The political progress of Britain; or, An impartial history of abuses in the government of the British Empire, in Europe, Asia, and America, from the Revolution in 1688, to the present time. The whole tending to prove the ruinous consequences of the popular system of taxation, war, and conquest. : [One line of quotation] — Political progress of Britain

The political progress of Britain; or, An impartial history of abuses in the government of the British Empire, in Europe, Asia, and America, from the Revolution in 1688, to the present time. The whole tending to prove the ruinous consequences of the popular system of taxation, war, and conquest. : [One line of quotation] — Political progress of Britain

Table of contents

Title page

ADVERTISEMENT.

INTRODUCTION.

THE POLITICAL PROGRESS OF BRITAIN.

CHAPTER I.

CHAP II.

CHAP. III.

CHAP. IV.

CHAP. V.

CHAP. VI.

CHAP. VII.

CHAP. VIII.

§

§

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THE POLITICAL PROGRESS OF BRITAIN; OR, AN IMPARTIAL HISTORY OF ABUSES in the GOVERNMENT OF THE British Empire, IN EUROPE, ASIA, AND AMERICA, FROM THE REVOLUTION IN 1688, TO THE PRESENT TIME.

The whole tending to prove the ruinous Consequences of the popular System Or TAXATION, WAR, AND CONQUEST.

"THE WORLD'S MAD BUSINESS."

PHILADELPHIA: PRINTED FOR J. T. CALLENDER.

ADVERTISEMENT.

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THE First Edition of The Political Progress of Britain was published at Edinburgh and London, in Autumn, 1792. The sale was lively, and the prospect of future success flattering. The plan was, to give an impartial history of the abuses in government, in a series of pamphlets. But while the author was preparing for the press, a second number, along with a new edition of the first, he was, on the 2d of January, 1793, apprehended, and with some difficulty made his escape. Two booksellers, who acted as his editors, were prosecuted; and after a very arbitrary trial, they were condemned, the one to three months, and the other to six months of imprisonment. A revolution will take place in Scotland before the lapse of ten years at farthest, and most likely much sooner. The Scots nation will then certainly think itself bound, by every tie of wisdom, of gratitude, and of justice, to make reparation to these two honest men, for the tyranny which they have encountered in the cause of truth. In Britain, authors and editors of pamphlets have long conducted the van of every revolution. They compose a kind of forlorn hope on the skirts of battle: and though they may often want experience, or influence, to marshal the main body, they yet enjoy the honour and the danger of the first rank, in storming the ramparts of oppression.

A copy of the first edition was handed to Mr. Jefferson, late American Secretary of State. He spoke of it, on different occasions, in respectful terms. ‘He said that it contained the most astonishing concentration of abuses that he had ever heard of in any government.’ He inquired, why it was not printed in America? and said, that he, for one, would gladly become a purchaser. Other gentlemen have delivered their opinions to the same effect; and their encouragement was one cause for the appearance of this American edition.

[Page]The work is intended for that class of people who has not much time to spend in reading, and who wants a plain but substantial meal of political information. The facts are, therefore, crowded together as closely as possible. All the coquetry of authorship has been avoided. The ambition of the writer was to be candid, unaffected, and intelligible; because truth is the basis of sound argument, simplicity the soul of elegance, and perspicuity the supreme touch-stone of accurate composition.

A report was circulated, and believed, in Scotland, that this production came, in reality, from the pen of one of the judges of the court of session. The charge was unjust. His lordship did not write a single page of it; but he said openly, that its contents were authentic, and unanswerable; and that the public were welcome to call it his.

For the extreme rashness of his plan, the writer cannot offer an apology that prudence will accept. A short story may, perhaps, convey the motives of his conduct. In 1758, the Duke of Marlborough, with eighteen thousand men landed on the coast of France. The troops, when disembarking, were opposed by a French battery, which was immediately silenced, for it consisted only of an old man, armed with two muskets; he was slightly wounded in the leg, and made prisoner. The English asked him, whether he expected that his two muskets were to silence the fire of their fleet? "Gentlemen," he replied, ‘I have done only my duty, and if all my countrymen here had acted like me, you would not this day have landed a Concale.’

JAMES THOMSON CALLENDER, An Exile for writing this Pamphlet.

Philadelphia, March 31, 1795.

INTRODUCTION.

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WITHIN the last hundred years of our history, Britain has been five times at war with France, and six times at war with Spain. During the same period, she has been engaged in two rebellions at home, besides an endless catalogue of massacres in Asia and America. In Europe, the common price which we advance for a war, has extended from one to three hundred thousand lives, and from sixty to an hundred and fifty millions sterling. From Africa, we import annually between thirty and forty thousand slaves, which rises in the course of a century to at least three millions of murthers. In Bengal only, we destroyed or expelled, within the short period of six years, no less than five millions of industrious and harmless people *; and as we have been sovereigns in that country, for above thirty-five years, it may be reasonably computed that we have strewed the plains of Indostan with fifteen or twenty millions of carcases. If we combine the diversified ravages of famine, pestilence, and the sword, it can hardly be supposed, that in these transactions less than fifteen hundred thousand of our countrymen have perished; a number equal to that of the whole inhabitants of Britain who are at present able to bear arms. In Europe, the havock of our antagonists has been at least not inferior to our own, so that this quarter of the world alone has lost by our quarrels, three millions of men in the flower of life; whose descendants, in the progress of domestic society, would have swelled into multitudes beyond calculation. The persons positively destroyed must, in the whole, have exceeded twenty millions, or two hundred thousand acts of homicide per annum. These victims have been sacrificed to the balance of power, and the balance of trade, the honour of the British flag, the universal supremacy of parliament, [Page] and the security of the Protestant succession. If we are to proceed at this rate for another century, we may, which is natural to mankind, admire ourselves, and our atchievements, but every other nation in the world must have a right to wish that an earthquake or a volcano may first bury both islands together in the centre of the globe; that a single, but decisive exortion of Almighty vengeance may terminate the progress and the remembrance of our crimes.

In the scale of just calculation, the most valuable commodity, next to human blood, is money. Having made a gross estimate of the destruction of the former, let us endeavour to compute the consumption of the latter. The war of 1689 cost sixty millions of public money, and at the end of it, the public debts amounted to twenty millions, or by another account*, to be seventeen millions and a half; so that not more than one third part of the expences were borrowed. In Queen Anne's war, forty or fifty millions sterling were also sunk in the same manner, besides about thirty millions, which were added to the former public debt. Very large sums have since been absorbed in other wars, over and above those which were placed to the national credit. In 1783, by the report of the commissioners of public accounts, the total debts of Britain extended to two hundred and seventy-nine millions, six hundred and ninety-eight thousand pounds, though many millions have been paid off in time of peace, by what is called the sinking fund. Hence we see, that this sum of two hundred and seventy-nine millions is much inferior to the actual charges of these wars. The total amount may be fixed somewhere perhaps between four and six hundred millions. To this we must subjoin the value of sixteen or twenty thousand merchant ships taken by the enemy. This diminutive article of sixty or an hundred millions would have been sufficient for transporting and settling eight or twelve hundred thousand farmers, with their families, on the banks of the Potowmack or the Mississipi. By the report above quoted, we learn, that in 1789, the interest of our public debts extended [Page] to nine millions, and five hundred thousand pounds, which is equivalent to an annual tax of twenty shillings per head, on every inhabitant of Britain. The friends of our intelligent and respectable minister, Mr. Pitt, make an infinite bustle about the nine millions of debt which his ingenuity has discharged. They ought to arrange, in an opposite column, a list of the additional taxes which have been imposed, and of the myriads of families, whom such taxes have ruined. At best, we are but as a person transferring his money from the right pocket to the left. Perhaps a Chancellor of the Exchequer might as well propose to empty the Baltick with a tobacco-pipe. Had the war with America lasted for two years longer, Britain would not at this day have owed a shilling; and if we shall persist in rushing into carnage, with our former contempt of all feeling and reflection, it may still be expected that, according to the practice of other nations, a sponge or a bonfire will finish the game of funding.

What advantage has resulted to Britain from such incessant scenes of prodigality and of bloodshed? In the wars of 1689, and 1702, this country was neither more nor less than an hobby horse for the Emperor and the Dutch. The rebellion in 1715 was excited by the despotic insolence of the Whigs. The purchase of Bremen and Verden produced the Spanish war of 1718, and a squadron dispatched for six different years to the Baltick. Such exertions cost us an hundred times more than those quagmire Dutchies are worth, even to the Elector of Hanover; a distinction which on this business becomes necessary, for as to Britain, it was never pretended, that we could gain a farthing by such an acquisition. In 1727, the nation forced George the First into a war with Spain, which ended as usual with much mischief on both sides. The Spanish war of the people in 1739, and the Austrian subsidy war of the crown, which commenced in 1741, were absurd in their principles, and ruinous in their consequences. At sea, we met with nothing but hard blows. On the continent, we began by hiring the Queen of Hungary to fight her own battles against the King of Prussia; and ten years after the war ended, we hired the King of Prussia [Page] with six hundred and seventy-one thousand pounds per annum, to fight his own battles against her. If this be not folly, what are we to call it? As to the quarrel of 1754, ‘It was remarked by all Europe, says Frederick, that in her dispute with France, every wrong step was on the side of England.’ By nine years of butchery, and an additional debt of seventy millions sterling, we secured Canada; but had Wolfe and his army been driven from the heights of Abraham, our grandsons might have come too early to hear of an American revolution. As to this event, the circumstances are too shocking for reflection. At that time an English woman had discovered a remedy for the canine madness, and Frederick advises a French correspondent to recommend this medicine to the use of the Parliament of England, as they must certainly have been bitten by a mad dog.

In the quarrels of the Continent we should concern ourselves but little; for in a defensive war, we may safely defy all the nations of Europe. When the whole civilized world was embodied under the banners of Rome, her Dictator, at the head of thirty thousand veterans, disembarked for a second time on the coast of Britain. The face of the country was covered with a forest, and the solitary tribes were divided upon the old question, Who shall be king? The island could hardly have attained to a twentieth part of its present population, yet by his own account, the invader found a retreat prudent, or perhaps necessary. South Britain was afterwards subjected, but this acquisition was the task of centuries. Every village was bought with the blood of the legions. We may confide in the moderation of a Roman Historian, when he is to describe the disasters of his countrymen. In a single revolt, eighty thousand of the usurpers were extirpated; and fifty, or, as others affirm, seventy thousand soldiers perished in the course of a Caledonian campaign. Do the masters of modern Europe understand the art of war better than Severus, and Agricola, and Julius Caesar? Is any combination of human power to be compared with the talents and resources of the Roman empire? If our naked ancestors resisted and vanquished the conquerors of the species, what have we to fear from any antagonist of this day? On six [Page] months warning we could muster ten or twelve hundred thousand militia. Yet, while the despots of Germany were fighting about a suburb, the nation has condescended to tremble for its existence, and the blossoms of domestic happiness have been blasted by subsidies, and tide-waiters, and press-gangs, and excisemen. Our political and commercial systems are evidently nonsense. We possess within this single island, every production, both of art and nature, which is necessary for the most comfortable enjoyment of life; yet for the sake of tea, and sugar, and tobacco, and a few other despicable luxuries, we have rushed into an abyss of blood and taxes. The boasted extent of our trade, and the quarrels and public debts which attend it, have raised the price of bread, and even of grass, at least three hundred per cent.

This pamphlet consists not of fluent declamation, but of curious authenticated and important facts, with a few short observations interspersed, which seemed necessary to explain them. The reader will meet with no mournful periods to the memory of annual or triennial parliaments; for while the members are men such as their predecessors have almost always been, it is but of small concern whether they hold their places for life, or but for a single day. Some of our projectors are of opinion, that to shorten the duration of parliament would be an ample remedy for all our grievances. The advantages of a popular election have likewise been much extolled. Yet an acquaintance with Thucydides, or Plutarch, or Guicciardini, or Machiavel, may tend to calm the raptures of a republican apostle. The plan of universal suffrages has been loudly recommended by the Duke of Richmond; and, on the 16th of May 1782, that nobleman, seconded by Mr. Horne Tooke, and Mr. Pitt, was sitting in a tavern, composing advertisements of reformation for the newspapers. MUTANTUR TEMPORA. But had his plan been adopted, it is possible that we should at this day, have looked back with regret, on the humiliating yet tranquil despotism of a Scots, or a Cornish borough.

The style of this work is concise and plain; and it is hoped that it will be found sufficiently respectful to all parties. The [Page] question to be decided is, are we to proceed with the war system? Are we, in the progress of the nineteenth century, to embrace five thousand fresh taxes, to squander a second five hundred millions sterling, and to extirpate twenty millions of people?

Notes

*

Infra, chap. 1.

↵

*

Memoirs of Britain and Ireland, vol. ii.

↵

THE POLITICAL PROGRESS OF BRITAIN.

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CHAPTER I.

Dutch prowess, Danish wit, and British policy,

Great NOTHING! mainly tend to thee.

ROCHESTER.

THE people of Scotland are, on all occasions, foolish enough to interest themselves in the good or bad fortune of an English minister; though it does not appear that we have more influence with such a minister, than with the cabinet of Japan. To England we were for many centuries a hostile, and we are still considered by them as a foreign, and in effect a conquered nation. It is true, that we elect very near a twel [...] part of the British House of Commons; but our representatives have no title to vote, or act in a separate body. Every statute proceeds upon the majority of the voices of the whole compound assembly: What, therefore, can forty-five persons accomplish, when opposed to five hundred and thirteen? They feel the total insignificance of their situation, and behave accordingly. An equal number of elbow chairs, placed once for all on the ministerial benches, would be less expensive to government, and just about as manageable. I call these, and every ministerial tool of the same kind, expensive, because those who are obliged to [Page] buy, must be understood to sell *; and those who [...] themselves under the banners of opposition, can only be considered, as having rated their voices too high for a purchaser in the parliamentary auction †.

There is a fashionable phrase, the politics of the county, which I can never hear pronounced without a glow of indignation; compared with such politics, even pimping is respectable. Our supreme court have, indeed, with infinite propriety, interposed to extirpate what are called in Scotland, parchment barons, and have thus prevented a crowd of unhappy wretches from plunging into an abyss of perjury. But, in other respects, their decision is of no consequence, since it most certainly cannot be of the smallest concern to this country, who are our electors, and representatives; or, indeed, whether we are represented at all. Our members are, most of them, the mere satellites of the minister of the day; and forward to serve his most oppressive and criminal purposes.

It seems to have been long a maxim of the monopolizing directors of our southern masters, to extirpate, as quickly as possible, every manufacture in this country, that interferes with their own. Has any body forgotten the scandalous breach of national faith, by which the Scottish distilleries have been brought to destruction? Has not the manufacture of starch also been driven, by every engine of judicial torture, to the last pang of its existence? Have not the manufacturers of paper, printed callicoes, malt liquors and glass, been harrassed by the most vexatious methods of exacting the revenue? methods equivalent to an addition of ten, or sometimes an hundred per cent. of the duty payable. Let us look around this insulted country, and say, on what manufacture, except the linen, government has not fastened its bloody fangs.

