By 3 G, 350

D

"Igivejthefe Books
for. the founding of a. College in this Colon f

•YAIUi-'VMVEiaSinnr-

Deposited by the
Linonian and Brothers Library
1908

SOME

VERDICTS OP HISTORY
REVIEWED.

Br WILLIAM STBBBING-,
LATE FELfcOW OF WORCESTER COLLEGE, OXFORD,

LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
1887.

LONDON:
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, Lnrnm
STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.

CONTENTS.

TAGK

I.— THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 3
II.— PATEIOT, OE ADVENTURER?
ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER . . |3
III.— TWO POET-POLITICIANS.
ABRAHAM COWLEY 47
MATTHEW PRIOR *2
IV.— TWO LEADERS OF SOCIETY AND OF OPPOSI
TION.
HENRY ST. JOHN . 125
WILLIAM PTJLTENEY 200
V.— AN AMERICAN REVOLUTIONIST AND AN
ENGLISH RADICAL.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 257
WILLIAM COBBETT . 300
VI.— PURITAN AND CAVALIER ENGLAND TRANS
PLANTED.
NEW ENGLAND 331
VIRGINIA . 380

INTRODUCTION.

I.
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY.

( 3 )

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY.

The substance of this volume, though subjected to revision
and re-arrangement, consists of a selection from biographical
and historical contributions to monthly and quarterly reviews.
Latest in order of composition are the studies of Frankhn
and Cobbett, and some notes, incorporated in the present
introductory chapter, on Mr. Lecky's ' History of England in
the Eighteenth Century,' which I am permitted to reprint,
the first two from the Edinburgh Review, and the third from
the Nineteenth Century. The essays on New England and
Virginia, which were written before the War of Secession,
together with others as early in date, for instance, those on
St. John and Pulteney, appeared in the Christian Remem
brancer and the North British Review, quarterly publications
long since discontinued. The antiquity of much of the con
tents of the book will explain and must excuse the absence
¦of reference to the labours in the same fields of others whom
I have had the misfortune to precede by many years.
My sketches can pretend to no historical continuity ; they
will, I hope, be found to possess unity of sentiment and
point of view. They whose fortunes and characters I have
traced agree in their enjoyment of extraordinary distinction
once, and in their condemnation, with the exception of
Franklin, to odium or obscurity now. Franklin himself
has lost his power of literary fascination ; if the states
man and man of science survives, the moralist and con
troversialist musters no more readers than Samuel Johnson.
Upon the rest, if they be not exposed in the pillory of
b 2

Some Verdicts, of Histm-y Reviewed.

historical obloquy, as Shaftesbury, or as Bolingbroke, the
silence of indifference has descended. It has engulfed Cowley
and Prior the poets, Pulteney and Cobbett the popular
leaders, the magnates of New England, and of Virginia,
all but Washington. To me the interest of the group of
careers has been as much in this present neglect as in the
former glare of concentrated regard. Diversities in the
personal and moral judgments passed by contemporaries and
by posterity should excite small surprise. Contemporaries
are apt to be excessively grateful to the doers of acts by
which they believe they have benefited. Often they are
extravagantly resentful against the prominent figures in
calamities by which they have suffered. Posterity can afford
to be more judicial both in praise and in censure. It has
the right as a court of appeal from the past to judge the
men. It has no right to leave either them or their acts
untried. It can exalt or abase ; it ought not to forget. An
age may be deceived in the virtues of its heroes ; its aversions
may have been as baseless ; it rarely miscalculates the weight
of persons as motive forces on their own times, and thereby on
those which follow. A halo of notoriety encircling historical
names is seldom a will-o'-the-wisp conducting nowhere.
We of the Victorian era may be right in classing as a
convicted political gambler the popular idol, the author of the
Habeas Corpus Act. Because she lavished affection on
female friends, of whom one was adored by the greatest cap
tain of the age, and the other captivated its greatest satirist,
it may be our duty to despise as a weak gossip the Queen
who quelled Louis XIV., and, from the hour of her accession
to that of her death, held two mighty contending parties in
the hollow of her hand. We may weary of the art of Cowley,
and be sceptical of the social charm of the wit who signed
the Peace of Utrecht. We may morally detest the inventor
of Constitutional Toryism, and disapprove the personal spite
of the Parliamentary wrestler who threw Walpole. We may
be conscious of no attraction in the journalistic scourge, the
blister that would not let the nation sleep under represen-

The Eighteenth Century.

tative corruption. Our generation is free to set aside old
Valuations of human motives and integrity, as its predecessors
were free to form them. It may be right, and they may have
been wrong; or both may be wrong together. If popular
contemporary judgments often were those of accomplices or
of prosecutors, posterity as often popularly has cancelled them
for mere failure to conform to canons which, when they were
delivered, had not been established. The exact medium will
always be a fair subject of dispute. But beyond question
an age abandons an inestimable clue, as well to the present
as to the past, when it turns its face from the builders of
the institutions under which itself .lives, in defiance of the
certain truth that every structure retains, and will reveal,
an impression of its makers.
Posterity is guilty of the same kind of error when it
consigns the eighteenth century to the lumber-room of
history. There are dull ages and brilliant ages. Posterity
is not bound to discover graces in a past which laid no claim
to them for itself. But a period is a trustworthy witness
to its own gaiety or torpor. The eighteenth century could
hardly have imposed upon its children as a focus of radiance,
if it were the chaotic and tedious morass it has been
pronounced by its grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
These are themselves far from treating it in act as the
dead level they choose to proclaim it in words. From its
depths they have not disdained to draw most of the mental
nourishment upon which they were reared. Almost every
movement which enriches and elevates the soil of the nine
teenth century started in the eighteenth. All who desire to
hold personal converse with such bright spirits as Addison,
Swift, Gay, Pope, Gray, Goldsmith, Gibbon, Johnson, Fielding,
Hume, Adam Smith, Handel, Garrick, Reynolds, Gainsborough,
Chatham, and Wolfe, must travel thither. Only on the
spot can we hope to solve the riddle why a period tenanted
by inhabitants so delightful, and the parent of ideas so
fruitful, should, as cannot be denied, exercise as a whole a
repulsion which warns off its confines all but resolute

Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.

students ; why it should induce even them to look at it
through the eyes of Smollett and Hogarth rather than those
of Goldsmith and Reynolds.
The political contests of the first fifty years of the eighteenth
century are repellent when surveyed from a distance. They
become interesting when St. John, Harley, Walpole, Pulteney,
and Wyndham are discerned struggling hand to hand,
when the flash of the swords is perceived, and the roar of the
cannonade is heard. The century throughout appears dull
and incoherent when discussed by distant and cursory
glimpses. Successive application to its several sections and
aspects of the method of treatment by personal types and
representatives interprets and illuminates the political chaos ;
it enables the entire age not merely to reveal, but to justify
itself. Regarded as a whole,, as a single chapter of national
life and history, in its proper perspective, and with its due
allowance of light and shade, it ceases to be tiresome and
monotonous. The eighteenth century surveyed in its unity
will be seen to be as harmonious, distinct, and instructive,
as the confusion of its politics grows exciting when lifted from
the swamp of annals, and embodied in living men.
Proximity, and the consequent absence of the assistance
of time to marshal and sift the crude mass of materials,
must in any case have rendered it hard for the nineteenth
century to catch a bird's-eye view of the eighteenth. A
literary accident has superfluously added to the prejudice
of the one age against attempting to discern the resources
for entertainment in its predecessor. Mr. Lecky censures
the reigns of the first two Georges for the withdrawal of
Government patronage from literature. Among other instances
he gives of the cold shade under which men of letters were
allowed to languish, is the fate of Tobias Smollett. " Smollett,"
laments Mr. Lecky, " was compelled to degrade his noble
genius to unworthy political libels, and, at last, after a life
which was one long struggle for bread, died in utter poverty
in a foreign land." Our age has to blame Sir Robert
Walpole and the Duke of Newcastle for the works their

The Eighteenth Century.

neglect compelled Smollett to undertake even more than for
the possible ' Peregrine Pickles ' and ' Roderick Randoms '
it has lost us. The versatility of genius was never
more fully proved than when Smollett turned historian.
Put to the trade of book-making he became the ideal book
maker. The language cannot show a more complete example
of the dismal art than the history compiled by a prince of
the domain of fiction, a master of fancy as fertile, and of a
pen as vivid as English literature has ever produced. To
Smollett's ' Continuation of Hume,' and the book trade
which tyrannically forced it upon several much-enduring
generations of readers, must be imputed not a little of the
extraordinary superstition that the eighteenth century is the
most tedious portion of English history.
Students of morals, of theology, of politics, and of the
belles-lettres know what a delusion this is ; but men generally,
even when they are readers, are very far from students. It
would seem to many persons a paradox, but it would be
simple truth, to say that the eighteenth century is the
best period from which to begin the study of contemporary
English history. The real obstacle is that the century is
too rich in distinct phases. No sooner is attention concen
trated on one problem of which the age promises a solution
than another and yet another present themselves. This is
the century which a multitude of people would pronounce
barren. Reigns are supposed to be without human interest
which saw to their close the careers of Bolingbroke and Swift,
which had moralists like Addison and Johnson, preachers
like Butler and Whitefield, an economist like Adam Smith,
metaphysicians like Hume and Berkeley, jurists like
Hardwicke and Mansfield, a musician like Handel, an actor
like Garrick, poets in verse or prose, or both, like Pope,
Gray, and Cowper, Sterne, and Goldsmith, novelists like
Richardson, Fielthng, and Smollett, a historian like Gibbon, an
orator like Chatham, a leader of society like Chesterfield, and
an administrator like Walpole. Never was there an age fuller
of variety and contrasts. Jacobitism and sneers at Divine

8 Some .Verdicts of History Reviewed.
Right, Deism and the theology of the October Club, con
stantly face each other, and not only in the character of St.
John. The Establishment rears at once a Warburton and a
Wesley. Parhament acknowledges the sovereignty, now of
a Walpole, now of a Pitt. Country gentlemen believe that
the Church ritual is essential to salvation, and the com
munication of vital truth dependent on the imposition of a
bishop's hands, yet expect their chaplains to rise with the
entrance of the pastry, and to marry their wives' waiting-maids,
or worse. Passive obedience is an article of faith among
squires, but the heir of the King de jure marches through
England and gathers scarcely a recruit to his standard.
Women are whipped at the cart tail, or publicly burnt to death
by the executioner, and Pope is the poet of society. While we
recognise the near general relationship of the age to our own,
we may be well satisfied that our lives are set in smoother
places than a generation which shot Byng for an error of
judgment, and connived at the wholesale purchase by a
Minister of Parliamentary votes ; which sat by turns at the
feet of Hume and of Wesley, believing now in evil spirits, and
now in no spirit at all ; in which young gentlemen thought it
a merry jest to bore out the eyes of quiet wayfarers with their
fingers, and wrecking was a vocation. But the period, at all
events, cannot be set down as tame, except by those who sur
vey it at such a distance that it becomes a catalogue of names.
The interest of the eighteenth century has suffered in com
parison with other periods of English history, partly because
it presents none of those epochs which belong to constitu
tional history in the making. Not merely does the array of
Catholicism against Protestantism lend unity to the reign of
Elizabeth, but even its literature has a mutually illustrative
consistency of its own. Marlowe throws light on Shakespeare,
and the prose of Bacon enables us to measure the stately roll
of Ben Jonson's verse. The battle of privilege against pre
rogative is the keynote to the reign of the first Charles. The
degradation of England under his son has its special interest
too. We hear through its hollowness the arming of the

The Eighteenth Century. 9
nation for the crowning vindication of its. liberties. England
had no such mortal combats to wage in the eighteenth
century. Anne respected the Constitution, and the Georges
had as little power as will to assail it. Abroad hopes were
cherished of restoring the Stuarts, but the Foreign Powers
which adopted their cause used them as a mere wheel in a
complicated machinery which was put in motion with a view
much more to Continental than to English politics. Readers
look even upon the trophies of Marlborough with something
of the same disgust at their supposed futility from an English
point of view as that which Harley and St. John felt.
The alliances in the next two reigns with or against France,
and with or against Austria, seem to most Englishmen
now, as to most Englishmen at the times they were con
tracted, simple devices for wasting English money for the
benefit of Hanover or Hanoverians. The Septennial Act
appears no more than a temporary device for preventing the
election of a Tory House of Commons ; and Excise Bills,
Toleration Acts, and Marriage Acts, show like measures of
parochial legislation by the side of the Test and Habeas
Corpus Acts of the previous century.
But it is not only that in the eighteenth century the English
Constitution has reached the harbour, and the grandeur as
well as the terror of the tempest is matter of the past ; the
century as a century has suffered neglect still more from the
presence of so many different points of interest that every
one can pick out what he chooses and leave the rest for
lumber. The student of the art of war has in the campaigns
of Marlborough and Frederick the Great a vein he can work
without concerning himself with the tortuous intrigues of
Harley, or the place-mongering of Newcastle and Bute. The
metaphysician can pit the theologians in whom Queen
Caroline delighted against each other, without bestowing a
thought on the miracle of political management by which a
nation with a majority of its population still loyal to the cause
of the Pretender, Old or Young, was being converted to as
absolute faith in the House of Hanover as if it had reigned from

10 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
before the Conquest. The Methodist, as he traces the crusade
the authors of his creed led against latitudinarian and moral
theology, is hardly conscious that the elder Pitt was rivalling
Demosthenes in the House of Commons, and adding Canada
and the Indies to the British Empire. The novel reader, as he
dwells on the sorrows of Clarissa Harlowe, or the adventures of
Joseph Andrews, or even the barbed experiences of Gulliver,
need not be dazzled by the flood of light on contemporary society
shed by the first two, and on contemporary politics by the
last. Only the student who views the century as a whole, in
its letters, its philosophy, its divinity, its manners, and its
politics, knows how completely they illustrate each other, and
that all, considered together, make a mirror of national life in
which may be discerned not only what England was in the
days of Bolingbroke and Walpole, but what it had been in
the days of Laud, and was to be in those of Canning and Peel.
Certain periods of history are watersheds. It is possible to
see in them currents flowing down into the plains on either
side. The eighteenth century is one of those periods. There
in lies its special value to students of history, and also per
haps the secret of the repulsion it exercises on those who are
not. The mass of the people still revered shibboleths which
had been living realities in the seventeenth century ; their
rulers repeated them ; but protests had already begun to be
raised ; and means had been found to nullify their despotism.
The Test Act remained in force, though Swift mocked
and Speaker Onslow deplored, a law which, as, Cowper
complained, — . . . made the symbols of atoning grace
An office key, a picklock to a place.
The Act continued on the Statute-Book ; its severity was
neutralised. Whig Parliaments and Ministers rejected
by overwhelming majorities proposals for its repeal; but
they passed annual Indemnity Acts which rendered it nuga
tory. The Act which punished witchcraft with death was
repealed in 1736; but it was in active operation a little
earlier in the century ; five persons, according to Dr. Parr,

The Eighteenth Century. 11
had been executed for this imaginary crime at Northampton
so late as 1722. After the formal abrogation the lower classes
clung to their belief in witches ; and the early Methodist
preachers vaunted their rescues of the victims of de
moniacal possession. Henry Pelham passed in 1755 an
Act for legalising the naturalisation of Jews ; it had been
introduced first in the House of Lords, and had there re
ceived the assent of the bishops ; but Conservative members
complained that Ministers were welcoming a people who,
as soon as they had obtained power through the elevation
of Queen Esther, used it to " put to death in two days
76,000 of those whom they were pleased to call their enemies
without either^ judge or jury." The fear of another Feast
of Purim was so great that Mr. Pelham had, in 1756,
to repeal the law. An Act of the reign of George the
First forbade Popish recusants to come within ten miles of
London, and gave them the alternative, on their refusal
to recant Catholicism, of exile or death ; but such laws were
enacted more to keep up the tradition of English irrecon-
cilableness with Rome than from any serious desire for a
new religious persecution. While Parliament menaced the
believers in Transubstantiation with death, a majority of the
clergy preached a Gospel of which it might have been much
more truly said than was alleged by Whitefield of Tillotson,
that it had " as little of true Christianity as the religion of
Mahomet." Bishop Wilson was evangelising the Isle of Man,
and Bishop Butler reconciling faith and reason ; at the same
time the Minister who controlled the ecclesiastical patronage of
England for nearly a generation laid it down as his principle
of selection, that he " would no more employ a man to govern
and influence the clergy who did not flatter the parsons,
than he would make a man Chancellor who was constantly
complaining of the grievances of the bar, and threatening
to rectify the abuses of Westminster Hall." The same
Minister had a fine taste for art, and understood obscenity to
be equivalent to wit. The kingdom was yearly growing in
wealth ; but the poor-rates and the amount of able-bodied

12 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
pauperism kept steadily increasing. It was growing in
general intelligence, yet Whitefield found close to Bristol,
the second city in the Empire, a population of many thousands
" sunk in the most brutal ignorance and vice, and entirely
excluded from the ordinances of religion." Highwaymen were
so audacious that, wrote Horace Walpole, " one is forced to
travel even at noon as if one were going to battle." Drunken
ness was so little a shame that retailers of gin were in the habit
of painting announcements outside their houses that men
eould be made " drunk for a penny, dead drunk for twopence,
and should have straw for nothing." Past the middle of the
century a panic was aroused by the reform of the calendar,
and people thought they had been robbed of eleven days
.of life. In the meantime Clarke was popularising the
philosophy of Newton, and Berkeley sounding the depths of
metaphysics. The nation had not awoke to the calls of philanthropy ; it
could give £100,000 to the relief of the sufferers by the earth
quake of Lisbon ; but a few men like Oglethorpe had not
yet succeeded in making charity fashionable. Not only was
sympathy with other types of humanity wholly wanting
among Englishmen, but there was little appearance of any
with their own. The kingdom continued to insist on its
monopoly of the supply of African slaves to the Spanish
West Indies, and its own laws against domestic crimes were
as savage as its measures to repress crimes were inefficient.
A hundred and sixty offences were punishable with death.
No pity was shown for the criminal, or horror at his guilt,
but there was plenty of curiosity. Famous felons, like
Jack Sheppard and Dr. Dodd, were exhibited by the turnkeys
in the press-room for two hours before execution at a shilling
a head. Criminals had the chance of a speedy release from
prison by the hangman ; insolvent debtors at the Fleet and the
Marshalsea might linger amid horrors unspeakable till small
pox or jail-fever freed them. Yet Englishmen who viewed
these atrocities of their law as matters of course, cherished an
excessive suspicion of designs against their liberty. They

The Eighteenth Century. 13
scented despotism in Walpole's wisely conceived Excise Bill,
and plots against their commerce in Bolingbroke's project for
a treaty of free-trade with France ; but they outlawed three-
quarters of the population of Ireland, and did all that in them
lay to destroy the whole of its trade. The House of Com
mons was made up half of placemen. For a member to be
inaccessible to a bribe was virtue so extraordinary that the
repute of the singularity weighed down the odium of a life
passed in concerting schemes for subverting the dynasty.
Yet a most corrupt Parliament reflected the national will, and
registered finally each national decision that this Minister
should resign and that Minister return.
The first George remained a petty German Prince to his
death, and the second, though he could speak a kind of
English, cared more for the Electorate than all the British
Empire. They never violated the British Constitution, or
pillaged the public domain, and their wars, whether or not
undertaken in the interests of Hanover, were more fruitful to
England than the great victories of Marlborough. Their
Court was stolid and coarse, and their private lives did not
bear inspection; but their German environment set them
apart from ordinary English society ; thus, their vices did
not lower the tone of public life a hundredth part as much
as the profligacy of Charles the Second. Their subjects did
not affect to love or admire them ; they sympathised heartily
with Pitt's invectives against George the Second's " absurd,
ungrateful, and perfidious partiality for Hanover ; " but they
had accepted them for their sovereigns once for all. The
warm devotion to the House of Stuart professed by millions
when George the First ascended the throne, and not
repudiated during the reign of his son, was a mere senti
ment deluding foreign Powers into a belief that they could
retort attacks from England by lighting the flames of civil
war. The nation burst into periodical paroxysms of passion
for war ; but it hired Hessians to fight its battles. English
men who thought it natural that the kingdom should mix
itself up with European pohtics, and with the quarrels of

14 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
thrones based on innumerable legions, continued to declaim
against standing armies in England. Pulteney, become Lord
Bath, lamented in 1760, when the nation was exulting in
the triumphs of the Seven Years' War, that '' our nobility,
born to be the guardians of the Constitution against preroga
tive, solicit the badge of military subjection, not merely to
serve their country in times of danger, which would be com
mendable, but in expectation of being continued soldiers when
tranquillity shall be restored." The erection of barracks was
resisted even by so calm and temperate a jurist as Black-
stone ; and a soldier like General Wade acknowledged that
" the people of this kingdom have been taught to associate
the ideas of barracks and slavery, like darkness and the devil."
They saw nothing atrocious in the manning of the navy by
the pressgang ; nor did they extend their tenderness for their
own liberties to any regard for the condition of the soldiers.
So scandalously was this neglected, that in 1707-8, sickness,
want of firing, unwholesome quarters, and desertion reduced
the garrison of Portsmouth by half in less than a year and
a half. This picture of the eighteenth century has abundance of
harsh shadows. The charge, however, popularly brought
against the age is not that it was immoral and cruel, but that
it was dull. On the contrary, the century, if only it be looked
at near enough, is seen to be full of movement and colour.
A writer whose bold pen sketched, so that they actually
live before us, the varied, though, by preference, the less
healthy, features of English existence, from the country
squire's household and the miseries of a British man-of-war
to the humours of a Prime Minister's levee in Lincoln's
Inn Fields, must have found it hard to fetter Ms ima°ina-
tion, and to libel his own times in a history which is about
as broadly philosophical as the Annual Register, and as abso
lutely without the air of reality of the Annual Register as one
of Pinnock's Catechisms. He did exactly what he was paid to
do. But it does not follow that every historian as determined
to do his duty by the century as was Smollett to give his

The Eighteenth Century. 15
customers no more than their mean money's worth, will be
equally successful in his more magnanimous design. The task
in which the novelist did not attempt to shine is not one to
be lightly undertaken. The only mode in which as yet it
could be really accomplished would be by treating the
century as matter for a series of dramas. Lord Macaulay
might have accomplished it, if he had lived to a hundred in
stead of sixty. Mr. Lecky has produced two charming
volumes, generous and liberal in sentiment, picturesque in
style, and running over with information, laboriously collected
and skilfully filtered. He has selected St. John and Walpole,
Pitt and Wesley, as exemplars of the movements and counter-
movements of the century, or rather its first three-quarters.
He has lucidly delineated their characters and careers,
and he has connected them with groups of essays, full of
the variety, point, and thought we should have anticipated
from his previous works on the social and political
phenomena of the time, and on the prejudiced mistakes of
another eloquent writer. But when we have read them we
find ourselves still asking, " What, then, is the secret of
the eighteenth century ? What has it which other cen
turies of English history have not ? What has it not which
they have ? "
A history of society would be the truest history of the
eighteenth century. Its work was the fusion of classes. The
English Constitution was defined by a succession of struggles
from the reign of John to that of William the Third. The
reigns of Anne and the Georges could contribute nothing
to the history of the Constitution in its broad outlines.
Those had already been drawn before the century opened ;
but its full operation was as yet far from ascertained. Its
principles were understood, but they had not been thoroughly
applied. The present century has shown, by its Reform Acts,
and its repeal of an infinity of legal disabilities and some
legal immunities, that the Constitution had not been followed
out to its logical conclusions. It has shown by its financial
and commercial measures that the State often interfered

16 Some Verdicts of History Revieived.
formerly when its interference was useless or injurious. It has
shown by its factory and educational legislation that it omitted
formerly to interfere when it was its duty to interfere. But it
is only in tracing the history of the eighteenth century that
we begin to be conscious of shortcomings in the State and
the Legislature needing a remedy. We are ready to complain
of the age for its poverty in social reforms in which the
nineteenth century has been rich. We do not censure the
seventeenth century for such deficiencies, for in those times
we do not expect to find them supplied. The intermingling
of classes which set in with the Revolution, and was encour
aged by Whig and Tory rule, gave Parliament, in spite of all
its rotten boroughs, a sense that it represented the whole of the
nation, and inspired courage to interfere with class interests.
In the seventeenth, as in earlier centuries, different classes
had allied to secure the nation's constitutional rights against
the Crown and Court ; there was no fusion. Occasionally a
member of one class passed into another, but he ceased to
belong to the class he had sprung from. Trade, manu
factures, and finance were the social solvent which last
century applied to England. The great landowners bought
out the small ; contractors of loans and merchants, and
later in the century, the " nabobs " bought out both.
Borough-mongering, with all its mischievous and immoral
scandals, promoted the general tendency by tempering the
dominant country-gentleman element in Parliament with the
capitalist element. Government by a Whig aristocracy or
oligarchy gave vogue to the economical aspects of politics
which Whiggism had always encouraged. When the House
of Lords displayed as much interest in the Bank Charter as
in the balance of power in Europe, the House of Commons,
though landowners monopolised the seats, was not likely to
resist very successfully the tendency of the age to attach
special importance to trade and commerce. Mr. Lecky says :
" A competition of economy reigned in all parties. The
questions which excited most interest in Parliament were
chiefly financial and commercial ones." A century in which

The Eighteenth Century. 17
a Parliament, with a majority made up of country gentlemen,
attends more closely to finance and trade than to questions
of constitutional safeguards and foreign politics, is at the
threshold of current history. Mr. Lecky is surprised that
St. John could not win favour for his proposed treaty of
commerce with France. The wonder is less that merchants
were so short-sighted as not to perceive the advantages of
free-trade with France, than that they could rouse the
passionate interest of the whole country in the defeat of a
measure which they feared might diminish the profits of their
class. The rottenness of a multitude of constituencies was
flagrant. Nothing was done to cure the evil in the eigh
teenth century; but in the eighteenth century the scandal
began to be noticed and condemned. In the reign of Eliza
beth, and even under Charles the First, there were as many
rotten boroughs ; they caused no odium. The country took
them for granted, and candidates for them could scarcely be
found. The eighteenth century is so much more like the century
which followed than those which preceded, that a temptation
arises to measure it with later times rather than the earlier.
Thus Mr. Lecky truly remarks, that " in no respect does the
legislation of this period present a more striking contrast to
that of the nineteenth century than in the almost complete
absence of attempts to alleviate the social condition of the
poorer classes, or to soften the more repulsive features of
English life." But no one would reflect on the Parliaments
of James the First, or Charles the Second, for not reforming
social abuses, or not providing wholesome dwellings for the
working classes. Parhament in those days did not try to
smooth asperities in English life, because it had no sense
of an obligation to interfere with such matters. It was
unconscious of an obligation, because classes were not
sufficiently blended for the representatives of the nation,
who belonged to one class, to feel it their duty to set right
the private wrongs of other classes. By the reign of George
the Second Parhament was beginning to understand that it
c

18 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.

was answerable for the whole country. When Mr. Lecky
expresses surprise at the inertness it showed in accepting
its liability, he is applying to the age a standard then still
in process of creation.
Englishmen were studying each other in the eighteenth
century ; they had not arrived at the conception that they
might or ought to legislate for the conduct of each other's
homes. An Englishman's house was still his castle ; but a
castle is no longer a fastness when the minutest details of
its internal arrangements become the concern of all its
neighbours. The eighteenth century was an age when the
favourite classic was Horace, and the favourite poet was
Pope who never wrote a line which was not an epigram, and
did not inclose a portrait. The facets of his verse, so ex
quisitely cut that we pardon some want of purity in the
water, occupy a place in English literature from which they
will not easily be dislodged. But we can form but a faint
surmise of the impression they must have made on his con
temporaries. We admire the archer and listen with literary
sympathy to the sharp whirr of the arrow ; his own age followed
it to its mark, and shuddered or mocked at the spasm on the
countenance of its victim. Every line of Pope is a witness
how, in the eighteenth century, courtiers and citizens, states
men and men of letters, watched one another in towns ; every
page of Boswell tells how they dissected each other's thoughts.
Cowper sings, and, later on, Crabbe, in tales which our genera
tion has not the wit to appreciate, narrates, how the same spirit
of personal criticism moved the village. Classes were break
ing up and melting together. The town was experimenting
in rural life, though satisfied as yet with the Arcadia of Bath
and Tunbridge Wells, and with a taste of the pleasures, hitherto-
unknown, of the sea-shore. The country was migrating to
cities. A wave of mutual curiosity was rolling over and
through English society. Dettingen and Minden were
toughly contested fields, and Frederick's campaigns had a
certain pohtical importance to England ; to the England of
the Georges they were most of all important as furnishing

The Eighteenth Century. 19

illimitable themes for talk. Chesterfield lamented after the
Convention of Closterseven, that " we were no longer a nation."
Are we to suppose that he ceased his polished trifling for an
afternoon, or savoured a scandalous anecdote a whit the less ?
Methodism scourged, in sober earnest, the frivolities of life ;
but it had the same effect as the other social movements of its
day, of rendering one class inquisitive as to the sayings and
doings of every other class. It was no age for those who
" do not much delight in personal talk ; " the English Lakes
had not yet been discovered. Such recluses in vain, like
Cowper, sought a rustic refuge from the life of busy
idleness Horace Walpole depicts. On the banks of the Ouse
they could not escape being touched themselves with the
humour of their time.
The century has bequeathed to us letters like Lady Mary's,
and Walpole's, addressed to a sister or friend, but written for
a circle, diaries which are a gallery of miniatures, occasional
verses still witty though blurred to us by time, comedies
which keep the stage and kill their modern rivals, and novels
which inspired Waverley and Pickwick, which Waverley
and Pickwick have not superannuated. In the belles-lettres
of the eighteenth century is embodied its history, and a
sparkling history it is. So studied, its attractiveness and
variety are precisely proportionate to its dreariness when read
in Parliamentary history and Gazettes. But to study it as it
deserves to be studied leisure is needed such as not all can
command. The secret of a period furrowed by a religious
or civil war may be communicated to those who would never
have discovered it by themselves; it is hard to teach the
true character of a period when it depends on the perpetual
shifting of its lights and shadows, and the transitions from
one scene to another. It is the drama of the nineteenth
century which is being rehearsed in the eighteenth. The
players do not know their parts thoroughly ; the prompter's
voice breaks the thread of the action ; there is no audience
but the company of the theatre ; and the author seems to
have hot yet decided upon the catastrophe. On the other

20 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.

hand, an absence of formality and stiffness atones for much
confusion ; we see how the points are made which give the
piece its final success, and we hear the stage directions.
We must study the two centuries of English history together
to understand either. In the earlier we can watch the
preparations making for the work the later has done or has
to do. In the one the legislative history is the more in
structive, in the other the history of society. England has
won more signal pohtical triumphs in other centuries than
the eighteenth, and has produced a nobler literature ; but on
those who love to speak face to face with another age than
their own there is none in English history which will fasten
a tighter grasp.
The period has its charm, and it has its enigmas. Among
the enigmas which are not without the charm are divers
careers corresponding so intimately with the age that fully
to decipher them would be to decipher it. Those which
furnish the subjects of this volume, though all are not com
prised within the chronological limits of the eighteenth
century, as a whole raise the same problems, and severally
might all contribute towards their solution. Shaftesbury and
Cowley, whom I have been tempted to introduce principally
that I might examine the remarkable phenomenon of the de
cadence of their fame, died long before the eighteenth century
opened ; but their influence, extinct for themselves, survived
in it. The liberties for which Shaftesbury fought, with what
ever sincerity or insincerity, made a basis for the political
emancipation of the coming generations. In his want of
enthusiasm and of moral earnestness, in his readiness to
accept a popular mandate, and become the instrument for
the promotion of national rights and tendencies, he is much
nearer to the professional politicians of the next age than to
the struggling zealots of his own. If Cowley had already
ceased to be read, his mental tone is more audible in the
literature of the next century than that of the Elizabethan
dramatists, or of Milton. The other chapters of biography
and history which I have endeavoured to analyze manifestly

The Eighteenth Century. 21

touch the borderland of two centuries, the eighteenth, and
either its predecessor or its successor. St. John's riotous
youth was spent, and his character was shaped, in the
seventeenth century. In that century Prior passed his
apprenticeship to diplomacy. Pulteney was born in the
reign of Charles II. Franklin, who lived and died in
the eighteenth century, belongs in spirit, and in his work,
as much to the nineteenth. Cobbett is altogether of the
nineteenth, though he happened to be born in the eighteenth.
The most absolute nineteenth-century entity, the United
States, dates back by its double keystone, Virginia and New
England, as essentially to the seventeenth century, when the
former in fact, as well as the latter, was planted, as to the
eighteenth, when their provincial life which I have tried to
depict suddenly transformed itself into a great nationality.

II.
PATEIOT, OE ADVENTUEEE?

ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER,
1621-1683.

ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER.

The period of the Restoration is at once the most degraded
in English annals, a.nd the age in which, socially and
politically, modern England can be seen preparing to take its
definite shape. The unpicturesque space in history covered
by the reign of Charles II. was formed of debris from the
preceding era. The constitution and the standards of life
were, in the apparent decay of patriotism and decorum, really
being nursed then under influences inherited from earlier
generations. To us the better qualities of the time are so
absolutely the air we breathe that we fail to see in their
original development either novelty or cause for gratitude.
The affinity between that stage of the past and our present
makes us more keenly and indignantly note the attendant
elements of rottenness and corruption.
No one of the politicians who are accused of having
used, abused, and perverted, to serve their selfish ends,
the nobler party impulses of the previous epoch, has been
so universally stigmatised since he died as Anthony Ashley
Cooper, first Earl of Shaftesbury, and Lord Chancellor.
Posterity has been content to accept as a judicial conviction
the Court poet's magnificent onslaught on the popular
champion. It has not sought for evidence, and knows
httle more than that which is told it in 'Absalom and
Aehitophel.' Manuals of history inform it in addition that.
Lord Ashley owns a letter in the word " Cabal," and that Lord.
Shaftesbury was author of the Habeas Corpus Act. Some
persons are aware of a connection between him and the ethical
philosopher of ' The Characteristics.' They have not thought
E 2

26 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.

enough about it to be amused at the opinion of a celebrated
American authoress that the statesman and the writer are
one. In general the name is passed by without inquiry
on the gibbet to which contemporary malevolence assigned
it, with its superscription of low cunning, vice, hypocrisy,
and recklessness. The charter of personal liberty Shaftesbury
won for the nation is accounted proof that he was so utterly
shameless as to fight in the colours of a soldier of freedom for
the mere gratification of Iris personal vindictiveness against
his royal boon companion. The party itself which he
organised has, h> the person of Lord Campbell, contemptuously
repudiated his advocacy of its cause, as the general disowns
a deserter through whom he has gained a victory.
Happily materials exist for the redemption of Shaftesbury's
memory from some, not the whole, of the unrelieved black
ness which has been permitted to darken it. Mr. W. D.
Christie, formerly British Envoy in Brazil, employed such
leisure as diplomacy allowed him in collecting and collating
the original evidences in a work, which appeared in 1859,
entitled, ' Memoirs, Letters, and Speeches of Anthony Ashley
Cooper, First Earl of Shaftesbury, Lord Chancellor.'
Nobody can read the volume and not be convinced that the
vulgar condemnation of its subject as a selfish and unscrupu
lous pohtical weather-cock requires some modification. As
certainly none will rise from a perusal of the morsels of
autobiography without regret for their incompleteness, and
no little personal interest in their author as a man, though
more for his candour than for his magnanimity.
The first autobiographical fragment refers to the years from
1621 to 1639. It begins with the excuse that " the villainous
slanders dispersed about its author under the authority of
both Church and State have forced him to follow the French
fashion," and write his own memoirs. He proceeds to give
an account of his youth and position in the country. His
name of Ashley, or Astley, and the manor of Wimborne
St. Giles he obtained from his mother's father, a comrade
of the first Devereux Earl of Essex, and original planter of

Anthony Ashley Cooper. 27
cabbages in England. With Hampshire he was connected
through his father, Sir John Cooper, who gave him for step
mother " a co-heir of Visco.unt Camden, a discreet woman of
a large soul, who gave some jealousy to both her husbands."
A German doctor, Ohvian, took his horoscope at his birth,
and the boy's tutor was a Mr. Guerden, chosen for his severe
principles, which were not very sincere, by Sir Anthony
Ashley, the grandfather. Old Sir Anthony thought " a youth
could not have too deep a dye of religion, for business and
conversation in the world wear it to a just moderation." On
the death of Sir John Cooper, a reckless gambler, he became
ward to Sir Daniel Norton. His estate had to fight for life
against a host of his father's creditors, who strove to pay
themselves from it. Against him were arrayed men power
ful enough to have themselves appointed by the Court of
Wards commissioners for the sale of lands which they were
intending to purchase. His only ally was the famous black-
letter lawyer, Noy, the inventor or discoverer of ship-money.
At the head of the freebooters were his great uncle, Sir
Francis Ashley, and " old Mr. Tregonwell, who never knew
generosity or kindness but for himself, his horse, or his dog."
They succeeded partially in cutting up the property for
their own benefit, though his acuteness in detecting flaws in
their title subsequently enabled him to retaliate. Meanwhile
he made the legal persecution a plea to his own affections
for eluding the proffer by his guardian's wife of the hand of
her youngest, and probably portionless, daughter, with whom
he seems to have been in danger, but for his precocious pru
dence, of falling in love. A young gentleman of fortune, so
sage as, though possessed of a large estate, to dechne an
alliance which would not have increased it, was marked out
for worldly success.
At Oxford, to which he now went, he displayed as deter
mined a character. He soon, we are told by himself, became
popular among the seniors by his learning and affability. He
earned the admiration of undergraduates both by " letting
his name in the buttery book own twice the expense of any

28 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
in the University," and by leading the " coursing," originally,
he says, a competition in logic and metaphysics, but latterly
in strength of hissing and jostling between Christ Church
and the tall raw-boned Cornish and Devonshire men of Exeter.
His authority, puny and weak as physically he was, he upheld
by generously ransoming his companions when caught in the
act of stealing a neighbouring farmer's poultry. Another of
his heroic deeds was a rescue of the Exeter beer from a
threatened diminution of its malt. He terrorised the authori
ties by threatening them with a secession of all the elder
sons. Those who could afford to be expelled he persuaded
to send the defiance, while the rest who had to live by their
studies he warned to be passive. Finally, to him is due the
abolition of " that ill custom of tucking freshmen," which, for
the benefit of all thorough Conservatives and opponents of aca
demical reform, had better be described in the revolutionist's
own words : — " The abolition of tucking was a harder work,
it having been a foolish custom of great antiquity, that one
of the seniors in the evening called the freshmen to the fire,
and made them hold out their chin ; and they, with the nail
of their right thumb, kept long for that purpose, grate off all
the skin from the lip to the chin, and then cause them to
drink a beer-glass of water and salt. The time approaching
when I should be thus served, I considered that it had
happened in that year more and lustier young gentlemen
had come to the college than had done in several years
before, and that the freshmen were a very strong body. Upon
this, I consulted my two cousins — german, both freshmen,
both stout and very strong, and several others ; and, at last,
the whole party were cheerfully engaged to stand stoutly to
defence of their chins. We all appeared in the hall, and my
Lord of Pembroke's son calling me first, I, according to
agreement, gave the signal, striking him a box on the ear,
and immediately the freshmen fell on, and we easily cleared
the buttery and the hall ; but bachelors and young masters
coming in to assist the seniors, we were compelled to retreat
to a ground chamber in the quadrangle. They pressing at the

Anthony Ashley Cooper. 29.
door, some of the stoutest and strongest of our freshmen,
giantlike boys, opened the doors, let in as many as they
pleased, and shut the door by main strength against the rest.
Those let in they fell upon, and had beaten very severely,
but that my authority with them stopped them, some of
them being considerable enough to make terms for us, which
they did, for Dr. Prideaux, the Rector, being called out to
suppress the mutiny, the old doctor, always favourable to youth
offending, our courage uniting with the fears of those we had
within, gave us articles of pardon for what had passed, and
an utter abolition in that college of that foolish custom."
His University exploits showed a mixture of boldness and
of skill both in calculating means and in using a victory.
He continued to exhibit this combination of gifts when he
quitted Oxford. Not even the counsels of his friend Olivian,
the astronomer, could induce him to woo a certain Miss
Banister on the faith of predictions, which he regretfully saw
subsequently fulfilled, that she was to succeed to a fine
fortune. He preferred to contingencies dependent on the
stars a solid alhance with Lord Keeper Coventry. He
was accepted as suitor for the hand of one of the great man's
daughters. The " unswerving prudence of the lady " caused
her to overlook the invidious phenomenon that her lover, in
the nervousness, doubtless, of his passion, had talked much
more agreeably to her sister than to herself. The marriage, at
any rate, accomplished his purpose of increasing his local
consideration. When released from attendance at his father-
in-law's mansion in the Strand, and the villa at Canonbury,
famous for the residence as well of Oliver Goldsmith as of
Queen Elizabeth, he could now vie, not unsuccessfully, with the
pomp of a rival squire, Rogers, Miss Banister's half-brother,
who had lorded it without a peer, in Ms coach and six, about
the DorsetsMre villages and bowling-greens. At present, all
his anxieties pointed to an utter overthrow of that unMstorical
magnate's county supremacy. His allies were Sir Walter Earl,
an old campaigner, who, like Uncle Toby, cut his garden into
copies of the redoubts he had stormed or defended in the Low

30 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.

