declaratory enactment. The mere deprivation of their original rights in the soil, was not considered a sufficient reduction of the independence of the Irish; and it was now determined that the shadow of a national legislature which they enjoyed, overawed even as it was by an English viceroy, English influence, and English arms, should be subjugated to the control of the English parliament. The immediate circumstance out of which the measure took its rise, was trivial in the inverse ratio of the results to which it led; but the slightest pretext will answer the purpose when an act of tyranny is about to be accomplished by the strong hand. One Maurice Annesley had been dispossessed of certain lands in the county of Kildare by a decree of the house of peers in Ireland, and, contrary to the usual practice, he made an appeal to the house of peers in England, which had never before been resorted to as a court of appellate

pole spoke with an elaboration of diction, emulated in later times only by Burke, choosing the figure referred to by Onslow for the opening of the exordium. The passage is thus reported in the Parliamentary History. "Among the Romans, the wisest people upon earth, the temple of fame was placed behind the temple of virtue, to denote that there was no coming to the temple of fame, but through that of virtue. But if this bill is passed into a law, one of the most powerful incentives to virtue would be taken away, since there would be no arriving at honour, but through the windingsheet of some old decrepit lord, or the grave of an extinct noble family; a policy very different from that glorious and enlightened nation, who made it their pride to hold out to the world illustrious examples of merited elevation,

Patere honoris scirent ut cuncti viam,"

1720.

IRISH APPEALS.

93

The British

jurisdiction from the Irish parliament. house of peers reversed the decree, and ordered the barons of the exchequer in Ireland to put Annesley forthwith in possession of his lands. The barons proceeded immediately to obey the order, and issued out an injunction to the sheriff of Kildare, setting several fines upon him for refusing to put it in execution. The Irish house of lords interfered, discharged the sheriff of the fines, and, resolving that the barons had acted in manifest derogation to the king's prerogative, in his high court of parliament in Ireland, as also of the rights and privileges of that kingdom, ordered them into the custody of the black rod. This spirited proceeding was followed by a representation to the king, in which the house of peers set forth their right to the final adjudication of causes in Ireland. The English house of peers met this remonstrance with a resolution that the barons of the exchequer in Ireland had acted with courage, according to law, in support of his majesty's prerogative, and with fidelity to the crown of Great Britain; and they further addressed his majesty, that he might graciously confer some marks of his favour upon them. The subject being thus mooted between the two parliaments, was speedily set at rest by the declaratory bill, which confirmed to the English house of peers the supremacy of the appellant jurisdiction, and established the right of the English parliament to make laws for the kingdom of Ireland in all cases whatever. The Irish parliament submitted tamely to this monstrous despotism, which made the constitution that had been guaranteed to them by England a dead letter. At a later period, they made a gallant and successful stand for their rights but only to vote them away again after they had secured them. It is difficult to decide which spectacle is more humiliating to freemen - the weakness with which Ireland surrendered her liberties, or the profligacy with which England took advantage of it.

The South-Sea company, which owed its origin to a