[Page]In the Excise annals of Scotland, that year which expired on the 5th of July 1790, produced for the duties on soap, sixty-five thousand pounds. On the 5th of July 1791, the annual amount of these duties was only forty-five thousand pounds; and by the same hopeful progress in three years more at farthest, our ministers will enjoy the pleasure of extirpating a branch of trade, once flourishing and extensive. Two men were some years ago executed at Edinburgh for robbing the Excise Office of twenty-seven pounds, but offenders may be named, who ten thousand times better deserve the gibbet. We have seen that oppressive statutes, and a method of enforcing them, the most tyrannical, have, in a single year, deprived the revenue of twenty thousand pounds, in one line only, and have driven a crowd of industrious families out of the country; and then our legislators, to borrow the honest language of George Ro [...] Esq "have the insolence to call this GOVERNMENT."

By an oriental monopoly, we have obtained the unexampled privilege of buying a pound of the same tea, for six or eight shillings, with which other nations would eagerly supply us for twenty-pence; nay, we have to thank our present illustrious minister, that this trifling vegetable has been reduced from a price still more extravagant. His popularity began by the commutation act. Wonders were promised, wonders were expected, and wonders have happened! A nation, consisting of men who call themselves enlightened, have consented to build up their windows, that they might enjoy the permission of sipping in the dark a cup of tea, ten per cent. cheaper than formerly; though not less than three hundred per cent. dearer than its intrinsic price.

Such are the glorious consequences of our stupid veneration for a minister, and our absurd submission to his capricious dictates!

At home Englishmen admire liberty; but abroad, they have always been harsh masters. Edward the First conquered Wales and Scotland; and at the distance of five hundred years, his name is yet remembered in both countries with traditionary horror. His actions are shaded by a degree of infamy uncommon even in the ruffian catalogue of English kings.

[Page]The rapacity of the BLACK Prince, as he has been emphatically termed, drove him out of France. At this day, there are English writers who pretend to be proud of the unprovoked massacres committed by his father and himself in that country; but on the other hand, Philip de Comines ascribes the civil wars of York and Lancaster, which followed the death of Henry the Fifth, to the indignation of divine justice.

Ireland, for many centuries, groaned under the most oppressive and absurd despotism; till, in defiance of all consequences, the immortal Swift, like another Ajax, ‘"Broke the dark phalanx, and let in the light."’ He [...]ght his country to understand her importance. At last she resolved to assert it, and, as a necessary circumstance, she arose in arms. England saw the hazard of contending with a brave, an injured, and an indignant nation. The fabric of tyranny fell without a blow; and a short time will extinguish the last vestige of a supremacy, dishonourable and pernicious to both kingdoms.

In the East and West Indies, the conduct of Britain may be fairly contrasted with the murder of Atabaliba, and will prove equally ruinous to the detested conquerors *.

When our sublime politicians exult in the victory of Seringapat [...]m, and the butchery of the subjects of a prince, at the distance [Page] of six thousand leagues, I am convinced from the bottom of my heart, and so will the majority of my countrymen be, long before this century has elapsed, that it would be an event, the most auspicious both for Bengal and for Britain, if Cornwallis and all his myrmidons could be at once driven out of India.

But what quarter of the globe has not been convulsed by our ambition, our avarice, and our baseness? The tribes of the Pacific ocean are polluted by the most loathsome of diseases; our brandy has brutalized or extirpated the Indians of the western continent; and we have hired by thousands the wretched survivors to the task of bloodshed. On the shores of Africa, we bribe whole nations by drunkenness, to robbery and murder; while in the face of earth and heaven, our senators assemble to sanctify the practice.

Our North American colonies were established, defended, and lost, by a succession of long and bloody wars, and at a recorded expence of at least two or three hundred millions sterling *. We still retain Canada, at an annual charge of six or seven hundred thousand pounds. This sum is wrested from us by an excise, which revels in the destruction of manufactures, and the beggary of ten thousand honest families †. From the province itself we never raised, nor hope to raise, a shilling of revenue; and the sole reason why its inhabitants endure our dominion for a month longer is, to secure the money we spend among them.

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CHAP II.

'Tis time to take enormity by the forehead and brand it.

BEN JOHNSON.

‘DURING the reigns of Charles and James the Second, above sixty thousand Nonconformists suffered, of whom five thousand DIED IN PRISON. On a moderate computation, these persons were pillaged of FOURTEEN MILLIONS of property. Such was the tolerating, liberal, candid spirit of the Church of England *.’ This estimate cannot be intended to include Scotland, for it is likely that here alone, Episcopacy sacrificed sixty thousand victims. Of all sorts of follies, the records of the Church from the most outrageous burlesque on the human understanding. As to Charles the Second, it is full time that we should be spared from the hereditary insult of a holiday, for what Lord Gardenstone has justly termed "his BANEFUL RESTORATION."

It is vulgarly understood that our political millenium commenced with "the glorious Revolution." Let the reader judge from what follows.

‘Two hundred thousand pounds a year bestowed upon the parliament, have already (1693) drawn out of the pockets of the subjects MORE MONEY than all our kings since the Conquest have had from the nation!—The King (William) has about six score members, whom I can reckon, who are in places, and are thereby so entirely at his devotion, that though they have mortal feuds, when out of the House, and though they are violently of opposite parties, in their notions of government, yet they vote as lumpingly as the lawn sleeves. The House is so officered by those who have places and pensions, [Page] that the King can baffle any bill, quash all grievances, and stifle all accompts *.’

A pawnbroker descending from the pillory would not be suffered to resume his profession. A porter convicted of theft, would be deprived of his ticket. We might be tempted to imagine, that a solicitude to embrace pollution, can hardly exist even in the meanest and most worthless rank of mankind. It seems incredible, that an assembly consisting of Gentlemen, shall first by a solemn vote discharge one of their members as a rascal, and in a short time after, place him at their head. That such a case has actually happened, appears upon record.

In the year 1711, the House of Commons resolved, ‘That Robert Walpole, Esquire, having been this session of parlialiament committed a prisoner to the Tower, and expelled this House for a breach of trust in the execution of his office, and NOTORIOUS CORRUPTION, when Secretary at War, was, and is incapable of being elected a member to serve in this present parliament.’ Such an expulsion would for ever have bolted him out of any society but a British senate. In 1715, when a new parliament was called, he resumed his seat. He rose superior to competition; and the end of his career was worthy of his outset. Yet his character can lose nothing by a comparison with that of his constituents, the burgesses of Lynn, who attempted instantly upon his expulsion, to return him a second time as their representative, but their choice was rejected. Nor was it because Walpole had pilfered five hundred guineas that he was expelled and sent to the Tower. He was a Whig, and at that time the majority in the House of Commons were Tories. This was regarded as the true cause of his sentence †.

[Page]The Earl of Wharton, another WHIG, was fined in a thousand pounds for an outrage too gross to be repeated. This did not deprive him of his seat in the House of Peers, nor impede his progress to the government of Ireland, where his conduct rivalled that of Rumbold in Bengal, or Verres in Sicily.—About the year 1770, General Burgoyne was fined in a thousand pounds for bribery at an election for Preston. He enjoys a seat in the present parliament.

On the subject of parliamentary corruption, no writer has spoken with more frankness and perspicuity, than Mr. Doddington, in his celebrated Diary. In a conversation with the Duke of Newcastle, in 1753, about an election for Bridgewater, there is the following curious passage: ‘I recommended my two parsons, Burroughs and Franklin. The Duke entered into it very cordially, and answered me, that they should have the first crown livings that should be vacant in their parts, if we would look out and send him the first intelligence.’ And again, ‘Mr. Pelham declared, that I had a good deal of marketable ware, PARLIAMENTARY INTEREST, and that if I would empower him to offer it all to the King, without conditions, he would be answerable to bring the affair to a good account.—The Duke of Newcastle said, that what I did was very great, that he often thought with surprise, at the ease and cheapness of the election at Weymouth, that they had NOTHING like it. I said, I believed there were few who could give his Majesty SIX members for nothing.—The election cost me three thousand four hundred pounds. I was fairly chosen, nor would the returning officer have dared not to return me, had he not been encouraged by the servants of administration. The borough was lost, and lost solely by a Lord of the Bed-chamber, and the Custom-house Officers.’ (Par nobile fratrum!) ‘Lord Bute had told Anson, that room must be made for Lord Parker; who replied, that all was engaged. Bute said, What, my Lord, the King's Admirally boroughs full, and the King not acquainted with it! Anson seemed quite disconcerted, and knew not what to say *.’ [Page] This agrees exactly with the account given by Mr. Courtney, in a late debate in the House of Commons, where he observed, that members came into parliament with a label at their mouths, inscribed, Yes, or No. The state of British representation has been often examined and censured. A few particulars may serve as a specimen of the rest.

England is said to contain eight millions of inhabitants, who send to the House of Commons five hundred and thirteen members. At this rate, every million ought, upon an average, to chuse sixty-four representatives. The cities of London and Westminster contain between them, about a million of people, who elect not sixty-four, but six members for parliament. The borough of Old Sarum, which contains only one inhabitant, sends two members.

On this topick, a short extract from Mr. Burgh's Political Disquisitions, may entertain the reader.—‘Two hundred and fifty-four members are elected by five thousand seven hundred and twenty-three votes; now, the most numerous meeting of the Commons ever known, was on occasion of the debate about Walpole, A. D. 1741. There were then five hundred and two in the House. Therefore, two hundred and fifty-four comes very near a majority of the House, or the whole acting and efficient number. And the greatest part of these illustrious five thousand seven hundred and twenty-three, who have the power of constituting lawgivers over the property of the nation, are themselves persons of no property *.’

The writer has here committed a slight inaccuracy; for, in the debate about Walpole, these two hundred and fifty-four members, who are not, in fact, elected by a two hundredth part of the nation, would have seemed an actual majority of six votes against the whole other representatives in the House. In the year 1770, the English nation became jealous that their liberties were in danger, because Government had interfered in the election of Mr. Wilkes, as a member for the county of Middlesex. The letters of Junius are chiefly employed upon this [Page] topic. Junius, with all his merit, resembled a barber, who plucks out a single hair, when he ought to be shaving your beard. It could not be of the least consequence to the county of Middlesex, nor is it of any concern to any other county in England, who are their representatives, since the two hundred and fifty-four members who are elected by A TWO HUNDREDTH PART of the nation, and the forty-five make-weight Scotch members, are alone sufficient to insure a majority. The subject is too absurd to admit of an argument, and too detestable for declamation. If Government were candidly to send two hundred and fifty-four excisemen, or clerks from the Bank of England, into parliament, in place of these two hundred and fifty-four members, it would save the expence of election, and a great part of the necessary expence of corruption. It is true, that the masters of rotten boroughs are often inrolled in the ranks of opposition; and among others, the Earl of Chatham began his progress as a member for Old Sarum. But an opposition always consists, in part, of adventures, who, as Dr. Johnson observes, ‘having estimated themselves at two high a price, are only angry that they are not bought *.’ There is a cant expression in this country, that our Government is deservedly the wonder and envy of the world. With better reason it may be said, that Parliament is a mere outwork of the court, a phalanx of mercenaries embattled against the reason, the happiness, and the liberty of mankind. The game laws, the dog act, the shop tax, the window tax, the pedlars tax, the attorney tax, and a thousand others, give us a right to wish that their authors had been hanged.

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CHAP. III.

—Felicior essem

Angustis opibus: mallem tolerare Sabinos,

Et Vejos: brevior duxi securius aevum.

Ipsa nocet moles.

CLAUDIAN.

IT is now eighty-eight years since * we surprised Gibraltar. We have retained this barren, useless rock, under the pretence of protecting our trade in the Mediterranean; and it is even a sorry conceit in Britain that we are thus masters of a kind of toll-bar to the entrance of that sea. Had the passage been only five hundred yards wide, this fancy would have had some foundation. But, unfortunately, the Strait, as we call it, is twenty miles in breadth; so that all the ships in the world may pass it every day, in contempt of all our batteries. As to the protection of our merchants, it is equally superfluous, for our commerce to that part of Europe was far more extensive, long before we possessed Gibraltar, than it is at this moment †; and this unquestionable fact proves the absolute impertinence of the whole scheme. A plain comparison from domestic life will illustrate what I say. Let us put the case, that a private gentleman is like Britain, overwhelmed with debt. He builds and furnishes a handsome inn on the road to his country seat, and he gives the premises to his butler, with a pension of five hundred pounds, on condition, that in dirty weather, he shall be suffered to pull off his boots in the kitchen. But were even the port of Gibraltar sunk to the centre of the earth, we can have no want of shelter at the shortest distance. There are three ports on the opposite side of the Strait. Besides, we cannot retain this fortress, unless we preserve a superiority at sea, and as [Page] long as we preserve that superiority, Gibraltar is of no consequence. For the memorable progress of Admiral Blake on the coast of Barbary proves, that while we can launch a victorious navy, manned as it is by a race of veterans beyond all praise, we can always command a free navigation in every harbour of the globe. So much for the importance of this boasted acquisition. Let us now consider its expence; and on this head the reader may, if he thinks proper, prepare himself for astonishment. The fortress, for a long period past, has cost us five hundred thousand pounds a year, besides the extraordinary advances in time of war, and the sums which the garrison, by sober industry, might have earned at home in time of peace. For the sake of moderation, let us compute that Gibraltar, during the whole space of our possession, has required, upon an average, only two hundred thousand pounds per annum; on multiplying this sum by eighty-eight, we are presented with an amount of seventeen millions and six hundred thousand pounds sterling. Could the premises be disputed, the total expence would exceed credibility; for at the rate of five per cent. of compound interest, a sum doubles itself in fourteen years; and, consequently, in the course of eighty-four years, from 1704, to 1788, the first payment of two hundred thousand pounds will increase to twelve millions and eight hundred thousand. The simple interest of this sum, for the four additional years, from 1788 to 1792 inclusive, amounts to two millions five hundred and sixty thousand pounds, and the whole arises to fifteen millions three hundred and sixty thousand pounds. This, however, concerns only one year of our conquest. The first four years extend in the whole to fifty-seven millions and six hundred thousand pounds sterling. Another loss also must be taken into this unfathomable accompt. The garrison of this fortress consists always of at least four thousand men, and sometimes of more than twice that number. An ordinary workman can earn ten shillings a week, and the labour of four thousand such workmen is worth to the public above an hundred thousand pounds per annum. This adds one third part more of additional loss. The total expence therefore, which this acquisition exhausted in the first [Page] four years only, including the legal interest of our money down to this day, cannot have been less than eighty-six millions four hundred thousand pounds. We are likewise entitled to compute not only what we have positively lost, but what we might with equal certainty have gained. Britain and Ireland contain about an hundred and four thousand square miles, and if this sum of eighty-six millions four hundred thousand pounds had been expended on the purposes of agriculture, it would have supplied a fund of eight hundred and thirty pounds sterling for every square mile. Hence, instead of an interest of five per cent. the funds thus employed would have returned a profit of ten or twenty, or perhaps of fifty per cent.