Countries ; John Tregonwell, who, so that he had his " night
caps," probably not remotely related to punch, "and his
poached eggs, thought no farther of the world;" Lord
Digby, "justly admired by all, but disadvantaged by a
pedantic stiffness and affectation;" niggardly Sir John
Strangways, and cunning Mr. Gray, Colonel Brigham, and
Sir John Tren chard. Sagacious politicians like Holies,
and old-fashioned country gentlemen, seem to have been
studied by the young squire of Wimborne St. Giles with
simple reference to the aid they might contribute towards
the baffling of his neighbour's "malicious rivalry." His
proficiency in the art of management at tiris juvenile stage is
demonstrated by Ms influence equally with courtiers and with
rustic grandees of the stamp of Mr. Hastings of Woodland.
His delightful sketch of Mr. Henry Hastings was extracted
from the Memoirs, and printed originally in 1754. But
Mr. Christie's transcript reproduced it for the first time with
perfect accuracy : —
" He was low, very strong, and very active, of a reddish
flaxen hair, Ms clothes always green cloth, and were all
worth when new five pounds. His house was perfectly of
the old fasMon, in the midst of a large park well stocked
with deer, and, near the house, rabbits to serve Ms kitchen,
many fish ponds, and great store of wood and timber; a
bowhng-green in it, long but narrow, full of Mgh ridges, it
being never levelled since it was ploughed ; they usSd round
sand bowls ; and it had a banqueting house hke a stand, a large
one built in a tree. He kept all manner of sport hounds that
ran buck, fox, hare, otter, and badger, and hawks long and
short winged ; he had all sorts of nets for fishing ; he had a
walk in the New Forest and the manor of CMist Church.
TMs last supplied Mm with red deer, sea and river fish ; and,
indeed, all Ms neighbours' grounds and royalties were free to
him, who bestowed all his time in such sports, but what he
borrowed to caress his neighbours' wives and daughters. . . .
The husband, brother, or father was very welcome to Ms
house whenever he came ; there he found beef, puddmg, and

Anthony Ashley Cooper. 31

small beer in great plenty ; a house not so neatly kept as to
shame him or his dirty shoes, the great hall strewed with
marrow-bones, full of hawks' perches, hounds, spaniels, and
terriers, the upper sides of the hall hung with the fox-skins of
this and the last year's skinning, here and there a pole-cat inter
mixed, guns and keepers' and huntmen's poles in abundance.
The parlour was a large long room as properly furnished ;
on a great hearth, paved with brick, lay some terriers and the
choicest hounds and spaniels ; seldom but two of the great
chairs had Utters of young cats in them, which were not to be
disturbed, he having always three or four attending him at
dinner, and a little white round stick of fourteen inches long
lying by his trencher, that he might defend such meat as he
had no mind to part with to them. The windows, which
were very large, served for places to lay his arrows, crossbows,
stone-bows, and other such like accoutrements ; the corners of
the room full of the best chose hunting, and hawking poles ; an
oyster table at the lower end, which was of constant use twice a
day all the year round, for he never failed to eat oysters before
dinner and supper through all seasons. The neighbouring
town of Poole supplied him with them. The upper part of
tMs room had two small tables and a desk, on the one side of
which was a church Bible, on the other the Book of Martyrs ;
on the tables were hawks' hoods, bells, and such like ; two or
three old green hats with their crowns thrust in so as to hold
ten or adozen eggs, wMch were of a pheasant kind of poultry
he took much care of, and fed himself; tables, dice, cards,
and boxes were not wanting. In the hole of the desk were
store of tobacco pipes that had been used. On one side of
tMs end of the room was the door of a closet, wherein stood
the strong beer and the wine, which never came thence but
in single glasses, that being the rule of the house exactly
observed, for he never exceeded in drink or permitted it. On
the other side was a door into an old chapel, not used for
devotion ; the pulpit, as the safest place, was never wanting
of a cold chine of beef, pasty of venison, gammon of bacon, or
great apple-pie with thick crust extremely baked. His table

32 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
cost Mm not much, though it was very good to -eat at, his
sport supplying all but beef and mutton, except Friday, when
he had the best sea-fish, as well as other fish he could
get, and was the day that his neighbours of best quahty
most visited him. He never wanted a London pudding, and
always sung it in with ' My part lies therein — a.' He drank
a glass of wine or two at meals, very often syrup of gilly
flower in his sack, and had always a tun glass without feet
stood by him holding a pint of small beer, which he often
stirred with a great sprig of rosemary. He was well-natured,
but soon angry. ... He lived to a hundred, never lost
Ms eyesight, but always writ and read without spectacles,
and got to horse without help. Until past fourscore he rode
to the death of a stag as well as any." Such was a son,
brother, and uncle to Earls of Huntingdon, " a copy of our
nobility in ancient days, in hunting and not warlike times."
Young Sir Anthony's acquaintances were not confined to
Hants and Dorset. He had many intimates in Somerset,
among them that " cunning old fox, Lord Pawlett." Every
where, as in all stages of his career, he made friends and
enemies too. The " pleasant lazy humour," which made him,
in the midst of dreadful pains in the side, " hate pitying, and
laugh and joke when the drops fell from his face for agony,"
was not readier for a jest than for a rivalry. Not so much a
love of grandeur incited him, as a determination to be first in
his company, and a passion for notoriety. For some time he
was satisfied to shine for the astonishment of his own orbit.
His own country's side was the mark at which he aimed his
various fascinations, his skill in palmistry and fortune-telling,
and the knowledge of family secrets which he derived from
the cleverness of a favourite servant. But chancing to visit
Tewkesbury, he won the hearts of the bailiffs of the town by
an encounter of wits, in which, on their behalf, he thoroughly
worsted bitter-tempered and tongued old Sir Harry Spiller.
Sir Harry had availed himself of a civic feast to abuse the
Corporation, and Sir Anthony triumphantly defended their
common hosts. In gratitude they returned him to the Short

Anthony Ashley Cooper. 33
Parliament " without a penny charge." Here, in the middle
of an account not particularly accurate of the Reformation and
its pohtical consequences, the first autobiographical sketch
leaves him just launched on public life. The reader's conso
lation for the abrupt close of this part of the diary is that
the whirl of affairs must in any event have speedily deprived
the ambitious writer of leisure or care for the further collection
of agreeable scandal about his rural neighbours.
Sir Anthony's next contribution towards Ms biography
overlaps the first. The narrative glances at his career from
1621 to 1650. In the Long Parliament he claimed the seat
for Downton, but was excluded by a party manoeuvre. A
majority in the House refused to call for the report of the
Committee, which was known to be in favour of his election.
In disgust, if it were not a suspicion of his Royalist pro
clivities which had caused his ill-treatment, he accepted a
Royal Commission, after the war had commenced, for the
capture of Weymouth and Dorchester. They had, he says,
long been under the absolute sway of "their parson, Mr.
White, one of the wisest and subtlest of that sort of man."
He succeeded, nevertheless, and was rewarded by Lord
Hertford, the King's Lieutenant in the South West, with the
Governorship of Weymouth and other places. He kept his
post for a time, though Prince Maurice desired it for a friend
of his own. But whether in consequence of a Court intrigue,
or patriotic scruples of conscience, he after a time resigned
both it and his loyalism. His enemies attributed his
defection to disappointed ambition. He professes indignation
at the charge, and argues that selfish motives would have
weighed in the contrary direction. The King had promised
him a barony, and he left his estate at the mercy of Cavalier
spoliation. His single reason, he asseverates, was his dis
covery that Charles's aims were " destructive to religion and
the State." Certainly they were; yet it would have been
satisfactory had he alluded to any new signs of the truth
which had been revealed to him in the very brief interval
since he took up arms for his sovereign.

34 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
After his secession, according to his own account, he
displayed remarkable generalship for the Parliament, m Ms
own and neighbouring counties. Though his story, with the
emphasis it lays upon minutiae, does not observe the rules of
proportion, there is no reason to doubt the details. He raised
sieges, helping, for example, to relieve beleaguered Blake at
Taunton ; he stormed castles ; and he performed, he intimates,
all Mnds of glorious martial exploits. They did not hinder
him from enjoying the usual amenities of a country gentle
man's life ; and that is very characteristic of the crisis.
Sometimes a black spot shows that war must be war, whether
in Wessex or in Westphalia. He mentions that, when the
besieged townspeople at Amesbury cried for quarter, he,
" considering how many garrisons of the same nature we were
to deal with, gave command there should be none given ; but
they should be kept Mto the house, that they and their
garrison might fall together." His object was to starve them
into terms. But generally, Englishmen seem to have
thought and acted, when not actually engaged in hostilities,
much as at any other time. Thus, Sir Anthony, in the
midst of Ms victorious campaign, could find leisure to visit
Tunbridge Wells with his wife, and drink the waters there
for six weeks. He could stay with connections, and spend
long summer days m bowling-greens. He could pass weeks
at lodgings in Holborn, seeing after the letting of his property
M the neighbouring Ely Rents, and the raising of loans for
the liqMdation of small debts, or for the improvement of his
estate in Barbadoes. He loved speculations in finance as
well as in politics, and Ms campaigning could at discretion
be interrupted for the purpose. If he were at home, other
country affairs beside arms shared the versatile notice of this
hero, statesman, man of pleasure, man of business. He
describes himself at Dorchester certifying, with satisfaction at
the incidental testimony to the guilt of a convicted murderer,
how the body bled at the prisoner's touch, or sentencmg
to death "pressed soldiers that ran away of the 15th of
January, 1646," or permitting the lives of criminals, " who

Anthony Ashley Cooper. 35

had been faithful soldiers to the State, to be begged." One
year he is High Sheriff. The King had nominated him
while he was still a Royalist. It was the Parliament
which, when his turn arrived in 1647, he served. His
journal dwells with some pride on his " sixty men in
liveries to receive the judges," and on the ordinary kept
for all gentlemen at Lawes's, at 4s. a head ; " I paid
for all."
He did not subside after his shrievalty into obscurity, as
the various local dignities he filled prove. But in 1649 his
wife died, and a new chapter in his career began. They had
lived affectionately together; and he eulogises her, as well
for many noble qualities, as for " preserving, works with the
needle, cookery, so that her wit and judgment were expressed
in all things." She had made his home so happy and
sufficing that, had her life lasted, he might have gone on
content to be a Dorsetshire squire. The closing of his
house happened, however, to be contemporaneous with the
opening of new avenues in statecraft for a character and
faculties like Ms. The diary is silent on the circumstances
of the King's trial and execution ; the diarist was already
engaged in fishing in the troubled waters. General Ludlow's
'Memoirs' testify to his activity, if not to his good faith. The
references are not to be found M the Memoirs as they
were published in 1698. Shaftesbury's reputation was still
at that period important to the Whigs. They induced
Ludlow's representatives to cancel the posthumous in
sinuations of the stern Republican who confesses that
he never trusted him, and thought him inclined to play
fast and loose. Mr. Christie discovered the suppressed
passages among the Locke Papers. In them, Sir Anthony is
sneered at as "of a heahng and a reconciling spirit of all
interests that agree in the greatening of himself." Cromwell
had nominated Mm a member of his Council. Accordmg to
Ludlow, he used his appointment to " labour to convince the
people that it was desirable to choose as representatives men of
heahng spirits." Shortly afterwards he went into opposition,

36 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
and was removed from the Council. Ludlow assigns as the
cause of his conduct disappointment at the rejection of his
suit for the hand of the Protector's daughter, Mary, and his
discovery that " Cromwell was resolved to act in the Council
as the chief juggler himself." He and the military party in
the Commonwealth, to which Ludlow belonged, were declared
foes. Much weight apart from independent evidence is not
to be allowed, therefore, to Ludlow's imputation of motives.
His assertion of the pohtical prominence Sir Anthony had
gained may be accepted as indisputable.
There can be no question of his importance, especially in
the disturbed interregnum which followed the Protector's
death. He was summoned to the Council, and defeated an
intrigue to expel him as " assured to Charles Stuart's interest."
Finally, he succeeded in establishing his title to a seat in the
restored fragment of the Long Parliament, on his bygone
election for Downton. Both there and in the Council of
State the "smooth tongue and insinuating carriage," which
Ludlow decries, ensured his ascendancy. Notes of a few of
Ms speeches survive. They contain pithy apophthegms,
unusual in modern Parliamentary oratory, such as " words are
the keys of the cabinet of things ; let us first take out the people's
jewels before you part with that cabinet." Occasionally the
point of view is hard for posterity to appreciate. It seems
far-fetched to us, though it would not be to a generation near
the era of Gustavus Adolphus, for Englishmen to be warned
against Sweden as a Power which "may overrun Spain,
Denmark, Pomerania, Italy, and make itself master of this
part of the world." But for the most part his policy is
sensible and well argued. His influence was consistently
exerted against harsh measures towards manifest or presumed
opponents of the Commonwealth, such as Nevil, Sir Henry
Wroth, and his future accomplice of the Cabal, Villiers of
Buckingham. Whatever the topic, the diction is invariably
bold and eloquent. Its chief themes are the absoluteness of
the Protector's despotism, and the absurdities of his House of
Lords. Though the attacks on the Protectorate were princi-

Anthony Ashley Cooper. 37
pally made after the death of its wonderful founder, the
House of Cromwell still, it must be remembered, reigned.
He execrates, he cannot despise, Oliver's autocracy, " a
government so absolute as the Florentine, Machiavelli, and
he that sat in the great throne of the world, if they had
met together, could not have made." Cromwell's Lords he
simply mocks at as a ludicrous burlesque of the order to
which he was very close by county rank, and had been
promised elevation by Charles I.
On this subject there is a constant ebullition of sarcasms.
In one discourse, in support of a motion that the Upper
House should last only for the Parliament held after
Oliver's death, and then sitting, his contemptuous fury
boils over. Some extracts will indicate its tone: "I dare
freely declare it to be my opinion that we are this
day making good all the reproaches of our enemies —
owning ourselves oppressors, murderers, regicides, supporters
of that which we do not only acknowledge to ' have been a
lawful government, but, by recalling it, confess it now to be
the best ; which, Sir, if it be true, and that we now begin to
see aright, I heartily wish our eyes had been sooner open :
and for three nations' sakes, that we had purchased our
convictions at a cheaper rate. We might in '42 have been
what we contend to be in '59 ; and our consciences would have
had less to answer for to God — and our reputations to the
world. This House of Lords is a house that inverts the order
of slavery, and subjects us to our servants. In a word,
Sir, it is a house, of so incongruous and odious a composition
and mixture, that certainly the grand architect would never
have framed it, had it not been his design, as well to show the
world the contempt he had of us, as to demonstrate the power
he had over us. . . . The foundation of this noble structure
was laid in perjury, and was begun with the violation and
contempt, as well of the laws of God, as of the nation. He
who called monarchy Anti-Christian in another, and made it
so himself; he who voted a House of Lords dangerous and
unnecessary, and too truly made it so in Ms partisans ; he

38 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
who with fraud and force deprived you of your liberty when
livmg, and entailed slavery on you at his death ; it is he, Sir,
who has left you these worthy overseers of that his last will
and testament, who, however they have behaved themselves
in other trusts, will, it may be confident, faithfully endeavour
to discharge themselves in this. . . . And all this according to
the ' Humble Petition and Advice ' which he was pleased to
give order the Parliament should present to him — for, as the
Romans had kings, his Highness had Parliaments among his
mstruments of slavery ; and I hope it will be no offence for
me to pray that his son may not have so too. His Highness,
of deplorable memory to this nation, to countenance as well
the want of quality as of honesty in the rest, has nominated
some Lords against whom there lies no other reproach, but
only that nomination. . . . But, Mr. Speaker, can we, without
indignation, think of the rest ? He who is first in this roll, a
condemned coward, one that out of fear and baseness did once
what he could to betray our liberties, and now does the same
for gain. The second, a person of as little sense as honesty,
preferred for no other reason, but his no-worth, his no-
conscience, except cheating his father of all he had, was thought
a virtue by him, who, by sad experience we find, hath done the
same for his mother — his country. The third, a Cavalier, a
Presbyterian, an Independent, for a Republic, for a Protector,
for anythmg, for nothing ; but only that one thing — money.
It were endless to run through them all ; to tell you of the
lordships of seventeen pounds a-year land of inheritance ; of
the farmer lordships, draymen lordships, cobbler lordsMps,
without one foot of land but what the blood of Englishmen
has been the price of. These, Sir, are to be our rulers — these
the judges of our lives and fortunes ; to them we are to stand
bare, whilst these pageant lordships deign to give us a
conference on their breeches. ... I say not this to revile any
man with Ms meanness. ... I remind you of their quahty,
because they themselves forget it ; it is not the men I am angry
with, but their lordships. Sir, for great men to govern is
ordinary, for able men it is natural ; knaves many times come

Anthony Ashley Cooper. 39
to it by force and necessity ; and fools sometimes by chance ;
but universal choice and election of fools and knaves for
Government, was never made by any who were not themselves
like those they chose. I might tell you, Mr. Speaker, that
the same honour is not purchased by the blood of an enemy
and of a citizen ; for victories in civil wars, till our armies
marched through the city, I have not read that the conquerors
have been so void of shame as to triumph. Even Caesar had
no days of thanksgiving to his gods and anniversary feasts
for having been a prosperous rebel ! To speak nothing of one
of my Lords Commissioners' valour at Bristol, and of another
noble lord's brave adventure at the Bear-garden, I must tell
you, Sir, that most of them have had the courage to do thmgs
wMch, I may boldly say, few other Christians durst so have
adventured their souls to have attempted. They have not
only subdued their enemies, but their masters that raised and
maintained them; they have not only conquered Scotland
and Ireland, but rebellious England too, and there suppressed
a malignant party of magistrates and laws ; and that nothing
should be wanting to make them indeed complete conquerors,
without the help of philosophy they have even conquered
themselves. All shame they have subdued as perfectly as all
justice; the oaths they have taken they have as easily
digested as their old General himself could ; public covenants
and engagements they have trampled under foot. In
conclusion, so entire a victory have they gained over them
selves that their consciences are as much their servants,
Mr. Speaker, as we are."
This speech is said to have been made against time, and in
a half empty House. Its consistency, argumentative and
pohtical, is not unimpeachable ; and some of the valiant
defiance of the new Protector's Government may conceivably
have been introduced in a revised edition. At all events,
it is an answer to the assumption of Hume and his school
that the oratory of the Commonwealth was made up of nothmg
but lengthy dissertations divided into a multitude of heads
as tedious.

40 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
Shaftesbury's oratory speaks for itself. His pohtical opinions
and combinations passed through so many phases that as
definitely favourable a judgment can scarcely be expected for
them. His memory has had the misfortune to be bound up
with a great satire remarkable more for gemus than justice,
and to have been revived by having to contribute to the
vast repository of entertaining but unsifted historical gossip,
entitled 'Lives of the Lord Chancellors.' As Mr. Christie
proves, Lord Campbell has poured out many random assertions.
When two explanations, one favourable, the other the reverse,
were given by contemporaries of Shaftesbury's acts, he inva
riably takes the latter. When there is no contemporary con
demnation, he discovers one in his internal consciousness.
For instance, Shaftesbury was not a practising barrister, and
therefore Lord Campbell declares his legal training to have
been acquired at theatres and fencing schools. He opposed
Cromwell, and so must have been actuated by envy. He
had sworn fidelity to Richard Cromwell; consequently, lie
was perjured for aiding in the restoration of Charles when
Richard had been deposed by a military oligarchy.
Shaftesbury was not the strange monster of cunning,
selfishness, hypocrisy, greed of power, and tergiversation
painted by Dryden and caricatured by Lord Campbell. On
the other hand, he is not to be furbished up as a hero and a
patriot. He took sides too easily not to change them without
any acute internal struggle. Had more notice been paid him by
King Charles's courtiers, he might have remained a Cavaher.
Had the Cromwell family, from Henry, whom he addresses
in letters as "My Lord and Father," up to the majestic
father, favoured Ms suit to " musical glib-tongued Lady Mary,"
he might never have joined in overtures, justifiable as in the
circumstances they were, to the exiled Prince. A more
scrupulous legal amateur, though it is a calumny to assert
him to have been ignorant of law, would not have aspired
to be at its head. While it is unfair to accept partisan
sneers, and his own jest at himself, as evidence of unmitigated
profligacy, it is useless to contest the unchallenged testimony

Anthony Ashley Cooper. 41
of the public opinion of Ms time to the looseness of his
morality. He had the misfortune to be no zealot, yet to have
to act with zealots, to be possessed of brilliant talents and a
fiery ambition for their display, without any special impulse
towards one or another party object. He could see the use
of other men's aspirations and beliefs as a motive force better
than lie could sympathise with them. He could persuade men
to follow Mm as their leader. They could not pardon him
when they found he regarded and treated them as tools.
His lot was to work among, with, and lay means of -politi
cians suffering from colour- bhndness, who viewed all acts and
characters through a distorting medium. Because he was not
equally blind, or animated by the same ardour, posterity as well
as Ms contemporaries have proclaimed him a traitor all round.
He was not an Ormond or a Goring, a Hampden or a Fifth-
Monarchy man ; therefore to the Cavaliers, and now to eulogists
of Sidney too, he must be nothing better than an impostor.
The reproaches heaped upon him from various quarters are
not altogether groundless. It is a dangerous game to league
with an Algernon Sidney and a Major Wildman, yet not be 'a
Republican either of the Cato or of the Hariy Vane class, to
subscribe to Titus Oates's figments without a Puritan's
apology of spiritual panic, to abet plots of a son against his
father, and of riotous courtiers against their royal ring
leader, without a Buckingham's boastfulness of incapacity
for principle, or the passion of a determined regicide. So
unnatural a coahtion is sure to taint a cold-tempered
¦statesman with the grossness of the extremes with which he
lias allied himself, while he misses their redeeming frankness
or fire.
Shaftesbury's party shiftings and desertions might be ex
plained or pardoned. Not many leaders in that lamentable
period were attended by their original principles ' for all the
stages in their career. A few alone, like Holies, and they not
of the rank of chiefs, remained throughout faithful to the
political type and theory they had adopted in youth. More
resembled Clarendon, a Constitutional Liberal, whose end was
F 2

42 Some Verdicts of History Revieivcd.
to be impeached for bribery, and to expiate by expatriation
his real crime of having been the dupe of a traitorous King.
Shaftesbury's frequent secessions from parties, led as parties
commonly were, would not by themselves prove Mm guilty.
A brief personal experience of a Court in which the Palatine
princes ruled, his native keenness being sharpened by his
private wrongs, might convince him that the fruit of victories
gathered under their auspices would be baneful. Clarendon,
we know, and Falkland, and Newcastle, privately thought as
much. Cromwell, again, he might follow gladly at first, when
an interval of dictatorship seemed necessary for the prevention
of anarchy. With equal honour and sincerity he might desert
the usurper of a prerogative exceeding that of royalty. There
was no self-evident fickleness in efforts for the restoration of
the second Charles as an alternative to a military oligarchy
or a tyrannic ghost of a Parliament. On the same principles
might be defended. Ms early co-operation with the companions
of the sovereign's exile. When the old counsellors were
found incompetent to rise to a comprehension of the growth
of the Constitution during their absence, when Clarendon, for
example, modelled on Lord Burleigh his estimate of a Prime
Minister's prerogatives, a man of the highest integrity and
moderation might have withdrawn from the returned Cava
lier coterie as impossible. Some apology could be attempted
for the Minister, who, perplexed between a master deter
mined to treat the national resources as his private patri
mony, and an Opposition conspiring with the enemies of all
kingship, and enhsting every class of malcontent and revolu
tionist, had for a moment connived at unconstitutional acts
to carry on the King's Government. More excuse might be
made for his defection from his master when required to
conduct a provisional crisis as a permanent system, and for a
remorseful employment of his information, influence, and
energy to cancel the evil precedent he had furnished. There
might have been an indemnity even for a statesman hurried
onward, by the growing consciousness that the King would
have either absolute power or none, into the extreme position

Anthony Ashley Cooper.

in which the line between rebellion and constitutional
resistance becomes indefinable. History has pardoned it in
Lord Russell. But then Shaftesbury was not a Russell. He
was not even an Algernon Sidney.
Each of his changes might singly be explained, and the
character of the seceder for good faith have been left unim
paired. In the mass they form an irrefutable indictment.
It is useless to urge in extenuation that his transfers of
allegiance were often against his interest. He might have
been Oliver Cromwell's right hand, and have guided Richard.
No game could have been more dangerous than the restoration
of an outcast royalty. Later, from the inmost confidence of
Charles he stepped spontaneously into hopeless opposition,
with the Tower and exile as its goal. Instability has always
proved ruinous in statesmanship. That the deserter suffers
as well as his abandoned party can never be admitted as
evidence of honesty. Unless Shaftesbury's apologists be able
to show that, at the instant of each new movement, he could
not have hoped to win the captaincy of one party in exchange
for the heutenancy of another, Ms actual losses are no proof
of disinterestedness. It is unfortunate for him that his
diaries, letters, and speeches afford no evidence which can
clear Ms fame. They exliibit his subtlety, and his power of
acting on men's minds, and on their perception of their
private advantage. They indicate a master genius for creating
a new party out of old materials. They are not without
tokens of courage in attacking the dominant party when the
storm wMch was to shatter it was as yet a speck in the dis
tance. They contain not a word to imply that he believed
in any principle, religious or political. His modern advocate
appeals to them against the recorded judgment upon him.
They are searched, and their answer is wholly negative. Not
a spark scintillates from them of generous self-denial in
himself, or admiration of it m others.
He was no thorough-paced villain, and he was no patriot.
He was simply a dexterous party leader in circumstances
demanding rather the character of a demagogue, or that of a

44 Some Verdicts of History Revieieed.
tyrant, neither of wMch was he inclined to play. He could
not endure a superior, and scarcely an equal. His misfortune
was that, like his most illustrious predecessor in the guardian-
sMp of the Great Seal, he was endowed with a burrnng am
bition and no enthusiasm of heart, with a quick brain-power
and a slow moral pulse. His crime was that he chose Ms
allies and Ms causes with a view to their power to promote
his pre-eminence rather than their national merits. His
failure was due as much to the limitations of his unscrupu-
lousness as to that itself. AVe cannot but think he must
have surveyed Ms career at its close Avith wonder how a
course of pohtical manoeuvres had landed him m exile, a
suppliant to a state of which, though it had never harmed
Mm, he had, in the bewildering tangle of party tactics, vowed
the extirpation. Refugee as he was at Ms death, and pro
claimed traitor, it is still hard to pronounce whether he ever
designed a revolution, or even an insurrection.

III.
TWO POET-POLITICIANS

ABRAHAM COWLEY,
1618-1667.
MATTHEW PRIOR,
1664-1721.

( 47 )

ABRAHAM COWLEY.

Cowley's career started from a much lower social level
than that of Anthony Ashley Cooper. It never approached
the same pinnacles of political and official splendour. It
encountered no dangers so virulently deadly ; and it may be
supposed never to have suffered so tremendous a fall. In
reality, though the man and his character were safe from the
storms in which the fortunes and personal reputation of the
potent Cabal Minister, the brilliant Lord Chancellor, and the
popular idol sank, Cowley's noblest distinction has under
gone a more irreparably ruinous shipwreck. The author of the
Habeas Corpus Act is secure against historical oblivion. The
blaze of fame of the incomparable poet has dwindled till
it is saved from absolute extinction only by the favour of
compilers of Elegant Extracts.
Before me is an advertisement sheet of Tonson's, affixed to
the tenth edition of Cowley's poems, issued in 1707, which,
post-dated by a few years, well represents the literature
and literary society in which that poet was supreme. It is
an obituary of departed reputations. The wits of Button's
and Will's, the courtiers of Whitehall, and scribblers from
Grub Street, satirists, playwrights, pseudo-travellers, divines,
and the great blind bard himself, make this single leaf a page
of history. There are Dryden, Milton, Waller, Denham,
Suckling, Rochester, Etherege, Garth's Dispensary, Addison's
Campaign, works by the Tory L'Estrange, a ' Voyage to the
Island of Love,' by Afra Behn, " our envy, her own sex's
pride," as the moral Cowley calls her. The list is completed

48 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
by congratulatory poems by Rowe, heavy booksellers' his
tories by Lawrence Echard, scandalous 'Memoires' by St.
Evremond, a life of Pythagoras, by Madame Dacier, and,
finally, various versions from the classics, the favourite read
ing of that lazy, spuriously scholarly era, and probably fully
bearing out m letter, though not in spirit, Cowley's recom
mendation that translators should not servilely copy the
original. It is curious to look on a muster-roll of dreary
battalions from the Dunciad mingled with giant names, and
mournful to think how many of these antitheses are now in
annihilation not divided. Some volumes are seen just
trembling mto fame, some already illustrious, though with
the seeds of quick decay in them, others destined to shine
forth unexpectedly, far beyond and above the rest, when
these, their coevals, should have become mere names of
history, notable as representatives of a very peculiar social
epoch, but with no distinct literary lustre. There Waller
shows his seventh edition, put forth in an age when the
court and the bar were an author's public, and Denham
his fourth ; and there, where Milton has apparently not yet
passed beyond his first impression, Cowley overtops them all
with the glories of a tenth. Where now are those " cele
brated hands," nay, those "most eminent hands," great in
society and the coffee-houses, who joined in Dryden's trans
lations ? Where are the much belauded patrons of literature,
those courtly men of letters and plagiarists of Horace, the
Dorsets, GodolpMns, and Rochesters ?
Abraham Cowley has been, perhaps, the most unfortunate
of all, as he was as then- chieftain far the most renowned.
The rest deserved their fate. It is hard for us to put our
selves into the proper position for comprehending the admi
ration of our ancestors for them ; in him are seen glimpses of
glorious poetry, and a poetical, though not, it may be, a phil
osophical depth and truthfulness, which should have preserved
him, as politico-poetical vigour has saved Dryden. His
works could not, perhaps, be now a text-book ; they deserve
to be a classic. Cowley is a kind of proverb for the insta-

Abraham Cowley, 49

bility of popularity. Each successive age has stolen away
one of the ornaments of his chaplet, till the present scarcely
comprehends how the infallible Doctor should have thought
it worth his while to accumulate reasons why men do not
study a bard whose very name they but seldom hear. We know
well the contour and bulk of the volumes of the eminent, the
most incomparable, or, as Wood loves to call him, that prince
of poets, Mr. Abraham Cowley. They lie stranded in every
old library, like the beams and keels of wrecks, or the piles
of drift-wood, described as obstructing navigation on the
Mississippi. The larger sympatliies and the central position
in literary history of Dryden, give him the power to put-
forth green branches from a decaying trunk amid the turbid
flood of time which has drowned much even of his celebrity..
But many noble logs of timber lurk beneath the waters,
unseen and almost unsuspected, until students, piloting their
way through the bygone history and literature, suddenly
strike upon them, and are startled at the mass which blocks'
their course. The current of literature flows over many
such submerged heaps. Some patience and resolution are
necessary before these relics of other systems can be pro
perly appreciated, so thick a barrier of temporary prejudices
has first to be surmounted. Of all of them, Cowley most
deserves forbearance ; as also perhaps most determination is
needed to discover something precious in him as compen
sation for wading through the deliberate eccentricity of his
style and versification. When readers have bound themselves
apprentices to Ms handicraft, it is not difficult to discover
how much harmony is consonant with art and stiffness, and
what grace may be shown in dancing in shackles.
Possibly not a little of what we think forced, unnatural,
and artificial in Cowley's poems, may be traced back to his
precocious facility of versifying, which by out-running his
power of conception, tempted him to look to novelty in
manner for originality, and for the satisfaction of his absorb
ing thirst for literary glory. Next to Chatterton, he is the
most remarkable instance of success in the ambitious imita-

50 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.

tiveness of childhood, wMch sometimes developes into poetry,
sometimes proves to be nothing but the effervescence of youth
and passion. His ' Pyramus and Thisbe ' was produced at
the age of ten, 'Constantia and Philetus ' at twelve, and
' Love's Riddle ' shortly after. Though it would be too much
to say that we can read these poems with pleasure, at least
in rhythm and sentiment they seldom offend the ear or
judgment. - .
Cowley's poetical power was hardly hereditary, unless the
narrow circumstances of Ms parents may be supposed to
indicate that, being unsuccessful traders, they were literary
geniuses. His father is supposed by Dr. Johnson, from the
absence of any note of the poet's baptism in the register of
his parish church, St. Dunstan's, to have been a dissenter.
According to Aubrey he was a grocer. A reference in the
Calendar of State Papers of the reign of James the First to a
bond owing by a certain Cowley, a grocer, to two other citizens,
would seem to corroborate that statement. The posthumous
son of a little shopkeeper, born within the democratic city of
London, beneath the shadow of Temple Bar, just where
Chancery Lane strikes the end of Fleet Street, he did not
start under very favourable auspices for winning the smiles
?„nd patronage of a Jermyn and a Buckingham. Mrs. Cowley,
to whom was left the task of bringing up three sons, was a
tender mother, and gifted with the power of exciting an affec
tion in her children which no years or fame could dimimsh.
But his friends confess she knew no more -about poetry than
her neighbours, and possessed no larger stock of books. It
so happened, however, that in her window, along with the
whole of the family library, lay a volume, the most
gracefully artificial of English classics, Spenser's 'Faerie
Queene.' Amid its bright pictures, Cowley tells us, he
basked and grew up into rpoetry, till the soHcitations of
Mrs. Cowley, and the interest of some powerful patron
with the head-master, removed him to the great school at
Westminster and the hard business of life in the shape of
Latin grammar.

Abraham Couiey, 5]

It was the most aristocratic school of the day, and, from
particular circumstances, the especial home of a pohtical
party ; yet it does not seem that the boy was looked upon as
an intruder, or exposed to unkindness from masters or
scholars, on the score of his humble birth. His name was
long and proudly treasured up among them, and his boyish
poems heralded in stately rhymes by admiring school-fellows.
Very quickly he vmdicated his claims to consideration,
though fits of poetic rhapsody did not at first exactly har
monise with the quaint hexameters of the prse-Busbeian
grammar. Sprat has recorded Cowley's natural and boyish
aversion for hard technical rules, as a portentous token of his
friend's genius. He has been rebuked by the greatest master
of the art of putting clown, and the paragraph treated as a
bombastic intimation that Cowley was no better than other
boys. There was doubtless no lack in the days of Charles
the First, any more than in our own more prosaic ones, of idle
schoolboys or of rods, the maiden Queen's perennial benefac
tion from the royal forests to Westminster School ; and the
poetical aspirant's prophecy of his own future glories, in a
juvemle dedication to Sir Kenelm Digby, —
" The birch that whipt him then would prove a bay ; *'
intimates that he had scarcely as yet experienced the results
of so agreeable a botanical metamorphosis. But the disgust
of the lad at those jingling prosodiacal barbarisms might
well proceed less from want of application than from the
desire, fostered by Ms previous process of self-education, to
grasp at the results without going through the stage of mas
tering details. At all events, he speedily exhibited very re
markable classical taste. An ear for Latin verse, inferior to
Milton's in sweetness and delicacy, but stronger, and showing
on the whole more freedom and power of thinking m the
language, is sufficient testimony to his early industry.
Hand m hand advanced his power over both English and
classical diction. In 1628, when the Parhament gained its
first triumph over the King, and in the more advanced days

52 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
of 1630, when the sovereign's violence was swelling by re
pression the growing passion for liberty, Cowley's muse tried
its first flights. His ' Pyramus and TMsbe,' and ' Constantia
and Philetus,' poems composed in. those years in an English
dress, were, envious contemporaries often wMspered, superior
to his mature works. His masters grew proud of him, and
cherished the genius from wMch they expected yet riper
fruits. One, Mr. Jordan, Cowley's gratitude for kindness, and
not the necessities of a school exercise, led him to com
memorate in an elegy.
Had he remained exposed to the feelings and influences
most powerful both in his own home and Ms school, the
future professed Royalist might have developed mto an
associate of Milton and Andrew Marvell. Westminster was
a hotbed of Parliamentarism. In a school supervised by
Williams, once Lord Keeper, and successor of Bacon, now
Bishop of Lincoln, Dean of Westminster, and Laud's rival,
and taught by Osbaldeston, alias Osbolston, alias, and as
Cowley writes it, Osbalston, the poet was in the direct way
of becoming inbued with the popular spirit. The earhest
extant poem by the satirist of Cromwell was dedicated to the
schoolmaster, who, even then suspected, was no long time
after sentenced, for an unpublished libel upon Archbishop
Laud, to stand hi the pillory at his own school-gate. It is
placed near a general dedication and congratulatory verses
to the Bishop of Lincoln himself, on Ms release from the
Tower, to wMch he had been sent for his part in this very
transaction. But a time was coming when all were to be com
pelled to take a side, when it was no longer possible to praise
the private virtues of a statesman without denouncing Ms
pohtical adversaries. It was not merely the weneral feelino-
among undergraduates in favour of Charles, as opposed at
Cambridge, to a powerful party in the neighbourhood on the side
of the Commons, but something also in Cowley's disposition,
wMch developed his pohtics in a very different direction to that
wMch might have been anticipated from the pupil of Osbal
deston and extravagant eulogist of the ex-Lord Keeper. He

Abraham Cowley. 53

belonged to the section which will always comprise many men
of letters in a time of popular commotions. Like Waller,
like Selden, like Falkland, Cowley hated despotism, though
¦scarcely with the fervour of judgment of the last two. But he
was slow to seize on the salient points in the proposed
changes and he dreaded the consequences. He could praise
" excellent Brutus " and flatter and co-operate with a mean-
spirited Jermyn, without any consciousness of inconsistency.
At Trinity, whither he proceeded in 1636, he had to fight
his way without any regular patron. As, however, Mrs.
Cowley could not well have equipped a son for college out
of her unaided means, he may have been subsidised by the
Lord Dorchester, whom he commemorates, or the son of the
Sir Everard of Guy Fawkes and Gunpowder-plot notoriety, the
celebrated Sir Kenelm Digby, of whom the gossip-mongering
Aubrey speaks as " ever very kind " to our poet. For some
Teason unknown Cowley had failed to be elected to a Trinity
scholarship on the Westminster foundation, but the renown of
his school successes procured for him almost immediately an
•open one. He was soon distingmshed favourably by the
notice of the fellows of his college, especially the learned Mr.
Fotherby, the uncle of Ms future friend, Matthew Clifford, and
by the Master, Dr. Comber. Among his fellow-students Ms
•chief associates seem to have been William Hervey and the
famous Crashaw, one of the sweetest of religious poets ;
though, like the rest, artificial. We have pleasant glimpses
into the academical life of the poet and his friend, and their
long walks along the meadows and dykes of that green region.
" Ye fields of Cambridge, our dear Cambridge, say,
Have ye not seen us walking every day ?
Was there a tree about which did not know
The love between us two ? "
In the same poem, written in honour of Ms friend's memory,
he appeals to the reminiscences of long winter nights, —
" Spent not in toys, in lust or wine,
But search of deep Philosophy,
Wit, Eloquence, and Poetry ;
Arts which I loved, for they, my friend, were thine."

Same Verdicts of History Reviewed.

His own assertion of assiduity as a student can have been
no vain boast. His devotion to Latin scholarsMp was evinced
by the production in 1638 of a dramatic medley, ' Naufragium
Joculare,' though the title expressed its hterary fate. Beside
this, he found time for the composition of most of that
ponderous poem, the 'Davideis,' which has hardly floated
down the stream of time to us on the fame of its author
It was commenced in the boyish belief that the doom of all
great poets is to compose epics ; but the vernal self-delusion
was not regretted properly in after years by its author.
Though not devoid of grand lines and noble sentiments, or
of bright, happy conceits, it is, on the whole, as heavy as
Prior's ' Solomon,' which was partly designed, in emulation
of its repute, as at once a continuation and rival. More
cannot be said against it. It is crowded with unblushing
plagiarisms, such as " So a strong oak," and so on, ad nauseam.
They are not, like Milton's imitations of the ancients, so
beautified with new hues and shades playing over them, that
we begin to compare Virgil with Mm, rather than him with
Virgil. Sir John Denham could scarcely have perused the
' Davideis,' when he wrote of his friend, —
" Horace's wit and Virgil's state
He did not steal but emulate."
Sense there is ; no fire is there to vivify the dead bones of
rhymes. We miss all power of imagining a scene. How
faded is Cowley's description of Hell, in comparison with
that in ' Paradise Lost' ! Milton is intentionally vague and
misty ; we feel as men groping in the dark, that ghastly
forms are lurkmg behind the veil, modelled with as scrupulous
fidelity as the carved gobhns beliind the stalls in Gothic
cathedrals, though, hke them, meant to remain hidden. In the
'Davideis,' there is a veil with nothing to Mde, or thrown on
merely to cover the barrenness and baldness of the author's con
ception. Sometimes, but rarely, the guardian angel of English
poesy, the spring-tide spirit of Chaucer, breathes tirrou°-h°ancl
animates the struggling verse. "Uprose the Sun andSaul"

Abraham Cowley.

perhaps betrays even more than sympathy with the patriarch
of our literature. Now and then there are lines like these : —
" Queen of the flowers who made that orchard gay,
The morning blushes of the Spring's new day ; "
or we may chance to stumble on the racy vigour and earnest
ness which are never entirely wanting to pohtical poetry ; as,
for instance, in the passage beginning,
" 'Tis jest to tell a people they are free."
But instances of natural feeling and power are few and far
between. If the Bishop, his biographer, were not misled by
friendsMp, or the wish to turn a sentence, the statement that,
" with all the faults of the ' Davideis,' it is a better instance
and beginning of a Divine Poem than he ever yet saw in any
language," is to be accounted for only on grounds injurious
either to Sprat's width of reading, or to rehgious bards. We
may be excused, too, a slight wonder how far the poet can
have believed the result to harmonise with his own lofty
and terse prelude of invective against "the cold meats of
the ancients " dragged into sacred verse ; or against the
" turning of a story into rhyme, which so far from elevating
Poesie is only abasing the Divinity." At all events, he has
cruelly abased the divinity of Milton's war-demon, kingly
Moloch, by describing him as a nursery-tale giant, who —
"Still did eat
New-roasted babes, his dear delicious meat."
Public opinion respecting the volume when subsequently
published, as that of the Bard's friends at an earlier period,
by no means accorded with ours. He was hailed as the
coming poet by the University and his College, of wMch he
proceeded major fellow in 1642. His Royalism and Ms
hterary fame together pointed him out as the proper person
to be selected for planning a dramatic piece for the enter-
tamment of the young Prince of Wales, when passing, in
1640, through the University on his way to join the King
at York. The result was 'The Guardian,' a rough-drawn
farce, he himself tells us, not written out, but learned by the

56 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
dramatis personw from his extempore dictation. But the
progress of the troubles brought evil days upon him. In
1643 he was, with Ms friend Crashaw, expelled from his
fellowsMp and the University by the Parliamentary Com
missioners, for delinquency m refusing the oath then tendered
to all members of Cambridge. St. John's College, Oxford, the
college successively of Archbishops Abbot and Laud, afforded
him shelter, while the friendship of Lord Falkland gave him
distinction with the courtiers assembled at Magdalen and
Christ Church. He appears to have thus drifted into con
firmed partisansMp, with no very active zeal for party polities.
Possibly, though some of the links for proving this are
wanting, the influence of Sir Kenelm Digby, who had long
been his friend, or some other powerful patron, may have
acted upon him in this direction. Poets and scholars in
those days occupied a more dependent, though at the same
time less laborious, condition than now. In the later general
revolution of political and social ideas they held a com
manding position. The result was not fully attained till
the reign of Queen Anne, when the golden age of literature
became the golden age of men of letters. They were still part
of the great man's household, and still looked to his purse and
countenance for support as of right ; but he began to use them
for the pohtical ends which were monopolising his own energies.
Men such as Cowley did not hire themselves out as party
tools ; but when, as scholars, they had been attracted within
the sphere of some patron's orbit, and exposed to all the
influences wMch surrounded him, it was natural that, on
Ms conversion into a statesman, their neutrality should be
modified in accordance with the only theory on the subject
with which they had had an opportunity of becoming imbued.
Thus Cowley, shortly after Ms migration to Oxford, appears
to have betaken himself to the protection of Jermyn and
the Queen's faction. In that focus of partisansMp his
own speedily became confirmed ; though, apparently, it was
always more the partisanship of habit and the accident of
association, than of passion. ' The Puritan and the Papist,' a

Abraham Cowley. 57

savage satire, delighted his companions, though it subse
quently terrified both himself and others. Only at Dr.
Johnson's earnest instance with the publishers was it at
length inserted in a complete edition of his works. But he
chiefly devoted his time to the composition of a heroic poem
on the civil wars. Much of it was compiled from his own
note-book ; for he seems to have attended the King on several
of his expeditions, and to have been employed in others as a
confidential agent. When his locality and circumstances
were different, the violence of the sentiments of the com
position appalled him, and the poem was carefully suppressed.
It was continued down to the time of the second battle of
Newbury, when the catastrophe of Royalist hopes was too
evident to admit even of a poet's favourable interpretation.
Soon after this calamity, the Royalist cause became so
desperate, that, along with a throng of compromised courtiers,
divines, and authors, he fled to Paris.
Materially it was fortunate for him that he had gained the
countenance of Jermyn, Lord St. Albans ; for it was a matter
of notoriety and scandal, that this nobleman alone of the
refugees in France kept open house, livhig in comparative
splendour, while the Prince of Wales was half destitute.
Into his household, and consequently the Queen's, whose
chamberlain Jermyn had long been, Cowley was admitted
as a favoured confidant. His fame, which, though no re
markable work had proceeded from him, had long resounded
throughout both the Republican and Royalist camps, as
that of the coming poet, while 'L' Allegro,' 'II Penseroso,'
and ' Comus ' were comparatively neglected as Elizabethan
archaisms, made him a welcome inmate. Jermyn, with
all his bad qualities, had sufficient taste to judge of hterary
power. The guest on his part appears to have used Ms
advantages so kindly and benevolently as to escape the
envy liberally dealt out to his host. By his help Crashaw,
who had lost his fellowsliip at Cambridge at the same time
and for the same reason, was kept from starving. Even
tually, having turned Roman Catholic, he was despatched G 2

58 Some Verdicts of Histeyry Reviewed.
into Italy with such warm recommendations from Henrietta,
procured by his friend's intervention, that Pope Innocent X.
gave Mm one of the richest benefices m Italy, a canonry at
Loretto. Cowley himself found active employment as
Jermyn's secretary, in the routine but confidential employ
ment of ciphering and deciphering the correspondence between
the King, now a captive, and the Queen, and other Royalists.
The drudgery took up all his days and two nights every
week. When so distinguished a copying clerk was no longer
needed, his services were put in requisition in various other
ways. The intervals between pohtical journeys were filled up
with poetry and visions of some such happy sinecure as the
mastersMp of the Savoy, of wMch the reversion had been
promised Mm both by Charles I. and Ms son. He still retained
the post of private secretary to Lord St. Albans, and managed
the correspondence between the httle Courts of Henrietta and
Prince Charles, m Ms various removals to Bruges, Spa, and
Cologne. Letters which have been preserved from Mr. Secre
tary Bennett, afterwards Lord Arlington, one of Charles II.'s
favourite Mimsters, from April 1650, show that the poet
readily became a serious man of business ; disappointing as-
this may be to those who would have a bard's eye always-
in a fine frenzy rolling. The consideration which he, a man
of no pretensions to nobility or audacity in camp or council,
enjoyed in the Queen Mother's Court, is of itself a sufficient
indication, not only of his poetical renown, but also of a
somewhat dignified character always keeping its place. We
are told, both by himself and Sprat, that he had peculiar
opportunities for becoming conversant with Courts and the
splendour of palaces : that he was no mere pensioner and!
dependent, but an active member of the royal establishment.
When not writing letters to Charles's councillors or spies;
in England, he was principally engaged in pohtical missions
to the Prince from his mother. Whenever some plan re
quired fuller exposition than was safe or possible tMough
the medium of an ordinary council letter, the poet seems
to have been despatched to communicate the opinion of the

Abraham Coiuley. 59

Queen and her chamberlain. With this object he visited
successively, Jersey, Scotland, Flanders, and Holland. No
records, however, of the purpose of his journeys or the incidents
to himself have been preserved, with one exception, consisting
of an answer sent by Mm from the Channel Islands, to a
copy of verses addressed to him when there. In Ms epistle
he endeavours to emulate "the Sweet Melody of Native
Insular Rhymes, written by  Esq. the year of our
Lord, sixteen hundred, thirty-three." Perhaps on tMs expe
dition finding himself, as he tells us, without any books but
Pindar, he was induced to study that poet's dithyrambic poems.
The result was the introduction into the waters of the
English Helicon of a rivulet of harshest verse, in wMch it
tasks the benevolence of the most kindly reader to detect. any
melody. While settled in France in the year 1647, he
thought it his duty to show his conformity with the prin
ciples, not the practice, of the Cavaliers, by composing his
* Mistress.' The subject quickly made it popular, rather than
the special merits of the poem. It is not without occasional
beauties : — " Love in her sunny eyes does basking play,
Love walks the pleasant mazes of her hair,
Love does on both her lips for ever stray,
And sows and reaps a thousand kisses there."
•At times a turn or a tone is caught wMch appears an an
ticipation of Tennyson. But the general impression on
the modern reader is laborious monotony. Cowley's own
explanation of its origin is enough to reveal the causes of
its barrenness. , He declares it was written because no poet
can be esteemed a freeman of his company till he has sacri
ficed to Venus. A habit of concerting systematic, cold
blooded conspiracies for winning literary renown was the
taint in Cowley's poetical character. His line —
" What can I do to be for ever known ? "
is an index to all Ms poetical cravings. He wrote the
' Davideis ' as Haydon painted his oppressive pictures, because
an Epic, has the primacy among poems, and Abraham

60 Some Indicts of History Reviewed.
Cowley must, therefore, put Mmself in a position to emulate
Virgil, and Homer, and Tasso. He wrote the ' Mistress,' not
because the subject, or the thoughts rising out of it, suited Ms
tastes, nor only because the poet of the Jermyns and Wilmots
must pretend to have analysed love ; but mainly because each
master poet had shown Mmself a votary of Cupid. Starting
from such a confessed theory, he exhausts the whole subject
as to its topics, though nowhere does he penetrate below
the surface. He was unwilling to leave room for the detection
of a smgle defect in his treatment of it. He was resolved
there should not be a rock he had not visited and planted his
flag upon. The laxity in moral sentiment which he was at
great pains to display was itself a hterary parade like the
rest. There can be no worse reproach to the age or to the
Cavalier party than that grossness of manners was so in
grained m it as to colour deeply the language of one practi
cally well conducted as was Cowley.
A tradition preserved among Pope's sneering remarks upon
Ms predecessors, says, that the lady meant to be fascinated by
panegyrics, many of them of a kind now to be esteemed
insults, was the Leonora celebrated by Cowley as his last and
enduring love in that sparkling, but scandalous 'Chronicle1
of Ms flames, wMch took Johnson's admiration by storm.
Though he never actually asked her hand himself, her accept
ance of a brother of Ms future biographer, the Bishop of
Rochester, is said, on the same authority, to have soured
his temper, and contributed mainly to Ms disgust at a Court.
It seems unlikely that tMs respectable lady can have sug
gested some of the feelings of either poem; at all events,
he had soon an opportunity of returmng to her society. In
1656, the stagnation of the Royalist schemes in France, and
the strength of the Protector at home, inclined many of the
exiles to make compositions with the revolutionary govern
ment. Cowley had no estate to compound for; so it was
supposed he would, have the less difficulty in returning to
England, and that while there, he might still be able, as
opportunity served, to co-operate with Ms friends. It was

Abraham Cowley. 61

not then thought dishonourable for a partisan to take to
the profession of a spy. For Cowley, who hoped for nothing
from Cromwell but to be overlooked, it appeared a most
innocent tiling to do what Evelyn, who was protected in
his estate, thought perfectly becoming. It had been thought
advisable that he should remain incognito ; and this is the
chief circumstance revealing that his duties were to consist
in espionage. His character would have led us to sup
pose he had intended now to throw off all political obliga
tions whatsoever, and live for literature and science ; but,
as it happened, almost immediately upon his landing he
was seized as a returned refugee, by mistake for another
against whom the warrant lay. His real name quickly
became known ; and the famous Court poet and confidant of
the Queen and the detested Jermyn was looked upon as a
prize. Several times was he examined and menaced by the
Protector and his Council, but to no purpose. It nowhere
appears, except from an obscure report of a saying of Claren
don's, that the enemies of Cowley Mnted he had betrayed any
secrets to Cromwell, to whom they accused him of un
worthily truckling in other ways. Perhaps he had no secrets
to reveal. The exiled prince's applications to every sovereign
in Europe for a little ready money could scarcely have
interested the mighty parvenu much. At length he was
dismissed, though only on bail to the amount of £1,000, a
sum wMch vastly raises our notion of the poet's pohtical value.
His surety was the celebrated Dr. Scarborough, of whose
loyalty to the Protector there was no doubt. Scarborough's
resolute Protestantism was alleged to have been the reason
many years later for concealing from him, though royal
physician, the accouchement of James the Second's queen.
Now the poet was free to make trial, if he chose, of some
positive realisation of the hope breathed in the drawing-rooms
of Paris : — "Ah! yet, ere I descend to th' grave,
May I a small house and large garden have !
And a few friends, and many books, both true,
Both wise, and both delightful too ! "

62 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
He actually betook Mmself from town into Kent, to study
botany and rival Virgil's Georgics. From the earnestness
and width of curiosity which distinguished his character,
medical and natural science soon absorbed Ms attention.
He sought for and, probably by the influence of Scarborough,
obtained from the Government a command to the University
of Oxford to grant him the diploma of M.D. By his applica
tion for a degree in medicine he may have wished to mamfest
Ms determination to leave politics. Its grant by favour of
the Protector was thrown in his teeth by detractors as a
species of apostasy. Whatever the motive, he really devoted
Mmself to science, after Ms manner ; and the result was the
first four books of his Latin poem on Plants. In the year
1656, he brought out a collection of his poems. The
measure was rendered necessary, as well by the un
scrupulous abuse of his name by English publishers to
screen paltry rhymes, such as a work called the ' Iron Age/
as by the numerous and defective editions both of his
juvenile and his later poems. But the volume scandalised
Ms friends ; it had a copy of verses to the Protector inserted
in it by way of dedication. Compliments to a pohtical
adversary who had treated him courteously by a poet, a
prisoner upon parole, are no atrocious crime. But it is to
be regretted that the Bishop extenuates the obnoxious
preface on the ground of the necessity under wMch the
author was of allaying the fears of Government, in order
more fully to discover and betray its counsels to his em
ployers. Cowley had, we may hope, a better apology, even if
such were the excuse for the biographer's own 'Pindaric
Ode, dedicated to the happy memory of the most renowned
Prince Ohver, Lord Protector,' wherein it was declared, rather
eqmvocally, that
" His fame, like men, the elder it doth grow,
Will of itself turn whiter too."
At any rate, Cowley's dedication brought him no profit;
his bond still remained uncancelled ; and the indignation of
the Royalists against verses, only, after all, expressive of

Abraham Cowley. 63

admiration of that energy in the Protector's rule which had
elevated the national character, was so violent that the writer
was weak enough to suppress them after the Restoration.
Altogether the visit was a failure ; if he came to collect
information, his detection and the suretyship of Scarborough
effectually baffled the mission. He had become an able
botanist among the Kentish orchards, and was recognised
through the introduction of the friendly physician; as a
man of science, and a master poet : but penury and the
cold looks of friends and foes embittered his life at this
period. Such was his despondency that he even used to
consult his friends on a migration to the American plantations,
to study botany and medicine, and write poetry at leisure.
His genius had a practical side to it, and he was wise enough,
while sigMng for solitude and a wilderness, to include a
good library in the list of necessaries for Virginia and Mary
land. Still it was fortunate for him, wearied though he was
with the world, that he could never put his vision to the test.
As this fancy floated off his mind the times rendered the
distant prospect of the Savoy less dream-like, and he accepted
an invitation to resume his duties in Jermyn's household at
Paris. They do not seem to have been obtrusive, for there is
no appearance of the poet's surety having been mulcted for
this new delinquency. At last came the joyful day of the
Restoration, and, of all men, the poet and author of ' The
Mistress ' expected that in the " cheerful fit of folly," which
was to do away with the remembrance of " the twenty years
of melancholy," he should not be passed over. But his
petition for the long-promised boon was rejected. Wood
declares this arose from some " enemy of the Muses." The
mysterious .assertion may refer to the dull George Monk,
dubbed " honest," or even to the ultra Royalist Cavaliers of the
Queen Mother's household. The story of Charles's response
to the petitioner, " Mr. Cowley, your pardon is your reward,"
if it rested on any foundation, might favour the latter
supposition. He would have been hardly a poet not to
exclaim at such treatment. His ' Complaint ' was temperate

64 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.

and loyal, but it and its author, " Savoy-missing Cowley,"
were ridiculed in Suckling's witty poem of the day on the
choice of a Laureate, as exhibiting a pitiful incapacity
for outspoken resentment. As it was, he remained a
dependent of Lord St. Albans, a poet by trade, and man of
general science by taste. His professional character of M.D.,
had been thrown off after the pubhcation of the poem on
plants. Soon came out, hi prose, with verses interspersed,
his ' Discourse by way of Vision concerning the Government
of Oliver Cromwell,' a grand composition. The reader's in
dignation at the renegade-like vehemence of the revihngs is
tempered by the feeling that the praises which pretend to be
ironical may have been an outburst of admiration. Hume has,
with the change of a few words, openly borrowed them for a
panegyric; they were probably in substance identical with
' The Lament of the Death of that Great Sovereign,' a poem,
though Wood records its existence, now no longer extant,
except as inserted in a setting of abuse. The 'Discourse'
is a noble eulogy, full of the fervour of a man exulting
that England had produced such a son, however much loyal
subjects might disapprove his usurpation. In few composi
tions is the prose more perfectly aMn to poetry. Cavahers
could not have been at all satisfied with a work in
which every epithet and censure revealed a sense of the
gigantic in the deceased. The favourite phrases of scurrilous
songsters and pamphleteers, 'Red Nosed Noll,' 'Brewer's
Son,' and such like, seemed to have evaporated amid the
strong stream of the poet's execrations. By the side of the
enumeration of the national glories, won by the dead Protector,
the flattery of the young King's locks —
" If gold might be compared with angels' hair,"
is tame and bald.
This work elevated the poet to ail undisputed supre
macy in contemporary literature, if it gained him no rich
sinecure. He remained a follower of Lord St. Albans, though
passing his time chiefly with meii of letters and science.

Abraham Cowley. 65

His companions were Evelyn, from Deptford ; Boyle, the
most modest and abstracted of philosophers ; Sir Kenehn
Digby, who frequented the society of the sages at Gresham
College in a long mourning cloak, peaked hat, and Oriental
beard; Hobbes, in his selfish green old age; Shakespeare's
godson, Sir William Davenant ; Lord Broghill ; Denham,
his associate in politics and poetry; and Sprat, somewhat
pompous, but a fervent and affectionate admirer. A little
further off in this circle of his intimates might be seen
men of fashion like Buckingham, constant to nothing but
patronage of literature ; Waller, from whose recollection the
shame of confederates betrayed to the hangman, had easily
glided off, and not from his memoiy alone, but from that of
friends and foes, whom his gentle wit then and long after
captivated ; politicians, who excused no variableness, except in
themselves, like Clarendon; accomplished debauchees, like
Wilmot Earl of Rochester ; Dryden, soon about to take up, as
it were, Cowley's sceptre, and rule literature after him ; and
Matthew Clifford, reputed co-author with the Duke of Buck
ingham and Sprat of the ' Rehearsal,' and deemed worthy of the
dedication of the hfe of Cowley, one of those anomalous men
of letters who are admitted as honorary members into the
guild, without performing its exercises, and sometimes, as this
connoisseur himself, with his coarse comments on Dryden' s
Fables, miserably disappoint their friends when at length they
have been flattered into authorship. All these, and, tradition
says, Milton Mmself, were among his professed admirers. As
recognised sovereign of letters he received the homage of the
men of science, the fashionable votaries of taste, the philoso
phers and divines. Beside all this, there were domestic
duties which the poet never neglected. His mother, probably
still alive at the Restoration, and brothers, one at all events
prosperous, and living in King Street, Westminster, shared in
the advantages, such as they were, of Ms fame.
Though not, as he has been termed, one of the six or seven
founders of the Royal Society, Cowley was on the list of the
men who were to be first asked to join. His general fame

66 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
and Ms acuteness in experimental science, especially botany,
made Mm a valuable recruit. Doubtless even experiments for
the restoration of youth by the transfusion of the blood of the
young mto the old, and other ambitious speculations, found
from his ready imagmation perfect sympathy. It was not
only Ms co-operation in that way wMch was desired; the
philosophers hoped from Ms social rank and pen to obtain
vogue, and to be screened from the popular ridicule wMch
irritated even the serene philosophy of Evelyn. He acceded
to the mvitation of the latter to give them " a divine song,"
to vindicate them from the satire and scoffs of the drunkards.
Accordmgly, he wrote, m the year 1667, a poem wMch it is
a shame on our age to have forgotten. Nothing in didactic
poetry can be finer than the Hnes on Bacon, beginning, —
" Bacon, like Moses, led us forth at last,"
and the apology for the theorist's failure in practice ; or than
the bitter retort on the men who were trying to laugh down
science — " The things which these proud men despise, and call
Impertinent, and vain, and small,
Those smallest things of nature let me know,
Rather than all their greatest actions do ! "
The praises of the Royal Society were undertaken by him
cordially, for the whole scheme of that mstitution approached
a design which he, in common with Milton, Evelyn, Boyle,
Sir William Davenant, and Sir William Petty, was always
debating. This was the erection of a philosopMcal college in
accordance with the suggestions of Bacon, in the " Advance
ment of Learnmg," for the promotion of general, but especially
experimental, knowledge. As might have been expected,
Cowley's designs were not altogether practical ; scarcely so
much so as Evelyn's. The latter would have been content
with £400 a year as a foundation; but then, apparently, each
member was personally to contribute all the httle ornaments
and elegancies required by philosophers, whose wives were
to join them in college, and hold musical soirees. Cowley's
scheme required an annual expenditure of £4,000. He pro-

Abraham Cowley. 67

posed to erect two quadrangles, the second opening upon
gardens and green lawns, and to procure no contemptible
endowment in the shape of appointments of £120 a year
for each of the professors, and £20 for each scholar, ex
clusive of incomes for travelling fellows to collect rarities.
The plan branched out into details respecting the division of
the profits of new discoveries between the college and the
inventors, and the establishment of a grammar school and
boardmg-house for rich pupils. From the profits of these
gradually a fund was to be accumulated for the maintenance
of poor men's sons, " as plentiful as for the rich, there being
nothing to be expected from a low, sordid, and hospital-like
education." In one point especially, the poet, as compared
with a man of the world like Evelyn, betrays himself when he
gravely lays down the rule for his seminary, that the professors
should " all keep inviolable and exemplary friendship with
each other." Cowley agreed with Milton as to the proper
instruments of education. Greek and Latin, especially the
latter, were to be taught, but Varro and Cato, Columella,
Celsus, the Georgics, and Manilius were prescribed as text
books, to carry out the design that the students should learn
things as well as words.
Amid the convulsions of pohtics and society, many Utopias
of the- same sort were being projected, all with the same
negative results. While republican theorists were con
structing their mipossibly perfect polities, the men of science
were planning how to turn the political changes to the
advantage of physics. They had all looked with unselfish
covetousness to the sequestrated bishoprics and royal domams,
and Cromwell's proposed University of Durham was viewed
as an instalment of large donations to learning. Even on the
Restoration, undaunted by the crowd of eager individual
claimants, the philosophers put forth their collective requisi
tions. So late as Queen Anne's reign, and in the sardonic mind
of Swift, a hope was harboured of persuading MiMsters to
endow colleges for the improvement of the language. Cowley
and his friends had already entertained a similar design. If it

68 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
came to nothmg, at least it gave the projectors an interestmg
subject of discussion. They used to walk through what were
then pleasant fields to talk literature at Gray's-Inn. They
thus anticipated the Kit-Cat Club, wMch had itself existed for
purely hterary purposes, under the auspices of a famous book
seller, long before it was taken up as a party organ. Though
there were but few meetings, they seem to have been continued
at mtervals during two or three years. They were interrupted
by the Plague, and above all, writes Evelyn, " by the death of
the incomparable Mr. Cowley." He was the centre of the
whole, the most fasMonable of poets, and esteemed the
greatest. To tMs age such a rank is incomprehensible,
though Milton's ' Paradise Lost ' had not yet appeared.
Cowley had a reputation mdependent almost of the merit
of his pubhshed works. This must have been mainly based
on his character, for his friend and biographer tells us that
"he did not surprise at first in Ms conversation," and
further, that none but his intimates would have discovered
he was a poet. There was nothing brilliant or showy to
make up for tMs m his general demeanour. When Ms
eulogist declares that he was possessed of perfect natural
goodness, great mtegrity, and plamness of manners, though
he had lived in France ; that there was " notiiing affected
in habit, person, or gesture ; " that " he understood the
forms of good breeding enough to practise them without
burdening himself ;" finally, " that he was modest and humble
excessively even to the appearance of dissimulation, unless
for other equal virtues," we have no great difficulty in
representing to ourselves a person destitute, like Addison, of
external graces, but without Addison's capability of warming
into eloquence and wit. It is not necessary to go so far as
to believe in the truthfulness of Ms friend Denham's
epigram — " Had Cowley ne'er spoke, nor Killigrew write,
They'd both have made a very good wit."
But perhaps it was the conjunction of Ms brilliant fame
with apparent unconsciousness of it, wMch chiefly charmed

Abraham Coxoley. 69

by its contrast with the affectation and pretentiousness of
other literary men of the day.
Such as it was, his popularity, like Dryden's, though it
survived them, had met with one or two checks. While
association with courtiers gave literature fashion, and taught
literary men the profitable art of making their compositions
popular with society, not only did they sometimes find
in the noble a competitor who forgot the patron in the
rival, but any deviation from the tone which the great
man believed himself fully competent to prescribe, or any
appearance of isolation in life and severer morals, exposed
to the chance of a persecution. Courtiers leagued with
his brother authors to degrade Dryden by treating Settle
as a rival, from jealousy of his hterary dictatorship. The
attack on Cowley had more of a political or party char
acter. In 1663, he had remodelled and produced upon
the stage, ' Cutter, of Coleman Street,' the play originally
represented before Charles, when Prince of Wales, at Cam
bridge, under the title of ' the Guardian.' In itself a witty
and well-managed comedy, with abundance of brisk action,
it seemed adapted to please the Cavaliers by much illiberal
caricaturing of the Puritans. To the horror and surprise of
the poet it was hissed off the stage. That seemed to Mm the
catastrophe, not only of Ms social, but his literary aspirations.
He feelingly laments, in a preface to a library edition of the
drama that, " from all he had written he had never received
the least benefit or the least advantage, but on the contrary,
had felt sometimes the effects of malice and misfortune."
He Mmself ascribed the disaster to an incongruous and
predetermined union of parties against him. He was con
demned, he writes, by a faction before being heard ; of
profanity, for attacking hypocrisy ; of disloyalty, for exposing
a few disorderly and sham Royalists, who had joined the
party only to disgrace it. This was the reward of his
sacrifices for twenty years.
Apart from reasons grounded on some unexplained envy, to
which Ms character would not seem to lay Mm open, the doom

70 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.

of the play may have been owing to the fact that its tone was
put of date. It laid stress on the roistering qualities on wMch
the Cavahers had, as a party, once prided themselves ; and it
held up Puritan sobriety and love of constitutional liberty as
the sentiments of canting rogues. Personal loyalty was put in
the place of all the virtues, when already all sensible Royalists
were beginning to be disgusted with the qualities of their
old comrades which favoured despotism and licentiousness.
The poet, though personally always moderate, and averse
from the extreme practice and doctrine of the Cavaliers, had
not been prepared, more than Clarendon, to discover that the
radicalism of the beginning of the troubles was become the
liberal conservatism of their conclusion. He had written m
accordance with the sentiments to which he had been of old
habituated. He did not comprehend the ramifications of the
Court and Country parties. If he had been free to study the
matter for himself, and then to take sides, he would probably
lhave been against extreme principles. He had assumed,
without investigation, the folly of all but simple Royalism.
As it was, he was thoroughly disheartened by his reception,
though the play subsequently, when a new Cavalier party was
reviving, was acted with applause. Perhaps he may have
been conscious of sinning against his conscience, by stretching
his dislike for fanaticism and austerity to the semblance of a
boon-companion's love for debauchery and riotousness, in order
to please the courtiers. In any case he discovered that a
spirit which suited the atmosphere of Bruges or of Prince
Rupert's camp was out of place in the vicinity of St.
Stephen's and the City of London. Sneering Dennis reports
an expression of surprise by Dryden that Cowley did not
bear the news of the fate of his -drama, when conveyed to
him by himself and Sprat straight from the theatre, with any
thing like the philosophy to be expected from so' great a man,;
as though, bitterly comments Johnson, who himself had
experienced the same sensation once, they had a right to
anticipate haughty tranquillity at the damning of a piece
produced in the sanguine hope of popular applause.