The reader may prosecute, and contemplate the sequel of this calculation. All the current cash in Europe, or in the world, would come infinitely short of discharging such a reckoning. Britain may be supposed at this time to contain about fifteen hundred thousand families, besides those who are supported upon charity. Now, dividing the present annual expence of five hundred thousand pounds equally among them, it amounts to a share of six shillings and eight pence per family. The money ought to be raised under a distinct title, such as the Gibraltar additional shilling of land tax, the Gibraltar malt tax, the Gibraltar excise on tobacco, the Gibraltar game licence, the Gibraltar horse licence, the Gibraltar attorney licence, or the Gibraltar stamp duty on legacies. In that case, the nation would instantly consider what they are about, and cast off such a preposterous burden. The payment of six shillings and eight pence is frequently the smallest part of the grievance. By the expence of excisemen, of prosecutions, and of penalties, five shillings of revenue may often cost a British freeman ten times as many pounds sterling *.

[Page]Before the acquisition of Gibraltar, England, in the whole course of her history, had only three wars with Spain. The first in 1588, was produced by the piracies of Drake and others, and by the assistance which Elizabeth afforded to the Dutch revolters. The second war was likewise unprovoked on the part of Spain. Cromwell found it necessary to vent the turbulence of his subjects in a foreign quarrel, and Jamaica was invaded and seized without even a pretence of justice. On this conquest chiefly has England founded that hopeful branch of her commerce, the Slave-Trade, while the climate has annually extirpated, by thousands, the vagrants from Europe. The third Spanish war had an origin worthy of its predecessors. The King of Spain, by his will, transferred his dominions to a Prince of the house of Bourbon. His subjects consented or submitted to the choice, and England, with a degree of insolence unmatched in history, interfered in favour of an Austrian candidate. The contest ended with our acquisition of Minorca, and Gibraltar; an injury to Spain of the most offensive nature. Since that period her court has always been forward to contend with us; and five wars *, begun and terminated in the short space of sixty-five years, assures us of their indelible indignation. Nor can we be surprised at their animosity; for what would an Englishman say or feel, were Plymouth and Dover fortified by a French garrison? Happily for the species, our countrymen at Gibraltar have been but seldom attacked. Hence, in a time of war, they have commonly inflicted and suffered far less mischief than must have been committed on both sides in a piratical expedition [Page] to the coast of Peru, in desolating the plains of Hindostan, in burning the shipping at St. Maloes, or in storming the pestilential ramparts of the Havannah *.

In 1708, we captured Minorca, and after what has been said as to Gibraltar, it is unnecessary to expatiate on the monsterous expences which it must have cost us during half a century, till it was in 1756 surrendered to the French. On this event the whole English nation seemed to have run out of their senses. Yet to the loss of this fortress, we may in some measure attribute our success, as it was called, in that war; for the charge of supporting Minorca must have been felt as a dead weight upon our other operations. It was restored in 1763, and in 1781, it was a second time, and I hope for ever, separated from the British dominions. By the loss of this fortress we save an incessant and extravagant expence. With me it is an object of regret, that the brave Elliot and his garrison had not been forced to capitulate by the first bomb discharged against them. The individuals, acting as they did, from the most generous and honourable principles, have acquired and deserved our warmest gratitude; and, as it may be expected that such events will hereafter become less frequent, their glory will descend with increasing lustre to the last generations of mankind. But their efforts were fatal to this country; for it is self-evident that we had much better have wanted this mock appendage of empire. The siege itself produced scenes of such stupenduous destruction, that they cannot be perused without horror. Nine years of peace have since elapsed, and, in that time, including the endless expence of fortifications, it is probable that Gibraltar has cost us at least five millions sterling; besides, we have been again on the verge of a war with Spain, which has added a comfortable item of four millions to the debts of the nation. If the annual expence of Gibraltar amounts to five hundred thousand pounds, this is about one thirty-second part of our [Page] public revenue. Nothing but the power of its disposal can obtain for a British minister a majority in the House of Commons. Three hundred and twenty members are about the usual number under his influence *; and therefore the patronage of Gibraltar may be conjectured to purchase ten votes in the market of St. Stephen's chapel †.

Though writers have presumed to specify the annual charge of Gibraltar, an exact estimate cannot possibly be obtained. The public accounts are presented to parliament in a state of inextricable confusion. Indeed, their immense bulk would alone be sufficient to place them far beyond the reach of any human comprehension. A single circumstance may serve to show the way in which parliamentary business is commonly performed. A statute was passed and printed some years ago, containing three successive references to the thirty-FIRST day of November.

For a foreign contest, our government is most wretchedly adapted. In the war of 1756, Frederick, that Shakespeare of kings, fought and conquered five different nations. In the course of his miraculous campaigns, he neither added a single impost, nor attempted to borrow a single shilling. At the same time our boasted Earl of Chatham was overwhelming this country with taxes, and contracting an annual debt of fifteen or twenty millions sterling. With a more destructive minister no nation was ever cursed. Yet this man we prefer to Sir Robert Walpole, a statesman, whose maxim it was to keep us, if possible, at peace with all the world.

In 1662, Dunkirk, then possessed by England, cost an annual [Page] expence of an hundred and twenty thousand pounds. At the same period the whole revenues of the nation did not amount to eleven hundred thousand pounds. The retention of the town must have proved a hot-bed of future wars with France. Charles the Second, at this time sold it to Lewis the Fourteenth, for the sum of four hundred thousand pounds. This was, I believe, the only wise, laudable, or even innocent action of his reign. It had almost produced a rebellion; and, as Mr. Hume observes, ‘has not had the good fortune, to be justified by any party.’

Domestic improvement is, in all cases, more advantageous than military acquisition. Yet in the great outlines of our history, we have incessantly forsaken the former, to pursue the latter. James the First, though in private, and even in public life, universally despised, was one of the best sovereigns that ever sat on the British throne. Without a single quality which could recommend him to our esteem, he preserved the English nation, though much against their will, in peace, during his entire reign of twenty-two years. Hence both islands made rapid advances in wealth and prosperity. "Never," says Stowe, ‘was there any people, less considerate, and less thankful than at this time, being not willing to endure the memory of their present happiness.’ On the same principles of rapine, which dictated the retention of Dunkirk, James has been severely blamed for delivering back to the Dutch three of their fortified towns, which had been put into the possession of Elizabeth. Mr. Hume has, with much propriety, vindicated his conduct. Had it been possible that the life of such a prince, and the tranquillity of this country, could have been prolonged to the present day, it is beyond the power of British vanity to conceive the accumulated progress of British opulence. Both islands would, long before this time, have advanced to a state of cultivation, not inferior to that of China. The productions of the soil, and the number of inhabitants, might have exceeded, by tenfold, their present amount. Public roads, canals, bridges, and buildings of every description, must have multiplied far beyond what our most sanguine wishes are capable of conceiving. A short review of the destruction committed by foreign wars within the last hundred [Page] years of our history, can hardly fail to amuse, and may perhaps instruct the reader.

CHAP. IV.

Facilis est descensus Averni. VIRG.

'Tis easy into hell to fall;

But to get out again is all.

‘THE ground of the first war, says Dr. Swift, after the Revolution, as to the part we had in it, was to make France acknowledge the late king, and to recover Hudson's Bay. But during that whole war the sea was almost entirely neglected, and the greatest part of six millions annually, employed to enlarge the frontier of the Dutch. For the king was a general, but not an admiral; and although king of England, was a native of Holland.’

‘After ten years of fighting, to little purpose, after the loss of above an hundred thousand men, and a debt remaining of twenty millions, we at length hearkened to the terms of Peace, which was concluded with great advantages to the Empire and Holland, but none at all to us *.’

This account does not give us much encouragement to send for a second sovereign from Holland. Dutch generosity appears to have proved a very miserable bargain. It is hardly possible that James, with all his priests and dragoons, could have committed one hundredth part of this havock. So much for a Protestant hero, and a glorious Revolution.

William ascended and supported his throne by a series of the meanest and most disgraceful expedients. He excited Argyle and Monmouth to rebellion. He bribed the servants of James to betray to himself the secrets of their master. He instructed [Page] these ministers to drive the King of England into those very measures which forced a Revolution. He was base enough to deny the ligitimacy of the Prince of Wales; he taught two thankless daughters to forsake, and ruin, and insult their father. When embarking for this country, ‘he took Heaven to witness, that he had not the least intention to invade or subdue the kingdom of England, much less to make himself master thereof, or to invert or prejudice the lawful succession *.’ James had quarrelled with the Church of England, and this was one of the chief causes of his destruction. Yet all the bishops, except eight, as well as many temporal peers, refused to take the oaths to the new government; and Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, who had been at the head of the opposition to James, was, along with five other bishops, deposed for his refusal. The convention parliament who made William King of England, were elected by himself, and contained, besides other extraordinary materials, fifty members of the Common Council of London. With this very parliament he was immediately on the worst terms; and Sutherland, Marlborough, and Admiral Russel, with many other chiefs of his party, entered into a conspiracy for his expulsion. The Irish rebels had forfeited lands to the value of three millions three hundred and twenty thousand pounds. This immense property William divided almost altogether among his Dutch favourites, and the Countess of Orkney, an English concubine, whose services were rewarded with an estate of twenty-six thousand pounds a year; while, at the same time, with the most sordid ingratitude, he turned his back on the family of Monmouth, who had been his tool and his victim. These acts of robbery were reversed by parliament. I pass over the tragedies of Glencoe and Darien, for on such a character, they reflect no peculiar reproach. William was the father of our public debt, which he multiplied as much as possible, that besides other mean purposes, he might attach to his personal safety the creditors of the nation. As to parliament, in 1690, the Speaker ‘promised to the king to manage his [Page]own party, provided he might be furnished with money to purchase votes *.’ His majesty consented. In the progress of this conspiracy, his agent was expelled from the House of Commons, for accepting from the City of London a bribe of a thousand guineas. A bribe of ten thousand pounds, from the East-India Company, "was traced to the king †;" a magistrate, whose office it was to sign the warrant for executing a pickpocket. William extinguished this inquiry by a prorogation. ‘Thus ended, says the historian, a wretched force, in which the feeble efforts for obtaining justice were scarce less disgraceful than venality itself.’ On the 20th December 1697, the Commons granted William seven hundred thousand pounds a year for the support of the civil list. This comprehended fifty thousand pounds a year, which he promised to pay to King James's queen as her jointure, and fifty thousand pounds a year, which he demanded as necessary to establish the household of the Duke of Gloucester. To the queen he never paid a farthing, and to the Duke only fifteen thousand pounds a year. This prince died on the 24th of July 1700, and in 1701 the Commons, after a violent debate with the adherents of the court, compelled William to refund the fifty thousand pounds, which he had engaged to pay to the exiled queen; and above twenty thousand pounds, which the Duke of Gloucester had left behind him ‡. Mr. Pitt complains of authors who publish [Page] libels on the Revolution. To forbid a person from publishing his sentiments on a historical event which happened above an hundred years ago, is in itself an example of the utmost insolence of despotism. To depose one tyrant was highly proper; but it was not less foolish to exalt another *.

More cost more honour, says the proverb; and by this rule the Revolution was certainly a more splendid transaction than the nation had ever seen. ‘The expences of England, from the landing of the Prince of Orange on the 5th of November 1688, to the 29th of September 1691, had amounted to near EIGHTEEN MILLIONS. Besides, great arrears were owing to the army in Ireland, the navy was destitute of stores, and the ships were out of repair †.’ In 1693, a bill passed both Houses, providing for annual sessions of parliament, and a new election once in three years. To this bill, the FOUNDER OF ENGLISH FREEDOM refused his assent, which in 1694 was obtained by compulsion. After having told all the world for ten years, that James had imposed a spurious prince upon the nation, he engaged in 1697, to obtain that prince to be declared his successor ‡. A man of common spirit would rather have been a chimney sweeper than such a sovereign.

As for the inferior actors in the Revolution, we may inquire what have they done? They did not transfer the load of taxes from the poor to the rich. They did not extirpate entails, and [Page] rotten boroughs. They did not establish an universal right of conscience, and an universal right of citizenship. They did not advance even a single step towards exalting the motely parliament of England into the actual representatives of a free people. They did not avoid a most destructive and endless quarrel on the continent. They did not reduce the civil list even to the prodigal establishment of Charles the Second *. They did not extirpate the most absurd and extravagant prerogatives of the sovereign, to adjourn or dissolve a parliament at pleasure, to bastardize a peerage with the puppers of despotism, to interpose a refusal to the most necessary laws, and to plunge at his will three nations into blood and bankruptcy. What then did they do? They obtained for their countrymen a right to petition THE CROWN †. They settled the succession on a family whom their hero, for what reason he best knew, despised and abhorred. The whole work was a change, not of measures, but of masters. Where then stands the difference between the trimmer Halifax, and the trimmer Thurlow; between Sutherland the traitor to all parties, and our Hibernian panegyrist of the Bastile? The Duke of [Page] Marlborough gave a just account both of the Whigs and Tories. ‘I do not believe, said he, that either party is swayed by any true principles of conscience or honesty. Their professions are always different; their views precisely the same. They both grasp at the possession of power; and the Prince who gives them the most is their greatest favourite *.’ Were farther evidence wanting, Burnet, himself both a whig and a courtier, tells us that the whigs set every thing to sale. He complained of the practice of bribing parliament to the king, and William assured him, that it was not possible to help it.

As a partial defence of our ancestors it may be urged, that in the end of the last century, the nation was unripe for a rational constitution. But since we know this to be true, why are we disturbed with rhapsodies on one of the most questionable combinations that ever deformed history? Does any body compare the packed convention parliaments of the two kingdoms, in 1689, with the democratical members of the first national assembly of France? As well might we parallel Charles Jenkinson with the Duke of Sully, or the assassin of Culloden with the conqueror at Bannockburn. Did the philosophical and concise decrees of the French patriots grovel in the feudal jargon of subjecting a people and their posterity forever to the assignees of a Dutchman who was universally detested? As well might we fancy a resemblance between the daubing of a sign-post, and the pencil of Reynolds, or the exercise of a school-boy and the stanzas of Buchanan.

Upon the whole, as William betrayed James into several of those crimes by which a revolution became necessary, his memory is an object not of respect but abhorrence. His conduct was like that of an incendiary who first sets fire to your house, and then claims ten times the worth of the whole building for his service in quenching it. To praise him and his revolution, discovers an ignorance of history, or a contempt of common honesty. It is as much a burlesque upon reason, as when a King of England calls himself King of France; or as when a [Page] person, like Henry the Eighth, whose word is trusted by nobody, assumes for his title Defender of the Faith.

But since the authors of the revolution did not surpass the diminutive standard of Court integrity, why has our temple of venality * for so long a time resounded with the wretched laram of whig families and whig virtues? Why should common men wander from their natural and just progress to obscurity, and [...]ck the attention of future ages? Had Archimedes been only the best archer at the siege of Syracuse, had Columbus lived and died but the most expert pilot in the port of Genoa, had the eloquence of Shakespeare shrunk to a level with the dramatick mushrooms of this day, these memorable benefactors of mankind had vanished into instant oblivion. Had Thomas Paine been nothing superior to a vagabond seamen, a bankrupt staymaker, a discarded exciseman, a porter in the streets of Philadelphi, or whatever else the insanity of Grub-street chuses to call him, an hundred thousand copies of his writings had never announced his name in every village on the globe, where the English language is spoken, nor would the rays of royal indignation have illuminated that character which they cannot scorch.

CHAP. V.

Nulla unquam de morte hominis cunctatio longa est.

No delay as to the death of a man is ever too long.

JUVENAL.