Abraham Cowley. 71
More eagerly then than ever the poet resumed his in
termittent longings for leisure to rear trees and flowers, and
search out the secrets of nature. Previously he had been un
willing to quit all hopes of advancement from the Court, while
reluctant to reside in town. As an intermediate course he had,
very soon after the Restoration, when his hopes of the Savoy
were not yet blighted, taken up his abode successively for a
short time at Deptford, in the neighbourhood of the sym
pathetic Evelyn at Sayes Court, at Battersea, and at Barn-
Elms. But at these places he only hired temporary residences.
They afforded no scope for putting in execution regular
schemes of rural retirement, till at last a gleam of prosperity
made his permanent plan of life feasible. Even now he
was not indebted to the direct bounty of the King, whom and
whose cause he had served long and faithfully, however calmly
and without enthusiasm. His preferment was due to the
solicitations and influence of Buckingham and the Earl of
St. Albans, his constant friends. Through them he was pen
sioned in the year signalised by the catastrophe of Ms comedy
with a lease for life of the Queen Mother's dower lands in
the manor of Chertsey, on terms so favourable as, with pru
dent management, to promise Mm £300 a year net income.
In Aubrey's account of the preliminary negotiation the
chief merit of the gift is attributed to Vilhers, whose memory
stands in woeful need of a few such kindly traditions : " The
Duke of Buckingham, hearing that at Chertsey was a good
farm of about fifty pounds a year, belongmg to the Queen
Mother, goes to the Earl of St. Albans to take a lease of it.
They answered that it was beneath Ms Grace to take a lease
of them. That was all one, he would have it, paid for it,
and had it, and freely and generously gave it to his dear and
mgenious friend Mr. Abraham Cowley, for whom purposely
he bought it."
The gift permitted Cowley to try Ms ideal life of a poet
and searcher after scientific truth, without too violent a
wrench from Ms established habits; for in all his Utopian
schemes he was sufficiently wise not to expect happiness from
H

72 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
pursMts perfectly ahen from those in which he had spent
his youth and manhood. From Deptford, Battersea, and
Barn-Elms he had been in the habit of resorting to London
occasionally, and there indeed the failure of Ms 'Cutter,
of Coleman Street,' had found him. Now he resolved to
dwell altogether in the country, though glad to admit the
visits of old friends. It is not strictly true, as Sprat relates,
that " he gave over thoughts of honour and riches when he
might have gratified them;" nor, lastly, is it very probable
"that " he refused many invitations to return to business."
Neither his character nor Ms talents were fitted for doing
the work, or pleasmg the humours of that capricious Court.
But we are ready to give all credence to the Bishop's assertion
of his friend's disgust at a Court like that at Whitehall,
" a sort of life wMch, though his virtue had made it mnocuous
to Mm, yet notMng could make qMet."
Before his visits to London wholly ceased, in his lodgings
at Barn-Elms, as later on Ms Crown farm, he had entirely
thrown aside the politician. That " unaffected modesty and
natural freedom, easy vigour, cheerful passions, and innocent
mirth," wMch had found themselves under constraint in the
miserable squabbles of the exiled Stuarts, expanded m a
rural hfe wMch admitted the cultivation of all such qualities.
Gardemng was one of Ms staple employments ; he writes to
Evelyn from Barn-Elms, acknowledging himself his reverent
disciple, and full of gratitude for a gift of plants and seeds,
and of curiosity respecting the success of some which he had
already set. At Barn-Elms the last two books of his
didactic Latin poem on plants were composed. They
testify to his study of the botanical characteristics of the
neighbourhood. A modest letter to Dr. Busby, cMef of ah
schoolmasters that ever were, accompanying a presentation
copy of Ms poem, has been preserved by Nichols, the
antiquarian. Poetry, which he had never intended, in all
Ms schemes for the future, to abandon, he now made
" together with himself," says his friend, " an anchorite dedi
cated to drive evil spirits from the human heart." His

Abraham Cowley. 73

solitude contmued to be crowded with silent aspirations after
literary renown. Then were produced the delightful essays,
which we can well believe to have been real expressions of
" Ms thoughts on the point of Ms retirement," though they
appear to be fully as much designed to persuade himself as
others of the charms of isolation. He had meant, though
they were never sufficiently completed to admit of such a
form, to dedicate them to his early patron Lord St. Albans,
who appears, from what Sprat says, to have felt displeasure
at the poet's retirement. Doubtless the "eminent and
¦celebrated Mr. Cowley" was an ornament in those days of
Maecenases even to Jermyn's household, and the lease of the
Crown farm may have been intended as a pledge and retainer
rather than a reward for the past. The beauties of prose
and verse are happily united in these compositions. They
oontam none of the sketches of society wMch pervade the
Spectator and Tatler ; none of their wit and humour. But
gardens with green pastures, and solitude, are described with
an exqMsite grace, and over all meanders a transparent
current of pure sentiment.
Another large design, which at intervals occupied his
attention, was a history of style, wMch Sprat and Clifford
and others of his admirers had persuaded him to undertake.
He meditated also a general analysis and review of the
-origmal principles of the primitive Church, as they might be
¦gathered from its records of the first four or five centuries.
His wish was as well to satisfy Ms own mind, and that of his
¦old companions in exile, of the truthfulness of Anglican
¦doctrines, as to vmdicate their sincerity in professing them,
which their connection with Queen Henrietta had caused to
be suspected. The plan was too vast for his learning or
leisure, and was never prosecuted. In preparation for the
history of style, some rough characters of ancient and modern
authors were drawn up, but never fitted together. Literary
ambition was as capacious in him as in Gray and Coleridge.
All three had the academical development of literary curiosity,
uncorrected by the feeling of what is practicable. All
h 2

74 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.

exhibit the same largeness of literary aspiration. The entries
of their schemes read like the catalogue of the labours of a
hterary society. Programmes of huge out-of-the-way Mstories
are scattered up and down their correspondence and memor
anda. Chams of philosophy were to be constructed to link
together sequestered settlements lately reclaimed from the
backwoods of metaphysics. Whenever it seemed to them
that the student has to search for himself a dozen works,
or infer a principle from a hundred scattered instances, an
obligation appeared to lie upon them to compose a book,
Cowley was not satisfied that a scholar should be left to learn
from Demosthenes and Cicero themselves the secret of their
eloquence. In hke manner Coleridge designed an epic on
Titus's capture of Jerusalem, because it ought to be done ; a
score of dramas merely to fill up the void in Shakespeare's
national scenes illustrative of English history; and for the
same reason a gigantic corpus of philosophy or register of
every possible dogma or shade of a dogma wMch could find
birth in a German mind.
Cowley's hterary cravings were not likely to diminish on
his removal to the deeper solitude of Chertsey, though they
were counterbalanced by the cares of his farm, and Ms
taste for natural philosophy. The latter was an abiding
love, as compatible with Ms poetry as was the pursuit of
medicine with Akenside's very inferior but not very dis
similar muse. He did not find all the leisure for it wMch
he had expected, though now in the position relative to-
London, which he had designed for his philosophical College.
But farming was a more anxious pursuit than gardening, and
making a living out of a leasehold estate, let at however low
a rental, was not the same as having a foundation of £4,000'
a year to fall back upon. Sickness also interfered with his
plans, though it did not efface them, or make him miserable.
Probably in disgust at Ms reception at Court and on the
stage, he had been in too great haste to quit London, and
consequently did not select his place of residence with sufficient
caution. The three Thames villages in which he took up his

Abraham ' Cowley. 75

abode successively were all more or less unhealthy from damp.
He lived at Barn-Elms, whither he removed from Battersea,
near the old manor-house. A neighbouring villa became
famous later as the residence of Jacob Tonson, and the resort
of the Kit-Cat Club. The manor belonged, by the gift of King
Athelstan, to the canons of St. Paul's ; but by compulsion, as
was her custom, Queen Elizabeth had extorted a lease from
the chapter. By her it was assigned to her sagacious councillor,
Francis Walsmgham ; and there he had the expensive honour
of entertaining her and the Court. From him it devolved
upon the Earl of Essex, in right of his wife, Walsingham's
daughter, the widow of Sir PMlip Sidney. Mulberry-trees,
wMch love old country seats, still bear witness to the times
of Walsingham; the more modern traces of Cowley long
since disappeared. Rich meadows spread about it, and the
river glistens near at hand, overshadowed by the tall elms
which gave the name. Beneath them was a fashionable
promenade, where Pepys loved, on a summer evening, as he
often recounts, to display Ms newest and gayest plumage to
the admiring and admired company. Cowley must have often
thus caught, not so unwillingly, an echo from the town he
professed to have abandoned for ever. " Barn -Elms no
longer has," wrote Lysons, "the reputation of being damp
and marshy." In Cowley's time the place had it with reason.
He was prostrated by a bad fever, from the effects of which
Ms constitution never entirely recovered, though he soon
resumed Ms old pursmts after it, and put the last touches
to Ms poem. His position at Chertsey, still by the Thames,
was not immaculate, though healtMer. The Porch House
attached to his farm is shown, with a verse from Pope's
* Windsor Forest,' shghtly modified, inscribed over the door : —
" Here the last accents flowed from Gowley's tongue."
It was just within the town, but surrounded with ample
gardens, and skirted by a brook, with St. Anne's steep
declivities rising at a httle distance. There, not yet far
advanced into middle age, he determined to settle himself

76 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.

for good. He had abjured the town ; but he was always glad
to receive Ms old friends, and speedily made new among his
neighbours. Many interesting facts might have been learnt from letters
passing between him and his friends, had not Sprat's and
Clifford's scruples about the propriety of publishing composi
tions designed for those only to whom they were addressed,
led them to suppress the entire correspondence. Wliether the
letters were destroyed or only secreted, is still a curious
question. The reverence for documents containing precious
information, though, in the opinion of the depositary, unsMt-
able for publication, allows a hope that they may be lying
concealed among old family archives either of Sprat or
Chfford. An antiquary might be rewarded who endeavoured
to clear up the problem. The fashion has been to bewail oe
ridicule Cowley's resolution to retire from London, as though
it had resulted from disappointment. He has so long occupied
the poet's reserved niche among the unrequited great, along
with princes reduced to merchants, schoolmasters, or market-
gardeners, premiers made into graziers, and court beauties
into lady abbesses, that it would be rather perplexing to have
to find another bard of fame for the vacant post, or a proper
station for the late occupant, high enough, yet properly
sequestered from the vulgar necessity of being read. As " the
melancholy Cowley," he is always sufficiently before the eye
of the hterary public to satisfy the requisitions of his celebrity
in Ms own age. He is dismissed with a well-turned phrase, and
people suppose they know all about him, without having to
gauge his actual merit, in order to rank him suitably. It
might be otherwise, if the conscience of the student were
burdened with a " celebrated," a " most incomparable " Mr".
Cowley, and obliged to give reasons for adoption of the
epithets handed down from a former generation. Yet no
authority exists for asserting that he was a disappointed man.
The three authentic bodies of evidence as to Mm are Sprat's
Life, and Evelyn's and Pepys's invaluable Diaries. The
Bishop says, " his retirement suited his mind better than his

Abraham Cowley. 77

body;" that is, he was happy and sickly. Evelyn and
Pepys speak of Ms fame as pre-eminent; and the former
refers to his life with invariable respect, but nothing like
pity. In Spence's amusing but untrustworthy colloquies of
Pope and his friends, his disappointment in love is mentioned,
and consequent inclination to be, in each remove, " farther
and farther from town." A blighted lover, if he ever were
that, is not identical with a soured courtier. His own poems
and essays show no feehng that his dreams of rustic retire
ment had been premature. All the mdications, even when
he had qmtted the Court, are of a contrary sentiment. The
one basis of the epithet, is his application of it twice to him
self in the ' Complamt,' a poem written simply to reproach
the failure of the Court to reward his long fidelity, and com-
prismg no reference to a country hfe, on which, at least since
the Restoration, he had not yet entered, On this slender
evidence he has been converted into a proverb, and a warning
to all who happen to think the charms of a villa in the
country exceed those of a house in town. One of his few
extant letters, on personal matters, that to Sprat in May
1665, has been thought to confirm the popular report of
his dejection in his suburban retreat. Surely, the cata
logue of ills in tMs epistle was compiled in sport, and by a
very cheerful mind. The sorrows of the amateur farmer
over trespassing cattle, and the rest, cannot have been very
deeply seated to disperse in a moment at the prospect of
a ramble over the slopes of St. Anne's Hill.
Agricultural perplexities at all events are known not
to have clouded Ms apparent serenity, or to have hindered
Ms enjoyment of local society. His ailments in Ms retreat
were, as his friend lamented, physical and not mental. His
constitution had been impaired by his sickness at Barn-Elms.
This was succeeded, on his removal to Chertsey, by another
illness of some months' duration. All warnings he appears
to have neglected, and to have continued his usual way of life.
Perhaps he was tempted by his new situation and prospects
to imprudent exertions. Staying out late with his reapers he

78 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.

brought on a stoppage in the breast and throat. In spite of
his medical training he treated the malady as no more than
a cold. It was thus suffered to increase, till it resisted all
remedies, and resulted in Ms death, at the age of forty-nine,
after a fortnight's illness. Pope's peevish memory retained
a story of the occasion of the death of a different com
plexion, and probably untrue. He declares that Cowley,
with Sprat, then on a visit to him, went to visit a neigh
bour, who would not let them go till evening. The two
friends set out, bewildered by the country lanes and the
claret, till they irrecoverably lost their way, and were com
pelled to pass the night in a ditch ; whence the poet's cold
and mortal disorder. We are told that the parish still talks
of the " drunken Dean Sprat." At any rate, Sprat's fair fame
may be exonerated. Cowley, in the letter to Sprat, to wMch I
have alluded already, speaks of a convivial country neighbour
as " the Dean." Pope, or his informant, would be unaware of
the nickname ; and having heard some local gossip that the
poet died from a complaint contracted by accidental exposure
to the night air, might suppose Sprat to have been the " drunken
Dean," though not appointed to his deanery till 1683.
Whatever the precise circumstances in which the fatal
cold was caught, its issue was bewailed as a national calamity.
It cut short a bright career. At a selfish, frivolous Court
it excited something hke sorrow. The Court indeed owed
Mm funeral honours ; it had spoilt an immortal poet. The
Duke of Buckingham reared his monument in Poets' Corner ;
Sprat composed his epitaph, and Denham his elegy. Nobles
attended his bier on its passage down the river to the
Abbey, — " Tears the river shed,
When the sad pomp along its banks was led."
King Charles passed on him the eulogium that " Mr. Cowley
had not left a better man behind him in England." His fame
and authority had bloomed and ripened early. He had been
passed over in the distribution of honours, and abused in the
theatre ; yet it was assumed by all that he had been and

Abraham Cowley. 79

was at the head of contemporary literature. Part of this
exalted praise may be ascribed to his gentle disposition,
wMch, as it prevented Mm generally from arrogating prece
dence, saved Mm from exposure to the worst violence of
envy. He was rather a centre for literary men to group
themselves round than their captain. Neither the man nor
his works provoked attack. Though he invented new metres
and experimented in rhythm, men, while their ear was
caught by novelty of sound, heard no thoughts of a kind
to offend their conservatism. Sprat declares that "his
rough verse was his choice, not Ms fault," that he affected
variety to divert men's minds. It is no great merit in a
poet to hunt after variety in this way. But it helps and
explains both the subsequent neglect, and also his favour with
Ms contemporaries. He allowed no affectation, the Bishop
tells us, in his language ; that is to say, " he neither went
before nor came after the use of the age." He forsook the
conversation, but never the diction, of the city and Court.
Though Sidney's it might be, this was not Shakespeare's and
Milton's way of avoiding affectation. They discovered how
to speak in the language of the nation, not of any section of
it. Good society was not to them the nation as to language
any more than as to life and manners. For Cowley, not
more from the aristocratic tone then prevalent, than from
the Puritan assumption of mdifference to such thmgs, the
whole national taste for literature was absorbed within the
narrow boundary of the Court and aristocracy. They might
have understood a poet speaking to the whole nation, of
which they were a part; they appreciated him with far
greater zest, and he lost few readers or admirers, because he
addressed himself to their class habits and sentiments in
their own everyday language. Cowley has become for us
not equally antiquated with Waller, because mental greatness
and want of exclusive sympathy with his party and the
Court prevented Mm from reflecting their tone alone. But
Ms general-reflection of the fashion of his day explains his
burning popularity then as compared with present neglect.

80 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
The quahties wMch caused Cowley to be worsliipped have
proved a bar to his posthumous fame. He had attributes
which must otherwise have secured Mm permanent favour.
He whom Milton, notwithstanding party hostihties, ranked
with Spenser and Shakespeare, in the first rank of English
poets, whom Rochester, chief of wits and courtiers, made the
pure gold standard to try base poetry by, whom the jealousy
of Pope allowed to be a poet with all Ms faults, a seventeenth-
century writer, lastly, whose works ran through ten editions
in twenty years, must have had solid claims to admiration.
He has no pathos, and little of the largeness of conception
fitted for the wide canvas of an epic ; his rhythm is wanting in
subtlety and glow ; but in his verse we find ingenuity of fancy,
depth of thought, and an astonisMng earnestness of intellectual
fervour, coloured with passion. His variety is inexhaustible.
As an epic poet his contemporaries admired Mm, though we
cannot ; now as then Ms lofty rank in the neighbouring class
of solemn didactic bards is not to be disputed. Thence he
suddenly passes on almost to the splendour of Pindar in
poetic narrative. His master could scarcely have improved
on the tale of the infancy of Hercules. Now he soars upwards,
high as ever poet mounted, in his noble elegies on Crashaw,
Hervey, Lord Balcarres, and Vandyck; then off he flutters
into the brisk vivacity of the ' Chronicle.' Nothing is more
Anacreontic in Anacreon than the song, still a favourite, ' To-
a Grasshopper,' and that to drinking, ' Come Man of Morals.'
Waller has no prettier stramed conceit than the verses ' On a
Lady tiring herself.' It would be hard to instance a freer or
more splendid outburst of fancy than the poem ' In the chair
made out of Relicks of Sir Francis Drake's SMp.'.- His trans
lations of congenial passages are elegant and spirited ; those
from Pindar are often something more. When he met with
sMtable material, as an epistle of Horace, he could all but
outdo Ms original. His dainty rendering of the ode to Pyrrha
is superior to Milton's. But perhaps the neutral territory
between poetry and philosophy, tinted with cross lights from
fancy and from reason, is more peculiarly his own. Bacoa

Abraham Cowley. 81

shines on the one side of the boundary line, Cowley on the
other. Each catches the reflection of a ray from the opposite
star. The Novum Organum appears to suggest the ode ' To the
Royal Society.' That in its turn interprets in poetry thoughts
which were verse disembodied in the mind of the reformer
of physical science. Inferior as is Cowley to Wordsworth as
an original thinker, he had an extraordinary and almost an
unique faculty for inspiring Ms imagination with grand
philosophical ideas not his own. He is not so much a meta
physical or philosophical poet, as the poet of science and
pliilosophers. I have more than once referred to that famous
ode 'To the Royal Society.' Men when they hear it seem to
recognise it, though they never read it before ; it rings through
our literature. In those to Hobbes and Scarborough and
Harvey, and in the Hymn to Light, are lines equally grand,
though fewer. They cry shame upon our neglect. Any reader
who is sceptical has but to study Cowley as a whole and not
in fragments, and his conversion is certain. He may com
mence by despising Cowley's contemporaries for worshipping
his genius ; he will end by blushing for the modern desertion
of the shrine.
It is good now and then to take the muster of extinct
literary luminaries, and reqMre an account of their former
brightness and present obscurity. At first we see all as through
a haze of prejudices from time and circumstances. Gradually
the qmvering lines and bars, through which the mind dazzled
by the novelty surveyed the scene, dissolve away ; we begm
to discover that the beauties wMch our forefathers saw were
happily not all imaginary. If a past age had been so grossly
deceived, we might well doubt the stability of our own esti
mate of modern genius. It is reassuring, while we feel in accord
with our own leaders of thought, to be able to understand why
previous generations felt in sympathy with theirs ; to perceive
that genius is not mere fashion ; that the great in their various
degrees are always great, though not always famous.

82 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.

MATTHEW PRIOR.

Very few years separate Cowley and Prior ; they are an age
apart in the characters they played, and the temper in which
they played them. Both were of humble extraction and rose to
high renown. They were scholars of the same Royal school.
Both were poets, and eminent poets, though of different
degrees of distinction. Both were employed in serious public
business, though their comparative importance was there
reversed. Literature was for both the ladder by wMch they
climbed ; and neither ever disdained its services. Yet, amidst
a multitude of points of resemblance in circumstances, the
general impression the two careers produce is of utter
dissimilarity. It was not only that the men were different;
their periods were more different still, and emphasised their
varying tendencies. Cowley in literary history stands, though
on the verge, within the period when the literary profession
was a profession of dependence on the doles of patrons, when
men of letters solicited, and did not make a maintenance.
Prior's lot was cast in times when literature was begmnmg to
be acknowledged as essential a constituent of social organisa
tion as law, physic, and divinity. The writer could not be
dispensed with; and he exacted his wages in what coin he
would. His commercial value had risen with his new utility.
Literature, not in one form alone or another, but as a whole,
was growing into a necessary vehicle of public opinion, to be
measured by general standards, and to be employed, with its
professors, for general public purposes. That is to say,
Matthew Prior happened to be born one of the moderns
and not one of the ancients.

Matthew Prior. 83
Two periods may be contiguous, yet one appear within the
verge of ancient, the other of modern history. Even in those
times which must be called by a common name modern, one
epoch impresses us with a feeling of the closest affinity and
analogy ; we can understand the passions and point of view
of its chief characters, and instinctively penetrate to the
springs of their conduct ; when we survey the list of events
occurring, it may be, but a single reign before, we grope
about in a kind of darkness. We hear party names and party
cries, and we know that the objects for which these factions
were striving, are the same as those which roused the desires
and regrets of our own fathers. The people which assumed
the appellations, and strove so angrily for the privileges and
rights, is to us altogether foreign. Thus, as we ascend in
English history from the reign of Henry VIII. to that
of his father, a sense of isolation in a strange land and
people comes over us. Bosworth field, and princes smothered
in the Tower, appear legends of the Dark Ages beside
the Reformers, and Hugh Latimer preaching at Paul's
Cross. We pass forward, through the reigns of Edward, Mary,
and Ehzabeth, into the epoch of the Stuarts, and start to find
the scene again changed, though many of the actors, the
Bacons, Cokes, Cecils, and Raleighs may be the same. It
is a new departure. When we compare men and tilings,
the one era seems ancient, the other modern history. The
same periods will appear modern or ancient according to
the presence or absence throughout them of particular
characteristics which happen for the time to be commanding
the mquirer's attention. In one sense, all on that side of
Constantine is ancient, and all on this is modern history.
In another the ecclesiastical revolution of the sixteenth
century draws the boundary line. In a third, for England,
the constitutional conclusions of the first half of the seven
teenth, make the age of the Pyms and Hampdens ours also,
and all before it antiquity. Yet the division even then
has not been carried far enough. The age of the Star

84 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.

Chamber, and " ex officio " oaths, of monopohes of soap, and
compulsory kmghthoods, scandalum magnatum, and sales of
peerages, cropped ears, and Harrington's Oceana, is to us
unnatural and alien. We know that the men of that age
fought for the liberty which we now enjoy, and we recognise
at a general election some of the arguments which Pym and
Hampden first made watchwords. The private life and
manners of the heroes of our political reformation are
"black-letter to us. They seem as unreal as the descrip
tions of men and women in historical novels. We cannot
imagine a Falkland or a Strafford walking the streets of
London, or an Aston and a Wilmot at Aldershot Camp.
Between West-end dinner parties, and the rioting of Royalists
in the Strand or Whitehall, or the debates of the Long
Parliament, and the harangues of our modern House of
¦Commons, yawns the same impassable gulf as between the
dark countenances frowning from the canvases of Vandyck,
or Lely's beauties, and a miniature by Ross, or the portraits
-of Lawrence.
It was reserved for another reign and generation to roll
back these heavy folds of the curtain still stretched between
us and our ancestors. The Revolution of 1689 did not
reform the working of our Constitution alone, it changed
manners. It was not achieved by the energy of one class
exerted agamst another class, as had been that accomplished
by the men of 1642. Its operations were not confined to the
¦atmosphere of high politics which the majority of a nation
scarcely breathe. They were attained, equally, by the
dexterity of statesmen, and by the passive resistance to
oppression of the ranks which had cowered beneath the
horrors of the Bloody Assizes. Freedom of opimon was the
reward of Nonconformists for having detected beMnd the
mask of an occasional lemty the persecutions of the High
Commission Court, and the Corporation and Conventicle
Acts. The great nobles had been at the head of the move
ment ; the masses, which followed and approved, or murmured,
-gave the moral weight and momentum indispensable for

Matthew Prior. 85

¦success. Feudal lords were no more ; influence, rather than
privileges, belonged to the order. Never had pubhc opinion,
in the wide sense of the term, been appealed to more con
sistently or fully. When the object had been attained, and
the succession to the throne changed, as a guarantee that
the policy most antagonistic to the old would be carried
out, the battle still raged. Every inch of ground had to be
defended by the strength of half the confirmed partisans
in the kingdom against the attacks of the other half.
No period is so favourable to the approximation of classes,
as one in which known and recognised chiefs have led a
movement, but by the choice and election of the people.
Every feature, mental or even physical, every little peculiarity
in manner or conduct belonging to the leaders, Whig or
Tory, was marked. The eccentricities of caste, which pre
vail when an order, is so separated and bound up in itself,
"that each member is sure of his position, and can, in the
wantonness of impunity, transgress all established rules, that
audacious trampling upon decency which the annals of
¦Charles II.'s reign lavishly display, subsided beneath the
inqmsitorial censorship of public opinion under Wilham and
Anne, and the biting sarcasms of the pen. Wharton was, at
last, decent, though as finished a profligate as ever. The
notorious Buckhurst, of the crew of Sedley and Rochester,
became, in the latter scenes of his life, a legitimate subject for
gratitude and odes, under the name of the Earl of Dorset, -the
protector of literature. The aristocracy, as candidates for
the popular leadership, were forced by dread of antagonists
¦ever in the field, and ready to seize on some occasion for
decrying them, to submit themselves to the decorous rules of
society. They were able to remain representatives of the
nation, on condition that they adopted the fashions and ways
of thinking with wMch their constituents could sympatliise.
Villiers might have still, in this generation, been the hope
and chosen leader of the Puritans, but he must have assumed
their demeanour to qualify himself. A reign earlier, Harley
"would not have deemed himself obliged as head of the Tories,

86 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
to wear the guise of a High Churchman, nor St. John to
pretend to be a Christian.
Much of tMs result had been effected by the efforts and
vigour of the writers whom the Revolution brought forth armed
in all the panoply of satire and invective. From the Court
of the Restoration they had imbibed social ease and polish,
The Revolution changed the aim and the form of their efforts,
while it was the means of elevating their profession. They
ceased to amuse society by ridiculing it in comedy or bur
lesquing it in the rant of tragedies with plots laid in Asia.
Their arms were keen satire, whether in prose or verse,
levelled agamst the blemishes of prominent champions.
They did not attack vaguely and uncertainly whole classes ;
for the dart would often have flown wide, and Mt a friend.
The Revolution had initiated no class-war. Its reproach, on
the contrary, is, that its contests were mere battles of factions,
each under leaders of the same condition and rank. Indivi
dual defects in the opposite chieftains were the stock-in-trade
of authors ; to know the vulnerable points they were obhged
to live in the same circles, and affect the same usages. No
longer were they mere hirelings, scribbling savage libels m
taverns for the eleemosynary gmnea of a noble. They wrote
as partisans, as themselves personally interested in the event
of the struggle. They did not simply draw the outline, and
leave their employers to embelhsh it with point and person
ality. A fee was not that for which they looked as their pay
and reward. Every student of Swift remembers the bitter
ness with which he repudiated a gift of money from Harley.
They claimed a share in the division of the booty when
embassies and departments were to be filled up.
If such were the duties and rank of writers in tMs age,
it might naturally be anticipated that, the more furious
and doubtful the contention, the more magnificent would be
the recompense to the cMef agents and instruments m the
strife. More peculiar claims would they have, who rose to
gratify the ever ready demand, when the issue of the struggle
of parties was as yet uncertain. That palmy condition of

Matthew Prior. 87

authors is the prominent feature in this exceptional epoch.
Under Charles II. literature flourished. A legion of poets
lived on the taste for dramatic exMbitions and the nauseous
flattery of dedications, with which the eminent person
ages of the day were fed. There was a " wits' coffee
house" then, as later; and courtiers, and men of fashion,
loved to throng the winter table, or summer balcony, where
sat enthroned the king, John Dryden. They dined at the
tavern with authors : they gossiped with them at the coffee
house; on occasion, they adjourned in their company, from
the long-protracted debauch to break windows and worry
watchmen. But tMs familiarity had been all on one side.
Writers, who in pubhc were bosom companions, had found
often the great man's doors rigidly closed against the suitor
for the customary acknowledgment of an adulatory inscrip
tion on the frontispiece of the last new poem. Suddenly,
and to the manifest surprise of some among them, they found
themselves elevated, by the novel relations of the Revolu
tion, and the personal tone of parties in that period, into
custodians of the most tremendous political engine. Cadets
of noble families, who would, under the old state of things,
have begun by being courtiers and companions of royal follies,
now inaugurated their career with a dash at literary fame.
Charles Montague, grandson of Lord Manchester, had no
mean title to promotion at the Court of a liberal and revolu
tionary monarch. He challenged and proved his claim to
favour there, and in Parliament, by winning first the glory
of a successful satirist. Prior, the son of a joiner and nephew
of a butcher, would have been, in different circumstances, as
much, if not, perhaps, something more of a wit ; Ms name had,
most undoubtedly, unless for exigencies flowing from the
events of 1689, never been connected with a peace, which is
one of the landmarks of politics, and with the fate of the two
illustrious statesmen, whose real character is yet a problem.
Prior is as consummate a representative of this phase and
order of things as it is possible to find. Apparently he
was not designed by nature or tastes for a professional states-
i

88 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.

man, as was Montague. As a writer, he had not genius, like
Addison's, to compel the world to accept as truths of human
nature the humours of a special period. Yet, by tempering
literature with politics, and politics with literature, he made
a high reputation among his contemporaries, and won lofty
official rank. By the mere weight of the frequent repetition
of his name, in one relation or another, in the records of the
period when he flourished, his fame, as a diplomatist and
poet, has descended to an age which recollects little of the
circumstances of his negotiations, and not much more, in
reality, of Ms muse. The creation of a considerable reputa
tion is never without an interest of its own. No effect can
be without a cause. Men may praise something which
contains not a germ or spark of what is really praiseworthy ;
they never praise by accident. Either in the object of their
laudations, or in themselves and their circumstances, is to be
found the explanation of the halo which surrounds some
names. It is often necessary to recollect this in contemplat
ing the life of Prior. At first, the humble attendant of wits,
and the patrons of wits ; then the college contemporary of a
man destined to be the most powerful agent in carrying out
the spirit of the Revolution ; renowned for a piece of humour
which carried the coffee-houses triumphantly over to the
Liberal side ; an active and favoured cooperator in every
great scene of William's foreign policy, while not less in
fluential in furthering it as a co-founder and luminary of the
Whig committee of wit, the Kit-Cat Club ; then, a seceder from
the standard he had long followed, but not altogether, even
now, alienated from his old companions, nor ever visited by
them with revilings and hatred as an apostate ; naturally,
among his new friends, assuming the same position as among
his former connections ; always associated with, never
leading, any prime movement of policy; though assisting
enemies of its spirit, still negotiating on the principles of the
Revolution, and not of the previous period ; a chosen com
panion and equal intimate of the master minds of his new
side ; in the crisis of Ms disgrace, and the fall of Ms chiefs,

Matthew Prior. 89

not condemned to a subordinate's ignoble punishment, neglect
and obscurity, but conspicuous by examinations before secret
committees, and imprisonment by the Commons ; lastly,
when at length released, though excluded from the profession
of politics, the idol, as a poet, of society — he affords, in his
history, a complete epitome of his times. For his tastes and
conduct he would have been a good representative of the
old ; he is, in his fortunes, a better illustration of the new
temper of the age, with its suspension of caste distinctions,
and its appeals to the nation at large by arguments drawn
from the scandal of the drawing-room, than either Montague,
with his historic name and high talents for finance, in an age
when finance was government ; or Addison, with his exquisite
taste, wMch must have, m any age, elevated its possessor above
the masses ; or Swift, with his keen political perceptions, and
constitutional exuberance of controversial venom, in an epoch
of personal and party rivalry.
Prior had no family claims, nor sufficiently manifest am
bitious propensities to excite the envy and jealousy of the
great houses which had effected the expulsion of the Stuarts,
and claimed the benefit of that exploit. But, beside negative
qualifications, the business-like tastes he possessed contributed
materially to Ms advancement. They were just enough to
hinder him from being a clog on serious hours ; they proved
a most important accession to the utility of a compamon in
days when affairs of State were discussed over tokay, and
the capacity to entertain a Queen or her waiting- women at
the tea-table was an essential gift in a politician. Business
and the pleasures of life were in that brilhantly artificial
portion of our history curiously intermingled. The combi
nation in Prior's disposition of an inclination for pleasure
with bureaucracy made Mm an efficient agent throughout
it. The aristocracy wMch had expelled the old dynasty
asserted its title to be the instrument in developing the new
system. The sovereign no longer was the head and source of
all political action. William and Anne had been parties to
the conspiracy. On its success they shared in its fruits.
I 2

90 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
But they had been accessaries only, not the designers, con
federates rather than patrons. As the relative power of the
two main factions in the State rose and fell, the monarcli
gave hi his or her adhesion to the conqueror. William natu
rally had been a member of the great Whig junto ; his sister-
in-law, through life, manifested a timid but persistent bias
to the side of the Tory and Church of England confederacy ;
yet, with all the feehngs and tastes of their several natures
interested and bound up with one party or the other, we find
each, in turn, compelled to have recourse to that which had
demonstrated its superiority for the time in the dubious
struggle. The nation in the name of which the battle was
being fought, which was the ultimate arbiter, did not claim
to appomt demagogues from the. masses as defenders of the
popular standard; it selected from the limited aristocratic
caste. The administration of affairs continued to be a
monopoly vested in a Court, though not dependent on the
sovereign, and all government to be an incongruous medley
of politics and pleasure.
Prior's period is enveloped in a bright confusion of
personal love and hatred, intrigues at home and abroad,
national alliances cemented by presents of strong liquors and
champagne, liable to be dissolved and interrupted by a fire in
an ambassador's house, or the abduction by a Popish Countess
of her Protestant son. In reading the records of the time,
we might imagine ourselves engaged with the Court of
Charles II. or the Orleans Regency, till the casual mention of
the " Crisis," or some appeal to the people against the efforts
of an Opposition hourly gaining ground,' drives home to our
recollection the fact that we are still in the purlieus of that
prodigy, the popular Revolution of 1689. The powers of
Prior were drawn out, and turned to account by the pre
disposing influences of the reigns of William and Anne.
His wit and poetry were political weapons, when vers dc
societe were an important part of the macliinery of states
manship, when Ministers of State roamed about to find a bard
to celebrate a battle, and a Lord Treasurer could win popu-

Matthew Prior. 91

larity by parading Ms white staff through a crowd of admiring
courtiers to compliment no greater a versifier than the amiable
and ingenious Parnell. As a diplomatist Prior was criticised
by Sir Robert Walpole, perhaps rather harshly ; for Walpole
dishked men of letters who took upon themselves the style
of politicians. It was fortunate for him that circumstances
required not so much a master-mind, as an obedient and
industrious secretary and mouthpiece, the popular name
and manners of a poet, rather than an inventive politician.
English diplomacy was almost the creation of his age,
and in diplomacy he found the freest scope for Ms abili
ties. The deeper and more subtle mysteries of negotiation
were beyond Mm, but he was never without chiefs to whom
the conduct of these fell, who would hardly have suffered
Mm to take the initiative, had he felt the desire. William
notoriously was his own foreign minister. The mind alone
which had designed it could hold the threads and clues of a
complicated net-work of plans embracing the whole of
Europe. The peace of Utrecht again was too delicate a matter
to be entrusted to the casual intuitions of some ingenious
-envoy; nor would the pride or the vanity of Bolingbroke
have brooked mtermeddling with the mazes of his compre
hensive scheme. The indifference of intellectual capacity in
Prior's character, rather than its many-sidedness, explains,
not the contimiity of Ms employments only, but also his
peculiar fortune in being the point of contact for competing
coteries. All projects of ambition and pleasure were then
much more concentrated than at present, and drawn into a
smaller and more contracted space; but he had a peculiar
facihty and coolness of temperament, which connected him at
different times with combinations the most dissimilar or even
mutually repulsive.
For one so prominent and active, remarkably little is to
be learnt of what is personal to himself. The details of his
life are but his relations to the history of his time and its
most illustrious characters. The demand for anecdotes of a
celebrated man's boyhood often produces the supply. But

92 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
the school reminiscences of Prior are meagre. Though he
was a contemporary at Westminster of Montague, with whom
his name was hereafter to be closely associated, whose powers,
though with the same component elements of a taste for
poetry and for pohtics, were weak and strong exactly in the
converse proportion, the grandson of a peer and the nephew of
the butcher and vintner were not school friends. Their ac
quaintance was strengthened at Cambridge, through the medium
of another Old Westminster, Stepney, called by courtesy a
poet, and made into one of those classics who are never read,
by his somewhat contemptuous admittance among Johnson's
famous biographies. At school Prior had been fortunate in
his master, Dr. Busby, whose pupils have procured for him
an honorary place in any history of English poetry. We are
told that he distinguished himself Mghly. But he was pre^
maturely withdrawn to be apprenticed to his uncle at Charing
Cross. To have passed through College at Westmmster was
in those days an important advantage to an ambitious youth ;
for the " Challenges," a competition, now, the Minor as well
as the Major, become a bygone memory, in which each lower
candidate turned examiner of Ms rivals in his turn, were then
a fasliionable spectacle. According to the pohtics of the head
master for the time being, or the accident of political or family
relationships to the competitors, party leaders, influential
peers, and prelates, thronged the antique schoolroom. We
read in Bolingbroke's correspondence of his attendance in the
plenitude of power and place, to encourage a friend's cousin,
and watch spitefully, with the old rancour of the Christ
Church and Bentley feud, the manoeuvres of the tyrannic
Master of TriMty inflexibly resolved, " pro solita, humanitate
sua," that is, writes the indignant minister, "with all the
good-breeding of a pedant," on choosing the best scholars for
Ms own college. At a later period, we have Pulteney writing
to his nephew Colman with fervour and enthusiasm on the
same subject, and expressing Ms desire to be present at the
contest. Many boys had an entrance into public life secured
to them by the acuteness and quickness they manifested

Matthew Prior.

on these occasions. Prior, who had scrambled into the school
with difficulty, had not the opportunity of signalising himself
thus. Traditions vary as to his plans and hopes on leaving.
There is a tale that he even served the office of tapster at his
uncle's house. But his talents were too useful to be lost at
this epoch of our history ; and his ingenuity and wit appear
to have been exactly suited for pushing his powers into notice
in the only way then possible.
The Earl of Dorset, and Horace, the standard of poetry and
of well-bred morals for the age, furnished very appropriately
Prior's introduction to society and fame. Lord Dorset repre
sents the Court of which he was the brightest ornament in its
light and its shades. We may at once reject his protege's
judgment of him as a writer. The song
" To all you ladies now at land,"
though not of the highest merit, or entitling its author to rank
with Alexander or William III., because he could touch it up
the night before a bloody sea-fight, is to be commended for
neatness and gaiety. According to Prior, "the manner in
which he wrote will hardly ever be equalled ; " " every one
of Ms pieces is an ingot of gold, such as wrought or beaten
thmner would shine through a whole book of any other
author." The adulation is excusable only from the extrava
gant courtesy of the age, the laudable grief of a friend writing
to a son of his dead patron, or, lastly, a prejudice in favour of
profligate wits. The panegyric of one member of the class
is balanced by allusion to the forgotten lucubrations of
another, Wilmot Earl of Rochester, as "the other prodigies
of the age." As a friend, a gentleman, and a courtier, Dorset
probably deserved the praises lavished upon his generosity
and universal affability, though frequent gusts of passion,
however short and speedily atoned for, and an uncontrollable
taste for satirising, not vice, but social faults, must have
made his temper trying, to say the least, to his associates.
But a casual allusion to the gross debaucheries and mad
follies of many years, scenes which have done most to taint

.94 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
the memories of Charles II.'s reign, as " the little violences
and mistakes of a night too gaily spent," is terrible evidence
of the radical corruptness of society, which could pardon
everything, and forget everything, when the perpetrator was
a Lord Buckhurst. His merits as a patron are less equivocal.
He seems to have possessed that instinctive apprehension
of the neighbourhood of geMus, which often beguiles friends
into the belief that he who can so skilfully estimate power
in others must be Mmself endowed with the same species
of capacity. Intimate relations to Waller, and Wycheiiey,
Dryden, Butler, and Prior, which, with the last three, were
the relations of a patron, point to no common appreciation
of intellect or ordinary keenness of discernment. To the
gratitude of Prior he is principally indebted for the pre
servation of Ms fame and the memory of his munificence.
They met at an annual dinner of the noblemen and gentry
of St. Martin's parish, held, according to custom, at the
Rummer Tavern, kept by Samuel Prior. From wine and talk
of love there had been a transition, usual in those days, to the
poet of both. A discussion arose on the exact interpreta
tion of , some inspired platitude in the Odes about the twin
pleasures. One of the company happened to recollect that a
schoolboy was in the house, the nephew of their host, whose
memory might be fresher on these points than their own.
Courtiers and authors were astonished at discovering
the delicacy and qmckness of perception of the destined
vintner in their own peculiar subject. Lord Dorset at once
recognised the lad's genius, and charged himself with his
maintenance at Cambridge and future advancement. The
determination did honour to Ms sagacity. The life of Prior
is henceforth, at home, the history of coteries, which have
made themselves niches in Mstory ; abroad, of famous treaties,
appealed to even now as articles of faith in the creed of
the balance of power, and, in many of their provisions, fresh
and lasting. At St. John's College, he soon grew into
fame as a wit of the very first rank in the then sense
of wit. Mathematics had scarcely as yet, notwithstanding

«

Matthew Prior. 95

the world-wide reputation of Sir Isaac Newton, begun to
engross the lion's share of the interests of Cambridge. Latin
verse composition was its primary occupation ; and each tenant
of the throne of letters in London counted it among the burdens
of greatness to have to peruse, or pretend it, the prolix Latin-
ity of ambitious gownsmen. Prior's good scholarship secured
Ms election as fellow of his college shortly after taking
his degree. He became a centre of that society of which, at
an earlier date, we discover many picturesque traces in the
quaint biography of Matthew Robinson. In the vacations he
and other University men might have been found pressing
round the upper table in the " Wits' Coffee-house," or the
famous summer balcony. There they listened reverentially to
their chief, "proud to dip a finger and thumb into Mr.
Dryden's snuff-box, thinking it enough to inspire them with
a true genius for poetry, and make 'em write verse as fast
as a tailor takes Ms stitches," as a carping contemporary
asserts. He appears to have been at least on repartee terms
with the great man at the date of the publication of the ' City
Mouse and Country Mouse,' apocryphal as is the anecdote,
that the veteran shed tears of annoyance and indignation at
the fact of " two young men, whom he had always treated
well, treating him so ill."
Never, indeed, had anything been welcomed with more
riotous exultation and a heartier burst of applause than this
parody of ' the Hind and the Panther.' The smartness of
the insinuations and mnuendoes so pleased and gratified the
party -rfeeling, wMch had now drowned every other sentiment,
as to insure it against cool and temperate criticism. Dryden
had already, by a proud self-assertion, and, at the same time,
by his competition, due to the narrowness of his circum
stances, with the crowd of hack-writers, roused envy and
jealousy. Now there had arisen an additional motive for rage
against him in his change of religion, and, in the partisan
fear of the admirable powers of satire and criticism, which had
worked havoc in Ms ' Absolom and AcMtophel,' among
Shaftesbury's Whigs. He has been avenged upon his over-

96 Some Verdicts of Histomj Revieived.
praised juvenile assailants by the neglect with which posterity
has chosen to visit their work. Such has always been the
case with themes of ephemeral interest, and almost in pro
portion to their temporary popularity. The ' Two Mice ' is
never republished, for it could have no readers, unless for its
historical interest. The authors were at once enrolled in the
select company of wits who were in the habit of meeting
at The Judge's Head, in Chancery Lane, the sign of the
celebrated Jacob Tonson, publisher of the maltreated ' Hind
and Panther.' This' society was the germ of the prince of
dining clubs, the Kit-Cat, more regularly established in 1700.
Originally it was a publisher's dinner and conversazione, at
which literary projects were discussed, and the first stone of
a clever epigram laid. Gradually, as the fame of its wit and
conviviality grew, peers and pohticians of the Liberal party
petitioned to be admitted, till at last, though preserving the
idea of a party of guests, with Jacob Tonson for host, it grew
into a focus of the literary and statesmanlike brilliancy of
the Whig houses. Along with its summer expeditions to the
Upper Flask, amid the distant wilds of Hampstead, it kept
its conclaves at Jacob Tonson's country house at Barn-Elms.
There it amused itself with the proud condescension of their
host, who thought himself the greatest man among them, in
taking the post of their secretary, and with his pompous
horror at the sacrilegious insolence of wild Lord Mohun, in
breaking off the gilded emblem of office from the publisher's
own sacred chair. But all this was at a later period, when
Prior was lamented as a deserter to the Tory camp. At
present it was more exclusively an association of young
authors, or genuine literary lords.
The poet's puns and bon-mots secured him a high place in
this fraternity. But there was an undercurrent of prudence
in his disposition, which made him crave some more stable
position than that, in itself no sinecure, of a man of wit and
fasMon. The times were favourable to his ambition. By the
political excitement the importance of authors had been dis
proportionately increased. The professional services of poets

Matthew Prior. 97

and satirists were required to rivet national assent to the
results which a comparatively minute body of prominent in
dividuals had achieved. All those most versed in the routine
of public business had been servants of the defeated Govern
ment, and were bound over to promote reactionary principles.
Their place had to be supplied ; and the owners of a fluent
pen were the natural reversioners. To his confessed surprise
Prior nevertheless was at first passed over. He complained
with a mixture of humour and querulousness —
" My friend Charles Montague's preferr'd ;
Nor would I have it long observ'd,
That one mouse eats while t'other's starv'd."
His murmurs were hardly justifiable. Not only had
Montague exceptional capacity for business and eloquence,
but Ms name and connections would give Mm a sure title to
notice from the ruling oligarchy. Prior, however, might be
pardoned for overlookmg the fact that the immediate event,
the publication of the satire, which led to his friend's eleva
tion, was not the sole reason. He could not help remem
bering that the co-author, who seemed in danger of ending his
days as a senior fellow, had contributed all the vivacity of
the burlesque, except what merit the preface might possess.
"Did not Hallifax write 'The Country Mouse' with Mr.
Pryor ? " asked Spence once of Lord Peterborough. " Yes,"
said Lord Peterborough, " just as if I were in a chaise with
Mr. Cheselden here, drawn by Ms fine horse, and should say,
Lord! how finely we draw this chaise." He fretted that
his right to promotion was vested, but not made payable.