IN the war which ended by the peace of Ryswick, seven hundred millions sterling were spent, and eight hundred thousand men perished, yet none of the parties gained one penny of [Page] money, of almost one foot of territory. In 1693, Lewis made very ample offers for peace which William refused. Had William accepted these offers of Lewis, ‘the war of the first grand alliance would have ended four years sooner than it did, and the war of the second grand alliance might have been prevented *. During some years previous to the peace of Ryswick, the price of corn in England was double, and in Scotland quadruple its ordinary rate; and in one of those years, it was believed that in Scotland eighty thousand people died of want †.’

The war which followed the Revolution cost England sixty millions sterling ‡. Let us suppose that an equal share of this sum was spent in each of the nine years, during which it lasted, and at six per cent. the compound interest of the sums advanced annually up to the peace of Ryswick in 1697, amounts to fifteen millions sterling. Four thousand merchantmen were taken by the enemy §; and De-Foe, in one of his pamplets, tells us, that the damage in this way had been computed at twenty millions. The interest of this sum, estimated in the same manner with that of the public expences up to the peace, will produce five millions. But that our calculations may be perfectly safe, let us bring down both principal and interest to fifteen millions, and we shall pass over the expence of at least four thousand bankruptcies, and ten times that number of lawsuits. The different sums above specified extend to ninety millions sterling. Let us next put the case that this money had been placed at a compound interest of five per cent. ‖ At the end of ninety-eight years from [Page] the peace of Ryswick, that is to say in 1795, these ninety millions would have doubled themselves exactly seven times, and the final produce would have been ELEVEN THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED AND TWENTY MILLIONS STERLING, or a dividend of eleven hundred and fifty-two pounds to every individual inhabitant of Britain. This sum is equal to the discharge of our national debts forty-eight times over, and is five hundred and seventy-five times greater than the whole gold and silver coin at present in the three kingdoms. Such has been the price of a Dutch frontier, and of Hudson's Bay. As Britain and Ireland are said to contain an hundred and four thousand square miles, if the money had been employed in the improvements of agriculture, it would have supplied a fund of an hundred and one thousand one hundred and fifty-three pounds fifteen shillings and eleven pence, and seven thirteenth parts of a penny for each square mile. This sum is much more than upon an average the whole landed property of both islands is worth *.

An objection may be advanced to this statement, that a great part of the sixty millions thus expended by government was embezzled among ourselves, and that as it never actually went out of the country, we are not at this day a farthing poorer than if the money had never been raised. If we might oppose the language of common sense to the jargon of political sophistry, I would answer, that when a grazier in Yorkshire has been knocked down and robbed, he cares but little whether his guineas are to be staked at the gaming tables of Paris or of London. But we shall admit that the Dutch administration like all those which have come after it, was a scene of inexpressible infamy; that thirty millions out of the sixty were pilfered in their road to the service of the public; and that the peers and others who stole this money applied their plunder to ends as honest as could have been devised by the farmers and tradesmen who were stripped of it. This is not very feasible, for what is won in a bad way is commonly [Page] spent in a worse one; but let us proceed. In estimating the expences of the war, there was omitted an article of loss at least equivalent to these thirty millions. It has been observed, that a workman can, upon an average, earn about ten shillings a-week, which in London is at present about half the common wages of a journeyman taylor. Reduce this to twenty-five pounds per annum, and his life may be estimated at twelve years purchase, or three hundred pounds in value to the public. In the war in question, we lost an hundred thousand men, and by this moderate and simple computation, the price of their blood to Britain was not worth less than thirty millions Sterling. Even this number of an hundred thousand lives is most likely far less than the actual destruction. Four thousand merchant ships were taken by the French privateers, and these alone must have required, one with another, twelve or thirteen mariners, which gives us an amount of fifty thousand prisoners; of whom, besides the numbers killed, at least ten or fifteen thousand would perish of jail distempers, of their wounds, of cold or hunger, and above all, of a broken heart.

As the pillage of public money is one of the worst consequences of war, I shall here say something farther on that subject. In 1695, Knight and Duncombe, two members of the House of Commons, were expelled for having forged indorsements on Exchequer bills. Duncombe confessed the charge, and his share of the booty had extended to four hundred thousand pounds. I am not informed what was the amount of Knight's plunder; or that of several others who were concerned. The Commons, in a fit of purity, passed a bill to fine Duncombe in half his estate. By the statute laws of England, he should have suffered death. The bill for his fine was rejected in the house of Lords *, by the casting vote of the Duke of Leeds, who was himself a swindler of the first distinction. The Earl of Chesterfield had some reason for terming that house an hospital of Incurables. Salmon tells us, that the ministry gave whatever interest and premiums were demanded for the loan of [Page] money, and that provisions and naval stores were taken up at an advance of thirty, forty, and sometimes fifty per cent. above their proper price. But, indeed, after the dimission of Mr. Duncombe, with his four hundred thousand pounds in his pocket, every charge of this kind becomes perfectly credible.

Whether in the present age, matters have been much mended, there was nobody better able to inform us than the late Earl of Chatham. ‘There is a set of men, says he, in the city of London, who are known to live in riot and luxury, upon the plunder of the ignorant, the innocent, and the helpless, upon that part of the community, which stands most in need of, and best deserves the care and protection of the legislature. To me, my Lords, whether they be miserable jobbers of Change Alley, or the lofty Asiatic plunderers of Leadenhall Street, they are all equally detestable. I care but little whether a man walks on foot, or is drawn by eight horses, or by six horses; if his luxury be supported by the plunder of his country, I despise and abhor him. My Lords, while I had the honour of serving his Majesty, I never ventured to look at THE TREASURY, but from a distance; it is a business I am unfit for, and to which I never could have submitted. The little I know of it, has not served to raise my opinion of what is vulgarly called the monied interest; I mean that BLOODSUCKER, that MUCKWORM, which calls itself the friend of Government, which pretends to serve this or that administration, and may be purchased on the same terms by any administration. Under this description I include the whole race of commissioners, jobbers, contractors, clothiers, and remitters *.’

The war of 1689 is at this day almost forgotten, in the blaze of more recent and stupendous follies. Yet the present short sketch of those calamities which it produced, cannot fail of [Page] leading us into some melancholy reflections on the general tendency of the military system. War may produce advantage to a race of barbarians, who have nothing to do, and nothing to lose; but for a commercial nation, it can be no better than an alderman deserting his ledger, to bet in a cock-pit. Of this system there is no part more injurious than that which enjoins the capture of merchant ships. An honest mariner has by the labour of half his life earned a thousand pounds, and embarks his whole property in a vessel freighted from Leith or Dunkirk. He is boarded by an enemy's privateer; his effects are forfeited; and he himself is to rot for six, or twelve, or eighteen months in a French or English jail; while his wife, his children, or perhaps his father—but this part of the picture becomes too shocking for the contemplation of humanity. Of these matters, kings or courtiers almost never think. At a certain elevation, the human heart seems to contract a frost more impenetrable than the summit of the Alps or the Andes. It would be an auspicous event for mankind, if all the ships of war in the world could be reduced to ashes in one day.

We have adopted a fancy, that frequent hostilities are unavoidable. Yet the Swiss, a nation of soldiers, and placed in the midst of contending tyrants, have hardly been thrice at war in the course of three centuries. The reason is, that their governments are founded on wisdom, benevolence, and integrity; while ours breathe only maxims of a less amiable nature *. Other instances from the history of our own island may be adduced to the same purpose. ‘For more than a century after the memorable year 1189, there was no national quarrel, nor national war between the two kingdoms †.’ This circumstance [Page] becomes the more remarkable, because, at that time our ancestors were fit for almost nothing else but fighting. The fatal contest that began in the end of the thirteenth century, sprung from the ambition of Edward the First. The respective nations lived in a profound peace, and were alike solicitous to preserve it.

From the year 1403, to the battle of Flodden, in 1513, being a space of an hundred and ten years, peace was maintained between the two kingdoms, with very little interruption; though sometimes there was a war which hardly lasted above a single campaign. During the long and bloody struggle between the houses of York and Lancaster, the Scots interfered only once or twice at most, and that was at the earnest desire of the English exiles; but they formed no ungenerous and impracticable plans of conquest. Even to Flodden they were driven by the temerity of their sovereign; and his fortunate death put an instant end to hostilities. Our ancestors, whom we consider as barbarians, were unacquainted with the deliberate systematic thirst of blood which marks a modern politician; and what quarrels they had, arose from the folly of their several monarchs. We have not enjoyed ten years of peace together since the Revolution. Even when we cease to fight in Europe, a war must immediately commence in Asia, or Africa, or America, and in the face of all this work, we call ourselves the happiest people in the world.

Peace may be considered as the universal parent of human happiness. Industry cannot long thrive without it, and to this we are indebted for a great part of our comforts, our enjoyments, and our resources. Spain has long been envied for her gold and silver mines, which, by Dr. Robertson's account, have in two centuries and a half, produced above two thousand millions sterling. But sober industry is vastly more valuable than all the mines in the world. If we can forbear butchery, we need not despair of discharging every penny of our public debt, with ease, in less than a century; or if we should not, still the property of the nation would increase with such rapidity, that the debt itself must be hardly felt. To make this truth evident, [Page] let us attend to what follows. As a counterpart to the bubble of Falkland's Islands, four millions sterling have lately been expended on a Spanish convention. Had they been placed out at five per cent. of compound interest, they would in ninety-eight years have produced five hundred and twelve millions sterling, and at present one half of this latter sum would be more than sufficient to discharge all our incumbrances, and make us as free of debts as our grandfathers were when the Prince of Orange landed. It is true, that the job government of Britain cannot, like that of a Swiss canton, place money at interest, but from calculations of this sort, we may form a conjecture, as to what we are capable of saving, by considering what we have spent. The American war alone added about one hundred and fifty millions to our public debt, and yet we are in reality a richer nation than when that war began *. Our funds, as we call them, have not hitherto recovered the shock, but that is, in spite of common prejudice, a happy circumstance. Had THE YOUNG MAN been able to borrow money with equal facility as his father, we should certainly have been scourged into a Spanish war. Now, though the country has recovered, and though our commerce is greatly superior to what it had ever before been, it is evident, that if we had not possessed an almost inexhaustible vital principle of reproduction and accumulation, so great a havock of property as an hundred and fifty, or even an hundred millions sterling, must have reduced whole provinces of this island to a desart. Such a complete recovery from the loss of more than an hundred millions in less than ten years, presents us with a regular annual overplus of at least six [Page] or eight millions. But that we may not overshoot the mark, let us rate the clear annual profits of British commerce and agriculture at only five millions. We shall find that this yearly accumulation of stocks with the legal compound interest only, amounts, in twenty-eight years, to three hundred millions. So that by a peace of twenty-eight years, we shall become a more opulent nation, than we would be at this moment were all our debts paid off to the last farthing.

Before we call this prospect extravagant, let us consider what has actually happened. The most sanguine projector, thirty years ago, would not have presumed to believe that four millions sterling were by this time to be employed in extending and adorning a single city in Scotland. Yet this progress of elegance continues to rise upon us like enchantment. Who in the last century would have suspected that by this time our North American colonies were to contain four millions of inhabitants? It must be owned, that besides other evils, Gibraltar, Canada, Nova Scotia, Botany Bay, the East India Company, and the civil list, are a sort of political millstones hanging at the neck of British prosperity. Yet such are our resources, that if we chuse to desist from the war system, our wealth must in the course of fifty years extend beyond all calculation. Mr. Fox, if providence shall continue to bless us with his abilities till that period, will not then have the smallest difficulty in obtaining a pension of forty thousand pounds a year for every descendant of the royal family. Three ungrateful nations will then cease to affirm, that for his conduct in a certain debate *, any other man would have deserved a flogging at [Page] every whipping-post in England. At that happy period, we shall support, without winching, an hundred Lords of the Bed-chamber, and as many Lords of the Necessary House. With these crumbs of comfort, I proceed to the war of the Spanish succession, a legacy from our Dutch benefactor.

CHAP. VI.

England has been the prey of jobs ever since the Revolution.

PAINE.

CHARLES the Second King of Spain had no children; he was of declining years, and a feeble constitution. There were three candidates for the inheritance of his dominions, the Emperor, the Dauphin of France, and the Electoral Prince of Bavaria. The Emperor claimed right as male representative [Page] to the family of Austria. Philip the Fourth, predecessor and father to Charles, had left behind him two daughters by different marriages. The eldest was mother to the Dauphin; the youngest had espoused the Emperor, and their daughter, an only surviving child, had been married to the Elector of Bavaria, to whom she had born that Prince who was at present a candidate. It seems that the Dauphin of France, as descending from the eldest daughter of Phillip the Fourth, had the nearest right; but as the other nations of Europe were extremly jealous of France, it was early foreseen that the Dauphin's claim would meet with a dangerous opposition. On the 1st of October 1698, the King of France, the King of England, and the Republic of Holland, engaged in a contract as to this succession. Their bargain was, that the Dauphin should succeed to the kingdoms of Naples and Sicilly, and a certain portion of the provinces of Spain itself. The other two candidates were to share the rest of the dominions, and this agreement hath since been called the first treaty of partition. So vast an accession of territory would have rendered France a most formidable neighbour to the Dutch, and on their part the treaty seems to have been an act of imprudence. The secret of this combination having come to light, Charles in a rage instantly made a testament, by which he transferred the whole dominions of Spain, to the young Prince of Bavaria. But as the latter died soon after, he made a second will, by which he bequeathed the succession, also entire, to the Archduke Charles, the Emperor's second son, by a marriage which he had entered into after the death of his Spanish empress. The former parties, on the 14th March 1700, engaged in a second treaty of partition, by which the Dauphin was to receive a large addition to his share, and the remainder was reserved for the Emperor. This transaction also reached Charles, before it was closed; and in August 1699, his ambassador at London delivered to the English ministry an interesting appeal on the conduct of William. He remarked, that if such proceedings were allowed, no people, no dominion could be safe against the ambition of the strongest, and the deceits of the most malicious; that should strangers be suffered to put their hands into the lines [Page] of succession of kings, no statutes, no municipal laws would be observed; that no crown could be free from the attempts of aliens; and the crown of England less than any crown; and that were men to lie watching for the sickness of sovereigns, no health could be constant, and no life secure. He also reminded them, that the expences of a war, and the destruction of commerce, must be the certain consequence of such adventures.

For this honest production, the ambassador was forced to leave England. On the 2d of October 1700, the King of Spain, by the advice of the Pope, made a third testament. To put an end to all projects of a partition, he left the whole empire, undivided, to the Duke of Anjou, the second son of the Dauphin of France, and grandson to Lewis the Fourteenth. By this choice, he attempted to avert the calamities of a disputed succession. For as the Duke of Anjou was not heir to the crown of France, that circumstance removed the objection of making a hazardous augmentation to the French dominions. This measure was more simble, just, and practicable, than that adopted by William and the Dutch. On the 25th November 1700, Charles died; and though he bequeathed such a splendid legacy to the house of Bourbon, he had been one of William's allies in his last long and bloody war against France; a fact which evinces the mutability of the political world.