His grievance was redressed through Ms friend Fleetwood
Shephard, an old courtier of Charles II., to whom two amus
ing " Conversation " poems are addressed. Shephard revived
the interest of the poet's old patron, the Earl of Dorset, in
his fortunes, and Dorset procured him an mtroduction to the
Kmg. In 1690, just three years after the publication of the
'City Mouse and Country Mouse,' he was gazetted to the
Secretaryship of Legation at the Hague.
Here beghis Ms political career. It was altogether diplo-

98 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.

matic, -though he held other offices, with nominal duties ; and
it was almost the same in its demands upon his talents
and political principles in the days of his Toryism and his
Whiggism. Fortunately for his fame the times immediately
succeeding the Revolution were as remarkable for their nego
tiations as for their wars. Then first began to be under
stood the doctrine of a balance of power. Formerly it had
only existed, as a principle, in the speculations of profound
international lawyers. The mutual fears and jealousies of
neighbouring great states had been the substitute for it in
the period following the condensation of the myriad of inde
pendencies, which, under the feudal system, had rendered
such a doctrine unnecessary. Practical statesmen had been
forced to recognise it through the insolent ambition of Louis
XIV., which made the terrors and suspicions, formerly inter
mittent, continuous. The comprehensive policy of William
of Orange gave the banded nations of Europe a chieftain and
centre, and facilitated the adoption of measures m conformity
with it. The negotiator recognised in the terms he was
instructed to ask, and the conditions the ministers of hostile
cabinets were constrained to accept, the vast and energetic mind
of his King. A sentiment of veneration for the champion of
the Whigs appears to have survived in the Secretary's mind
his defection to the Tories. He himself was no mere make
weight in these transactions. A spiteful saying of Walpole's,
and his reputation as a poet, have prejudiced posterity against
receiving him as a statesman. For no real cause men have
been led to conclude that he was an incapable diplomatist.
William, and Bolingbroke, Ms subsequent patron, were
not in the habit of choosing incompetent instruments. If
there were any merit in the local labours of the embassies in
which he was engaged, undoubtedly to the Secretary we must
assign the praise, and not to the great Revolution Lord who
might happen to be the chief figure in the pageant.
His possession of abilities for the work there can be no reason
to question ; if his name only had been wanted to give an air
of literary distinction to the Government, plenty of glittering

Matthew Prior. 99

sinecures could have been found for him. What the work
really was, and the sort therefore of talent needed, is not
so apparent. As William was his own foreign minister, so
he was, and especially in Holland, all but Ms own diplo
matist. Bolingbroke imitated Mm in this respect. It would
have been strange had it been otherwise. The rights of
nations were much more perplexed then than now ; the com
plications which had been growing more tortuous since the
feudal system, were then first being mapped out. The states
man who had conceived the plan, and who held the chart of
the track in his own mind, could alone embody the result in a
treaty. No certain rules had as yet been established to deter
mine the relations of states ; the application of them was not
the only difficulty, but the principles themselves. For envoy
a man was required shrewd enough to comprehend the bear
ing of things, and not too egotistical to communicate all to his
principal, and to obey orders implicitly. He had to be pliant
and able to adapt himself quickly to foreign customs in an
age not yet abounding in travelled experience. A reputation
for esprit was wanted to render him acceptable in foreign
society, and the art finally, to avail himself of all secret in
fluences in an age of female stratagems and finesse. The
correspondence of Prior at a later period shows how well he
fulfilled these multifarious conditions.
We have not full particulars of his conduct as a negotiator
during William's reign. We know that he answered the
expectations of his patron, and satisfied the King. Without
any impeachment of his business gifts, he appears to have
been looked upon as ornamental too, not from personal
attractions, since we are told by a friend, that he possessed
"un visage de bois," but for his sparkling wit. He figured,
accordingly, on all occasions of show and pageantry. He did
not dislike being forced to become part of a spectacle, though
he anticipated with some shame the humble condition to
which he would have subsequently to return. His move
ments were watched by all the quidnuncs at home with a
curiosity wMch must have been gratifying to the nephew of

100 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
the butcher and vintner of the Rummer, and perhaps yet
more to the fellow of St. John's. Narcissus Luttrell, in the
diary published in 1857 by the Oxford University Press,
records carefully every rumour of Ms elevation and domgs.
From Mm we learn that, after having been four years at the
Hague, attending the congress of the Anti-Gallic powers of
the West of Europe, he was appointed secretary to the King
himself. Being now regularly retained for diplomacy by
Government, he assisted at the peace of Ryswick in 1697,
and was selected for the honourable duty of bringing home
the news to the Lords of the Regency. Bonfires and bell-
ringing welcomed Mm as though he had been a conqueror.
The same year, as a reward for Ms exertions, he was gazetted
Irish Chief Secretary, but was speedily called upon to attend
Bentinck Earl of Portland, William's prime favourite, on his
mission to Paris to exchange ratifications of the treaty. With
the exception of the Duke of Bedford's mission to France, in
the last century, and that of Lord Castlemaine to the Pope, in
James the Second's reign, this was perhaps the most sumptuous
ever dispatched by our country. The occasion was important.
Not one, but a series of wars had ended. There was a
desire also to show that England, in changing its dynasty,
had not abdicated national splendour; to publish to all
Europe a manifesto of insular pride and spirit. The whole
was conducted on a scale of rude and boastful magnificence.
The starving peasants, who thronged the highways to welcome
the bearers of peace, were astonished at the droves of fat oxen
imported from home, and the French capital flowed with
English ale. The Secretary was allowed £300 for his equip
age on the occasion of the solemn entry into Paris; and
the exact number of shillings thought by the Administration
sufficient for such an official's daily expenditure is specified by
the minute philosophers of London taverns and coffee-houses.
His tact and wit recommended Mm to the same office
under Portland's successors, Vilhers Earl of Jersey, and Lord
Manchester. With his reputation for fasMon and dexterity
of repartee, combined with real apphcation, he was a most

Matthew- Prior. 101

valuable representative of England at a Court of politico-
amatory intrigues. He seems to have been gifted with a
coolness, or coldness of temper, which made him, though no
Machiavelli, a capital Secretary of Legation. The dignity of
his position, as envoy of England at that special time, and a
genuine admiration of the obstinate heroism of William's
character, of wMch the object of his mission was so material
a proof, gave an air of sincerity to his famous saying, when
paraded before Lebrun's pictures of Louis's Flemish campaign
at Versailles, that " the monuments of his master's actions
were to be seen everywhere but in his own house."
He continued to reside m France, with but two short
intervals. One was devoted to a visit to King William at
Loo, on matters connected with diplomacy. The other was
occupied by his temporary charge, in default of work for him
at Paris, of the Under-Secretary's portfolio in Lord Jersey's
office. The curious in England were very inquisitive as to the
business which could have gained for Prior admittance to the
monarch's favourite retirement, and the conference has been
considered evidence of his statesmanlike qualifications. His
second absence from Paris was rumoured to be connected with
a negotiation of marriage between himself and the dowager
Lady Falkland. Whether there were grounds for the
report does not appear. Prior, at all events, never succeeded
in contracting any advantageous alliance. He was unhappy
in his attachments. Previously he had paid his addresses,
during the leisure of a Gentleman of the Bedchamber, to Mrs.
Singer, subsequently the celebrated Mrs. Rowe. From a
Mrs. Bessie Cox, who responded more favourably, his friends
thought him fortunate in escaping, even by the last resource
of dying. He was soon summoned back to Paris from the
caresses and caprices of society in London. To be employed
at all is no disagreeable lot in life ; to be employed as was
Prior is rare good fortune. Any one should remember what
sort of mind and tastes his were, and ought to read a page of
his poetry, who feels inclined to regret that a poet's life was
frittered away in the circumlocutions of diplomacy.

102 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
Yet we must not underrate Prior's Court poetry. A poet
m office was considered indebted to the King or Ms mimsters
in so many bundles of panegyrics or condolences, just as if
he had been a salaried Laureate. But Prior laid his tribute
before the throne with a frankness and elevation of tone,
wMch showed it not to be wrung unwillingly from Mm. The
character of the King, as a general and sovereign, nqjiwith-
standing forbidding traits in his ordinary djmeahdiur, might
have inspired a less ready muse. Johnson is forced to allow,
when speaking of the Carmen Seculare of 1699, that William
was, in his public character, heroic, and that Prior may have
told the truth, when he declared that, while he praised others
out of compliance with fashion, he lauded his king from
inchnation. The poem itself is too laborious, after the manner
of odes generally, and especially those of Ms age, to be read
with pleasure now, let alone its wearisome mimicries of
Horace. Still it has some fine lines, contrasting with
William's more complete character, as he thought it, the
mixture of iron and clay in Roman heroes. He proceeds in
the vein of Dryden : —
" With justest honour be their merits drest ;
But be their failings too confest :
Their virtue, like their Tyber's flood,
Boiling its course, designed their country's good.
But oft the torrent's too impetuous speed
From the low earth tore some polluting weed ;
And with the blood of Jove there always ran
Some viler part, some tincture of the man."
The humorist and inditer of clever epigrams could rise on
occasion; yet readers may be pardoned for not searching a
poem, and that an ode, of some five or six hundred lines, for
a few dignified passages. Why the ' English Ballad on the
Taking of Namur' has not kept its popularity, it is much
harder to explain. Perhaps, as in the 'City and Country
Mouse,' the labour of hunting out the parallels in the parody
of an obsolete French poem may be the reason. At all events,
Prior's verses have an admirable freshness and animation. In
lieu of thought, there is, what is no bad substitute sometimes,

Matthew Prior. 103

true zeal for his subject. There is plenty of animation if
there is scarcely genuine poetic fire. The poem is full of
open daylight and plain sound English.
Prior's change of party is a fact of history. There is no
mystery in it which calls for explanation. He was no devotee
of pohtical purity, no constructor of theories of the Constitution
and Government. . Jhe interest of his career is its representa
tive character. SSSe simply pursued with more than ordinary
success the object of a multitude of clever men of his age.
He was not sufficiently energetic for the bar; nor could the
son and nephew of tradesmen have gained direct admission
to the Court. From Parliament, as a profession, he was
excluded by the deficiencies which unfitted Mm for Lincoln's
Inn or the Temple. But he chanced to combine a taste for
the splendour of a courtier's hfe, and abilities for the desultory
industry of bureau statesmanship. His powers, such as they
were, were well attempered, and in perfect unison. Poetry
and patronage in Ms youth were the regular and legitimate
resource for men of education, narrow means, and social
aspirations superior to their rank. Prior, therefore, became a
poet, having an ear, and an especial taste for Horace, the
hierophant of the mysteries of Court versification. Dorset
had the honour of lighting upon him for a protege. The
characteristics of Charles's reign passed away. The Court, as
a Court, no longer absorbed all the talents of the nation.
Sedley, and Buckhurst, and Wilmot could no longer affect,
with repute, to blaspheme. But the people, though not
content to go on being beaten and insulted by a gang of
young nobles, who esteemed it fashionable to play the ruffian,
retained too much of the impulse of the Restoration to refuse
to let them subside into secretaries of state and ambassadors.
Their followers became politicians with their patrons ; and
Prior, without abandoning Ms profession of a wit, grew in
time into a mmister plenipotentiary.
He took up politics as the natural bread- winning resource, in
those times, of a wit and a poet. He had no sympathy with
the fervour of either of the two religious parties. His pohtical
K

104 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
tenets were not much more clearly defined than his religious,
though he had a practical liking for the ohgarchical system
wMch succeeded the expulsion of James. The attraction
exercised upon him by some of the chief agents in that event,
had set Mm on his first literary performance, and carried
him forward along the same track. His strongest sentiment
on the side of 1689, admiration for the great qualities of
William, was of the same personal sort. But pohtical
partisansMp, grounded merely on personal dependence, not
cemented by reminiscences of personal risks and trophies in
the strife and struggles of principles, is unsteady. So it
proved in Prior's case. Suddenly, and without notice, we
find him on the opposite side: His migration occurred the
year after Ms election for East Grinstead, and his appoint
ment to the seat vacated in 1700 by Locke at the Board of
Trade. The occasion seems to have been the motion for a
Bill of Impeachment against the Privy Councillors, who had
irregularly connived at Wilham's conclusion of the Partition
Treaty. At the same time a future friend, destined, by the
baleful lustre of his genius and ambition, to blast the dawning
hopes of the Tories, Henry St. John, made himself remarked.
It has been supposed that Prior records Ms own original
dislike of that convention, in spite of the part he had taken
in it, in ' The Conversation.'
" Matthew, who knew the whole intrigue,
Ne'er much approv'd that mystic league."
But as tMs is said in the character of . a false pretender to
intimacy with the negotiator, and the next couplet —
" In the vile Utrecht treaty too,
Poor man ! he found enough to do,"
is an attack upon the triumph of Ms diplomatic career,
the contrary inference might more plausibly be drawn.
Uncharitable critics who choose to construe Ms conduct
as St. John mterpreted his subsequent intercourse with
the Whig Ministry on the fall of the Tory cabinet, will
suppose him to have been influenced now by a fear that

Matthew Prior. 105

the' mechanical share he himself had in the transaction as
secretary to the King, might involve him in the criminality.
But explanations, when we once allow the possibility of
perfidy, are endless. Jealousy of his old comrade, Charles
Montague, would be as probable as any ; only it has not
the least basis of proof to rest upon. It is best to impute Ms
secession to a mixture of motives, a little dread of the odium
waiting upon a smking party, long accumulating discontent
at the slowness of promotion, a faint conviction of the im
propriety of unconstitutional measures in politicians who had
expelled a sovereign on this plea, and, finally and chiefly, the
formation of new connections.
A vote against Somers and Montague clearly indicated
Ms mtention, but he had never sufficiently pledged him
self as a partisan to be open now to execrations as an
apostate. His present change was rather of masters than of
principles. Scarcely, in the heat, if the term can be used
of a diplomatist, of envenomed controversy, during the later
years of Queen Anne, did Prior engage himself to pras-
Revolution doctrines. For a long time he seems, notwith
standing Pope's assertion to the contrary, to have maintained
his acquaintance and cooperation with many of the sub
ordinates in the party he had left. He kept the regard of
men, who had, like himself, taken to pohtics as the proper
profession for men of intellect. Stepney, for instance, on
his death in 1707, associated Ms two opposed schoolfellows
in Ms will, bequeathing to Halifax books and a gold cup, to
the other fifty guineas. We find, a year after, in the height
of the party war, when the friends of Prior had recently been
ejected from office by a coalition of Whigs and Liberal Tories,
the ' Phaedra,' a play by the WMg Edmund Smith, brought
out with an epilogue by Mm and a prologue by Addison.
If he had changed from motives of interest, he was rightly
puMshed with a long interval of enforced leisure. He was
repulsed in 1701, when Ms new allies were in place, m an
application for the KeepersMp of the Records at WMtehall,
vacant by the death of Sir Joseph Williamson. The cir-
K 2

106 ' Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
cumstance is alluded to in Addison's answer in the Whig
Examiner to his criticism on Garth's verses. It is in
sinuated that his bitterness against the quondam Tory,
Godolphin, was not truly patriotic. Literature, and plots,
and all the trivialities of a man of fashion occupied Mm,
voluntarily or otherwise, for nine or ten years. Some of his
time was given up to the foolish dissipation of the period.
Yet he was not a notorious tavern-haunter, or a man to spend,
like Addison, whole days and mghts in a coffee-house. He
preferred privacy in his pleasures, and the character of Ms
wit was better suited for the meetings of a select club, or a
ady's drawing-room, than for the publicity of the favourite
resorts of that age. His lodgings in Duke Street, Westmin
ster, were often glorified by the presence of Addison Mmself,
and Swift and Steele, who all, at times, could merge the
accidents of political hostility in the common brotherhood of
literary genius. At some of these meetings the conspiracy of
Isaac Bickerstaffs predictions against the astrologer Partridge's
peace of mind, and belief in his own existence, conceived by
the same fiery fancy from which flashed the idea of Lilliput
and Brobdingnag, was elaborated and embellished by the
others, assisted by Rowe, not yet a Whig, and Yalden, a
consistent Tory.
Much of his leisure was passed at the houses of Lord
Dorset, Fleetwood Shephard, near Stamford, and Sir Thomas
Hanmer, at Euston. Part he spent in his rooms at St. John's,
where, no doubt, he was duly admired as a great politician
and London wit. Still, with all these varied sources of
interest, the late diplomatist repined at being without
employment. He kept Ms Commissionership of Trade,
having been confirmed in it on the accession of Anne ; but
he made it all but a sinecure. Besides, he was subject
to chronic apprehensions of poverty, though, according to
friendly testimony, totally devoid of the prudent habits by
which it might have been avoided. Rather later, responding
to an invitation to Euston, he complains, that " he does not
perceive that his fortune does any way intend to lessen Ms

Matthew Prior. 107

liberty," and commissions Hanmer to get him, not only " a
pretty nag," but also any available " Welch widow, with
a good jointure." The narrowness of his circumstances, at
the same period, appears to have made him hesitate about
dechning an offer of the secretaryship to the Bishop of
Winchester, with a land of general agency to the estates
of the see. He had weighed the matter in his own
mind, and was decided against acceptance as much by a
discovery that the income was less than what report made it,
as by a fear of compromising his prospects with a Liberal
Tory nunistry. He expresses himself vexed at the rumour
that he was to " set up High Church, and cut down all the
bishop's woods into fagots to burn dissenters."
The first cabinet of Queen Anne's reign had been formed
on Tory principles. Though many subjects had been turned
into open questions to let in the new partisans of the Duke
of Marlborough discontented with the regular Tories, it had
preserved enough of its original character to allow the ex-envoy
to hope for a fresh mission. The successes of Marlborough
left no scope for abilities so pecuharly adapted as were Prior's
for the atmosphere of the Paris and Versailles of Louis XIV.'s
reign. On the rupture among the Tories, he attached himself
more and more to the section of Harley and St. John, less
from any especial devotion to their principles, than from the
courtesies of which these leaders were prudently profuse to all
men of letters. The death of Dorset in 1706, and of Stepney
in 1707, left their friend more at hberty to follow Ms own bent.
He was not ordinarily inclmed to exult passionately in the
triumph of his friends or the fall of his opponents ; so we
must not expect songs of victory on the virtual defeat of the
prosecutors of Dr. Sacheverell. But for a moment, he ' let
Mmself be borne away by the violence of his associates, and
was one of those Tories who sympathised with the wrath of
the October Club at the lenity displayed to their foes by
Harley. When the Examiner was set up by St. John,
who at first conducted it, Prior was enrolled among the con
tributors, and signalised his accession by a contemptuous

108 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.

critique of Dr. Garth's verses to GodolpMn on the loss of his
white staff.
The genius of Prior was brought to bear upon the most
vulnerable points in the enemy's ranks by his editor, a very
complete master of all the artillery of political literature.
Notwithstanding the poet's zealous cooperation in the earlier
numbers of the Examiner, the kind of warfare does not
appear to have altogether suited Ms capacity. We miss in
Addison's answer the grace and neatness of the Spectator.
Addison was not better adapted for a hand-to-hand combat
in letters than m Parliament. His satire is obscure, and
the virulence clumsy. Prior Mmself had equal deficiencies of
a different description. He was open to attack himself, and
was too self-conscious to take up those positions from
wMch alone, m such conflicts, at some risk of personal
exposure, any mortal injury can be done to the adverse side.
He could point and wing a javelin, not " the sort of sledge
hammer retort " which Swift, with scarce an effort, would heave
at ancient friend and present foe. But he had his aptitudes
too, and they fitted the period. In the intervals of the
"dreams of cockets, and dockets, and drawbacks, and jar
gon," by which, as a Commissioner, he declared himself
to be haunted, he dressed smart sarcasms, orgamsed clubs,
and did much of the work of a Whip among the polite and
fasMonable adherents of Ms two cMefs. It was an age of
epigrams. Society was a more important element in the life
especially of politicians and authors than now. Newspapers
had not yet begun to report faithfully the heaviest and the
longest speeches for future reference, so that oratory, to be
remembered, had to be terse and pointed, rather than elaborate
and argumentative. The author had no large reading public
at his beck and call. Even in the upper classes, books were
not a necessary. A bon-mot, on the other hand, travelled
with the swiftness of every sedan chair, and made its inventor
famous where he most desired to shine. The example of
France, even the prevalence of the French language, encou
raged this taste. The sharpness of political contests, and

Matthew Prior. 109

the fusion of a man's pohtical and social life, rendered the
class of literary ability which can, embalm a party cry or
invective in a stanza invaluable.
Prior's powers as a wit were employed by Ms party, till
the policy of its leaders created fresh scope for Ms services in
diplomacy. Peace with France had been, since the Revolu
tion, a rooted sentiment of the Tory party ; and the recent
Whiggism of Marlborough, the only born general England
possessed, rendered negotiations, in the judgment of a hostile
cabinet, inevitable. The nation, however, could not bear
the thought of resigmng the fruits of an incomparable series
of victories, even wMle it murmured at the expenditure
of wMch they were the result. The equipment of a formal
embassy on a contingency was too perilous an enterprise
for an unstable cabinet. Prior received in 1711 a secret
commission to prepare the way. Unluckily the whole trans
action was bruited abroad through his detention on his return
from Paris in company with Mesnager and Gaultier by the
officious patriotism of some provincial pohticians. We can
imagme how the city of Canterbury, or Deal, wMch other
accounts represent as the scene of the incident, would triumph
at the capture at last of the celebrated Mr. Matthew Prior,
so long a suspected character, in the company of a notorious
French Abbe. Occasion for invectives as noisy against a
Tory and Popish Government would be furnished by the order
in Council for their release. The ' New Journey to Paris,' by
the Sieur de Baudrier, was composed by Swift in ridicule
of the monstrous reports to which the clandestine expedition
gave rise. The quiet demureness of the satire is excellent,
as is the picture of the airs of the pretended narrator, whom
we discover from internal evidence to have been the Enghsh
envoy's pryhig valet. The incident had, at all events, the
effect of habituating the country to the idea of peace, and it
precipitated the preliminaries.
Next to St. John, Prior was the most active and conspicuous
personage throughout these negotiations. At Ms house in
Duke Street the managers of the preliminaries met ; and he

110 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
signed the articles along with the Privy Councillors. Often,
after the business of the day was over, did the aspiring
Secretary of State resort to these same lodgings in quest of
" cold bladebone of mutton at the hour of midnight, despatched
after the drudgery of office, with much talk," and that, often,
we may suspect, not of the gravest or most statesmanlike cha
racter. The poet was named Ambassador Extraordinary, to act
at Utrecht with the Resident, Lord Strafford ; but the indigna
tion of the latter justified Swift's apprehensions, and hindered
the ratification of the nomination. He was consoled by being
selected to attend his chief and comrade, the "all-accom
plished" Secretary of State, to Paris, where he participated
in the glory of a deliverer of a harassed nation from an in
ternecine war. On his own account he was acceptable to
Louis, who doubtless had never heard of his advice how
without peril to earn the laurels of a martial kmg : —
l" Are not Boileau and Corneille paid
For panegyric writing ?
They know how heroes may be made
Without the help of fighting."
Voltaire, indeed, remarks in his ' Lettres sur les Anglais ' that
down to the time of the poet's last visit to France, Paris was
not aware that he had ever written verses of any kind. It is,
however, hard to reconcile this statement with facts.
The correspondence with Bolingbroke, on the return of the
latter to England, throws light upon Prior's character in this
the most exalted scene of his career. He was not a great
master of the art of letter-writing, but neither were Ms
immediate coevals. Queen Anne's reign was that also of
epigrams ; the next two reigns lost this secret ; we find a blunt-
ness even in Pulteney's bon-mots ; they excelled in epistles.
Nowhere can be discovered more exquisite models of this
branch of literature than in the correspondence of Pope, and of
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, both, though contemporaries of
Prior in a literal sense, belonging more properly to the era
of the Georges, of Gray, and Horace Walpole. The letters of
the famous men of Anne's reign, of Swift Mmself often, of

Matthew Prior. Ill

Bolingbroke, and Prior usually, are stiff and spoilt by classical
quotations, and stilted attempts now and then at smartness.
Then: epigrams and saymgs are pointed and as happy as can
be. The distinction is due to the varying influence of the
social element in the two epochs, and to the different objects
wMch called out and developed it. A good epigram is,
in its own way, as certain evidence of the prominence
of the social features in an age as a picturesque style in
letter-writing. Its neatness and pungency require a highly
educated audience. That is not enough by itself. The
audience must be composed of persons living so familiarly
together as at once and simultaneously to catch the intention
of an msinuation. A perfect epigramatic style implies, as
precedent to its formation, large enough an audience and
eager enough an interest in its neighbours' concerns, to reward
the pains of the wit. Such was the age of Marlborough,
Addison, Wharton, and Bolingbroke. Politics had become
sport and excitement for a number of leaders of society,
plotters m drawing-rooms as well as in cabinets. The
interests with which they coquetted were national ; the heart
of a whole people and the hfe of ministries were the strings
on wMch they played. But too many instruments and agents
were required by the demands of national and party enter
prises, to be compatible with perfect social freedom. The
entire reciprocity of sympathy and even prejudices, a sense
that the relations of writer and reader are settled once for
all, whether they be those of mutual equality, or the reverse,,
and that rank and position are recognised and fixed, all
necessary conditions of epistolary ease, were wanting, for
example, between the tradesman's son and the heir of the
St. Johns. Hence, in the letters of Prior to Bolingbroke
there is an appearance of effort in the familiarity. Only
when he gossips of common acquamtances does this vanish.
Otherwise, they are curious records of the business of the
representative of a powerful nation. They throw much
light on the real functions of a plenipotentiary in that,
age, if not in others, during the negotiations for a graat

112 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
European peace. The proofs of the dependence of the
Minister at Paris on mstructions from home on every smgle
pomt, however trivial, diminish our wonder at the elevation
of Prior to so important a station. With two short intervals,
when Bohngbroke and the Duke of Shrewsbury were at
Paris, he was in full charge. On the departure of the
Duke he assumed the pubhc character of ambassador ; never
theless, his correspondence with the Secretary of State is
filled throughout the entire period with details of petty
vexations, httle triumphs, and little duties. The letters
chiefly refer to events subsequent to Ms visit to England in
October 1712. We hear incidentally about that visit, that
stocks rose on his arrival. He went up to Cambridge to
display the plenipotentiary to Ms wondering brother-fellows.
The Master of St. John's, to show he at least was not dazzled,
let the great man stand before Ms elbow-chair. Prior, in half-
feigned indignation, indited an epigram to the effect that the
dignitary should not have Ms interest for a bishopric.
He returned to France, to be harassed with a legion of
petty perplexities. His complaints that Ms salary was
always in arrear, and trouble at the ambiguity of his position,
as envoy with full powers at one time, and at another, as
during Shrewsbury's residence in Paris, without a definite
name, though with a public commission, are distressing.
Accompanying nearly every official despatch to the Secretary
of State, is an epistle from " Matt to Harry," detailing, his
embarrassment from want of eqmpages. Now and then he
affects to despise the parade of a pubhc entry mto Paris,
except for the honour of England and the Queen's com
mission. In March his murmurs are answered by Lord
Dartmouth, the Secretary of State for France, with a reproof
of Ms cravmg to be part of the spectacle on the entiy
of the Duke of Shrewsbury. He had been allowed a sum of
money for equipage, when only secretary to the Earl of
Portland, at the peace of Ryswick ; he is now censured for
supposing his commission gives him any representative
character, and informed that he need only assist at the

Matthew Prior. 1U

ceremonial as a private gentleman. " Did I ever desire to be
a lion m Arabia," he cries to St. John, in a burst of hurt
pride, " any more than to be an Ambassador at Paris ? " His
friend "Harry," who to every disappointed applicant for
Government patronage always returned expressions of com
miseration and readmess to aid, were it not for the senior
partner in the ministerial firm, had often reiterated, " My
friendship, dear Matt, shall never fail thee ; employ it all,
and continue to love Bolingbroke." Now, he advised him not
to ask for such tilings, but to get them on credit. Matthew
did this to Ms cost, finding, on the fall of his chief, that he
was held personally hable. In April 1713, however, the old
querulousness again breaks out. " Those people, you know,"
he writes, " who are curious and impertinent enough upon
such heads, begin to question me so closely that I sometimes
wish I knew how to turn the discourse." In July, he
feehngly complains, that " if he be left plenipotentiary, he
must have a house and a parson." His troubles were con
siderably lessened m September, for Ms friend had now
become Secretary of State for the half of Europe in which
France was included. The envoy seems to have been told, in
St. John's magnificent way, to order all he wanted ; for he
bemoans, with manifest vanity, the necessity of keepmg " ten
horses in his stables, and knaves in proportion." We know
that no part of all this splendour was as yet paid for, even
the salaries of the State messengers being in arrears.
His pubhc business consisted mainly in learning and trans
mitting the propositions of the French Ministry, not m disput
ing or discussing them. His less mechanical duties, beyond the
subjects of constant meditation with which his unsatisfied
wants in the way of services of plate, Royal portraits, and
coaches supplied Mm, concerned the maintenance of the
national glory by hospitality to foreigners and Englishmen,
the transaction of Bohngbroke's private business at the French
Court, and the provision of truffles for the Queen's kitchen.
The last care is prolific of Ministerial despatches. The
Mstory of the truffles was this: Mme. de Tencin had sent

114 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
some to the Secretary of State through the agency of Prior.
St. John, knowing the Queen's taste, loyally transferred them
to the royal cook in the plenipotentiary's name, followmg up
the event by the grave announcement : "the Queen liked them,
wished them marbre within ; I give you the hint." Hence more
truffles, and fervent thanks from Paris for " the hint as to
the marbre in truffles ; non sunt contemnenda quasi parva sine
qMbus magna constare non possunt." Prior recompensed
his friend's kind offices m the propitiation of the royal palate
by undertaking the apportionment of St. John's gifts among
his fair or political allies in France. There is much corres
pondence on the important subject. One consignment was
composed of honey- water, sack, and " eau de Barbade," and
several high dames had, it appears, equal claims in the
" Nectareous liquor eau de Barbade," known to us under a
less recondite name. " I protest," writes St. John, " I contri
buted to make the partition of Europe without being so much
at a loss as I should be how to make that of this cargo ! "
But a blight was about to fall upon all his political
prospects. Harley and St. John had quarrelled; and the
hopes of foes and fears of friends rose to a tremendous
height. Prior had often vaunted his preference of "some
small establishment at home " to all Ms mmisterial grandeur,
and indulged in affected regrets for the modest poverty' of
Duke Street. Still the Queen's illness, in January 1714,
had struck him with a panic, and induced the trite but well-
founded foreboding, " if the prospect be dreadful to the masters
of Mortimer Castle, Hinton St. George, Stanton Harcourt, and
Bucklebury, what must it be to friend Matt ! " No sooner
had the immediate danger disappeared, than in the very next
month came the terrible rumour of a schism in the Tory
party. "We have reports here," he says, on March 3, 1714,
"that frighten me all day, and keep me awake all night."
They compelled Mm " to put Ms mind into 10,000 postures,
as the caprice of every man that comes from the enchanted
island requires." Again, renouncing his old longings for
a lowly refuge, he encourages himself and his chief to

Matthew Prior. 115

determine to make their retreat, respectively, to Bucklebury
and St. John's, " as late as possible." Then he urges upon
the Secretary, that, "though it may look like a bagatelle
what is to become of a philosopher, when that philosopher is
Queen's plenipotentiary and on such an occasion, and friend
of one of the greatest men in England, one of the finest heads
in Europe," it is unbecoming he should be left to the osten
tatious patronage of a Frenchman, de Torcy, who had offered
to remind " Robin and Harry " of his claims. He disdains
the Baden legation, and even the Commissionership of Trade,
" having been put above himself, and not liking to return to
himself." In a little while he would gladly have com
pounded for the poorest official asylum. In vain had
St. John assured Mm that there would be no Tory scMsm,
and reiterated that, " though he laugh at the knave and the
fool who is advanced, he will never go about to disturb the
only Administration he ever liked, the only cause he can ever
like." In vain did Prior urge the scandal of open quarrels
between Ms masters at Whitehall, and bemoan his own ruin
as involved in theirs ; " Am I to go to Fontainebleau ? Am
I to come home ? Am I to hang myself ? From the present
prospect of things, the latter begins to look most eligible."
The rupture was to be ; St. John was to snatch the crown of
victory from his rival Harley's hands, and find it turn in his
own into a mere bunch of withered weeds.
WitMn a month all the fears of the party were realised, its
councils convulsed by an internal revolution, and the Queen
dead. Prior lingered in Paris till March in the next year, in a
sort of ampMbious condition, between an ambassador and a
political refugee, vexed by debts contracted to support the
dignity of his station, and watched by his own countrymen as,
perhaps, now already intriguing with the Pretender. It was a
sad reverse, after he had gaily congratulated Mmself and the
Ministry on St. John's "beautiful daughter, the peace," to
be looked upon as a traitor for the very treaty which he had
proposed should be depicted on medals, impersonated, and
enthroned in a triumphal car, as " Pax missa per orbem."