On the death of their sovereign, the Spanish nation determined that a conspiracy of foreigners should not be suffered to partition their provinces. They dispatched a courier to the court of France with the testament of their late sovereign, and if Lewis should refuse to accept the monarchy for his grandson, they gave him orders to proceed to Vienna, and make an offer of the universal succession to the Archduke. Thus Lewis had his choice of two measures. If he accepted the testament of Charles, his grandson was at once, and without opposition, put into possession of the Spanish dominions, at the hazard of a quarrel with the Dutch and England. If he refused this offer, the Austrian Archduke was with equal certainty to ascend the throne, and Lewis was to depend on the very doubtful friendship of his old enemies, the Dutch and England, for their assistance [Page] [...] conquer a share of Spain, in opposition to the Emperor and that nation. But as Lewis himself was feared and hated both in Holland and England, there is not the least probability, that he would have obtained any serious aid in his pretensions, from these two countries. We cannot therefore with reason condemn him, when he accepted for the Duke of Anjou the offer of the Spanish crown. The reader is requested to pay particular attention to this concise and candid state of the case; for even at present, it is the vulgar opinion that Lewis acted upon this occasion with treachery. It would be more proper to say, that William engaged in an enterprise far above his power, and that he shewed an utter indifference to the interest of his kingdoms. The preference which the Spanish nation bestowed upon the Duke of Anjou, was in the moral sense an ample vindication of the acceptance of Lewis. If there be such a thing as equity upon earth, it must begin with this maxim, that a people are at all times entitled to their choice of a master.

On the 17th of April 1701, William acknowledged the Duke of Anjou, as the lawful sovereign of Spain, by a letter under his own hand. The Dutch also recognized his right. On the 7th of September thereafter, William, with his wonted consistency, entered into an alliance with the Emperor and Holland to attack the young monarch. The design avowed in the articles was, to obtain the Dutchy of Milan from the crown of Spain, as a compensation to the Emperor; and Flanders, or part of it, as a barrier for Holland. What England was to obtain, we are not informed. On the 6th of September 1701, James the Second expired, and Lewis, on his death, acknowledged his son as King of England. Though this was but an empty form, William employed it as a pretence to seduce the nation into a second war. His project was embraced with exultation by all parties.

Yet though Lewis was to blame, we ourselves had behaved but little better. Our assumed title as King of France, is not only a dishonourable untruth, but a wanton insult to a respectable people. William prepared for a campaign, but happily both [Page] for others and himself, a fall from his horse put an end to his battles and his treaties, on the 8th of March 1702 *.

Before we enter into the events of this war, it may not be improper to illustrate, by an exact and interesting parallel, what Dr. Swift calls "our infamous treaty of partition." Let us suppose, that for some years before the death of Queen Elizabeth, all Europe had foreseen that she was to die childless, that James the Sixth of Scotland was to be her successor, and that by such an increase of dominion, England was to ensure a decisive addition of power and importance. "No," exclaimed the Dutch, the French, and the Austrians, ‘WE cannot, Elizabeth, permit you and your people to chuse a sovereign for England. We all know that Master † James is a fool. He has married a daughter of the King of Denmark; and hence the British Empire would become but a province to the court of Copenhagen. We have formed a much better plan, and you must adopt it. Jersey, Guernsey, and Plymouth, Dover castle, and the county of Kent, are to compose a frontier in the hands of his Most Christian Majesty. The [Page] isles of Wight, Anglesea, and Man, must be delivered up to their High Mightinesses for the convenience of importing gin; and you must likewise permit them to catch and cure pilchards on the coast of Cornwall. To Ireland you never had any title but that of a robber, and as you are detested by the whole nation, to the very last man, it is necessary, for preserving the balance of power, to declare them independent. As for the rest of your dominions, we have brought you a GERMAN master, born at the distance of a thousand miles, a stranger to your country, your laws, your manners, and your language. In defence of his RIGHT, we have disembarked on the coast of Yorkshire two hundred thousand armed russians; and unless you instantly acknowledge him as successor, we shall spread desolation from Caithness to the land's end. If his Danish majesty declines to assist us in overwhelming his son-in-law, our admirals have orders to beat Copenhagen about his ears. We are perfectly determined; and before we give up the point, we shall spend the last drop of our blood, and the last farthing of our money; besides diving into more debt than our posterity can pay off in an hundred generations.’

On the 4th of May 1702, hostilities were declared against Spain. "We hastily engaged in a war," says Swift, ‘which hath cost us SIXTY MILLIONS, and after repeated, as well as unexpected success in arms, hath put us and our posterity in a worse condition, not only than any of our allies, but than even our conquered enemies themselves *.’ The two first campaigns escaped without any decisive event. On the 25th of November 1702, the Commons, in consequence of a mendicant message from the Court, assigned the yearly sum of an hundred thousand pounds to the Prince of Denmark, her Majesty's [Page] husband, in case he should survive her. So extravagant a pension confirms the remark of Milton, that the trappings of a monarchy would set up an ordinary commonwealth. On the 28th of October 1708, the Prince died, and as he was a person of the most innocent character, it sounds harshly to say, that his exit was desirable. Yet had he outlived Anne, twenty thousand necessitous families must each have paid five pounds a year of their pittance to support him. And this single imposition would, while it lasted, have comprehended more substantial injustice and oppression than all the other thefts and robberies in the country.

In September 1703, Charles, the second son of the Emperor Leopold, was declared King of Spain, and as such, was acknowledged by all the Allies, including the Dutch and England, who had both formerly recognized the title of the French Prince. It is needless to expatiate on the justice or decency of such a measure. In August 1704, Marlborough won the battle of Blenheim. In October 1706 Lewis offered better terms of pacification than were afterwards excepted. With what propriety then are we to blame his ambition? "The Whigs," says Mr. Macpherson, ‘who were now possessed of the whole power of government in England, insulted common sense, in the reason which they gave for rejecting the proposed peace. They said, that the terms offered by France were TOO GOOD, to be the foundation for a lasting tranquillity, and therefore they ought not be admitted.’—Had Lewis engaged to restore Normandy to England, that, upon Whig principles, would have been a still better reason for refusing an agreement. Such were the political heroes whose virtues we vaunt of adopting, and by whom Europe was condemned to remain for six years and five months longer, a scene of confusion, distress, and carnage! This insolence very soon met with its reward. On the 25th of April 1707, an entire Whig army was dispersed, taken, or extirpated, at Almanza, by the Duke of Berwick. Sixteen thousand of the vanquished were killed or made prisoners. In this campaign, the Duke of Marlborough atchieved nothing worthy of his former fame. Prince Eugene, with forty [Page] thousand men, invaded Provence, and invested Toulon. His forces were in danger of being surrounded, and his escape or flight was marked with the usual and heroic circumstances of slaughter and devastation. Four English men of war, with Admiral Shovel, a person whose abilities had raised him from the rank of a common sailor, foundered on the rocks of Scilly. In short, the disasters of the Allies were so numerous and severe, that Lewis might at this time have turned the chase, if his counsels had not been governed by an old woman. The Scots, by a bargain sufficiently questionable had been united with England. The whole nation were inflamed into a degree of madness. The Pretender's birth day was publicly celebrated at Edinburgh; and a memorial was transmitted to France by a number of nobility and gentry, who promised to embody in his favour five thousand horse and twenty-five thousand foot. The proposal was rejected. In 1708, the Allies were more successful, and among other blessed events, they gained Lisle, with the loss of eighteen or twenty thousand men. For what notable purposes have we dragged the smith from his anvil, and the farmer from his plow! In 1709, the Government borrowed from the Bank of England four hundred thousand pounds, at six per cent. besides granting them several advantages, which may have raised the real interest to ten or twelve per cent. and all this for the pleasure of making a German King of Spain. The practice of advancing money to the public was at that time, and has been ever since, a very profitable traffick to those gentlemen of whom Lord Chatham has made such honourable mention. Lewis, in the beginning of this year, had renewed his offers of peace. He attempted, as Torcy relates, to bribe the Duke of Marlborough, by a conditional present of four millions of livres; but his Grace, after due consideration, declined the proposal. The aged and unfortunate King promised to yield the whole Spanish monarchy to the House of Austria without any equivalent *. He consented to a series of the most degrading demands which his enemies could [Page] invent, but they left him no choice between resistance and destruction. France was in the mean time ravaged by a terrible famine, which served to fill up the measure of universal wretchedness. Whatever we may think of Lewis himself, and even a despot may deserve our pity, one must have the nerves of a Dutchman or a Whig, if he does not feel for the miseries of twenty millions of people. On the 10th of September 1709, these conferences were succeeded by the victory of Malplaquet, which Marlborough purchased with the lives of twenty thousand men, while the French, though defeated; left but eight thousand dead on the field.

In 1710, Lewis made fresh offers of submission. ‘He promised even a subsidy of a million of livres monthly to the Allies, till King Philip should be driven out of Spain *.’ But mark what follows:—They required that Lewis should assist them with all his forces, to expel his grandson from the throne of that kingdom. We need not enlarge upon the baseness of trampling a fallen adversary, since our illustrious ancestors might have improved their morality from a boxing stage. A ring of chairmen would be ashamed of such consummate barbarity. Whether Lewis would have submitted to this last act of degradation is doubtful, for Eugene and Marlborough obstructed the progress of explanation, and commenced the campaign.— ‘They gained three places of importance, and conquered twelve leagues of a fine country. But they lost twenty-six thousand men by the sword. Half their infantry was ruined by wounds, diseases, and fatigue †.’ In Spain, we obtained during this year two victories. Stanhope, the English general, entered Madrid. ‘The army lived at large upon the people, without order, without moderation, and without discipline. They raised contributions on private persons. They pillaged the churches, and sold publicly the utensils of the altar ‡.’ Nobody can be sorry to hear that on the 8th of December 1710, these russians were defeated. Stanhope himself was taken prisoner, with five thousand British troops.

[Page]By this time the nation were almost tired with the expence of this war, and had begun to suspect the absurdity of its first principles. But as the Cabinet was comletely garrisoned by the partisans of Marlborough, to reverse the system, required both a strong and dexterous hand. A circumstance in itself trifling contributed to this event; and the friends of mankind must acknowledge, that for once at least, public happiness has been promoted by public superstition. On the 3d of November 1709, Henry Sacheverell, a Tory parson, preached at St. Paul's a sermon, in which he enforced, with much virulence, the nonsense about passive obedience and non-resistance. In this performance, the Earl of Godolphin. Lord High Treasurer of England, and one of the chief leaders of the Whigs, was personally attacked, and the whole party were eager to punish the man who had thus contested their darling doctrines. They brought him to a trial before the House of Peers; and this measure gave the Tories an opportunity for asserting that the Church was in danger. The great body of the people broke into a transport of rage. ‘The current, which had been long changing, ran down with a force, that levelled every thing before it *.’ During the trial, the pews of five dissenting meeting-houses were burnt in the streets. The outrages of the rabble were directed by persons of higher rank, who attended at their heels in hackney coaches; the watch word was—The Church and Sacheverell. Those who joined not in the shout were insulted and knocked down; and Burnet tells us, that at his door one man got his skull cleft with a spade, for his refusal. The sermon was ordered to be burnt by the hangman, but the public flame was kept up with much address by the Tories. Sacheverell made a journey into Wales, and was every where received with raptures of admiration. The Queen, by degrees, embraced this opportunity to free herself from the tyranny of an insolent faction. On the 8th of August 1710, Godolphin was dismissed. A new parliament was summoned to meet on the 25th of November thereafter. The frenzy of the [Page] mob was supported by the substantial logic of the Treasury; and a majority was returned of Tory members. Harley, the new minister, and his associates, had too much sense to discover abruptly their designs to the people. The sum of fourteen millions five hundred and seventy-three thousand, three hundred and nineteen pounds, nineteen shillings and eight pence half-penny, was voted to discharge the arrears in the navy and other offices, and the services of the current year. At this critical moment, a second stroke of fortune advanced the pacific views of the Tories. On the 1st of May 1705, the Emperor Leopold had d [...]: and on the 6th of April 1711, his eldest son and successor, Joseph, died also; and without regarding his own two daughters, left his brother Charles, our intended, King of Spain, his universal heir. ‘His death suddenly changed the whole state of affairs. The war undertaken by the grand alliance for preserving the balance of Europe, was now likely to destroy it for ever; and men who judged of the future by the past, began to dread the irresistible power of the Emperor Charles the Fifth, in the person of a prince of his family *.’ Hence, even upon our own mad principles, it became just as necessary to oppose the succession of our candidate Charles, as that of the Duke of Anjou. Yet with the most astonishing impudence, the Whigs and our Allies, Charles and the Dutch, were anxious to continue the war. The German princes, and among others, the Elector of Hanover †, expressed their highest disapprobation of the projected peace. The arguments of George, if such they may be called, are too frivolous for confutation or insertion here. Portugal and Savoy seconded the German chorus. ‘The emoluments derived from war were greater than their expectations from peace.—The money of the maritime powers, and chiefly that of England, more than the territories of the House of Bourbon, was the grand object of those petty tyrants, who fed on the blood of subjects whom they [Page]let out for slaughter *.’ Compared with merchants of this description, an ordinary offender is a paragon of innocence. When a nation sends for sovereigns from such a school, there appears but a melancholy presage of the prospect before it.

The campaign of 1711, elapsed without effort on either side. The surrender of Bouchain on the 13th of September, closed the military exploits of the Duke of Marlborough. The new minister of England had been engaged in attempting to reconcile the demands of the contending powers. But the States of Holland were so much exasperated by the conduct of Queen Anne, that they were at no pains in concealing their design to treat her as they had treated her father. They proposed ‘to fit out a fleet to assist the Elector of Hanover to strike the sceptre from her hand †.’ On the 7th of December, parliament met. Harley had secured a Tory majority in the House of Commons; but his party was somewhat inferior in the House of Peers. Affairs had now come to a crisis. The leaders of the Whigs were suspected of intending an immediate appeal to arms. It became therefore necessary to dismiss the Duke of Marlborough from his military command; and on the last day of December, Harley produced what is now called a batch of peers. Twelve gentlemen devoted to the court were created members of the Upper House. Anne had the very same right to have created twelve thousand. The constitution of Britain, like the sword of Dionysius, hangs by a single hair.

On the 17th of January 1712, Mr. Walpole was committed to the Tower. He had received five hundred guineas, and a note for five hundred more, for two contracts when secretary at war, for supplying the forces in Scotland with forage. ‘A member, says Burnet, who was a Whig, was expelled the House; and a prosecution was ordered against him:—but the abuse goes on still, as avowedly as ever.’ The Duke of Marlborough's conduct underwent a severe censure, and Cardonnel, [Page] his secretary, was expelled by the Commons. The campaign of 1712 was unfortunate on the part of the Allies. The British forces under the command of the Duke of Ormond remained inactive; and even the absence of the abilities of Marlborough seems to have been severely felt. The peace was not finally settled till March 1713. The Whig faction, to their eternal infamy, strained every nerve to prevent it. By this peace, besides the islands of Minorca and St. Christopher's, and the fortress of Gibraltar, for ourselves, we obtained the island of Sicily for the Duke of Savoy, which produced the Spanish war in 1718, a partial right for our merchants of trading to South America, which began the Spanish war of 1739, and Nova Scotia, which gave rise to the French war in 1756. This war was more destructive than that of 1689, as it lasted for eleven campaigns. Dr. Swift computes that each of them cost us six or seven millions sterling. The loss of lives and of shipping could be hardly, if at all inferior to that of the former war, as our battles were numerous, and as the protection of our commerce was altogether neglected. In a word, the nation squandered seventy or eighty millions, that Marlborough might pilfer one.