116 Some Verdicts of History Revieioed.
kt last he was relieved from his official pillory, by the
arrival of Lord Stair as Ms successor, and the tardy payment
of Ms debts, not the less tardy that Lord Halifax, his old
schoolfellow, who still called himself Ms friend, was King
George's First Commissioner of the Treasury.
No bells were rung or bonfires lighted, on this occasion, on
his arrival at Whitehall ; but men's eyes were not the less
fixed upon Mm with eager expectation. Though never
upbraided for treachery his political career had scarcely given
evidence of any rigidity of principle. His partisanship had
seemed the result rather of personal connections and friend-
sMps than of conviction. His disposition was unenthusiastic,
and Ms intimates appear to have considered him, though
careless, selfish. Enemies could not be blamed for hoping
to intimidate or corrupt such a character. They adopted
measures to suit both alternatives, committing Mm to the loose
custody of a messenger in his own house, and inviting him
to dinner at the mansion of Walpole. The most appalling
evidence of the common opinion, even among his friends,
as to his weakness of will, or bad faith, was that conveyed in
the flight of Bolingbroke the night on wMch the news
of this certainly most suspicious entertainment reached
Mm. Happily there are strong reasons for believing that
Bohngbroke's terror was groundless. Prior, if he had really
led the Whigs to hope anything from his confessions, pre
tended readmess to turn king's evidence only to concentrate on
himself exclusively their expectations of startling disclosures.
He may have calculated that, if the confidant of the late
cabinet in all the inmost mysteries of negotiation should,
when divulging all he knew, be found to have revealed no
plan bordering upon treason, the party would be cleared of
criminality in the eyes of the nation. The details of the rage
of the Whigs on discovering the trick played upon them, as
furmshed by the pen of the poet himself, are amusing and
piquant. They vented their wrath on the author of the failure
of the mighty secret committee, by voting him the honour of an
impeachment. For a second-rate poet and diplomatist this

Matthew Prior. 117
ought to have appeared the acme of his career. He himself was
not content with such glory. Though he never was in any
fear for his hfe, notwithstanding his own account of the origin
of his deafness, that " he had not thought of taking care of
his ears, while not sure of his head," the wreck of his career as
a politician, and the cloud under which he lay, seem to have
weighed upon his spirits.
He remained under surveillance over two years, being dis
charged shortly after the passing of the Act of Grace in 1717,
from which, however, he was excepted by name. At first he
had attempted to make light of his misfortunes, and to give
himself to poetry ; the clever but unsystematic ' Alma ' was
the production of tMs period ; but the permanence of his
equivocal position, aggravated by a constitutional cough,
produced great dejection. In October 1716, he writes to
Sir Thomas Hanmer, Ms steady friend, and too moderate
a Tory to have been dangerously implicated m the plots
of Ms brother Ministers : — " I have been for the last two
years a stranger to health and pleasure;" and, in No
vember of the same year, " Melancholy I can't help indulg
ing even to stupidity." He had never been a sufficiently
bold or earnest politician to be properly impressed with the
grandeur of acting the martyr to his maintenance of the tenets
of the October Club, so long as the dignity interfered with
Ms personal comfort. His circumstances, besides, were bad,
most of Ms small savings from official salaries having been
swept away in 1711 in the failure of Stratford's bank. He
was forced to meditate a sale of Ms house and effects. His
friends, on hearing of Ms necessities, exerted themselves
nobly. They were a numerous body. The correspondence
with Bolingbroke was never renewed. In that dark suspicious
mind, an impression once planted unfavourable to a friend
grew till it overshadowed all reminiscences of ancient kind
ness. His rage against the memory of Pope exemplified
later Ms temperament. He always recollected, with resent
ment, that the fear of Prior's disclosures was the immediate
cause of his own rash and ill-judged flight. The closeness

118 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
of the relations between Prior and Lord Harley, Ms old rival's
son, kept his anger fresh. Swift and Pope might remain on
a friendly footing with the house of Oxford, yet be Ms friends ;
but the poet-diplomatist was now become its attached and
Tegular retainer. With the bulk of the party, however, Whig
persecution was accepted as convincing testimony to the
constant good faith, as well of Prior as of the Harleys. The
halo of an impeachment blinded it to all old shortcomings.
Instead of a testimonial, which would now be the course,
an edition of his poems by subscription was proposed by Lewis
and Arbuthnot, and strenuously furthered by Swift, Pope, and
Oay. " No advertisements," writes the first mentioned," are to
be published, and the whole affair will be managed in a maimer
the least shocking to the dignity of a plenipotentiary." In
addition to the ' Alma,' the collection contained another new
work, the fruit also of Ms detention. ' Solomon ' was Ms
chief pride and boast, but, notwithstanding Cowper's appro
bation, and some few stately passages, is an attempt wholly
outside his powers. The poem is an experiment at embody
ing Proverbs and Ecclesiastes in a romance, embellished with
lively scenes and highly -wrought descriptions of banquets
so complete, that " Not e'en the Phcenix scaped."
The design wants method ; but more radical defects are that
the bard had no heart in what he portrayed, and, perhaps, httle
comprehension of the grandeur of the sentiments he aspired
to versify. The enterprise is said to have been undertaken
in rivalry as much of the fresher laurels of Pope as of
Cowley and his 'Davideis.' Consequently he petulantly
s-ejeeted Pope's preference of the Hudibrastic ' Alma.' Pope
judged rightly ; he also praised discreetly : —
" Our friend Dan Prior told, you know,
A tale extremely a, propos."
Even the jealous author could sometimes criticise impartially
and in the same spirit, the child of his matured abilities—
" Indeed, poor Solomon in rhyme
Was much too grave to be sublime."

Matthew Prior. 119

The edition produced £4,000, which, with the addition of
the same sum lent by Lord Harley, in whom the estate,
subject to the poet's life interest, was vested, purchased
Downe Hall, a pretty and pleasant seat in the west of Essex,
which had ancient associations with the de Veres. He did
not spend much of Ms leisure there. He divided his time
thenceforward till his death chiefly between " the little house
close to the noise of the Court of Requests," the mansion of
Lords Harley and Bathurst, and St. John's College. Though
making over the emoluments generously to a deprived fellow,
the learned Baker, he had steadily refused to resign his
fellowsMp in the height of his fortunes. He was in the habit
of replying to the railleries of friends on Ms collegiate pluraity
that it would procure him " bread and cheese at the last."
The event justified his prudence.
The Brothers still met occasionally, and he with them.
But clouded with thoughts of the faded past, the society pined
and at length died out. Prior did not keep up Ms friendship
with the more professed pohtical followers of St. John, such
as Wyndham ; but a close intimacy subsisted between him,
and not only Hanmer, a type of the Hanoverian Tories,
whose Conservatism included acquiescence in the Revolu
tion, as un fait accompli, but even, though subsequently their
affection waned, plotting Bishop Atterbury. If at his death
St. John affected regretful surprise that he should have been
abandoned by Ms wealthy patrons to comparative poverty,
the remark was rather a sneer at the Harleys than the expres
sion of a literal fact as to Prior. There can be no question
that he enjoyed a very fair amount of comfort at this period
of his life. It certainly approached what he had himself
often represented to his friends as his ideal of happiness.
Nevertheless, we can detect, in his correspondence, the
shadow of a lingering hope that he might once more be
floated into political consideration, not through any exertions
of his own, or even the agency of the Tory party, but in
the train of Lord Oxford. The South Sea Bubble so marred
the credit of the Whig Ministers that a vague expectation L

120 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.

arose of the late Lord Treasurer's restoration to Ms old
authority. Prior reckoned upon a share in Ms patron's
prosperity, though not entertaining the same opinion as the
pubhc of that statesman's character. He disbelieved the
popular explanation of all Lord Oxford's conduct as ruled by
the laws of a profound cunning. The apparent caution and
astuteness he knew to be nothing but dilatoriness and inde
cision. At all events, the crisis passed by, and the supposed
sagacity had no opportunity of being again found out.
Prior's regrets and longings, his querulousness at straitened
means, and determination to enjoy to the full the pleasures
within his reach, lasted till his death, which occurred shortly
after this final disappointment. He left behind him the brief
memory of a very everyday character, most remarkable for
its contrast with the grandeur of the scenes in wMch he had
figured as a principal agent. Both parties in turn trusted
him as an active ally. He was the favourite, as a negotiator,
of two sovereigns, one his own, the other an enemy. Not
withstanding this, he was no statesman. In the so-called
golden age of our literature he ranked among eminent poets ;
he was confessedly the first to introduce that more pohshed
rhythm, which Pope's ' Rape of the Lock ' displays in its Mghest
perfection ; Pope, who disliked Mm for his quarrel with St.
John, placed him along with Shakespeare, Spenser, and'
Dryden, among the eight " authorities for poetical language" ;
he was vindicated fiercely by the moral, devout, and natural
Cowper, from Johnson's " rusty fusty" remarks on Henry and
Emma; and he had the honour to furnish large stores of
quotations to the tenacious memory of Scott ; yet his claims
to lofty poetic fame have been disallowed by the popular
judgment of posterity, and his neatest love-odes are totally
neglected. Without thought or passion, no writer can long
keep Ms rank among poets ; and Prior had neither. He was
more regularly engaged m politics than Swift ; some of his
bon-mots, Hazlitt says, are the best that are recorded ; but
who would dream of comparing him with the author of the
Drapier's Letters and Gulliver as a politician, or even as a

Matthew Prior. 121

wit? In the unique social epoch of Queen Anne's reign,
he occupies no place apart, no individual position among
the many luminaries with whom he familiarly consorted.
Scarcely an idea has been handed clown to us of his de
meanour and general appearance. He did, said, and wrote
many things wMch are remembered ; he himself is not. A
nation did not mourn for Mm as for Cowley ; and the grief of
his other old friends was as well under control as Atter-
bury's, who was content to be kept away from his funeral by
a cold. He had to remind posterity by a bequest for a
sumptuous monument in the Abbey who he was, and what
he had been.

L 2

IV.

TWO LEADEES OF SOCIETY AND
OF OPPOSITION.

HENRY ST. JOHN,
1678-1751.
WILLIAM PULTENEY,
1682-1764.

( 125 )

HENEY ST. JOHN.

Feom Prior to Bolingbroke is a transition from agent to prin
cipal, from an instrument to the hand which wielded it. The
two were intimately connected with one another by association
with the same events and persons. Both represent then-
period, and their careers unite in reflecting its pecuhar charac
teristics. But the men played their parts with very different
powers, and with very different effectiveness. The second is
so identified with his age that he seems to sway it as much
as it him. He does not merely exemplify it ; to study it
apart from Mm is virtually impossible. An exposition of the
first half of the eighteenth century wMch was not also a
biography of Henry St. John would be lost labour.
That it is so follows from the qualities of the age, and
from the spirit which constitutes its charm. In it the trait
which specially engages our fancy is the strong personal
element manifested as clearly in literature as m the conduct
of affairs. Queen Anne's era must be interpreted in a liberal
chronological sense. The current of some great rivers can be
traced far out to sea ; and in the same way the impetus of the
spirit Queen Anne's era set in motion outlasted a reign. The
period in many ways extends over the following generation,
which its influence governed. As a whole it has the relation
to sober history which Lord Beaconsfield's novels bear to a
serious pohtical treatise. It is as though the spirit of the
Parisian coteries of the time of Louis XIV., and the regency
of Orleans, had blended with the violent humours and passions
of an English electioneering season. In Anne's reign itself,
not till the catastrophe, which astonishes us from its complete

126 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
independence of the vicissitudes of the struggle itself, do we
detect the national pertinacity of adherence to a deliberate
decision. The interval is given up to a chaos of drawmg-room
schemes, back-stairs plots, and the intrigues of club-com
mittees. We feel, with a certain fascination in the discovery,
that the State is, after all, not an abstraction, but a concourse
of livmg beings, moved by the same impulses, and susceptible
of the same vexations and pleasures. Posterity is admitted
further behind the scene than at other times ; and more of
specific character appears in the prominent agents than can
usually be perceived in the instruments of a nation's will.
Above all, these servants of a national policy did not pass
away with the measures they shaped. Round one of them,
the master-spirit of an Admmistration once, gathered subse
quently all the strength of Opposition. His influence we trace
in each more important act of the close of the Queen's reign.
He, by fasMoning the most shining of political and hterary so
cieties, when out of power, and half an outlaw, has brought both
politics and society within the verge of the same sympathies.
Violent partisanship ran in Henry St. John's blood. His
ancestors, when they came forward, chose no safe or moderate
course, and dehghted in extremes. The grandeur of the family
dated back from the marriage of a scion of the powerful Saxon
family of Port, settled at Basing, with the heiress of the
Norman St. Johns. It had never been obscured since the days
of the Conquest, though, till the seventeenth century, cMefly
conspicuous in the details of county history. During all that
century, and far into the following one, it was in the van of
all political movements. Henry St. John could count in the
male hne among Ms near relatives the Earls of Bolingbroke
of the Parliament, and the chivalrous Viscount Grandison of
Clarendon's History, one of the first victims of Charles's
cause. Through females, he was grandson of the gloomy
Chief Justice of the Commonwealth and nephew of the
High Church and Tory Earl of Nottingham. He himself was
destined to run the gauntlet of principles seemingly contradic
tory, and to illustrate in his own life the extreme conclusions

Henry St. John. 127

of the most adverse political factions of the preceding age.
Tradition tells of the splendour of the old house at Battersea,
the gift of Charles I. to Viscount Grandison, with its forty
rooms on one floor, the cedar parlour, still existing, where
Pope loved to compose, and the terrace overlooking the
Thames, so often paced by the statesman and the poet, only
in death estranged. There he was born. In his boyhood he
witnessed an unfortunate contrast of strict theoretical prin
ciples with the example of a lax private morality. The
sternest moral discipline was maintained by the old Puritan,
Ms grandfather, throughout the household, even to Ms death
in 1708. Abroad, a libertine father made a jest of all
political and religious sincerity. It was the worst possible
framing for one whose versatility of character disposed Mm to
mimic tenets, and to indulge every wayward gust of passion.
His school-days at Eton, where he had Walpole for a con
temporary, foreshadowed that strenuous idleness, that petty
ambition of supremacy in licentiousness and genius, which
distorted into something at once grotesque and picturesque,
repulsive and attractive, the whole course of Ms life. It
is easy to see in the boy a historical Vivian Grey, leader
of the school and terror of masters, already preparing the
minds of his friends to expect the statesman. He continued
Ms education at Christ Church. Under the rule of Dean
Aldrich, famous for port and music, architecture and logic,
" Priest of Bacchus," as Whigs styled Mm, " Champion of the
Church," as Tories, a more than modern licence was allowed
to students of noble families. St. John possessed the
perilously happy constitution, both of mind and body, which
enabled and tempted him, like Alcibiades, to enter into
excesses, which must have else qmckly degraded him to
the condition of one of his future partisans of the October
Club. His model was Wilmot, the fantastic friend and rival
of Charles II., whose genius had a spontaneous bouquet,
which has, in evaporation, left behind it notliing but a
deposit of vapid immorality. In emulation of the Court
wits, he became a poet, as poets were then. Various very

128 Some Verdicts of History Rcvieived.

wretched compositions are ascribed to his muse, too weak
and poor, with a few exceptions, even for Dodsley's Collec
tions. He had already propitiated the favour of Dryden with
eulogistic verses on his Virgil, and been admitted to the
vinous conclaves over which the poet presided. In him all
this licence was not a mere result of youth, but an indication
of incurable restlessness of organisation. The manners of his
family had not implanted in him any fixed principles. The
manners of the time were not likely to supply the defect of
education. Of all men he was the most incapable of supply
ing it for himself. Higher capacity and abilities the world has
rarely seen. There was nothing for which they were not
prepared. They were tools of the finest temper, but wanting
a soul to guide them. He had not enough conscientious
patience to conceive and maintain a code of action for him
self in an age when factiousness was the only consistency.
He was without the moral sagacity and self-restraint needed
for accepting the fundamental theory of a party, and
identifying himself with it, heart and soul, after the manner
of Nottingham among the Tories, and Cowper among the
WMgs. All he cared for was to guess, with Ms marvellous
shrewdness, the petty selfish motives which instigated the
pohcy of parties. He possessed the instinct of leading men,
or rather of constituting himself their spokesman, in perfec
tion ; but the spirit he poured into them was rarely higher
than their own, only, heated and enkindled with his fiery
energy, and consciousness of power. In the days of Henry
VIII. he would probably have been another Cromwell ; under
the Commonwealth he might have copied Ms maternal grand
father, though with less of stern consistency; in the semi-
literary, semi-political agitations of Queen Anne's reign, he
became the representative of the Gallic sympathies and
the Court intrigues of the second Charles, coloured later by
the new philosophico-political spirit which came in with and
mystified the Hanoverian dynasty.
The wit and debauchee of Oxford was not very widely
separated from the hard-drinking zealot of the October Club.

Henry St. John. 129
The doom of his nature was that it was ever eager to con
stitute itself the centre of a faction rather than a party, of a
knot of personal adherents, who would make Mm their lode
star, and look on his conduct, however irregular, as a law
carrying its own theory. No period could have been better
adapted for the encouragement of his special temperament
than that commencing with the year 1700, when he first
entered the House of Commons. At any time he must have
proved himself a remarkable man, full of the statesman-like
power of seizmg opportunities, however wanting in the un
erring sagacity which teaches the most prudent use of them.
He could not but have led, whether an Opposition or an
Administration. But portions only of his character and
faculties might have been matured and illustrated. The
attraction and repulsion of other luminaries in the pohtical
firmament might have restrained Ms aberrations, and kept
him in one certam orbit. The revolutionary aspects of
William's reign, and the unstable basis on which rested the
boasted legitimacy of Anne's title, with its regular incon
sistency of party-badges, and glaring contradictions in political
creeds, formed a lurid and troublous atmosphere, in which
blazed and strayed at will Ms disorderly genius.
He had made a marriage of convenience, if we may judge
from the fact that the co-heiress of Sir Henry Winchescomb
possessed a fortune of forty thousand pounds, and that the
pair lived in a state of perpetual discord, though never legally
separated. Contemporaneously he entered Parliament as
member for Wotton Basset, in Wiltshire, the seat of his own
and Ms wife's interest. The same year was signalised by
the return of Robert Walpole for Castle Rising, in Norfolk.
Both were as unscrupulous in the details of political morahty
as free in their maxims of private conduct. But something
in the nature of Walpole at once attached him to the ranks
of the great Revolution party ; and something in that of St.
John, notwithstanding, or perhaps partly in consequence of,
early associations, drew him to the side where all was yet
to be won, and a party constructed from the foundation.

130 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
The anarchy and humiliation of the Tories served only to
attract him. Of the best blood in England, he felt the envy
and jealousy of the close oligarchy of the Whartons and the
ChurcMlls which might have roused a young noble of Ancient
Greece or of the Middle Age Republics of Italy to seek in
a tyranny vengeance upon the ruling Houses. With the con
sciousness of originality and resolution sufficient for a whole
Cabinet, he wanted no established system, no groove, along
which the wheels of his policy might smoothly glide. Fol
lowers he needed, and not champions or counsellors, a strong
cry, and not previously settled rules of action.
It was the epoch of the peace of Ryswick ; and the title of
the Revolution dynasty was recognised at home and abroad.
Now at last, might the Tories argue, had arrived the time for
testing the benefits to arise from the expulsion of the Stuarts.
Yet the Protestant Government ruled by the military arm
wMch had terrified Church and Cavahers into revolt from
the son of the "Blessed Martyr." Williani unhappily pos
sessed no pliability of temper. If the nation proved resolved
on a measure, he could not but acquiesce ; but the manner
was most ungracious. His enemies pretended they saw in
Ms hesitation evidence rather of a tacit protest or reserva
tion of a right to retract, than of conscientious reluctance to
assent to a policy he thought dangerous. Though he felt
himself bound by the will of the majority, he was ever too
open in Ms denunciations, and too bold m Ms expressed fore
bodings of the evil consequences likely to ensue. The King
threatened to abdicate if the army were disbanded. The
WMg leaders supported Mm in vain. Their old arguments
against a standing army had been too deeply imprinted on the
minds of the mass of their followers, and afforded too convenient
a handle for the Opposition. Rather hastily William construed
tMs defeat by a coahtion of Whigs and Tories as a sign of a
sure preponderance on the side of the latter. He at once re
placed Somers, Sunderland, Shrewsbury, Orford,and Montague,
by Rochester, and the pliant Conservatism of GodolpMn.
St. John soon flashed Ms maiden sword in the battle of

Henry St. John. 131

parties. He had cast in Ms lot with Harley, that pre
eminently clever upholder of principles at least not Tory by
the help of Tory adherents. With him he had supported the
Act of Settlement, and carried the insertion of clauses meant
to coerce the prerogative of the new family. With Mm and
all the chiefs of the " Young England " Tories, he carried up
an impeachment of Portland, Somers, Orford, and Hahfax, to
the Peers, in April, 1701. Now the young statesman felt for
the first time, what he was to experience m subsequent stages
of his political career, that the Tory majority in the Commons,
though elected by the nation from discontent at the conduct of
affairs by a Whig Ministry, were watched with suspicion by
their own constituents. They were sent up to Westminster
to gratify a popular pique; their commission executed, the
kingdom had no intention of letting them play their own
game. St. John was among the foremost in inflaming the
ready passions, and not so ready courage, of his fellow-
members against the Kentish petitioners. The imprisonment
of these persons for what was called a libel gave the Whigs a
watchword, which they employed to ruin their adversaries.
This blunder, and the ineffectual menace of impeachment
thrown out against the late Government, provoked the incom
parable efforts of Swift and De Foe, soon to become opponents.
The House of Commons felt how powerless it was unless as
the representative of the people, and bowed to the storm
it dared no longer openly resist. William's last days were
cheered by a more unanimous sentiment of national loyalty
than had ever before been elicited even from his own pohtical
partisans. Anne, on her accession found a Tory majority in
Parliament, eager to gratify all her blind instinct of animosity
to the memory of her brother-in-law. She found the powerful
Revolution famihes exposed to popular rancour; charged
with unconstitutional subservience to the monarch's will;
with a denial, finally, of the right of Parliament to discuss
the preliminaries of grand and permanent measures. But
she also found the principles of the Revolution recognised,
and registered in the Act of Settlement, which she could not

132 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
impugn, since her own title depended on it, and the nation as
little inclined to concede unlimited discretion to Tory sqmres
as to Whig peers.
In this state of things her first Ministry, though composed
of Tories, was scarcely representative of that party. The
Sovereign's personal predilection was rather the title to
admission witMn it, than the fact that its members were the
organs of a certam pronounced pohcy. Harley and St.
John were still left without office. There were great Tory
families as there were great WMg famihes. Finch Earl of
Nottingham, GodolpMn, sure of place, from his long expe
rience, his wariness, and his connection with Marlborough, and
Rochester, both as son to Clarendon, and as the Queen's uncle,
had a sort of hereditary claim to be employed. When not
courtiers of the King, they had been courtiers of the heiress ;
and to them the sovereign naturally looked as the legitimate
chiefs of Opposition. It had been so throughout the hfe of
William, but, during Ms reign, a strong and genume Tory
confederacy had been reviving, the potent country interest.
Politicians, whom we may term social Tories, Tories not
because there were Whigs, but as a consequence of the
entire tenor of their lives and circumstances, had, put Harley
into the Speaker's chair, and maintained Mm there in Anne's
first Parhament. They recognised Mm and Ms lieutenant,
St. John, as their spokesmen ; they did not adopt measures at
their dictation. Harley had a decided bias, in many respects,
to the Nonconformists, but he only committed himself to
vague professions, and never compromised his position by a
vote. St. John was a libertine in practice and doctrine ;
yet he protested agamst latitudinarianism in doctrine and
disciphne, along with the most vehement county members.
The new Parliament, which had met in the October of
1702, speedily evinced its tendencies. Its first act was to vote
thanks to the General, while it showed that the intention
of the vote was rather to reflect on the late King than to exalt
so doubtful a Tory as Marlborough, by refusing Mm a pension
on the Post-office revenue. But the most significant measure

Henry St. John, 13:3

was that against occasional Conformity. The bill, though
vehemently supported by St. John, was dropped for this time,
in consequence of a quarrel between the two Houses artfully
inflamed by the leading Whigs. There had existed, since the
Revolution, two fruitful sources whence the tMrst of the rival
factions for reciprocal calumny might be readily quenched.
The Whigs accused the Tories of advocating the cause of
arbitrary power, and the Tories the Whigs of culpable laxity
in religion. Never was a motion introduced reflecting on
the one side, but forthwith, blast and counterblast, came
retaliation in the shape of a bill reminding the nation of all it
had to fear from the other. The Whigs saved themselves on
this occasion by a manoeuvre of an analogous kind to those
often practised by Shaftesbury. Their turn had now arrived
to attack. They moved that every attempt to disturb the
Protestant succession as established by the Act of Settlement
should subject the offender to the penalties of treason.
Harley, with Ms Trimmers, could not reasonably oppose a
resolution, superfluous perhaps and supererogatory, yet in
affirmation of a measure they claimed as their peculiar work.
St. John took an independent part. Already his ambition
was to be identified with the country Tories, while he acted
with Harley. None of these measures were strictly what we
should call Ministerial. A Whig administration really
represented the Whig party. It was not so with the Tories.
Although in Godolplhn's cabinet, as origmally constituted,
the majority was Tory, its members, not having been called to
office by the voice of a party, did not conceive themselves indi
vidually pledged to any special course. Thus, when Rochester
had resigned the Lieutenancy of Ireland in a fit of jealousy
at Godolplhn's ascendency, and Lord Nottingham, after find
ing his reiterated complaints of the sway in the Council of
the Whig Dukes of Somerset and Devonshire disregarded,
had retired, there was nothing self-contradictory in the ap
pointment in 1704 of Harley, Hedges, and St. John, the first
two to be Secretaries of State, and the last Secretary-at-War.
Though Tories, they represented a different body to that

134 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
which gathered round Rochester and Nottingham. The Hydes
and Finches were themselves parties in the State ; their suc
cessors were influential Parliamentary partisans. A Tory
Lord Treasurer might, in those days, adopt means for the
exclusion of Tories who were personal rivals. Such pro
cedure exposed Mm to no imputation of treachery to his
party. It evidenced no wish or intention to resist the royal
determination to maintain the Tory element in the Govern
ment. The whole change was simply the result of an intrigue
in the Cabinet, however the victory of Godolphin might
foreshadow a future divergence from the pronounced opinions
of Ms ejected colleagues.
The Ministry was, in truth the last for a long time
openly formed on the old principle that the Sovereign, as
responsible for the executive, had a right to choose the most
capable subordinates he could discover. The accession of
the House of Brunswick, which depended originally for its
crowned existence upon the Whigs, caused this doctrine to
be obscured for half a century. George III., whose title was
more secure, revived it. For many years under him every
Minister forced into office by the voice of the nation had to
endure the presence in his Administration of certain men,
who, as " King's friends," deemed themselves chartered to
play the spyi in council and the public informer in Parha
ment. King's friends, however, but partially resembled
the discordant element in the Godolphin Government.
Godolphin, unlike the Pitts and Norths, represented no known
party in the State, while Harley and St. John were admitted-
actually as leaders of a division of Tories. Their junction
with Godolphin could be called neither a coalition nor a
defection. It was no coalition, for they succeeded to the
posts of notorious Tories ; it was no defection, since their
chief voted for Tory resolutions. If Walpole found in the
reconstituted Ministry a seat at the Admiralty Board, the.
appointment of Simon Harcourt to be Attorney-General was
a full Tory counterpoise.
But the two friends were far too acute not to comprehend

Henry St. John, 135

the tendencies of the Ministerial modification. The sagacity
of the elder, especially, was seldom at fault, when his own
interests were concerned. He saw in his own elevation a
design of warding off Tory opposition by securing the co
operation of Tory placemen for half concealed Whig measures.
When the chiefs should have been thus compromised, they
might be cashiered with impunity. He calculated that,
whatever the present views of Godolphin, the instinct of
Marlborough, the dictator, must teach him to look to the
party of the Revolution as the only permanent support for
his war policy. Finally, he did not believe that any Premier,
except perhaps himself, had the art to balance in those days
two antagonistic interests in the same Cabinet, and to treat
all critical topics as open questions. For ;the present,
especially after the elections of October, 1705, dimmed the
prospects of their party, the two new Ministers confined them
selves to the work of their offices. The glittering abilities of
the Secretary-at-War proved no bar to the display of capacity
for business, which won golden opinions from the great
captain, whose commissariat he superintended. Repeatedly,
in his correspondence, Marlborough entreats the Treasurer
to confide in Mr. St. John. In Parliament they were less
conspicuous than formerly. It was at once dangerous to
provoke dismissal by too violent Tory partisanship, while their
plans remained immature, and to offend the Queen by the
appearance of an active alliance with the other side. At
length, the now open Whiggism of the majority in the Cabinet,
and the inveterate mistrust conceived by it of Harley,
united in bringing about the Bed-chamber Plot of Harley,
Mrs. Masham, and the Queen, against the tyranny of the
Marlboroughs and the family compact of the Administration.
The expulsion of the most active conspirator and the triumph
of his Whig adversaries in the new Parliament of 1708 ensued..
Godolphin yielded Mmself absolutely to the counsels of the
" Junto," Somers, Orford, Halifax, Sunderland, and Wharton.
Harley had earned his dismissal. The red eyes of the
Queen, remarked by the suspicious curiosity of the courtiers, M

13.6" Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
bore witness to many a midnight conference, enlivened only by
continual tea. St. John had scarcely found an opportunity .
for displaying his knowledge of character and his ability for
intrigue. Yet his resignation accompanied that of Harley,,
Walpole, who always dogged his steps, succeeded to Ms office.:
He had the additional mortification of exclusion from Parlia
ment. His seat, gained. by a combination of family influence
and his presumed adherence to the political creed of his Whig
grandfather, had been retained by the authority of place.
Now, suspected as a factious Tory, and a foe of the Govern
ment, he had to betake himself, with a poor attempt at self-con
gratulation, to literary pleasures,. and others which were not so
innocent. He had not yet attained to the stoicism or hypocrisy
which could give vent to the lofty sentiment, "no life should
admit the abuse of pleasures; the least are consistent. with
a constant discharge of our public duty, the greatest arise
from it ! "
General odium, however, both in country and in Parliament,
was quietly preparing the downfall of the MiMstry. All the
complicated forces implied in the Greek Nemesis, the in
trinsic self-destructive action of all self-confident prosperity,
were at work to overthrow this too strong Cabinet. There was
ingratitude, real or supposed, to a host of adherents, who were
for the most part no genuine Whigs, but merely scented the
sarcase of patronage. There was a growing discontent at the
Burdens of taxation, which, as the condition of Marlborough's
grandeur, Sunderland and. Godolphin felt themselves pledged
to keep up. Harley, who knew by instinct all the ins and;
outs of faction, nursed this increasing disaffection. He hoped
to be enabled to turn it to account by means of the naturally
anti-Whig prejudices of the Queen, now exasperated and
roused by the capricious insolence of Lady Marlborough. St.
John still had only a subsidiary part in this long and
dexterous extra-parliamentary campaign. When the object
was to seduce from a rival the affections of his partisans;
there never existed, as Harley found to his cost, a more
incomparable intriguer than he. He possessed, in perfection;

¦Henry St. John. 137

the gift of displaying himself in the aspect most attractive to
each man's peculiar temperament. But it is one thing to win
over individuals, another to have grown by long study and
practice so morbidly sensitive to every thrill and throb of
national or party feehng, as to be able to predict infallibly the
direction which a popular movement will take. Harley, in
virtue of that facility, was sole " undertaker " for Opposition.
But it was not till the impeachment of Sacheverell for
impugning the doctrines of the Revolution, and calhng the
Lord Treasurer Volpone, that the secret interviews of Anne
with him were renewed. He was at Ms country seat, and at
table, when news came of the rash prosecution to which
Ministers had committed themselves. He set off for London
the same hour. The Whigs found that they had, in St..
John's language, burnt their fingers in trying to roast a priest.
Hardly could the managers, Boyle, Smith, Walpole, and
Stanhope, prevail with the House of Peers, the natural strong
hold of ,the Revolution, to impose a sentence of two years'
suspension. The Doctor employed the beginning of Ms
leisure in solemnly visiting all the London churches, to
offer up thanks for Ms virtual deliverance. Bonfires, ad
dresses, and civic banquets, shouts, and substantial presents,
proclaimed the awakened strength of the party, wMch the
semblance of a Tory element in the Government, in the
person of Godolphin, had lulled to sleep. Jealousy of
the Dutch, our rivals in commerce and in the Protestant
confederacy, and suspicion of a subsidising foreign policy,
were the common ground on wMch the nation and party
met. The cry raised was loud enough to overbalance, for
a time, the pleasure the people derived from the sweets of
positive military glory after William's succession of drawn
campaigns. Harley's time was come. Not a High-Churchman at
heart, he had found matter for sarcasm in Harcouft's inter
pretation of Sacheverell's sermon as an exposition of the
doctrine of non-resistance to the two Houses of the Legisla
ture, the true sovereign power in the State. His feeling towards
m 2

138 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
the man was not more friendly than to his discourse. Swift
says of.Sacheverell, April, 1711: "He hates the new Ministry
mortally, and they hate him and pretend to despise him too.
They will not allow him to have been the occasion of the late
change." Harley 's words in public conveyed a different
impression, as did also his suggestions to the Queen. The
scheme of government which he laid before her was both
in itself plausible, as was everytMng wMch originated with
him, and most dexterously adapted to her temperament.
She felt much jealousy of the appearance of subservience.
The new fact in the English Constitution, the necessity
of choosing a Ministry wholly from one party, conveyed
no idea to her mind. It seemed to her, naturally enough,
to reduce the Sovereign from a personally influential agent
to the condition of a machine for registering the results
of a party contest. Her secret adviser recommended an
Administration selected on a different principle. It was to
be composed of men influential in the Houses, yet not
chosen in the mass for their party prominence, but taken one
from this section, and from that section another, according
to the character of the departments they were required to
fill. GodolpMn had tried the plan. Long after, St. John
advocated it. But the Queen's extreme aversion to all
connected with the then Ministry, Cowper and the Somer
sets excepted, condemned the scheme to failure, however
well suited to her own theory of the royal prerogative.
Otherwise, the first experiment must have demonstrated the
impracticability, now that the superintending control of
Parliament was acknowledged, of carrying on a Government
without reciprocal confidence among its members. The dread
of a colleague's Parliamentary manoeuvres and intrigues was
sure to have vitiated all unison of operation. Harley, it may
be suspected, less with any patriotic design of mitigating party
rancour, than from the love of coalitions, a radical feature in
all his policy, and in the hope of warding off the violence of
the Whigs, or the vehemence of the undisciphned Toryism,
of which he seems to* have conceived an instinctive dread,

Henry St. John. 139

made the attempt. Lord Chancellor Cowper and Walpole
emphatically repulsed his overtures. In vain he insinuated
that " a WMg game was intended at bottom." The Chancellor
declares in Ms diary that he saw how shuffling were all Harley's
explanations, and that, " in a little time, when any Tory of in
terest would press for the place, he must have it." Probably
prejudice against the new Minister's candour rendered Cowper
unjust. Harley's constant policy was to temper the Tories
with the WMgs, that he might not become an instrument of
Jacobite intrigues. But the Whig policy was not to temper
Whigs with Tories ; and, after a flourish of trumpets, in the
dismissal of some subordinates, Godolphin surrendered his
beloved white staff. Though Marlborough retained his com
mand, his fall was the slow but certain consequence of the
overthrow of his connections. The Treasury was put in
commission, Harley being head of the Board. Rochester, as
President of the Council, in the absence of a Lord Treasurer,
was in rank Premier ; and St. John assumed, Avith a Secre
taryship of State, his historical position of statesman.
The suddenness of St. John's elevation dazzles the student
of history. He had spoken often, and with effect; he had
discharged the duties committed to him with zeal and tact ;
but he was only the follower of Harley, rising and falling
with him. The plot which brought him his promotion was
not of his devising. To his chief the honour belonged, if
honour there were; yet St. John reaped the lion's share of
the profit. He had been lost in a party; all at once the
nation resounded with his voice, and Europe, for half a
century, felt the effects of his policy. Harley knew better
than any man how to adapt himself to weaknesses. St. John
compelled adhesion from admiration. The one could never
lead a party boldly and decidedly; the other could never
collect a party ; he was made to be the spirit and soul of
one already formed. The audacity of conception, which
aroused fear in his adversaries, gave confidence to friends.
Few joined his ranks because they had been convinced by
his acts or arguments, but, once gathered round him, they

140 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.

obeyed imphcitly. He did not entrench himself in the camp
of Toryism. Toryism was not recognised as the national
policy. Whig principles were alone constitutional, Whig-
statesmen the only authorised interpreters of the Constitu
tion. The object of the Harley Cabinet was to impugn the
deductions from the principles, and the integrity of their cus
todians, without attacking the premisses on which the infer
ences were based. St. John was an instrument in carrying
out this pohcy, and he secured the aid of the press ; but Ms aim
was Mgher and it was independent. In that aim is to be found
the hnk between his Toryism and his Radicalism. Shaftesbury
was by turns a Republican and a Royalist, and we shall see that
the Royahst St. John could recognise, at one time, an obligation
upon the sovereign to consult the popular will on every occa
sion ; at another, his right to govern his territories according
to the absolute bias of his own will. Both theories flowed
from the same mental character. The dislike to a Venetian
oligarchy is an original sentiment in certain minds, and no
invention of Mr. Disraeli's imagination. St. John appealed
from the dogmas proclaimed by a league of great lords, among
whom it enraged him that he was not himself counted, to
the individual majesty of the Sovereign, and the collective
majesty of the people. It was not the capriciousness of a
disposition ever attempting innovation for the sake of show
ing craft, which inspired his peculiar pohtical career. It
was not disgust at the haughty disdam of the lords of
pocket boroughs. It was hatred of a system which exacted
blind submission to a creed of the past, and required a party
to act in a particular way because it had acted so. before.
His feehngs moved him to adopt a cause in which he would
be most of a real agent ; the Organ, it might be, of a monarch;
it might be, of a democracy ; but, at all events, not a colleague
of a set of mummies.
In mere numbers the Tories probably exceeded the Whigs ;
but the Whigs had achieved the Revolution ; and their work
had never been renounced by the nation. To wm over the
people, to secure, not its incorporation in the Ministerial, but

Henry St. John. 141
its defection from the opposite party, was the object of the
eager patronage now extended to literature. From this
line of action the characteristic lustre of the last four years
of Queen Anne's reign is derived, set in relief as they are by
the neighbourhood of Walpole's unillumined adnunistration.
Now, not a few isolated exceptions, as Addison and Montague,
among writers, were caressed by Cabinets ; all were accepted
as, of right, equals in society, by their employers and patrons.
Literary men of the same political opinions were courted for
the aid they brought, and, if adversaries, less for the harm they
might do than out of compliment to the profession. Not only
were Prior and Swift reckoned high among statesmen, but
Steele retained his Commissionership, and Addison was
always an honoured guest of St. John's. Authors responded
by a spirit and manifest consciousness of power- over affairs,
unknown in the days of Charles II. Proud of being acknow
ledged partners of pohticians equally sympathetic with litera
ture, and prominent in that practical faculty of ruling men
wdiich unpractical men appreciate so intensely, professional
writers became at once sworn advocates of the policy of the
statesmen, and protectors of their fame. Robertson attributes
the unjustifiable glory of Francis, as contrasted with the
very indifferent reputation of his rival the Emperor Charles,
to his zealous patronage of letters. No small part of the
renown of St. John is due to the openness with which he
confessed the power of literature, and the manner in wMch
he conciliated the admiration of its professors by Ms own
devotion to the art.
The high rank maintained by the reign of Anne, as the
Augustan age of English literature, is intimately connected
with the favour shown to authors by the Minister on whose
subsequent reputation the celebrity of some of them has
signally reacted. A condition necessary to the promotion of
any especial epoch to this rank, is a high state, not of caste
culture, but of national culture ; that state m which a whole
people is able to appreciate a production, in proportion to the
distinctions of social grades. No author will write so as to

142 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.

move a nation, unless his countrymen be in a condition to be
moved. Only thus will the spirit of a nation be so changed
or modified by literature as to become a force reproducing
like effects in the minds of after generations. Whenever
in such circumstances great authors arise, as great authors
surely Avill, they must exercise an enduring influence.
But place them, with this condition of general intellectual
culture fulfilled, in a crisis of political agitation, or social
progress, and enforce among them the recognition of a
standard, by forming them into a community for reciprocal
criticism ; then the influence of the era will have no bounds.
Its best intelligence will be directed to the training of national
and pohtical feeling, and will exert an ever fresh and living
power. The writings may be scarcely intelligible as to their
immediate objects, when these have been obsolete for genera
tions; they never lose the interest with which a thorough
perception of popular tastes and temper originally invested
them. Gulliver's Travels and Sir Roger de Coverley cannot
become unmeaning. The title to be a golden age of letters
is determined by the coincidence of a popular taste for
literature with a call to advocate popular objects. The
Elizabethan age demonstrates the extreme height to which
the English mind can aspire. But Addison, Swift, Pope,,
Steele, De Foe, and Bolingbroke, are still practically our
literary models. Their age continues to set the standard by
which we test the works of our contemporaries.
All the literary strength had hitherto been on the side of
the Whigs. De Foe, Steele, Addison, and Swift, at first in
the train of Somers, were a host. St. John perfectly compre
hended the importance of such an engine in the uncertain
pohtical state of the kingdom. Later, wearied with thfr
various attacks on his measures, and without the hopefulnes
of the youth of an Administration to sustain him, or in the
confidence of power, he brought forward a sweeping enact
ment against the freedom of political tracts. Though he
failed in carrying that, he persuaded Parliament to lay a
heavy tax upon newspapers and pamphlets. At present

Henry St. John. 14c

as he could not, or would not, curb the Opposition press
by force, he resolved to Avrite it down. The Post-boy, a
ferocious party paper, and the much more characteristic
Examiner, commenced August 3, 1710, undertook the
task. The benefit to be obtained by the Government from
a clever literary organ could not be overrated. It Avas in a
most exceptional position. While it enjoyed the decided
confidence of the House of Commons, and, by inference,
the squires, it was hated by the most energetic portion of
the community, by the middle classes and the trading in
terest. They saw in it a faction exemplified by its leaders,
some the personifications of selfish unscrupulousness, some
careless of everytliing but the gratification of personal am
bition, or personal vanity. It was no answer to this that
its opponents were as mere a faction; that they cared
nothing for the interests of their country, or for the liberties
of the people ; that they had always been ready to intrigue
for party ends with foreign powers, and actually, in this reign,
concerted Avith Marlborough and the Elector a scheme for
introducmg HanoA^erian troops to fortify the Protestant
succession. Their success in changing the dynasty had
stamped all their measures with the authority of legitimacy.
Both alike Avere factions, utterly regardless of the Avill of the
majority. Both would have been inclined to sympathise
with the temper of the Duchess of Marlborough, who loved
to dabble in philosophy, when she denounced the patience
of Socrates under a legal sentence awarded by "a villains'
majority." The difference remained, that the one faction
seemed to have none but private aims, the other to have
identified private Avith public. To offer to its oavu party
a plausible theory of the plans of their leaders and the
calumnies of enemies, was the object of the Examiner.
It Avas supported by St. John's sparkling style, in Avhich
the English language seemed to have reached its ultimate
pamphleteering force of expression, and by the fierce but
cold humour of Swift. Its greatest strength Avas in the
confident tone, avMcIi assurance against pillories and actions

144 Some Verdicts of History Revieived.
of libel, and acquaintance Avith secrets of State, naturally
taught all its contributors. The Review, edited by De Foe,
exMbited, together with a residuum of, positive WMggisni,
the conciliatory tendencies of. Harley. The Exammer dis
played against Steele's and Addison's Tattler the Secre
tary's uncompromising hostility, not to the principle of the
Revolution, at least openly, but to the deductions drawn
from it, and to the characters of its agents. The bitterness
Avhich flowed freely from his pen he would probably ha\re
justified by Ms tenet, that " to form a good and great charac
ter, the heart must be touched Avith esteem and contempt,
with loA'e and hatred." While Swift hurled the imputation
of mean rapacity against the General, and of analogous
conduct to that of David towards Uriah, and bigamy, against
the Whig Chancellors, Somers and Cowper respectively, St.
John vented, in a letter to the Exammer, Ms detestation of
the ambitious Duchess, and his exultation that "the Fury,
broke loose to execute the vengeance of heaven on a sinful
people, is restrained, and the royal hand reached out to chain
up the plague." State measures were freely discussed, and
in a vray to proAroke, even unite, free discussion on the other
. side. Steele answered Swift, and Cowper St. John. This
Avas St. John's own design. His instinct told Mm, truly,
that the one thing to be dreaded by Mimsters was the feeling
of a mystery and concealment, wMch made the nation suspect
more than met the ear in everytiiing done or attempted.
When the start ,wasLfairly made,.he had resigned the editor
ship to hands strong enough to uphold the most dubious
cause, to the portentous mixture of fury at will and plain
shrewd sense which composed the mind of Swift. Swift
Avas, with more sincerity, St. John's literary counterpart. His
diseased constitution, both of body and disposition, AA-as not
fitted for the fine balancing of party combinations which was
Harley's pecuhar delight. The writer avIio stigmatised the
Chancellor, Mmself no half partisan, as " Trimming Harcourt,"
for disapproving the charge of; cowardice against the most
accomplished of English generals, could be no sincere adviser

Henry St. John. 145

of coalitions, unless as temporary manceuA'res. Whatever he
undertook he lent his Avhole being to acMeve ; though he might
change his politics, he had a capacity of beheving always in
Ms Avork, of never doubting the obligation which lay on him
to do Avhat he had undertaken, as a matter of conscience. Noav,
too, at last, disappointed ambition had driven him into the
party which really smted his nature. He loved to fashion
men's thoughts and institutions after a pattern furnished by his
own fancy. There was in him an element of destructiveness,
controlled and corrected by a passion for reconstruction. A
Church establishment which should endure no occasional con
formity, a monarchy aatMc1i should not be at the bidding of an
oligarchy of birth or riches, were the two fundamental concep
tions in the soul of Swift. As with St. John, there was an
assumption in his projects that the Church and the monarchy
should be exactly fasMoned after his own, and not other
men's ideas ; and that as abstractions cannot act, their organs
should be himself and his friends. But, to effect all this, the
present state of things must be changed; and the change
could be accomplished only through an appeal, not to the
great Revolution families, but to the people. In this, the
Radical side of Ms politics, as of St. John's, is the point of
contact betAveen the two. Yet he does not appear to have
altogether liked the Secretary. One party could scarcely afford
free scope for tAvo such men. Each had sufficient self-confi
dence and ambition to rebuild the entire edifice of society,
and each believed himself to be an infallible touchstone
for all measures. Besides, there Avas a grand seigneur air
at times about St. John, as about Byron and Frederick the
Great, in his intercourse with literary men. The demeanour
of a man affecting to look on such employments as a
graceful condescension, not perhaps in the statesman,. but in
the man of the world, could not but offend his companion's
earnestness and energy. The one had not knoAvn what
leisure meant, and- still remembered, with loathing, the lofty
graciousness of Sir William Temple. A man whose life
had been neArer free from anxiety about petty wants, who

146 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.

threAv himself with all his heart into the work before him,
could not be satisfied to see another, who profited by Ms
efforts, professing to look upon all this as not the real busi
ness of life, as not entitled to come into competition with a
saunter in the Mall or an assignation. Harley's complaisance
and spirit of concession Avere more to the Doctor's taste.
That statesman had learnt, in his partly neutral position of
Speaker, not to affront his clients with the ostentation of
patronage. Even when he annoyed the proud spirit, which
rated its services at a mitre, Avith the offer of £50 for his
parallel between the late and present Cabinets in the 26th
number of the Examiner, the blame was laid by the
offended author rather on a Avant of delicacy of perception,
than on the contemptuousness of a man who thought money
could buy brains. Swift's letters and sayings betray a deeper
sentiment of friendship for Harley, sincere admirer as he was of
the genius of the Secretary, his own more immediate coadjutor.
The ascendency of character which at length obliged Swift to
recognise in St. John the chief of the party, while he depre
cated his patron's deposition, began, soon after the formation
of the Cabinet, to be exerted. Not only was the foreign
policy shaped by the Secretary as of course ; the scope of
the general policy of the Administration was also mainly
marked out by him. The office of countenancing the Cabinet,
and procuring for it the favour of the hereditary Tory
famihes, Avas left to Rochester, otherwise a mere obstructive.
Harley's genius was best adapted for conciliating opponents.
He did not hope to convert professed partisans, but to blunt
the edge of their hostility, and to gain the votes of dubious
members. The respectable appearance made by the Whigs
in the new Parliament pleased him. It gave room for the
practice of the art of management of the House of Commons,
which none understood more exactly. He saw in it a pros
pect of escape from the thraldom to party principles and
violence which he abhorred. As Swift represented St. John,
so De Foe expounded, though with truculent earnestness, the
views of Harley, to whom he owed his liberty. He had been

Henry St. John. 147

sentenced to NeAA'gate for the authorship of 'A Short Way
Avith the Dissenters,' a sarcastic burlesque on the Establish
ment, which was, it is said, for a long time applauded in the
combination rooms of Cambridge as a grave and judicious
suggestion to Government. Thenceforward at peace Avith
the Ministry, he advocated, Avith his deliverer, a larger com
prehensiveness and a widening of the basis of party.
But Harley was not a statesman of originality or far
sightedness sufficient for such an undertaking. Any union
of parties effected by him could be only a coalition of men.
It could not reconcile principles, by tracing them up to and
including them within something higher. Unhappily for
him, a temper was at work in the country, and an unquiet
spirit astir in his own Cabinet, which swept away the cobwebs
of his intrigues, and undid all his clever Parliamentary patch-
Avork. The Country party Avas at last thoroughly roused.
In its red-hot vigour and strong with the unpopularity of
the Avar policy of the late Administration, it complained of
conciliatory schemes as treason against it, and a violation of
the right of the conquerors. Now it had a leader far superior
to Rochester or to Nottingham, and him it resolved to
make head of the Government, as he was already of the party.
The attempt on the life of the First Lord by Guiscard, a
French Abbe, part profligate, part infidel, which, well managed,
might have caused the evil day to be put off indefinitely, did
not defer for long the transfer of the preeminence. At the mo
ment Harley's wound excited a degree of national enthusiasm
and generous sympathy only to be paralleled by the feeling
of the country on the murder of Mr. Perceval. He Avas held
up as a martyr to the vengeance of disguised Jesuits. A
peerage was the least of Ms honours. The opportune death of
the Lord President opened his way to the High Treasurer's
staff, a badge of supremacy which could not be bestowed in
Rochester's lifetime.
The incurable bitterness betAveen the colleagues, wMch
infuses so painful and personal an interest into the catas
trophe of the Administration, dates from this e\rent. St. John,

e>-

148 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
who had at first manifested all becoming indignation at
the crime of Guiscard, grew envious of the glory his friend
had acqmred, especially as the previous request of a private
conference with himself seemed to indicate Mm as the original
object of the assassin's fury. The fervour of Harley's popularity
with the nation, at large seemed to defer, perhaps for ever, the
elevation which the Secretary's influence over the Tories had
given Mm a right to expect. Not Ms ambition alone was
attacked. His vanity Avas wounded by the subsequent conduct1
of the Premier. Vanity was an insatiable passion in Mm.
A morbid craving for opportunities of action and the exercise
of Ms abilities is the key to Ms career ; he intended not only to
be, but to seem, the prime mover of the Government pohcy.
But even to be left undisputed leader in the House of Commons
he thought a small thing beside a grant to Harley of the heraldic'
honours of the de Veres and Mortimers. Perhaps Harley's
perception of Ms own comparative obscurity in Council made
him feed the flames of jealousy in his colleague's breast by a
proud sequestering of himself, Avhile he resolutely claimed the
exclusive distribution of all patronage. " We avIio are reputed
to be in Mr. Harley's intimacy," writes St. John to Lord Orrery,
May 1711, " have few opportunities of seeing him, and none
of talking freely with him. As he is the only true channel
through which the Queen's pleasure is conveyed to us, there
is, and must be, a perfect stagnation till he is pleased to open
Mmself, and set the waters flowing." TMs festering prejudice
had been nursing itself in the hearts of the two, before their
common friends discovered its existence. In February, Swift
expressed his satisfaction to Lord Peterborough at their love
for one another, in spite of the scandal of inconstancy under
Avhich Court friendships lie. In May, he was forced to AA'rite,
" I am not now so secure." Well might he doubt. It was un
likely that St. John would long consent to sit as a subordinate
in the Cabinet to which he dictated. It was even improbable
that he would consider it prudent to rest quiet in a position,
in which all his plans had to be submitted to the carping and
timorous supervision of such a principal. The delay, in Avhich

Henry St. John, 149

he Avas forced to acquiesce, irritated Ms appetite. The time Avas
not ripe in the moment of national enthusiasm for another bed
chamber plot, avMcIi should rudely set aside the popular idol.
But it was not in St. John's nature to forget a scheme of aggran
disement, thoughfriends might, as Swift attempted, demonstrate
it to be fraught with ruin to himself, as well as his adversary.
He had converted the press into a poAverful machine for
cementing his party, by concentrating round Mmself a vast
amount of literary poAver to be pointed and directed by
Mm. Noav he devoted his abilities to the task of impress
ing Ms political associates with a sense of his OAvn talents, in
contrast with his rival's incapacity. His force of character,
and mastery over the mysteries of social intercourse, enabled
Mm to employ to this end the collective weight, and the electric
sympathy of mind with mind, of which by his day political clubs
were become reservoirs. London taverns had been from of
old, before the tone of good society had shrunk into a tone of
reserve, the favourite resort of men of pleasure and leisure.
Every one will remember the brilliant picture drawn of them
in the ' Fortunes of Nigel.' Coffee and chocolate houses were
of later origin ; they did not supersede the life of taverns,
but extended it ; they afforded, as any number of the
Spectator, or the details of Addison's own day indicate, a
more habitual resort for the purposes of conversation or
busmess. "Button's" and "Will's" are become names of
history.. Yet all these were obviously ill adapted for centres
of political movements, liOAvever well they served for the
rendezvous of authors. Clubs filled up the void. The name
is an anachronism, when applied before the age of the Revo
lution. The conception Avas not realised in the conclaves
which listened to the Republican dreams of Harrington
and Sidney. That was reserved for the comparatively free
epoch of the reign of William, and the adventurous propa-
gandism of the statesmen of the next.
The Kit-Cat Club, founded by Lord Somers, in conjunc
tion Avith Prior, Congreve, and Jacob Tonson, the bookseller,
met in summer at the Upper Flask, Clarissa Harlowe's

150 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.

Upper Flask, on Hampstead Heath; the rest of the year
in Shire Lane, at the house of that inauspiciously-named
baker of mutton-pies, Christopher Cat. Whig it was, heart
and soul. Whig sentiments alone were given ; Whig witti
cisms alone were allowed ; Whig beauties, as we learn from
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who herself had, as a child,
enjoyed the distinction, were the only toasts. Wit or rank
Avas a necessary condition of admittance ; and dinner was
served at the ultra-fashionable hour of three. Hard drink
ing seems to haA'e been, though not its monopoly, at once
the principle and art of the Beef-steak Club, rather than
politics. Presbyterian Liberals do not appear to have had
any such society. The Calves' -head Club Avas a reunion
for the remnant of the implacable CromAA^ellians, being
designed to commemorate the execution of Charles I. The
October Club, so called from the devotion of its members,
mostly country gentlemen of the rank of squires, to mighty
October ale, was instituted for party purposes, and compre
hended almost a third of the Commons. Harley was no
favourite Avithin the walls of the Clock tavern, in West
minster, Avhere the members met. They supported his
measures ; they did not disguise their dislike to Ms char
acter, nor their suspicion of his ulterior intentions. St.
John, on the contrary, they received with open arms ; the
licence of his private life was excused in their eyes by Ms
persecution of everything unorthodox, m a generation wMch
had no spare energies for the championship of morahty,
whether against him or a Wharton. They may have thought
him too clever ; his fierceness atoned. But even of St. John
they avouM make no inspired prophet : he must first conquer
their confidence. At a subsequent period, he wrote savagely
to Wyndham of the House of Commons and the Tory
members, that " they grew, like hounds, fond of the man who
shows them game, and by whose halloo they are used to be
encouraged." A blinder confidence was kept for men such
as Nottingham, or, still more, Rochester.
The death of Rochester did not merely remove an

Henry St. John. 151

obstruction from the path of the Treasurer, but also, by
depriving the Tories of their hereditary leader, abandoned
them to the conduct of the younger statesman. St. John,
however, required a more manageable and more obedient
centre, from which his theories and principles might be
propagated through the nation. The society of The Brothers
— they avouM not call it a Club — Avas instituted in June,
1711, for twelve, and afterwards sixteen members. It
included, beside St. John, the Dukes of Ormond and
Shrewsbury, the latter a discontented Whig and a most fatal
convert to Toryism, Swift, Prior, Arbuthnot, and Wyndham.
Neither the Treasurer nor Harcourt Avas a member, though
their sons were admitted. In it was contained the germ of
the literary " Scriblerus Club," far better known to posterity.
The members and their wives were supposed to be hnked
together by the closest friendship. It was but an extension
or modification of the Saturday dinner at Harley's house,
with St. John substituted as president. As Harley's guests,
before the outbreak, in May, of the bitter mutual jealousies,
the Secretary, Swift, Harcourt, Rivers, and that capricious
faithless genius, Peterborough, the Tory hero, and the Don
Quixote of his age, for valour, though not for truthfulness, had
met Aveekly to dine and confer. Over their beloved champagnej
or more beloved tokay, they had listened reverentially
to the counsels of the despotic Dean, as Scipio and Lselius to
the poet Ennius ; only, the viands Avere rather superior
to the pot-herbs which, on Cicero's authority, Ave must beheve
formed the staple of the Roman banquets. The " society "
really served chiefly the purposes of St. John's rivalry. He
pretended that its object Avas to correspond, in the higher
ranks of the Tory party, to the influence among the Whigs of
the Kit-Cat. "The first regulation," say St. John's pro
posals for the formation of it, "and that Avhich must be
inviolably kept, is decency. None of the extravagance of the
Kit-Cat is to be endured." The founder required a standpoint
from which to propel popular opinion. All his friends became
apostles to spread his vieAvs : some of them are accepted as of

152 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
finer intellect than their master ; from Mm came the impetus
wMch set their minds working. He might safely embelhsh
his projects with their wit and thought, or borrow ideas from
them ; as Mirabeau pressed the masterpieces of ancient and
modern eloquence into his service. All came forth bearing
the genuine stamp of Ms genius. The preachers of the
neAV gospel traced their inspiration to him.
The defect of his nature was, that there was not sufficient;
ballast for the weight of sail. He would be first always ; and
not borrow, but found a system. His talents made Mm
lead ; there was not enough of judgment, patience, sympathy,
or, above all, consistency, to constitute a successful leader.
His career, in all its several divisions, had ever the same
features. It left a profound impression of force, which may
be traced in contemporary literature, but he could never keep
his levies long from disbanding. His immediate survivors.
were unable to explain the sudden dechne of the influence
of his ideas, AAdien the man, with his contagious strength of
will, was gone ; posterity cannot understand whence arose his
influence at the first. In Ms own day, the momentum and
energy of his character, with its extraordinary subtlety and
keen perceptions, were sufficiently visible impulses. His
is one of the periods when an individual palpably moved
Europe. The proper circumstances were given ; the spot on
which the machinery was to be set up had been prepared.
He had reorgamsed and collected the scattered powers of the
Tories, turning against the Wiiigs their own peculiar artillery
of the press. The author and head of the Cabinet had been
reduced by Ms lieutenant's superior capacity to a titular
digmtary, Ms friends detached from him, and his programme
forgotten. The victor now put forth Ms strength to achieve
a measure which he regarded as the index of his own and
his party's predommance, and a patent for it of perpetuity.
The hatred felt for a league with the Dutch by the Tories
was only equalled by their hatred of a war with France. Yet
they had found it necessary to accede to both these measures,
from the patriotic fear of royal treachery, in the reign of

Henry St. John, 15?

Charles II., and of popular feeling, in their brief intervals of
power under William. Godolphin's originally Tory Admini
stration had yielded to this incubus . Harley,' and the maj ority
of his Tory colleagues, though encouraged by the Queen,
did not venture to throw it off. St. John, however often
wanting in moral fortitude, had abundance of pohtical courage.
The difficulties which deterred others were a spur to him ;
he preferred having the whole of the risk, and the whole of
the glory. It would be a noble exploit, he thought, in itself ;
and avouM ensure his pre-eminence among his adherents, and
Avith Anne. The negotiation of the peace of Utrecht Avas the
glory of his term of office. It was not merely the conclusion
of a sanguinary war ; it Was the inauguration of a change of
European pohcy, which lasted till toAvards the retirement
of Walpole, Avhen that great Minister resigned his peaceful
tactics in deference to clamour.
Even at this distance of time, opinions diametrically differ
on the expediency of the peace, apart from any suspicions of
treachery in its author. His own declared contrition for
having compromised the balance of power by deserting the
United Provinces, and not forcmg a breach in the brazen wall
of France, Avill not be taken at more than its proper value.
The confederacy of Walpole and Fleury was wonderfully
efficacious in opening his eyes to the want of patriotism
Avhich any alliance with France indicated. There could be
no doubt of the danger to Europe from the not improbable
union of two contiguous realms like France and Spam, had
the Due de Berri died and PMlip disavowed his renunciation
of the French succession. A forgetfulness of family ties, even
should the two crowns remain separated, Avas no certainty,
as the subsequent alliances of those powers against us proved.
On the other hand, the nation had a right to consider whether
there were any proximate hope of success in an undertaking,
by deserting Avhich no sacred obligations, except perhaps the
engagement to the Catalans, would be compromised. It-
might Avell hesitate to pronounce authoritatively that a free
nation should -take a sovereign of another's choosmg, and not
n 2

154 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
the next heir. Again, the peril from the present union of the
Empire of Germany and Spain, in the person of Charles, was
to be set against a possible future conjunction of France and
the Peninsula. Men then still beheved in the tradition of
Spain, as head and fountain of violent Catholic propagandism ;
they had not forgotten the collective might of Charles V.
They were not able to discern, as we can, that the apathy of
Spain respecting the Netherlands in William's reign was the
result, not of corrupt government merely, but thorough
national exhaustion. In addition to all this, we must
remember the character of the Imperial House of Austria,
always ready to demand subsidies, and to break its own
engagements, which might, frighten some statesmen from the
delivery into its hands of the keys of West Indian commerce.
All Ministers felt the impracticability of deahng with a policy
essentially and hereditarily selfish. It was not only Harley's
Cabinet. Stanhope and the rest who reprobated the desertion
of Charles of Hapsburg, confessed that they were induced to
form the Quadruple Alliance by the prospect of confining the
grasping covetousness of the Emperor within specific limits.
St. John's motives in concluding the treaty which , left
Spain under the Duke of Anjou, are estimated generally by
the light of his subsequent connection with the Pretender.
When men had before them the facts, that St. John made
peace with France, and afterwards joined the Stuarts, they
found no difficulty in imagining an union of cause and effect
betAveen the two events. St. John's sincerity in Ms nego
tiations with James at the end of Queen Anne's reign is
noAV a foregone conclusion. The Stuart papers, and his own
confession to Lord Marchmont, prove it completely. If he
acknowledges so much, posterity is to be excused for con
jecturing an earlier, though not so complete a collusion with
the Court of the exiles. His misfortune was, that this pro
bably true inference, which the country had no right to draw
from Avhat is known of the negotiations at Utrecht, it took
for granted on the weak evidence of party, or anti-French
prejudices. Partly circumstances, and partly the bias of St.

Henry St. John. 15

John's disposition, are chargeable with the obloquy attaching
to him on the score of the treaty. It was his own particular
Avork, and transacted by him Avith that appearance of self-
confidence and selfish exclusiveness, which rendered him a
bad coadjutor in any political enterprise, unless it Avere an
attack. Secrecy and mystery may be necessary in preparing
an assault ; they are not popular quahties AA'hen the captured
fort is to be governed.
Hence the peace became the natural point of aggression
both for former friends and for open enemies. Harley, as head
of the Cabinet, was a party to the conclusion, but had been
excluded from knowledge of many of the preliminary manoeu
vres, in Avhich he might not haAre had the courage to engage.
His personal friends, aAvare of this, bore no good will to a treaty
which was a mark of their chief's humiliation. We may be
sure that he himself, the clever Parliamentary Trimmer, the
friend of the Nonconformists Avhile leading the Tories, would
hardly care to conceal the fact from the Opposition. On the
contrary, he blazoned abroad his OAvn insignificance. " While
this was doing," writes St. John, " Oxford looked on, as
though he had not been a party to all which had passed ;
broke now and then a jest . . . ; and, on those occasions,
Avhen his station- obliged him to speak of business, was
absolutely unintelligible." The whole Whig connection felt
itself aggrieved by such an end to such a war. The memory
of its great " Deliverer " Avas insulted by the commonplace
termination to all his confederacies and toils. WMgs exclaimed,
that the pledges of England to the Protestantism of Europe
had been dishonoured, and its presidency of the league against
the breaker of the Edict of Nantes deliberately disowned.
Even many Tories had expected more from all the burdens they
had borne, and from the splendour with which Marlborough,
Avhom yet they affected to depreciate in comparison with
Webb, had suffused the national name.
There were two divisions of the Tory party, which, though
united generally against the Whigs, Avere always suspicious
of each other, and not seldom at open war. There were the

156 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
Parhamentary Tories, and the great " Country party," the
Abhorrers of Charles II.'s reign, the Cavahers of his father's
campaigns. Not so much fear for the Constitution had made
the latter recognise the de facto government of William, as
fear for the Church. They liked the old peaceful foreign
policy of England, though they nourished a prejudice against
France, not the less for the thought that there the Stuarts
had learned the doctrines which made them unfit rulers of
England. William's policy, as Shaftesbury's two reigns before,
had caused this national dislike to be transferred to Holland
and the allies generally. War with France had become the
watchword almost of the WMgs, and the dreaded Hanoverian
succession was bound up Avith the same idea. Thus, with
this Tory section the peace Avas decidedly popular, although,
as soon as it Avas signed, the old jealousy of our neighbours
revived, and i prevented any concerted resistance to the mur
murs of Opposition. The other division, the Parhamentary
Tories, had been for the most part implicated in the Revolu
tion, and had too much to lose to approve of any measure
wMch might pave the way for the restoration of the Stuarts.
They had conceived, besides, a rooted distrust of the leaders
of the larger portion of their OAvn party. The country gentle
men of that section had chosen chiefs of their own, not
those hereditary cMefs avIio become at last fixtures in a party,
but active instruments for carrying out and representing their
views. Of these the Parhamentary Tories suspected Harley,
but they absolutely feared St. John. They saw in him an un-
scrupulousness, whether rightly or wrongly, Avliich avouM lead
him into any situation best fitted for a display of mgenmty.
His evident determination to gratify an inordinate A-amty, as
Ms enemies would term it, his talent for affairs, according to
his friends, dismayed them, unchecked as he Avas by the least
self-restraint in the choice of means or occasions. Stanhope
and Nottingham alike saw in him a resoluteness, Avhich would,
to accomplish a party measure, lead him to conspire, though
in office, against the established order.
Domestic suspiciousness grievously increased his difficulties

Henry St. John. 157

as a negotiator. He had, at once, to convince the French
Court of the large concessions it must make before peace could
be guaranteed by his Administration ; to outbid the Dutch
and Austrians in popularity at home; and to conceal his
procedure, till he should have so far compromised the nation,
as to make it virtually impossible for Parhament to draw back.
With the array of friends and foes against him, Whigs and
Tories, he could not have escaped from a similar storm to
that avMcIi broke upon Somers and Portland toAvards the end
of the last reign. His morbid love of workmg in darkness
deprived him of the kindness and charity of all sections of
opinion in the hour of that fall wMch public men might m
those times count upon with certainty. No nation, no party,
suffers itself with impunity to be circumvented, to be duped,
even into being done good to against its consent. This Avas
what, according to his OAvn interpretation of Ms conduct, he
did* He deceived the kingdom into deliverance from a
war, which was become a nightmare, but henceforth was
invested in the popular fancy with ideal lustre. England
was tricked into a peace Avhich, however necessary, was an
inadequate compensation for so much glory and exhaustion.
In vain was the captious rejection of more advantageous
conditions, offered at Gertrudenberg, retorted upon the Whigs.
They rejoined, that nothing had occurred to justify the accept
ance of terms so inferior, or, yet more, to extenuate the infamy
of abandoning the Catalans. Secretaries of State might wonder
at what they deemed " the stupid obstinacy " of patriots, fight
ing for their hereditary liberties, as St. John called it in a letter
to the Queen; but nations often have a conscience, which party
leaders, as Walpole, who have it not themselves, know how to
rouse, for selfish purposes, against official violators of justice.
The whole affair was involved in mystery. Secret agents,
the Abbe Gautier and Prior, traversed in disguise England
and France. Mesnager, and Dubois, the future statesman,
appeared in London. Informal powers, countersigned by no
Minister, not sealed with the great seal, were forwarded from
Windsor ; Harley and Shrewsbury Avere hurried on by the

158 Some Verdicts of History Revieived.

audacious Secretary ; and, suddenly, the nation woke up to find
the campaigns of Marlborough matters of Mstory, and itself
committed to articles of wMch no party, no statesman ap
proved, but one Avith the reputation of a political adA~enturer.
His work was still by no means over. The allies might
rouse the nation to disavoAv its diplomatists. Marlborough
and Eugene might open a campaign so brilliant as to necessi
tate a rise in our demands. Parhament might refuse to
ratify what had been so informally done as to be the act
of an individual, and not of a cabinet. Swift's journal to
Stella depicts the confusion of parties, and excitement of
St. John, whose spirit rose to the leA-el of the occasion. An
amendment to the Address Aras actually carried in the Lords,
since the Revolution a Whig assembly, to the effect, that no
peace could be safe and honourable Avhich left the Spanish
Indies and the Peninsula in the hands of the Bourbons.
Harley, who did not dare to cast off his dangerous colleague,
yet avouM not openly subscribe to Ms measures, was not
present. The friends of the Secretary and Mmself affected
surprise at the apathy of the head of the Government, as if in
all the transaction he did not feel his degradation from that
position, though without the boldness to break with the
man, noAV the only intermediary between him and advanced
Tories. In the LoAA'er House the fascination exerted by St.
John kept the party together. The same amendment was
rejected there by 232 to 106. All the resources of intrigue
and faction were called out by Ms inventive mind. De Foe,
ever grateful for his freedom, though calling himself a true
Whig still, wrote, unconscious of the estrangement of the
Treasurer from his colleagues, to vindicate the peace from
the charge of being a desertion of William's constant pohcy.
Swift, Avith a less scrupulous partisanship, poured forth a
Avhole hail-storm of Grub Street parodies and invectives on
the leader of the " Hanoverian " or " whimsical " Tories, to use
St. John's phrases —
" The orator dismal of Nottinghamshire,
Who has forty years let out his conscience for hire " —

Henry St. John. 159

whose junction AA'ith the Opposition on the peace silenced
resistance to the long-mooted " Occasional Conformity Bill."
The same scourge fell, in the " Windsor Prophecy," on the
Whig Duchess of Somerset, against Avhoni SAvift enigmatically
warned the too partial Queen, " Beware of carrots ; " and on
the great General, aaIio had long been used, though he neArer
greAv reconciled, to the names of " Harpy " and " Crassus."
At last, the partisans of peace felt strong enough to strike
openly at their adversaries. It Avas not Swift's insulting pen,
nor the unpopularity of a tedious war, nor the Ministerial
majority in the House of Commons, which left them at liberty
to commence the assault. It Avas the Queen's detestation
of the whole family connection of the Churchills, comprising
the Godolphins, Sunderlands, and the Duke and Duchess
themselves, which freed St. John's hands. He had leave to
propose in the Commons a Committee of Inquiry into the
pubhc expenditure of the late Lord Treasurer. In vain did
Walpole declaim and argue. The October Club had its eye
on Mm also, though for the moment there Avere older foes
to be singled out. The integrity of Godolphin Mmself Avas
unimpeachable ; but Marlborough did not escape. Custom,
and the Queen's direct permission, were pleaded, in excuse of
his malversations, to no purpose. The plea, though perhaps
true in form, was, Avhen we consider the Duchess's despotism
over her mistress, too httle equitable, in fact, to justify Lord
Stanhope's indignation, in his able History of England, at the
" baseness of bringing a charge of peculation." Anne gladly
took advantage of the doctrine Avhich screens the SoArereign
from the reproach of inconsistency. She deprived the Duke,
at a blow, of employments from Avhich, and his wife's
places, he derived the enormous revenue of £64,000 a year.
Notwithstanding Harley's caution, the Cabinet had at length
succumbed to the dictates of the October Club. The news
of so radical a measure, which could be attempted with
safety only by the creation of tAvelve peers in the equally
divided House of Lords, where the General's interest Avas
strongest, struck dismay into the Protestant and Germanic

160 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
confederacy. Prince Eugene came over, in the futile hope
of dissuading the Queen, or the not unreasonable expectation
of creating such a storm of personal enthusiasm as to compel
the resumption of the old pohcy. The former danger was
dispelled by the insensibility of Anne, and the vigilance
of St. John, who, in a royal audience accorded to the
famous Captain, bore the brunt of the conversation. The
latter, and more formidable one, was obviated by the mo
mentary popularity of the peace, and some ridiculous reports
of an intention on the Prince's part to seize the reins of
government. All the heads of the Whig party were marked down for
destruction by the October Club. Harley shuddered at the
large majorities which affirmed Ministerial motions. St. John
did not participate in these fears. He must in far different
times have looked back with regretful exultation upon the
day AAdien a charge of peculation, a terrible engine for those
corrupt days, was brought to bear on Ms enemy Walpole.
All tMs time only Ms name appears in State affairs. The
Treasurer still had the disposal of patronage; his influence
over Anne had already passed into the hands of the friend
and flatterer of Lady Masham. We see traces of this in the
secret cooperation of the Sovereign. While England believed
the negotiations were being conducted at Utrecht, St. John
was quietly transacting the whole matter with Torcy.
Ormond, whose, presence in arms in the Netherlands still
kept the Opposition quiet, was secretly instructed, by order
of the Queen in Council, to refrain from any deed of active
hostility. But the veil was soon to be lifted. Pulteney, a
name inseparable from opposition, though sometimes with,
and sometimes, as Ave shall see, against St. John, detected the
difference between the pubhc and private mstructions to the
General. The leader of the Commons boldly avowed his
plan, and took credit for his management. On the 6th of
June, 1712, the Queen came in state to communicate to the
Houses the propositions for peace.
On the prorogation, which shortly followed, St. John was