To Dr. Swift we are much indebted for the termination of this war. His pamphlet on The Conduct of the Allies, excited a sort of political earthquake, and more than all his admirable verses must endear him to distant posterity. A few passages may serve as a specimen of the rest. "It will appear," says he, ‘by plain matters of fact, that no nation was ever so long, or so scandalously abused, by the folly, the temerity, the corruption, and the ambition of its domestic enemies; or treated with so much insolence, injustice, and ingratitude, by its foreign friends.—We are destroying many thousand lives, and exhausting our substance, not for our own interest, which would be but common prudence; not for a thing indifferent, which would be sufficient folly; but perhaps to our own destruction, which is perfect madness.—The common question is, if we must now surrender Spain, what have we been fighting for all this while? The answer is ready. We have been fighting for the ruin of the public interest, and the advancement [Page] of a private. We have been fighting to raise the wealth and grandeur of a particular family;’ (that of Marlborough,) ‘to enrich usurers and stockjobbers, and to cultivate the pernicious designs of a faction, by destroying the landed interest.—Since the monied men are so fond of war, I should be glad if they would furnish out one campaign at their own charge. It is not above six or seven millions; and I dare engage to make it out, that, when they have done this, instead of contributing equal to the landed men, they will have their full principal and interest at six per cent. remaining of all the money they ever lent to the government.’

Even at this day, we are deafened about the glorious victories of the Duke of Marlborough, and though by the death of the Emperor Joseph, the object of dispute was utterly extinguished, a crowd of authors persist in lamenting that our commander was checked in the career of pillage and butchery. Happy might it have been for this country, had Marlborough, with all his forces, perished on the field of Blenheim; since it may be supposed, that such a stroke would at once have blasted our crusades upon the continent. As if his Grace had not enjoyed sufficient opportunities of plundering the treasury of the nation, as if the manor of Woodstock, the palace of Blenheim *, and an hundred thousand pounds a year †, had not been adequate to the services of himself and his Duchess, we are saddled with as annual payment of five thousand pounds to his family for ever. When a constitution, deserving that name, shall succeed our present political anarchy, it is not difficult to foresee some of the first objects of reformation. The Earl of Chatham enjoys four thousand pounds a year, because his father added seventy millions to the national debt. The Duke of Richmond raises from the city of London an annual revenue, said to be [Page] twenty thousand pounds, because he is descended from the son of a criminal *, who deserved an hundred times over to have been stogged out of human society.

As a commentary on the preceding narrative, we may consult a quotation from Dr. Johnson's pamphlet on Falkland's islands. The reflections which it contains have more than once extorted, in my hearing, the admiration of the late Dr. Adam Smith, who was far from being a general advocate for this Author.

‘It is wonderful, with what coolness and indifference the greater part of mankind see war commenced. Those who hear of it at a distance, or read of it in books, but have never presented its evils to their minds, consider it as little more than a splendid gaine, a proclamation, an army, a battle, and a triumph. Some indeed must perish in the most successful field, but they die upon the bed of honour, resign their lives amidst the joys of conquest, and, filled with England's glory, smile in death.’

‘The life of a modern soldier is ill represented by heroic fiction. War has means of destruction more formidable than the cannon and the sword. Of the thousands and ten thousands who perished in our late contests with France and Spain, a very small part ever felt the stroke of an enemy; the rest languished in tents and ships, amidst damps and putrefaction; pale, torpid, spiritless, and helpless; gasping and groaning, unpitied among men, made obdurate by a long continuance of hopeless misery; and were at last whelmed in pits, or heaved into the ocean, without notice, and without remembrance. By incommodious encampments, and unwholesome stations, where courage is useless, and enterprise impracticable, fleets are silently dispeopled †, and armies sluggishly melted away.’

[Page] ‘Thus is a people gradually exhausted, for the most part with little effect. The wars of civilized nations make very [Page] slow changes in the system of empire. The public perceives scarcely any alteration but an increase of debt; and the few individuals who are benefited, are not supposed to have the clearest right to their advantages. If he who shared the danger enjoyed the profit, and after bleeding in the battle grew rich by the victory, he might shew his gains without envy. But at the conclusion of a ten year's war, how are we recompensed for the death of multitudes, and the expence of millions, but by contemplating the sudden glories of paymasters and agents, contractors and commissaries, whose equipages shine like meteors, and whose palaces rise like exhalations.’

‘The are the men who, without virtue, labour, or hazard, are growing rich as their country is impoverished; they rejoice when obstinacy or ambition adds another year to slaughter and devastation; and laugh from their desks at bravery and science, while they are adding figure to figure, and cipher to cipher, hoping for a new contract from a new armament, and computing the profits of a siege or a tempest.’

[Page]

CHAP. VII.

Where I have treated high life with freedom, I hope I shall not be understood to propagate the doctrine of levellers.—I have no such intention.—I mean to give a just picture of human life▪ according to my own knowledge of it, and according to my sense of truth, without ceremony or disguise.—I do not wish, in any degree, to diminish the respect which is justly due to persons and families of distinction.

Letter to the People of Laurencekirk.

THERE is not in history a more signal example of ingratitude, than the conduct of the Emperor, the Dutch, and Marlborough, to the Queen of England. She had fought for ten years the battles of her Allies. She had advanced her general to be the first subject in Europe. When she refused to complete the ruin of her country for the caprice of the former, when the insolence of the latter compelled her to dismiss him, loaded with the plunder of nations, from her presence, these worthy associates conspired for the destruction of their benefactress. It is not certain that William himself had ever proceeded into such a climax of baseness. Though his partition treaties were absurd in a British sovereign, we may forgive, in his hostilities with Lewis, the resentment of a Dutchman. When we peruse the plan of Eugene for setting fire to the streets of London, and the palace of St. James's *, even his transcendant behaviour at the Revolution almost fades before it.

By the prudence and firmness of Harley, the plots of Eugene were discovered and disappointed; and on the 17th of March 1712, he was obliged to embark with some precipitation for the Continent. The neutrality of the English forces in the next campaign, with the final termination of the war, has already been mentioned. It does not appear that the Elector of Hanover was engaged in the scheme of dethroning Anne. His [Page] beggarly condition may have contributed to the moderation of his sentiments. In 1713, he solicited from the English Crown a pension for his mother the Princess Sophia. ‘In the present situation of his affairs, a fresh supply of revenue was much wanted. His agents every where complained of their too scanty allowance. The Whigs, with all their patriotism, were soliciting for pensions. Some Lords, who were zealous for the Protestant succession, were, it seems, too poor to follow their consciences. They had sold their votes to the Ministry. But—they would take smaller sums from HIS ELECTORAL HIGHNESS. The Earl of Sunderland, in his attachment to the family of Brunswick, had advanced three hundred pounds to one of these poor conscientious Lords. The Earl wished to see this sum repaid. Though the Elector might be willing to gratify such faithful friends, he had reason to expect that they would help to serve themselves. They were, therefore desired to promote, with all their influence, the pension demanded for the Princess. His Highness was no stranger, upon the present occasion, either to the abilities or poverty of the Duke of Argyle. The whole world knew his love of money, He desired that nobleman, and his brother the Earl of Ilay, to promote the allowance to the Electress, as they might expect good pensions to themselves from that fund *.’ This pension was never obtained; and the Electress herself died about sixteen months after, on the 28th of May 1714. ‘The Elector himself seems to have become indifferent concerning the succession of his family to the throne. Teazed by the unmeaning professions of the Tories, and harassed by the demands of the Whigs, he dropped all correspondence with both parties. He suffered his servants to continue their intrigues in London. He listened to their intelligence. But to the requisitions of his Whiggish friends for money, he turned a deaf ear. He was however persuaded at length, to order six hundred pounds to the Lord Fitzwalter, to enable that NEEDY [Page] PEER to pay a debt of three hundred pounds to Sunderland. He allowed forty pounds to the author of a newspaper, for conveying to the public, paragraphs favourable to THE PROTESTANT SUCCESSION. He added ten pounds to that (immense) sum, after various representations from his council and servants *."—"The excluded party in Britain harassed, at the same time, the Elector, with proposals for his invading the kingdom with a body of troops. They suggested, that should the Dutch refuse a squadron of men of war, some ships of force might be obtained from Denmark. But the Elector rejected the scheme, as utterly improper and impracticable †.’

On the 9th of April 1713, the Queen opened a session of parliament. The stream of popularity had now turned against the Whigs. ‘In this distressful situation, they implored Kreyenbeg to lay their humble solicitations at the feet of the Elector. They entreated his Highness, for the sake of Heaven, to send over the Electoral Prince. Without the presence of one of the family, they solemnly averred, that the succession must inevitably be defeated ‡.’ All this canting had very little foundation in fact. The bulk of the nation were determined in favour of the Protestant succession. But these sycophants wished to make themselves of importance with George the First. The following passage will set the nature and motives of their conduct in a proper light.

‘The Whigs had, in the beginning of the year (1713) harassed the Elector with demands of pensions for POOR LORDS. They had perpetually teazed his Highness for money to political writers, and for spies planted round the Pretender. Though their solicitations on these subjects had been attended with little success, they continued to make applications of the same disagreeable kind. When the session was [Page] drawing to a conclusion, and a dissolution was foreseen, they demanded one hundred thousand pounds from the Elector, to corrupt boroughs, to influence elections, and to return men of constitutional and WHIGGISH principles to the ensuing parliament. The magnitude of the sum left no room for hesitation in rejecting their request. One repulse, however, was not sufficient either to intimidate or discourage a party so eager in the pursuit of their designs. They diminished their demand to fifty thousand pounds. The Elector plainly told them, that he could not spare the money. That he had done the greatest service consistent with his own particular situation, and the state of Europe in general, to the well affected in Britain. That he had engaged the Emperor and Empire to continue the war against France. That he had employed seventeen thousand of his troops against that kingdom. That this circumstance had deprived the French King of the power of sending an army into Britain with the Pretender. That could he even advance the money, which was far from being the case, the secret could never be kept; and that a discovery might be dangerous, from the offence that the measure was likely to give to the British nations*.’

Within a few pages, we meet with fresh applications of the same kind. ‘The Whigs again urged the Elector to invade the kingdom. They promised to furnish him with sums, upon his credit, to save their country, and to execute his own designs; but with an inconsistence repugnant to these large promises, they reverted to their former demands of money from his Highness. They asked pensions for poor conscientious Lords who were in want of subsistence. They demanded, with the most vehement entreaties, two thousand pounds, to carry the elections for the Common Council of London. They represented, that, with that sum, they could chuse their own creatures, and terrify the Queen and parliament with remonstrances and addresses throughout the winter †.’ It is not surprising that Mr. Macpherson is a most unpopular historian. [Page] But the facts which he has advanced are unquestionably true. The original correspondence of the parties is still extant in their own hand writing. Let us proceed, therefore, with a few farther extracts from this authentic and instructive author. ‘A proposal made by the Baron de Bernstorff, President of the Elector's Council, was received by Marlborough and Cadogan with eagerness and joy. He insinuated, that his Electoral Highness might be induced to borrow to the extent of twenty thousand pounds from his friends in Britain. This sum was to be laid out on the poor Lords, and the Common Council of London, during the three years the parliament was to sit. The first would be thus enabled to vote according to their principles; the latter might ply the Government, and harass the Queen and her ministers with remonstrances in favour of civil liberty and the Protestant succession. Marlborough and Cadogan undertook to furnish the money on the obligation of his Electoral Highness, provided the interest of five per cent. should be regularly paid. But his Highness would give no obligation either for the principal or interest. He however signified to his agents, that his friends should advance the money, as they might be certain of being reimbursed as soon as his Highness, or the Electress his mother, should come to the throne *." It does not appear that his friends chose to advance their money on this promise.’ On the 20th of March 1714, George made answer to some fresh demands ‘of money for poor Lords, Common Councils, bribery of members, and private pensions, that he would hear NO MORE OF THAT AFFAIR. That, from the narrowness of his own income, he could not enter upon these heads, into any competition with his antagonist, the Lord Treasurer. But that, except in the article of expences, he was willing to support, to the utmost, their party †.’ It would be idle to suppose that one part of the island was less corrupted than another. In July 1713, ‘the Duke of Argyle told Halifax, that with twenty thousand pounds, he would answer for all the elections in [Page] Scotland *.’ The reason assigned for refusing these applications, was clear and satisfactory. A letter from the Court of Hanover contains these words:—‘The Elector cannot give the money demanded for the elections. Besides, he should fail infallibly, as the Court would always have the heaviest purse †.’

Nothing is more surprising, than the inaccuracy which abounds in many, even of our best historians. There cannot be stronger proofs imagined of the corruption of both Houses of Parliament, than what have been just now produced. Yet, with this blaze of evidence before his eyes, the writer of the Memoirs of Britain has advanced a very strange assertion.— When speaking of Mr. Duncombe's acquittal in the House of Peers, in 1695, he adds, ‘For the honour of the House of Lords, this is the only instance in English history, in which the distribution of private money was suspected to have had influence with a number of Peers ‡.’

After such a specimen of the honesty of the Whigs it would be unnecessary to enumerate all the other methods which they fell upon to embarass their unfortunate Queen. One of their schemes was, to bring over the Elector Prince, under the title of the Duke of Cambridge, as a head to their party. But unluckily this project was equally disagreeable to the Elector of Hanover and to the Queen. In a letter to George, dated 30th May 1714, ‘I am determined," says Anne, "to oppose a project so contrary to my royal authority, however fatal the consequences may be §.’ And George himself absolutely refused every proposal of this kind. ‘His refusal was so peremptory, that the Whigs, and even his servants, made no scruple of ascribing his conduct to a jealousy of his own son ‖.’ It has been said, a thousand times over, that George the First entertained the most violent suspicion as to the legitimacy of his [Page] son; and that his jealousy was fatal to the life of a Swedish nobleman. His wife, the Princess of Zell, was at this very time in confinement for her amours; and in this situation the unhappy woman died, after a melancholy captivity of thirty-six years.

Another modest contrivance to harass the Queen, deserves peculiar notice. On the 8th of April 1714, ‘it was proposed to request her Majesty to issue a proclamation, setting a price on her brother's head. The Tory Lords represented, that the motion was as inconsistent with common humanity, as it was repugnant to the Christian religion; that to set a price on any man's head, was to encourage assassination by public authority; and that should ever the case come before them, as peers and judges, they would think themselves bound, in justice, honour, and conscience, to condemn such an action as murther. The Whigs argued upon the ground of EXPEDIENCY *.’ The motion was rejected.

The Whigs did not always confine their operations to bribery. We may comprehend from what follows, the genuine character of some of their principal leaders. In 1694, William planned an expedition against Brest. The particulars were betrayed to James the Second, in a letter from Marlborough, where he complains that Admiral Russel was not sufficiently hearty in the cause of the exiled. In consequence of this act of treachery, the English forces were repulsed on their landing at Brest. Six hundred were slain, and many wounded; one Dutch frigate was sunk after losing almost her whole crew. Another example may serve to show the character of there leaders in a proper light. In 1695, Sir John Fenwick, a Major-General, had been engaged with Penn, the founder of Philadelphia, and others, in a project for a rebellion in England, and had, on its discovery, fled. Some time after he returned, was found out, and arrested. To save his life, he transmitted to the King an account of the treasonable correspondence of Godolphin, Marlborough, Russel, and many other Whigs of distinction with James. His accusation ‘is now known to have been in all [Page] points true;’ and as there was only one evidence against him, ‘he could not be convicted in a court of law, which required two." But the persons whom he had accused, "believed that they could not be safe as long as he lived.’ A bill of attainder was therefore brought in against him, and Russel appeared at the head of the prosecution. The sequel produced a crowd of proceedings ‘which exceeded the injustice of the worst precedents in the worst times of Charles the Second and his successor;’ and the whole were vindicated by Burnet, in a long speech. The bill passed both houses by a narrow majority; and on the 28th of January 1696, Fenwick was beheaded on Tower-hill, "without evidence or law." Lady Fenwick attempted to bribe a person whose testimony she dreaded, to fly the kingdom. The accusers prevailed on this wretch to place people behind a curtain to overhear the offer; ‘and this attempt of a wife to save her husband's life from danger, was turned into an evidence of his guilt *.’ These are the words of a historian, who is himself a professed Whig, who has been a lawer, and is now a Judge. It is difficult to say, whether the conduct of the parliament, who passed such a sentence, or of his Majesty who signed it, was most completely indesencible.

On the 1st of August 1714, Queen Anne died; and as much has been said in praise of her virtues, a short account of a transaction conducted by her Tory parliament is here inserted, which in part is abridged from the Anecdotes of the Earl of Chatham.

It has been told by many historians, that for four years, Queen Anne gave an hundred thousand pounds per annum out of her civil list, to support the war against France; and hence they deduce an argument of the oeconomy and patriotism of that Princess.—But, on the 25th of june 1713, her Majesty acquainted the Commons that she had contracted a very large debt upon the revenues of the civil list; and she specified that this deficiency amounted in August 1710, to four hundred thousand pounds.—Mr. Smith, one of the tellers in the Exchequer, [Page] who seems to have been too honest a man for his office, arose and informed the House, that the estimate of this debt was to him astonishing; as at the time pointed out, he could affirm, that the debt amounted to little more than an hundred thousand pounds. Other members undertook to prove, that the funds assigned to her Majesty for seven hundred thousand pounds per annum, had produced eight hundred thousand pounds, so that in the course of eleven years, her Majesty had received eleven hundred thousand pounds of an overplus, and after deducing the pretended gift of four hundred thousand pounds, she had still seven hundred thousand pounds sterling of the public money in her pocket. Though this was the same virtuous assembly which had expelled Walpole from bribery, these observations could not obtain attention; since the very next day the House voted five hundred and ten thousand pounds for payment of this debt. ‘This, adds the historian, is the truth, and the whole truth of that generous exploit of the daughter of James the Second. It was a mean trick, by which the nation was cheated of four hundred thousand pounds *.’ He should have said, five hundred and ten thousand pounds, for that was the exact sum granted.

It is entertaining to remark the style in which a courtier sometimes talks of his sovereign. When William, in a fit of despondency, had once threatened to resign the crown of England, ‘Does he so?" said Sunderland, "there is Tom of Pembroke, (meaning Lord Pembroke) who is as good a block of wood as a king can be cut out of. We will send for him, and make him our KING †.’ To the same purpose the Princess of Wales, in 1753, expressed herself as to George the Second, in a conversation with Mr. Dodington. ‘She said, with great warmth, that when they talked to her of the King, she lost all patience, for she knew it was nothing: that in these great points she reckoned the King no more than one of the trees we walked by, or something more inconsiderable which she named, but that it was their pusillanimity which [Page]would make an end of them."—"She said, that if they talked of the King, she was out of patience; it was as if they should tell her, that her little Harry below would not do what was proper for him; that just so the King would sputter and make a bustle, but when they told him that it must be done from the necessity of his service, he must do it, as little Harry must, when she came down *.’

CHAP. VIII.

I am no orator as Brutus is,

To stir men's blood; I only speak right on.

I tell you that which you yourselves do know.

SHAKESPEARE.

THE history of England has been continued in the last chapter, to the beginning of the disastrous but memorable reign of George the First. We shall close this part of the work with some general observations on the civil list.

‘There we find places piled on places, to the height of the tower of Babel. There we find a master of the household, treasurer of the household, comptroller of the household, cofferer of the household, deputy-cofferer of the household, clerks of the household, clerks comptrollers of the household, clerks comptrollers deputy-clerks of the household, office keepers, chamber-keepers, necessary-house-keepers, purveyors of bread, purveyors of wine, purveyors of fish, purveyors of butter and eggs, purveyors of confectionary, deliverers of greens, coffee-women, spicery-men, spicery men's assistant-clerks, ewry-men, ewry-men's assistant-clerks, kitchen-clerks-comptrollers, kitchen-clerk-comptroller's first clerks, kitchen clerk-comptroller's junior clerks, yeomen [Page] of the mouth, under yeomen of the mouth, grooms, grooms children, pastry-yeomen, harbingers, harbingers yeomen, keepers of ice houses, cart-takers, cart-takers grooms, bell-ringers, cock and cryer, table-deckers, water engine turners, cistern cleaners, keeper of fire buckets, and a thousand or two more of the same kind, which if I were to set down, I know not who would take the trouble of reading them over. Will any man say, and keep his countenance, that one in one hundred of these hangers on is of any real use?—Cannot our King have a poached egg for his supper, unless he keeps a purveyer of eggs, and his clerks, and his clerk's deputy-clerks, at an expence of 500l. a year? while the nation is sinking in a bottomless ocean of debt? Again, who are they, the yeomen of the mouth? and who are the under-yeomen of the mouth? What is their business? What is it to yeoman a King's mouth? What is the necessity for a cofferer, where there is a treasurer? And, where there is a cofferer, what occasion for a deputy-cofferer? Why a necessary-house keeper? cannot a King have a water-closet, and keep the key of it in his own pocket? And my little cock and cryer, what can be his post? Does he come under the King's chamber window, and call the hour, mimicking the crowing of the cock! This might be of use before clocks and watches, especially repeaters, were invented; but seems as superfluous now, as the deliverer of greens, the coffee-women, spicery men's assistant-clerks, the kitchen-comptroller's first clerks and junior clerks, the groom's children, the harbinger's yeomen, &c. Does the maintaining such a multitude of idlers suit the present state of our finances? When will frugality be necessary, if not now? Queen Anne gave an hundred thousand pounds a year to the public service *. We pay debts on the civil list of six hundred thousand pounds in one article, without asking how there comes to be a deficiency †.’

[Page]The following conversations on the same subject, between the late Princess of Wales and Mr. Dodington, cannot fail to excite the attention and surprise of every reader. "She," the Princess, ‘said, that notwithstanding what I had mentioned of the King's kindness to the children and civility to her, those things did not impose upon her—that there were other things which she could not get over, she wished the King was less civil, and that he put less of their money into his own pocket: that he got full thirty thousand pounds per annum, by the poor Prince's death.—If he would but have given them the Dutchy of Cornwall to have paid his debts, it would have been something. Sould resentments be carried beyond the grave? Should the innocent suffer? Was it becoming so great a King to leave his sons debts unpaid? and such inconsiderable debts? I asked her, what she thought they might amount to? She answered, she had endeavoured to know as near as a person could properly inquire, who, not having it in her power, could not pretend to pay them, She thought, that to the tradesmen and servants they did not amount to ninety thousand pounds; that there was some money owing to the Earl of Scarborough, and that there was, abroad, a debt of about seventy thousand pounds. That this hurt her exceedingly, though she did not shew it. I said that it was impossible to new-make people; the King could not, now, be altered—.’

‘We talked of the King's accumulation of treasure, which she reckoned at four millions. I told her, that what was become of it, how employed, where and what was left, I did not pretend to guess; but that I computed the accumulation to be from twelve to fifteen millions. That these things, within a moderate degree, perhaps less than a fourth part could be proved beyond all possibility of a denial; and, when the case should exist, would be published in controversial pamphlets *.’

[Page]In 1755, Mr. Pitt had a conference with the Duke of New-castle, which has been recorded by Mr. Dodington. A short specimen may serve to show how the British nation has been bubbled by Government. ‘The Duke mumbled that the Saxon and Bavarian subsidies were offered and pressed, but there was nothing done in them: that the Hessian was perfected, but the Russian was not concluded.—Whether the Duke meant unsigned, or unratified, we cannot tell, but we understand it is signed. When his Grace dwelt so much upon the King's honour, Mr. Pitt asked him—what, if out of the FIFTEEN MILLIONS which the King had saved, he should give his kinsman of Hesse one hundred thousand pounds, and the Czarina one hundred and fifty thousand pounds to be off from these bad bargains, and not suffer the suggestions, so dangerous to his own quiet and safety of his family, to be thrown out, which would, and must be, insisted upon in a debate of this nature? Where would be the harm of it? The Duke had nothing to say, but desired they might talk it over again with the Chancellor. Mr. Pitt replied, he was at their command, though nothing could alter his opinion *.’

The reader will here observe, that thirty-seven years have elapsed since George the Second had saved FIFTEEN MILLIONS from the civil list. It has been said above, that a sum at five per cent. of compound interest doubles itself in fourteen years. This is not perfectly exact, but as my former calculations did not require strict minuteness, the conclusions remain unshaken. Where a topick so delicate as the civil list is concerned, the utmost accuracy may be expected, and therefore it must here be premised, that in fourteen years, an hundred pounds produce about a fiftieth part less than a second hundred pounds, that is to say, ninety-seven pounds nineteen shillings and eight pence, or in decimal fractions .9799316 parts of an integer. Now, at this rate, these fifteen millions would, in thirty-seven years, have multiplied to more than ninety-one millions and an half. It is indeed true, as Mr. Dodington, says, that we cannot [Page] tell what has become of it, or how it has been employed, but we know that no part of it has been applied to the service of the nation. We have since paid several large arrears into which the civil list had fallen, and an hundred thousand pounds per annum, have been added to the royal salary. At the same time, the nation has been borrowing money to pay that salary, the expences of Gibraltar and Canada, for the support of the war-system, and other matters, nominally at three and a half, or four per cent. but in reality, as shall be explained hereafter, at six or eight per cent. Hence, by the way, the calculations as to Gibraltar are one third part lower in point of compound interest than they should have been, and the fifteen millions of George the Second, instead of increasing to ninety-one millions and a half, would, at seven and an half per cent. have extended to about an hundred and thirty millions, seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds; which would a present buy out more than one half of our national debt, and save the country from an annual burden of perhaps four millions and an half sterling.

The most miserable part of the story still remains to be told; but the particulars must be deferred to some future opportunity. The civil list is a gulf yawing to absorb the whole property of the British empire. We look back without satisfaction, and forward without hope.

Lord Chesterfield informs us, that George the First was exceedingly hurt even by the weak opposition which he met in parliament, on account of subsidies; and could not help complaining to his most intimate friends, that he had come over to England to be a begging King. His vexation was, that he could not command money without the farce of asking it; for in his reign, as at present, the debates of parliament were but a farce. Such were the liberal sentiments of the first sovereign of the Protestant succession.

FINIS.

Notes

*

‘Damn you and your instructions too, I have BOUGHT you, and I will SELL you,’ said a worthy representative to his constituents, when they requested him to attend to their interest in parliament. Political Disquisitions, vol. i. p. 280.

↵

†

To this general censure we can produce a few exceptions, but the individuals are so well known, that it would be needless to name them.

↵

*

‘The civil wars to which our violent desire of creating Nabobs gave rise, were attended with tragical events. Bengal was depopulated by every species of public distress. In the space of six years, half the great cities of this opulent kingdom were rendered desolate; the most fertile fields in the world lay waste; and FIVE MILLIONS of harmless and industrious people were either expelled or destroyed. Want of foresight became more fatal than innate barbarism; and men found themselves wading through blood and ruin, when their only object was spoil.’ Dow's History of Indostan, vol. iii. p. 70. This book was published in 1772, and the present quotation refers to our conduct at that period.

In this dreadful scene, the most distinguished actor was Lord Clive. But neither four millions sterling, nor even immense quantities of opium could stifle in his bosom the agonies of reflection. In 1774, he cut his own throat.

↵

*

In the war of 1775, British officers pilfered books from a public library, which had been founded at Philadelphia by an individual more truly estimable than many of the whole profession put together; I need hardly subjoin the name of Franklin.

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†

Look into Ke [...]rsely's or Robertson's tax-tables: What concise! what tremenduous volumes! When our political writers boast of British liberty, they remind us of Smollet's cobler in Bedlam bombarding Constantinople. If the victims who groan under our yoke, were acquainted with the confusion and slavery which our avarice or mad ambition have inflicted on ourselves, a very considerable share of their abhorrence would be converted into contempt or pity.

↵

*

Vide Flower on the French Constitution, p. 437, and his Authorities.

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*

Burgh's Political Disquisitions, vol. 1, p. 405.

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†

George the Second, on his accession, had resolved to dismiss Walpole. The minister offered on condition of keeping his place, to obtain an addition of an hundred thousand pounds per annum to the civil list, and a jointure of an hundred thousand pounds to Queen Caroline. His terms were accepted. It is impossible for the human mind to conceive a more sordid transaction. Edmund Burke, in what he calls an appeal to the old whigs, has gravely assured us, that ‘Walpole was an honourable man, and a sound WHIG. He was not a prodigal and corrupt minister. He was far from governing by corruption.’

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*

Doddington's Diary, 3d ed. p. 256, 283, 293, 309, et seq.

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*

Political Disquisitions, vol. 1, p. 45.

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*

Vide False Alarm.

↵

*

In 1704.

↵

†

This circumstance has been fully explained by Dr. Adam Smith, in his Inquiry, book 4, chap. 7.

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*

I shall mention an example in point, which occurs while I am now writing. An old woman had been in the practice of supplying her neighbours with halfpennyworths of snuff. She was ordered, under a penalty of fifty pounds, to pay five shillings for a licence, and she did so. Had she been able to buy from the manufacturer four pounds of snuff at a time, the business might have rested there; but as this was beyond her power, it was required by the terriers of taxation, that she should make oath, once a year, to the quantity she sold. Her memory failed, and she is now, with a crowd of other victims, in an excise court, which will very possibly bring her to beggary. This is like a drop in the ocean of excise. The very sound of the word announces utter destruction; for it is derived from a Latin verb, which signifies to cut up by the roots.

What "our most excellent constitution" may be in theory, I neither know nor care. In practice, it is altogether a CONSPIRACY OF THE RICH AGAINST THE POOR.

↵

*

Viz. in 1718, in 1727, in 1739, in 1762, and in 1779.

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*

The Major of a British regiment who served at that siege, had in his company, on his arrival at Cuba, an hundred and nine healthy men. Of these, as he himself told me, five only returned to Europe.

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*

When the whole strength of each party is called forth, a minority are commonly within an hundred voices of the minister, which corresponds with tolerable accuracy to the computation in the text. In the regency question, Mr. Pitt, with the whole nation at his back, mustered only two hundred and sixty-nine members.

↵

†

In the Spanish negociation in 1757, the Earl of Chatham (then Mr. Pitt) proposed to cede Gibraltar to Spain, and again, in 1761, he offered it as the price of the Family Compact. Vide His Life, in two large volumes just published. This proposal evinces, that the fortress was not, in Mr. Pitt's opinion, of much importance to Britain.

↵

*

The Conduct of the Allies.

↵

*

Macpherson's History of Britain, vol. 1, chap. 3.

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*

Macpherson's History of Great Britain, vol. 1, chap. 10.

↵

†

Ibid. vol. 2, chap. 2.

↵

‡

Macpherson, vol. ii. chap. 3 and 4. The historian has related this anecdote in such a manner, that we cannot learn what sums the exiled queen ought to have received. When her jointure is twice mentioned in chapter 3, he calls it fifty thousand pounds a year. But after four years, in chapter 4, he contradicts this statement, by informing us, that William had retained the fifty thousand pounds due to her, which, with the reversion by the death of the Duke of Gloucester, amounted to ‘near an hundred thousand pounds.’ By the account in chapter 3, the whole sums, including interest, should have been about two hundred and fifty thousand pounds.

This mistake is hardly worth notice here, but is mentioned merely to shew that one may sometimes be forced to seek a way through very discordant materials.

↵

*

Smoliet's character of William is a curious jumble.

‘He was religious, temperate, generally just and sincere.—He involved these kingdoms in foreign connections, which, in all probability, will be productive of their ruin. He scrupled not to employ all the engines of corruption. He entailed upon the nation a growing debt, and a system of politics big with misery, despair, and destruction.’ The rest of this passage is too long for insertion; but the author's inference appears to be, that William was the most ruinous sovereign who ever sat on the throne of England.

↵

†

Macpherson, vol. ii. chap. 1. All our continental wars and subsidies, from 1688, to this day, must be ascribed to the Revolution.

↵

‡

Ibid. vol. ii. chap. 3. The author adds, ‘The successors provided by the act of settlement, he either despised or abhorred.’ These were the illustrious House of Brunswick.

↵

*

Viz. Four hundred and sixty thousand pounds. The settlement of seven hundred thousand pounds is no doubt one of those wise and wholesome PROVISIONS so gratefully referred to in Mr. Pitt's late proclamation. There can be no question, that in the course of an hundred years, the civil list has reduced many hundred thousands of his Majesty's ‘faithful and loving subjects’ to beggary. That the weakest come always to the worst, is a trite observation. The principal hardships of every tax must in the last resort fall upon the poor. At this day the civil list, with all its abyss of appendages, absorbes above eleven hundred thousand pounds per annum of English money. This expence would, at least in Scotland, be more than sufficient to maintain two hundred and fifty thousand paupers, for those in the poor's house of the parish of St. Cuthbert's, near Edinburgh, cost but about four pounds each per annum.

Hence it follows, that the royal establishment is in fact equal to an establishment of many myriads of beggars. As to the ELECTORAL HOARD, we have curious and authentic information, but this subject deserves a chapter by itself.

↵

†

They might as well have spoke about the right of blowing one's nose. Yet this miserable stipulation, extracted from the very dregs of slavery, has been thought of infinite consequence.

↵

*

Macpherson, vol. ii. chap. 8.

↵

*

In the Anecdotes of Lord Chatham, we are told that Mr. Pelham was intrusted with what is usally called THE POCKET LIST OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS; and Mr. Pitt sometimes said to his friends, "I was obliged to BORROW the Duke of Newcastle's "majority, to carry on the public business."

↵

*

Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland, part iii. book 10.

↵

†

Ibid. part iii. book 5.

↵

‡

Ibid. Part iv. book 1.

↵

§

Macpherson, vol. ii. chap. 7.

↵

‖

The legal interest of money was not reduced from six per cent. to five, till the twelfth year of Queen Anne. The writer of the Memoirs of Great Britain observes, that in those days, parliament found more difficulty in borrowing at eight per cent. than we do now in getting money at four. Lord North paid, and we have still the satisfaction of paying six or seven per cent. for the money that supported his American war; and this is known to all mankind, with it seems a single exception. At four per cent. we could not raise a single shilling.

↵

*

In the Memoirs of Great Britian and Ireland, the author estimates the mere loss of labour to the contending nations during the nine years of war, at ninety millions Sterling, exclusive of the additional loss of labour for life, by the mutual slaughter.

↵

*

Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland, part iii. book 4.

↵

*

Vide his speech in the debate on Falkland's Islands, which has been re-printed in the Anecdotes.

This quarrel ended like others, in our disappointment, and perhaps disgrace. Besides much expence and trouble to individuals, the nation squandered between three and four millions sterling. Quid vis insane?

↵

*

‘The republics of Europe are all, and we may say always in peace. Holland and Switzerland are without wars, foreign or domestic; monarchial governments, it is true, are never long at rest; the crown itself is a temptation to enterprising ruffians at home; and that degree of pride and insolence, ever attendant on regal authority, swells into a rupture with foreign powers, in instances where a republican government, by being formed on more natural principles, would negociate the mistake.’ Common Sense.

↵

†

Annals of Scotland, by Lord Hailes, vol. i. p. 133.

↵

*

On the subject of national improvement, the reader may consult with advantage Dr. Campbell's Political Survey of Britain; an Estimate of the Comparative Strength of Britain, during the present and two preceding reigns, by George Chalmers, Esq. and a continuation of this latter work, by the same elegant and profound writer, published about six months ago. Our presses are groaning under controversial divinity, heraldy, blank verse, commentaries on Shakespeare, and every other imaginable species of nonsense, while the books here referred to, have not in this country been honoured, as I am informed, with even a second edition.

↵

*

Vide his speeches in parliament on the settlement of the Duke of York. [...] the clerk of a counting-house were to lose at the gaming-table a thousand pounds of his master's money, or even of his own, he would be discharged as unworthy of trust. There is a man, who is said to have lost five hundred thousand pounds in that way, and when he had thus reduced himself to bankruptcy, we have seen him preserved to the management of an annual revenue of sixteen millions sterling. It is difficult to conceive a more gigantic instance of stupidity and depravity than such a choice. That a House of Commons should adopt a minister of this sort, is quite in character; but that individuals, who have the happiness of their country at heart, should applaud such a selection, must fill every sober man with astonishment. To sweep off large sums at the gaming-table, is a dishonourable dirty practice. Mr. Fox, in the boundless diversity of his adventures, must have ruined many a family, and sent many a helpless woman with sorrow to the grave.

In the manuscript of a tour in Switzerland, which I have seen, the following passage deserves peculiar attention. ‘At Bern, a heavy penalty is imposed upon any person, who in one day shall lose more than two pounds five shillings sterling by gaming; and every member of government, and officer in public service, is obliged to take an oath, not only that he shall faithfully and honourably observe this law, but that he shall zealously maintain it, and that he shall freely and impartially give information against all persons who to his knowledge shall offend against it. The presence of some of those distinguished persons in all good companies, proves in fact an invincible bar to immoderate play.’ With what contemptuous pity would a Swiss hear us prattling, that our government is the envy of the world!

↵

*

In drawing up this statement, Mr. Macpherson has been chiefly followed, with some additions from the Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland, printed in 1788. In this last work, William is every where represented as a virtuous and sublime character. The story of the Countess of Orkney, and the trite catastrophe of Darien, with many others of the same sort, are completely explained away. The partition treaties are defended, as pregnant with future blessings to England; for the historian seems to fancy that the Allies could have divided the provinces of Spain, with the exactness and tranquillity of a grocer cutting a pound of cheese. The sequel sufficiently proved the absurdity of such a supposition,

This writer has assigned a remarkable reason for sending into the world his second volume. ‘But seeing England lately, as I thought, on the brink of ruin, because she was on the brink of a continental war, I thought that the pictures of misery, even amid success, which the continental wars of the two grand alliances present, might make the public attend to the prospect before them.’

It is impossible to publish from more honourable motives, or to attest a more important truth.

↵

†

Henry the Fourth of France used to call him so.

↵

*

The Conduct of the Allies. This is the case at the end of almost every war, and reminds me of a remark made by Lord Monboddo. Somebody once asked him, Whether Europe or America had profited most by the discoveries of Columbus? "The balance," replied his Lordship, ‘is pretty equal. We gave them brandy and the small-pox; and they gave us rum and the great pox.’

↵

*

Macpherson, vol. ii. chap. 7.

↵

*

Macpherson, vol. ii. chap. 7.

↵

†

Ibid.

↵

‡

Ibid.

↵

*

Macpherson, vol. ii. chap. 8.

↵

*

Macpherson, vol. ii. chap. 8.

↵

†

In a Memorial printed by his envoy, and a letter from himself to Harley, dated November 7, 1711.

↵

*

Macpherson, vol. ii. chap. 8. Seventeen thousand of these miserable victims were at one time furnished by the Court of Hanover. Macpherson's State Papers, vol. ii. p. 497.

↵

†

Macpherson, vol. ii. chap. 8.

↵

*

Dr. Swift estimates Woodstock at forty thousand pounds, and adds, that Blenheim House had cost two hundred thousand pounds, and was at the time of his writing unfinished. There can be no wonder, that we must now pay nine-pence per pound of importation duty for Peruvian bark, and three guineas for leave to shoot a partriage worth two-pence.

↵

†

The sum has been stated higher, but such computations are always in part random.

↵

*

Charles II.

↵

†

The manning of a fleet has often produced almost as much mischief as its depopulation. On this subject there is here subjoined a short but shocking story, which happened about the time when Dr. Johnson's pamphlet was first printed, and which can harbly be regarded as a digression, since it reflects additional horror on the war system.

A workman, in London, was apprehended by a press gang. His wife and child were turned to the door by their landlord. Within a few days after she was delivered of a second child in a garret. On her recovery, she was driven to the streets as a common beggar. She went into a shop, and attempted to carry off a small piece of linen. She was seized, tried, and condemned to be hanged. In her defence she said, that she had lived creditably and happy, till a press gang robbed her of her husband, and in him, of all means to support herself and her family; and that in attempting to clothe her new born infant, she perhaps did wrong, as she did not, at that time, know what she did. The parish officers, and other witnesses, bore testimony to the truth of her averment, but all to no purpose. she was ordered for Tyburn. The hangman dragged her sucking infant from her breast, when he strained the cord about her neck. On the 13th May 1777, Sir William Meredith mentioned this assassination in the House of Commons. ‘Never, said he, was there a fouler murder committed against the law, than that of this woman by the law.’—Such were the fruits of what Englishmen call their inestimable privilege of a trial by jury.

It would not be difficult to fill a large volume with decisions of this stamp, though there is not perhaps any single case, which is in all its circumstances so absolutely infernal. The reader may compare the guilt, as it was termed, of Mary Jones, with the progress of those noble patriots, whose history is recorded in the next chapter, and who are at this day held up as the saviours of Britain, and then say which of the two parties best deserved a halter.

General Gunning, a man who is not worth a shilling, was lately fined in five thousand pounds for seducing a doxy who was as forward as himself; and Mr. Tattersal, the editor of a London newspaper his just now been fined in four thousand pounds for a paragraph which asserted, that a lady had an amour with her footman. It was proved that Mr. Tattersal was at a great distance from London, when this story was printed; and consequently, that had it been even a forgery on the Bank of England, the law could not have touched a hair of his head. There can be no doubt that the lady will accept the last farthing assigned by this verdict, and such an acceptance can leave no striking impression of female generosity. Another splendid specimen of an English jury shall conclude this long note.

Some years ago, Mr. Cooper, of London, was accused of being the printer and publisher of a performance deemed a libel. Upon strict inquiry, it was found, that it had been printed at his office; but it was proved, that at the time when this was done, he was in so dangerous a state of health, as to be given up by the physician who attended him, and that for several months before the publication, as well as at that period, he had been entirely disabled by sickness from either attending his office, or knowing what was doing in it. Notwithstanding these circumstances, a Middlesex jury found him guilty; and, as soon as he had recovered from his sickness, he was placed on the pillory, and, no doubt, would have been pelted by ministerial hirlings, had not a number of respectable gentlemen prevented it by their personal attendance.—So much for the liberty of the press, when protected by a Middlesex jury.

↵

*

Macpherson, vol. 2, chap. 9.

↵

*

Macpherson, vol. ii. chap. 9. and Hanover Papers, January 27, 1713.

↵

*

Macpherson, vol. ii. chap. 9.

↵

†

Ibid. This was about the 21st of March 1713, a full year after the departure of Prince Eugene. Their objects were to prevent the peace, which was signed about this time, to recover their places, and ruin the Ministry.

↵

‡

Macpherson, vol. ii. chap. 10.

↵

*

Macpherson, vol. ii. chap. 10.

↵

†

Ibid.

↵

*

Macpherson, vol. ii. chap. 10.

↵

†

Ibid.

↵

*

Macpherson's State Papers, vol. ii. p. 498.

↵

†

Ibid. p. 497.

↵

‡

Memoirs of Britain, vol. ii. part 3d, Book iv.

↵

§

State Papers, vol. ii. p. 621.

↵

‖

Macpherson, vol. ii. chap. 10.

↵

*

Macpherson, vol. ii. chap. 10.

↵

*

Memoirs of Britain, vol. ii. part 3. book 7.

↵

*

Anecdotes of the Earl of Chatham, vol. ii. p. 50.

↵

†

Memoire of Great Britain, vol. ii. part 3. book 7.

↵

*

Dodington's Diary, p. 205, and 213.

↵

*

The reader is already acquainted with the progress and termination of this act of royal munificence.

↵

†

Political Disquisitions, vol. ii. p. 128.

↵

*

Dodington's Memoirs, p. 167 and 290. These debts of the Prince of Wales are still unpaid.

↵

*

Dodington's Memoirs, p. 373.

↵

Information about this book

Title statement

The political progress of Britain; or, An impartial history of abuses in the government of the British Empire, in Europe, Asia, and America, from the Revolution in 1688, to the present time. The whole tending to prove the ruinous consequences of the popular system of taxation, war, and conquest. : [One line of quotation]Political progress of Britain

Callender, James Thomson, 1758-1803.

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Text Creation Partnership,

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Date

2011-05.

ID [DLPS]

N21591

ID [TCP]

N21591

ID [STC]

Evans 28380

ID [NOTIS]

APY1854

ID [IMAGE-SET]

28380

ID [EVANS-CITATION]

99028929

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Early American Imprints, 1639-1800 ; no. 28380.

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(Evans-TCP ; no. N21591)

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— The political progress of Britain; or, An impartial history of abuses in the government of the British Empire, in Europe, Asia, and America, from the Revolution in 1688, to the present time. The whole tending to prove the ruinous consequences of the popular system of taxation, war, and conquest. : [One line of quotation], Political progress of Britain, Callender, James Thomson, 1758-1803..

Extent

4, [1], 4-71, [1] p. ; 21 cm. (8vo)

Printed for J.T. Callender.,. Philadelphia: :: [1795]. (Signed on p. 4, 1st count: James Thomson Callender, an exile for writing this pamphlet, Philadelphia, March 31, 1795.) ("The matter of this edition does not correspond with Folwell's edition (Evans 28379) except in places here and there."--Evans.)

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