Henry St. John. 161

elevated to the peerage as Baron St. John of Lidiard-Tregoze,
and Viscount Bolingbroke, ancient titles of tAvo branches of
Ms family. It might be thought the culmination of Ms
prosperity. The grant of a peerage, unless to a laAvyer, is
considered an equivocal compliment to a pohtician, as, in fact,
an intimation of past rather than present vigour. TMs was
not the opinion, even so late as Anne's reign. The poAver of
the Commons had been acknoAvledged since the Great
Rebellion; but the House Avas scarcely the place where a
Minister preferred to publish his larger schemes of policy.
In the Commons the leader Avas too much the slave of a
violent and prejudiced mob like the October Club. We may
fairly question whether the desire of a serener pohtical atmo
sphere were the influential motive with St. John. As a Tory,
even as a Minister, he was a radical ; but his radicalism was
that of a nobly-born demagogue, who advocates the popular
privileges to cast down some superior of his own order. The
chagrin he evinced at the inferiority of his title to that of
Harley, a man " bred up in the Inns of Court," bears out this
view. His consent to be ennobled was due not so much to
the Avish for leisure from the daily contests of a popular
assembly, nor again, to the need of a counterpoise to the
tremendous weight of Whig eloquence and sagacity in the
Upper House, as to the vanity of shining with a title, and the
ambition of arguing in the Painted Chamber with his hat on.
The party does not seem to have lost much from his trans
plantation. The Tories hardly Avanted a champion in the
Commons. There it Avas esteemed a weakness, if not a
sign of corruption, in a member to change sides on account
of an eloquent speech. The Minister could, though sitting
among the Peers, yet grasp the reins, and know how and Avhen
to loosen them. The thorn in his coronet was his colleague's
earldom. He had coveted a revival for himself of the just
extinct earldom of Bolingbroke. In after-life he wrote, that
he " was dragged into the House of Lords, in such a manner
as to make his promotion a punishment, not a reward ; and
was there left to defend the treaties' almost alone." With no

162 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.

gratitude to his Queen and country he set off for Paris, Avliere
the open conferences Avere to be held.
The brilhant statesman of tiiirty-tAvo Avas sure of favourable
judges at the Court of Louis XIV. He Avas fitted to sMne in
that rendezvous of politics and pleasure. He laid the founda
tion of some friendships which served him well when a
fugitive; and he may, perhaps, have had, as his enemies
reported, confidential communications with the Stuarts. His
journey did not conduce to the popularity of his Administra
tion. The tone of sympathy with France was dishked, and
the Jacobite relations of the Tories furnished a fruitful topic
for whispers of treason. On the whole, however, in spite of
the natural murmurs of Opposition, he Avas AArell satisfied with
the definite conclusion of the negotiations. In the midst of
his triumph he attempted to conciliate the WMgs. Willingly,
at SAvift's request, he invited to dinner their common literary
adversary, Addison. The party was rather constrained, till
drinking, protracted from two or three o'clock till mid
night, at last Avarmed the distinguished guest to a friendly
pohtical fervour. In his enthusiasm he made Ms host
toast Lord Somers, and began sociably to discuss the peace
with the negotiator of it. It Avas ahvays St. John's policy,
and perhaps inclination, to stand Avell with literature.
Especially, on the eve of the first appearance of " Cato," was
there reason for seeming to be on good terms Avith Joseph
Addison. He might hope to ward off an application of the
moral of the play to his own conduct, by the conscious
innocence indicated by intimacy Avith the poet. His dexter
ous reference of the tirades against Caesar to the patent for
hfe which the Whig Commander-in-Chief had once demanded
is well knoAvn. A harder conflict awaited Bohngbroke in
Parhament than at a drinking-bout. All Arthur Moore's and
De Foe's sagacious arguments for free trade with France,
with all the zeal of the Minister's private following in the
same cause, Avere ineffectual to save the eighth and ninth
articles in the Treaty of Commerce. The House of Commons
feared that the free importation of Bordeaux and Burgundy

Henry St. John. 163

would destroy the gainful woollen trade with Portugal, and
refused to resign a certain advantage for an uncertain.
Calculations were made, showing that the annual balance
against England, had the articles been approved, would have
probably been not much under a million and a half.
The national jealousy of France gained for Opposition this
unexpected victory. The feeling extended even to the
moderate members of the Tory party, as represented by Sir
Thomas Hanmer. They had been eager to check Wilham's
continental pohcy, but could not be won over to confer any
thing resembhng a favour on the ancient enemy. A more
statesmanlike and' nearer anxiety respecting the succession
Avas added to this hereditary prejudice. The apprehensions
Avere, in some measure, justified by the characters of the
present holders of office. Of them, Harley had accumulated
so confirmed a character for insincerity, that he was trusted
neither by his OAvn nor by the opposite party. Not opponents
alone would cordially hate a man, who " loved tricks, when
not necessary, from an inward satisfaction in applauding his
own cunning." " If any man Avas born under the necessity
of being a knave, he was," Avrites Lord Cowper in January, 1706,
when his colleague and guest. Even partisans suspected a
chief, " who," says Lockhart in Ms Commentaries, " was indeed
very civil to all who addressed him, but, generally, either
spoke so low in their ear, or so mysteriously, that feAv kneAv
what to make of his replies ; it would appear that he took a
secret pleasure in making people hang on, and disappointing
them." His friend SAvift charges him with flunking, "that
there is somethmg profound in politics, which men of plain
honest sense cannot arrive to." Much of the earlier portion
of his political life was passed in hopeless opposition to
a party Avhich had placed upon the throne the actual
Sovereign. He had become imbued with the spirit of intrigue
and distrust of all men. A man can hardly escape imbibing
such sentiments who sees his firmest adherents perpetually
seceding from him under the temptations of office, and his ranks
recruited only by insurgents, or by politicians AAdio intend to

164 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
pass there their political apprenticesliip, and to approve them
selves fit for place, by showing themselves to be dangerous ;
who, lastly, is forced to cut down and pare all his schemes,
from dread of detacliing one element of the incongruous
faction by measures suited to the tastes or passions of another.
In such a school Harley had learned with consummate
dexterity to mamtain different opinions, at the antipodes in
all but their advocates' exclusion from office. He had not
learned how to conduct a Cabinet, when the position had at
length been attained. He was perplexed by the conflicting
claims of friends, Nonconformists and Churchmen, whose sole
common topic was love or hatred of the " Occasional Con
formity Bill." His habitual "Poll ! poll ! all will be well ; "
" Let us go gently," and " Leave it all to me," were rather
inadequate watchwords for a faction whose trust was in action,
and, it might be, revolution. In his perplexity he remained
neutral, a spectator of the proceedings of Ms own ' Cabmet,
allowing Ms colleagues to carry through, uncurtailed, measures
certain to disgust half Ms supporters. He cherished the vain
hope, as Avell that he could not be held responsible for acts he
had never advised, as that he might gain a sublime and evident
ascendency over Ms subordinates by sequestering himself
from their petty quarrels, and by bemg known among them
only as the dispenser of all patronage, and the Sovereign's
friend. With such a character opponents could expect from '
his treachery or weakness no guarantee for the Protestant
succession. If he found the Jacobite cause clearly the
stronger, they could not hope that he would refuse his
adhesion to any Jacobite plot of his fellow-Ministers. The
mere fact that he remamed nominalhead of the Cabinet,
though scarcely one of its proposals had his hearty assent,
though against his express advice] it pardoned apologists for
the Stuarts, though it instigated the Queen to rebuke addresses
of the Lords against the exiles, and to compel Marlborough's
favourite officers to sell their commissions, proved how httle
reliance could be placed either on Ms paternal love for the
Act of Settlement, or his antagonism to his Jacobitish

Henry St. John. 165

Secretary of State. The selection of Bromley, the suspected
member for the University of Oxford, as Secretary, in Lord
Dartmouth's place, and the appointment to the Exchequer of
Sir William Wyndham, close friends, as both were, of the
banished family and of St. John, gave additional reason for
fearing the preponderance in the Ministry of a spirit much
more daring than that of Harley. The promotion of Dean
Atterbury, a zealous writer in the Examiner, to the See of
Rochester was as significant.
The elections of August, 1713, only partially shoAAred how
the nation construed all these signs. Popular discontent Avas
chiefly manifested in the strength of the so-called HanoArerian
or Protestant Tories returned by the old decaying market-
toAvns under the influence of the clergy. The Opposition
had at length a good cry of its oavu, and Government found
no retort to the reproach of the desertion of the gallant
Catalans, and the odium of its defeated Reciprocity Compact.
There was no persecution now of a Sacheverell ; there was no
military dictatorsMp, with which to alarm the nation's sus
picions. Ministers could only call upon their partisans to
stand by the throne, the security of Avhich their principles,
it was contended, alone endangered, and rehearse equivocal
sentiments upon the beauty of hereditary right, which a foe
on the opposite coast was eager to illustrate. With tMs for
their only standard, and not even a Cabmet ready to risk an
open assertion of the belief, there were fatal dangers ahead
for the Administration. We cannot think Bolingbroke judged
wrongly, on Ms own principles, in intimating quickly the
course he meant to pursue. It may have been an instinct
before, which made this favourite of the October Club mtrigue
to wrest the first place from Harley ; it may have been
vanity. Now, it was the last desperate resource of a tottering
party. His cause was certain to lose much numerical strength
could he succeed. A much more furious hostihty would
proceed from opponents with whom Harley had kept up
relations, and been a sort of bail for the loyalty of his com
panions to the Constitution. But the confederates would

166 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
at length have concord in their OAvn body, and hberty to
deliberate unreservedly about their concealed projects. Con
cealed they were only from Cabinet Councils. The whole of
England took them for granted, so that the Ministry Avhich
had espoused such opinions had at once the disadvantage of
their unpopularity, and a prohibition imposed upon them,
both of repelhng insinuated charges which they refused to
consider relevant to themselves, and of taking measures for
accomplishing that revolution to aaMcIi these charges pointed.
Perils were on every side. A majority in the Commons,
in spite of Whig denunciations of the unfortunate Treaty of
Commerce, and the general show of Whig Avoollen " favours "
at the late elections, still mechanically endorsed Ministerial
resolutions. Expulsion from the House by a majority of a
hundred votes, for the authorship of the " Crisis," taught
Steele that it was a libel on the October Club to maintam
that the Protestant succession Avas in danger. The WMgs
Avere not disheartened. In the House of Lords they had
always been in a majority, as far as intellectual power
Avent, and, previously to 1712, numerically. They avenged
Steele's cause by committing the publisher and printer of
SAvift's anonymous answer, ' The Pubhc Spirit of the WMgs.'
Only by the shreAvd device of instituting a prosecution against
the same two victims did Harley save Ms friend from the
consequences of their eA'idence. In vain Government en
deavoured to check popular suspicions by motions that the
Protestant succession Avas in no danger under her Majesty's
Administration. In the Lords, the resolution was the signal
for an ominous secession. Lord Anglesea, an old friend of St.
John, exclaimed, glancing at the unlucky Treasurer, " that he
durst pursue an evil Minister from the Queen's closet to the
ToAver, and thence to the scaffold ¦ " Even in the Tory
Commons, the effrontery of the thing reduced the majority to
48. The Treasurer grew frightened and more Constitutional.
The manoeuvre of the Whig Junto, in making the Hanoverian
envoy demand a writ of summons for the Electoral Prince, as
Duke of Cambridge furnished him Avith an occasion for-

Henry St. John. 167

manifesting his disagreement Avith his colleagues, and attach
ment to the House of Brunswick, as Avell as Ms pique at the
Queen's estrangement. Yet he could not be forced to declare
himself sufficiently anti-Tory to furnish a pretext for his
ejectment from the Cabinet. He escaped the ambush of
Wyndham's Schism Bill by the plea of not having considered
the matter. He listened in silence to St. John, an almost
avowed deist, arguing for it as a bulwark of the Church;
nor could be drawn to defend a friend, even by the vengeful
attack of Nottingham, who had the self-restraint to reject the
bait of the Bill in his desire to conciliate the Nonconfor
mists, on " a certain divine who, hardly suspected of being
a Christian, is in a fair way of being a bishop."
It has been sometimes assumed, that Harley had at heart
the Restoration of the Stuarts, and was only converted to the.
opposite opinion by his rivalry with the favourite of the October
Club. The hypothesis is hardly even plausible. He had
never been a Jacobite. Chosen leader of the country gentle
men, he soon gladly exchanged his prominence among them
for the headship of a coalition characterised by one broad
feature, opposition to the great Whig houses of the Revolu
tion. We cannot suppose that his cautious nature and hberal
tenets coexisted with a craving for arbitrary rule. His genius
Avas altogether Parliamentary, and not made, as that of his
rival, for the office of vizier to an almost absolute Sovereign.
His passions were not strong enough to move him to purchase
the right of persecuting at the risk of enduring the same
treatment in turn. His negotiations Avith Marshal Berwick,
and the equivocal admonitions to the Pretender to quit France
for Venice, prove no more than the mission of his brother to
Hanover, if so much. Now, at all events, Anne's alienation,
and his desertion by all the high Tories of the Government,
ensured his Constitutionalism. Traces are discernible of a
convulsive attempt by the falling statesman to effect a coalition
with the Whigs and the Hanoverian Tories, by the instrumen
tality of Ms former colleague, Cowper. The taint of insincerity
throughout his career must finally have vitiated any such
o

168 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
negotiation ; but St. John's vigour disconcerted the pre
liminary advances. The Queen had a parting mterview with
her old servant. She accused him of indolence in the conduct
of pubhc business, of a complete Avant of truthfulness, of
unintelligible mysteriousness in all his statements, and of
often coming drunk to confer on matters of State. It Avas
a strange collection of her wrongs as a lady and as a
Sovereign, and evinces how intermingled as yet were the
two ideas. Either she had never liked him, and, with her
prudent egotism, merely accepted his aid against yet more
detested personages, the Marlboroughs ; or, a term of office
had exaggerated his natural slovenliness and carelessness ;
or, more probably still, the sway of St. John over the great
party which Anne, by a monarchical instinct really loved,
even AAdiile sometimes fearing it, had communicated a senti
ment of aversion for the man who hindered the consummation
of its projects. She had, to enforce this propensity, the
perpetual company of a woman, once the friend of Harley,
now Ms bitterest foe, on account of shameful ingratitude on
his part, as she aa-ouM haAre said ; for haA'ing refused to bribe
her with public money, according to the report of Ms ad
herents; both explanations being, the Treasurer's character
allows us to belieA'e, at one and the same time correct.
The defection of Ms old followers seems to have been
partly the result of dread of Ms extreme wariness in a crisis
requiring boldness ; principally, of the extraordmary capacity
of St. John for infusing into his immediate intimates confi
dence in Ms energy and genius. At any rate, no man could
have resisted the combination of his OAvn colleagues and the
majority in the Commons. The final scene appears to have
blended historical solemnity Avith the petulance of a catas
trophe in genteel comedy. The personal connection of
Sovereign and Minister, of wMch the Government of Lord
North is our latest perfect example, conjoined with a sense
of Ministerial responsibility to the country, fully recogmsed,
though not always acted upon, gave to the interview at once
the air of a private quarrel between friends, each accusing the

Henry St. John. 169

other of faitMessness, and the lofty tone of a patriot's AArarning
to rulers ready to put in jeopardy their country's happiness out
of private spite. St. "John and Lady Masham were there, to
keep the Queen to her resolution, and to triumph OArer their
old friend. Almost to the moment they had mamtained
their ancient appearance of intimacy. In the midst of all
this history of mines and countermines, we hear of friendly
little suppers at the Mashams, of strolls together in the Mall,
and familiar conversations. Now the parting was indeed come.
Harley, with all the wrath of a betrayed friend, and the pro
phetic forebodmgs of a retiring Minister, predicted the anger
of an incensed nation against the miserable ambition and
traitorous schemes of the Cabinet he had formed. The pro
phecy in part brought its oaati accomplishment. Anne had
been deeply agitated by the scene. She had long been per
turbed both by xemorse, at having, on her own view of the
indefeasible right of kingship, usurped and kept her brother's
inheritance, and by resentment, that her most loyal subjects
were calculating on her death as the 'removal of 'an- obstruction
to the reversion of the crown to the rightful owner. Under
tliis conflict of emotions her vital powers gave indications
of decay. Her mortal disorder manifested itself on the
29th of July, 1714. A Council was summoned, at which the
Duke of Shrewsbury presided. He had been, as a youth, a hero
of the Revolution. Once again his old liberalism revived;
and he openly rejoined that party which had till then looked
on him as a deserter. The appearance of Ms name in the
Elector's secret instrument of Regency, which had been for
some time past in the hands of the Hanoverian envoy, proves
he must have so acted as to be counted upon by the cliiefs on
both sides. FeAv statesmen of this age can, we fear, be placed
for honesty far above the systematically false Sunderland
and Marlborough. At Shrewsbury's invitation, the Whig
Dukes of Argyle and Somerset took their seats in the Privy
Council, though not members of the Ministry. Probably on
their proposal, though St. John's friends declared it was on
his, ShreAvsbury Avas nominated to the Queen High Treasurer.
o 2

170 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
Alas for Bolingbroke ! " The Earl of Oxford was removed
on Tuesday — the Queen died on Sunday ! What a world is
this, and how does Fortune banter us ! " It is St. John's
groan to Swift in a letter of August 3. The prize had been
wrested from the grasp of his rival ; he had gained nothing
by it, except a schism in Ms party. All the work of so
much intriguing, eloquent pamphleteering, and subservience
to the littleness of factious spleen, was nullified in a moment.
His plan, as future head of the Government, had been
elaborated. It shows much judgment and self-restraint in
him that he had decided on retaining the Seals of the Foreign
Office, in preference to the glittering bauble of the Lord
Treasurership ; while the names of Wyndham, Ormond,
Harcourt, Buckinghamshire, Bromley, Mar, and Atterbury,
point, at least, to a more decidedly Tory policy than had pre
vailed in the old Cabinet. At the same time, envoys had their
instructions for coquetting with the Electoral Court. Now,
Avhen he acted on his own sole responsibility, he began
to comprehend the caution of his predecessor. He even
sought to estabhsh friendly relations with the principal WMgs.
Would that we had the details of a banquet at which he
entertained Walpole, Stanhope, and Pulteney, a few days
before the Queen's death, at his mansion m Golden Square I
What speeches full of flowing courtesy were there delivered !
What disclaimers of private enmity, notwithstanding the
strifes of political interests ! Little could a stranger have
augured the fierceness of the cry for blood, which those
amiable guests would soon raise with one accord against
their host, or the yet more rooted rancour of disappointed
friendship, which should avenge him in the future enmity of
all the three.
Had the Queen but sanctioned the Minister's nominations
one half hour before her death, he might have selected his
policy in safety, and either restored the exiles, or made terms
for Mmself with Hanover. As it was, with a Cabinet all his
own, with Anne Arilling to accept his counsels, the dead
weight of three Whig Dukes, backed by and backing the Con-

Henry St. John. 171

stitution, could not be resisted. The Ministry had a great
majority in Parliament, but chiefly of country gentlemen,
independent members, each acting for himself, and joining
in the same votes from choice, and not in obedience to the
dictation of their leaders. The Whigs were a compact body.
They had faith in their champions, and these could advocate
any measure AArith the certainty that it would be supported.
They had overturned an ancient dynasty. Their names far
outweighed those of men like Bromley, and Mar, and the
unstable Peterborough.
Added to the mortification at the loss of all the advantages
of Ms machinations, were many petty vexations inseparable
from so pecuhar a conjuncture. The Regency, appointed
already by secret instructions of the Elector, did not attempt
to soften them. He was superseded in all the real duties
of his office, and compelled to attend with his bag outside
the Council Chamber, where he had so long ruled, till it
should please Ms enemies to admit him. Very few men
would have the philosophy to bear patiently these trivial
affronts. Bolingbroke was not of the feAV. His troubles
were not to end here. He took up an attitude neither of
defiance nor of submission. With Harley he assisted at the
coronation of the new King, and, Ave are told by Lady Cowper,
" bowed three times down to the very ground " in doing homage.
He intimated his willingness to take office, should it be the
policy of the new dynasty to rule independently of party.
" On the same principle," he writes to Lord Strafford, as he
had served Anne, " will I serve the King, if he employs me."
But it was not the policy of the Whigs to encourage coahtions.
When offered place by Harley they had refused. It was
unlikely that they would now, in the day of their triumph,
consent to share their power and forego revenge. Lord Cowper,
in a memorial presented to the King, argued that it was not
for the safety of his House to attempt any such partition
of favours, and intimated that the Whigs would not consent
to have the experiment tried.
They were not of a temper to spare an enemy who refused

172 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
to sohcit their mercy. His whole demeanour was that of a
man who may have been mistaken, but, having acted con
scientiously, keeps his own opinion, though not condemning
the opposite. He proposed in the Lords, in a fine oration
which lived in men's memories, the substitution of the word
" mamtain," for " recover," with respect to the reputation of the
kingdom in its foreign relations. The Duke of Shrewsbury,
the immediate cause of his present downfall, in vain supported
the amendment. Everywhere he saw notliing but hostility.
The country had returned a WMg majority to the Commons,
of 244 to 138 who still dared to call themselves Tories. The
names of the new Ministry, notwithstanding the, admittance
of the Hanoverian Tory Nottingham, indicated Avhat reliance
could be placed on the King's assurances that he avouM not
be a partisan. Harley trusted to his late ignominious ex
pulsion from the Cabinet, and to his carefully preserved
relations with the Nonconformists and. the Electoral Court.
St. John's hope Avas, not so much in -the,- justice or mercy
of- Parliament, as in the impossibility of Ms condemnation
even by Whigs, Avithout proof of -collusion between him and
Versailles or St. Germains. His compromising papers were
in security; and only one confidant existed Avho had anytliing
dangerous to tell. This Avas Matthew Prior. Never was a
friend more trusted- than he by St. John,, never a dependent
treated more as am equal, We may well pity. the fallen
Mmister,when he heard that Prior had landed at Dover under
an engagement to reveal all. He could not tell, what Ave have
reason for believing, that the whole was a device, to con
centrate expectation on the envoy's disclosures, and then, by
their triviality, to convince the nation of the injustice of its
suspicions of the late Government. He only kne>v that Prior
had been granted an audience by the King, that, he was now
at dinner with ToAvnshend and Stanhope,, The news, com
municated according to an uncertain rumour by Marlborough,
folloAvedhim to Drury Lane Theatre on March 26,, 1715.
He sat through the spectacle, bespoke the, performance ft>r
the following night, and then, in the disguise of a French

Henry St. John. 173
Messenger, set off for DoA-er. In another day and a half he
Avas on the French shores, and a ruined exile.
His flight Avas a blunder. It betrayed a want of moral
courage, and was esteemed proof presumptive of criminality.
Yet not many would have acted differently in the circum
stances. The. Whigs raged against Mm ; a doggrel ballad
expressed the thirst of the populace for his blood. His
imagination pictured the late victorious leader of Parlia
ment reduced to supplicate its compassion, and dAvelt on the
humiliation of kneeling at the bar before his Peers in a
partnership of odium and guilt with the detested Harley.
His personal friends were dispersed ; Swift gone to Ireland,
in wrath against the disunited Cabinet, " to die like a poisoned
rat in a hole ; " Prior presumed a traitor to friendship ; his
Jacobite followers furious with their chief for his procrastina
tion; he furious Avith himself for the same. His fears were
not altogether groundless. The two-years' imprisonment of
his rival proves, that, though he had escaped the scaffold, a
dreary doom for his impatient temperament avouM have
awaited him. On release from prison he could not hope to
be alloAved to return to pubhc life ; and his nature was
too fiery to have rested satisfied Avith the literary leisure
AvMch contented Lord Oxford. Harley in his gardens and
magnificent library, in the chief treasures of which his
name still survives, enjoyed the repose, never lost sight
of by him m the most tempestuous season of his intriguing
life. The plots of St. Germains,- and the feverish extra
vagances of < the Regent's Court, alone might deaden the
younger statesman's regrets for the SAveets of poAver so
briefly! tasted, and his lust of revenge upon old friends and
old foes. His departure from England scandalised Ms few
remaining partisans, and seemed to sanction the vituperations
of his enemies. His coeval, Robert Walpole, Ms evil genius,
born to affairs with Mm, and destined to die to political
activity almost at the same time, was the fitting chairman of
the secret committee for investigating the conduct of the
Ministry in the negotiations of Utrecht. Robert Walpole pre-

174 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.

sented the report and moA-ed the impeachment, not, in the first
place, of Lord Oxford, but of Henry Lord Viscount Bohngbroke.
It Avas a foregone conclusion. Only two voices were raised
in his defence, those of General Ross and Mr. Hungerford.
The news of the resolution, Avhich passed on the 10th of June,
and of the readier process by bill of attainder, founded upon
it, soon reached its object. He had already estabhshed
a secret connection with the Pretender, in anticipation.
Sometimes it has been questioned whether his intercourse
with that Court had been of long continuance. The Stuart
Papers and de Torcy's Memoirs sIioav that scarcely a single
statesman of any account, of any party, whether in or out of
office, in the reign of William and Anne, refrained from
corresponding with the exiles. It is paradoxical to seek to
clear the chosen companion of the chiefs of semi-Jacobite
clubs from the general reproach. The declared Jacobitism
of many of* his especial instruments in the Cabinet, as Mar
and Ormond, with his hostility to all supporters of the
Protestant succession, is circumstantial evidence. The con
clusion is corroborated by his bias against the Dutch, however
weak an argument if standing alone. We are, at all events,
justified in agreeing with Count Remusat's summing up
in ' L'Angleterre au Dix-Huitieme Siecle,' a Avork to which
all students of the period are deeply indebted : " La trahison
envers la succession hanovrienne entra au besoin dans ses
calculs, et fut au nombre des expediens qu'il se reservait."
St. Clair, on the left bank of the Rhone, near Vienne, had
been the retreat of the fallen statesman. When the tidings
came of the vindictiveness of the Whig Parliament, neither
its charms, nor the greater of Madame de Tencin, the fasci
nating and dissolute mother of D'Alembert, could restrain
him, though ill in bed with a low fever, from responding at
once to an invitation from the Chevalier. With the royal
courtesy and tact, which contrasted favourably with the
German brusqueness of the first Georges, the titular earldom
of the Bolingbrokes, their descendant's never forgotten object,
was revived for him. "I cannot, you know," wrote the

Henry St. John. 175

Prince, " as yet, give you very essential proofs of my kind
ness ; but the best I can do for so good and faithful a servant "
— perhaps a poor compliment to one who always described
himself as noAv for the first time a Jacobite — " is in sending
you the enclosed warrant, which raises you a degree higher
than my sister had done before, and which will fix your rank
with me beyond dispute." The Jacobites, with the active
cooperation of Ormond, still braving Whig violence in
London, had resolved upon two movements, one in the south
of England, the other in the Highlands. St. John persuaded
them that the two, to have a chance of success, must be
simultaneous. The secret of his influence at St. Germains and
Commercy consisted in his perfect acquaintance with the
spirit and sentiments of the present French Ministers, through
whom advantage might have been taken of the capricious
change in popular opinion noAv exalting Ormond and Harley
into martyrs as representatives of the Church party. His ill-
luck dogged the Pretender's neAv Secretary of State. At the
beginning of July he had arrived at the little Court. On
the first of September, 1715, died Louis XIV., and with him
all the zeal of France for the restoration of the Stuarts, and
all the authority at the French Court of the negotiator of the
peace of Utrecht. The Regent Duke of Orleans was anxious
for a good understanding with England, the Power most in
terested in supporting his title as heir presumptive against
Philip of Spain. He had no kindness for the pohcy of a
Cabinet from which he had been sedulously excluded. The
small knot of exiles soon understood that their Secretary was
not more powerful at the Regent's Court than themselves. They
made him feel Avhat a counterfeit his office was, as compared
with the reahty he had left behind in England. His positive
experience, and perhaps a feeling of contempt, not entirely
concealed, for minute unproductive intrigues, led him to display
a conscious superiority which offended men, each of whom
thought himself more of a victim to principle. He soon
found reason to be disgusted with himself for his flight, and,
as he declares to Wyndham in a famous letter, for his pre-

176 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.

cipitancy in casting in Ms lot with a set of desperate outcasts.
His sagacity saAV the folly of the dreams of Ms associates,
" some, who could read and Avrite, having letters to show, and
those who had not arrived to this pitch of erudition having
their secrets to Avhisper." The crowd of " busy Irish faces,"
Avith their rumours of bulls and benedictions and subsidies
from. Rome, especially annoyed Mm, conscious as he was of
the exclusive dependence of the cause on English Churchmen.
However, he counselled his neAv master to the best of his
abihty; and he intrigued in the Jacobite interest with the
ladies of the French Court and the Regent's favourites Avith
indefatigable diligence. Indeed, the entire history of the
earlier portion of Ms residence in Paris is chiefly an un
intelligible maze of negotiations with 'Mrs. Olivia Trant.'
He rejected offers made by the French Ministers to use their
influence with the English Government to procure the pardon
of a man who might, on his return home, have greatly
furthered their objects. All this was not for long. On the
13th of November the surrender of Preston sealed the fate
of English Jacobitism; and on the same day the battle of
Sheriffmuir proved, of equally decisive importance in Scotland.
By the ,last week in the . next February the Pretender was
back in Paris. The day folloAving his return, St. John, whom
he had received with the greatest demonstrations of affec
tion, was discharged almost contumeliously from Ms service.
This mysterious step was- justified in the busy gossip of the
Court by reports that the Secretary had joined the party in
order, by betraying its secrets, to requite it for the. losses his
old attachment to the cause had mflicted upon him. An
improbable tale can hardly be preferred to the unison of the
testimony of Lord Stair, the King of England's ambassador,
of Marshal Berwick, and of the published papers of the Pre
tender's Secretary's office, to Ms honesty and zeal. Here is
the Marshal's opinion of Ms capacity and fidelity : — " It is
admitted by all England that there have been few greater
Ministers than Bolingbroke. He was born with splendid
talents, which had raised him at a very early age to the

Henry St. John, 177

highest employments ; he exerted great influence over the
Tory party, and was, in fact, its soul. ... I AAras in part a
witness how he acted for Kmg James, Avhile he managed his
affairs, and I owe him the justice to say that he left nothing
undone of what he could do ; he moved heaven and earth
to obtain supphes, but was always put off by the Court of
France." There is a httle more intrinsic plausibility in another
story that the punctilious Prince's disgust was excited by
the demeanour of his Secretary in one of his not infrequent
drunken fits. The probability is that he had prepared the
way for his abrupt dismissal by taking no pains to hide his
discontent at the misery into which Ms rash adhesion had
brought Mm. He afterwards asserted that Ms resolution had
been already formed to quit his post, as soon as the affairs
of the Stuarts should have been in some sort arranged.
Never was there a man of a spirit less inclined to sit down
under an affront, or to neglect the opportunity, afforded by
the severance of old ties, of following that in wMch his soul
delighted, a new combination. He was once more the
English agitator and pamphleteer, and in much the same
attitude as of old. In office he had been the leader of a
party opposed, both practically and in principle, to what was,
since the Revolution, the actual Constitution of England. It
Avas equally, when in power and in disgrace, a faction,. ho av-
ever gallant. During his brief term of service under James,
his, capacity for organising a plot had been almost dormant ;
now it blazed up anew, and, from the circumstances Avhich
called it forth, demanded all the resources of ingenuity
and irony which the friend and partner of Swift possessed.
Malcontent WMgs Avere to be personally courted, and per
suaded of the harmlessness of the writer ; while sufficient
animosity was shoAvn to their doctrines to satisfy Ms Tory
friends. Finally, all the. wretched jealousies and disputes of
the Court he had just quitted were to be withered up by the
scornful pen of .this political free lance. The home Govern
ment had, from the first, expected his secession from the
Jacobite Court. Some, judging him so faithless that he could

178 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.

never refrain from betraying his employers, had authorised
Lord Stair to purchase his confessions. Others, more truly,
discerned in his character an intellectual restlessness which
could never let things be, and must, sooner or later, snap
the connection. He Avas not unwilling to prove them right in
their conclusions. His letter to Sir William Wyndham, in its
present state, is an attempt at once to justify himself to the
Enshsh Tories, and to win favour with the Government.
The character of the man is, as M. de Remusat aptly remarks,
Avell illustrated by the fact, that at the very moment when
the relenting of the King and Whigs promised his restoration,
he drew up, in the manner of Seneca, various reflections on
the consolations of exile. If he thought he should no longer
need them for personal use, and therefore could spare them
to the Avorld, he found Mmself for some time disappointed.
His celebrated Letter Avas Avritten in the September of 1716 ;
not till 1723 Avere the incidents of the attainder so far
mitigated as to restore him, when a resident in England, to
the protection of the laws. The tedious delay Avas OAving
partly to the rooted suspicions of the WMg leaders, and partly
to Walpole's jealousy of the opponent who had at the first
far outstripped him. The discovery of Ararious plots for the
reestablishment of the Stuarts, of one especially in avMcIi
Bishop Atterbury, St. John's ancient ally, was alleged to he
implicated, excused their reluctance.
All parties were against him. He Avas at variance at once
with the Jacobite section of the Enghsh Tories, though still
the friend of Wyndham, and with the adherents of the late
Treasurer. He never ceased to cherish a strange im
placability against Harley, only to be explained by Ms
belief that to Harley's pertinacity in retaining office had
been OAving the postponement, till too late, of those plans
wMch might else have secured to their author a dictatorship
under a neAv dynasty. The resurrection of Harley in 1717,
through Walpole's coalition with the Tories against the
Cabinet from avMcIi he had been ejected, must have spoiled
many a dream of rural contentment at St. Clair. The popular

Henry St. John. 179

cry of " High-Church and Harley " would sound in his rival's
ears hke the war-trumpet to a captive knight. The discord
in the victorious Whig party, the cabals of Sunderland and
Stanhope against Townshend, and of Townshend and Walpole
against Stanhope, cannot but have vibrated even through the
non-conducting atmosphere of divine philosophy. Yet in
the meantime he did not let life slip by untasted. A main
characteristic of his disposition was that, Avhile there could be
no one Avith a more pertinacious constancy in the pursuit of
any objects, hoAvever various, or however minute, wliether of
pleasure or of ambition, his nature seems to have had so,
indomitable an energy and capability of enjoyment, as to
employ itself Avith equal vehemence on a scheme for destroy -
mg a system of faith, and on an intrigue in Paris. Vainly
did neglected Lady Bolingbroke use all her Hanoverian
interest in her husband's service: her lord repaid her exer
tions Avith a sneer that his cession of his goods for her benefit
to save them from confiscation eventually proved a serious
loss to him. In the interval he was falling in love Avith the
Marquise de Villette, niece of Madame de Maintenon, Avhom
he married on the death of his Avife, in 1720. For his sake
she professed Protestantism. In that same year, under the safe
guard of the Regent, Avhose companion in pleasure, though
not in pohtics, he had always been, he Avas engaged in eking
out, through the enterprises of Law, a subsistence which the
£11,000 he brought from England could but ill have supphed.
His usual residence was the Chateau of La Source, AA'here, amid
fair gardens, rises the Loiret. There, by the aid of Madame
de Villette, avIio was wealthy as well as witty, he learned to-
despise the Avorld, and studied the addition of neAv perfec
tions to the marvellous political pamphlet style, destined in
future days to gall the callous Walpole. But the gaieties of
Paris not unfrequently drew him from philosophical and other
speculations. He was pecuharly fitted, with the reputation
of his name, the versatility and eccentricity of his genius, to-
delight ahke the courtiers of Versailles and the new school of
polite philosophers. Voltaire writes of Milord Bolingbroke

180 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
in a stram of rapture, AvMch may have been, he half confesses,
somewhat heated by the coniphments Ms idol paid to the
" Henriade." He describes Ms universal learning, and the
cosmopolitan tastes which French encyclopaedists adored.
That all these gifts met in a man who had been the greatest
roue of Ms time, seems to haAre kmdled in the Frenchman the
same gloAv of enthusiasm as in Swift. He only spoke the general
opinion. With the French philosophers ''of the Entresol Club,
as Alary, Count Argenson and the Abbe Charles St. Pierre,
Avith Swift in Dublin, Ms cMvafrous champion against Jacobite
mahgners, Avith Pope, Gay, and Arbuthnot in London, d'OAvn
to the miscellaneous crowd of the French Court, the impetus
of his mind, and Ms power of setting the stamp of gemus
on all pursuits ahke, had gained Mm an universal sway.
At length, his residence in France drew to its close. In
May, 1723, the pardon promised m 1715 -passed the great
seal; but he had no hope, at present, of a Parliamentary
restoration in fortune and peerage. Walpole distrusted Ms
professions of friendsMp, and replied to hints of his power
to bring over Lords Gower and Bathurst, and Sir William
Wyndham, to the WMgs, by warnmg Mm against Tory con
nections. The Minister had in mere deference to Melesina,
Duchess of Kendal, waived the hostility, wMch in 1719 had
drawn from him, in allusion to the acquittal, mainly due to
himself, of Harley, the indignant words : " His rival m guilt
and poAver even now presumes to expect an act of the legis
lature to indemnify Mm, and to quahfy Ms villainy." On the
AAdiole, St. John's reception in England was so chilling, as
quickly to despatch him back to La Source. Not till the 25th
of May, 1725, durst Ms advocates move Ms restoration in
fortune. Then the bribed Court, the Duchess of Kendal
receiving for her share £11,000, only extorted a sullen
assent from the Premier by the menace of dismissal. St.
John's Parisian friends contributed not a little to the result.
They had lamented his departure in 1723 ; but they used all
their influence to effect Ms complete restitution. Two visits
AA-ere paid to England by Madame de Villette, whose own

Henry St. John. 181

considerable English investments were imperilled by her
husband's legal disabilities. During the second, she succeeded
in buying the good offices of George's ugly mistress. Besides,
his foreign acquaintances procured Mm information of highly
serviceable Court secrets. The em-oy, Horace Walpole, the
Minister's brother, applauded Mmself for having learnt them
" without having given to St. John any handle to become the
negotiator of his Majesty's affairs.'' Lord ToAvnshend, whom
they enabled to triumph over Carteret, was more grateful.
The Abbe Alary, founder of the Entresol, Avhich, like all
French societies of the period, was a social, philosophical,
political, and literary reunion, exerted his influence on a visit
to England in the same cause. 'What so many sought was
at last granted to the active mediation of Harcourt, become a
Whig in 1721, but still mindful of the merry dmners at
Avhich the early pohcy of the Harley Cabinet used to be
moulded. The WMgs, on the one side, roused themselves to
oppose the motion, under the leadership of Onslow, Methuen,
and Poulett, though Walpole, AA-ithout any affectation of mag
nanimity, intimated to his adherents that they might be
content with the exclusion of their enemy for ever from office
and Parhament. On the other, the memory of long severed
associations, against the inclination of their Jacobite chiefs,
Musgrave and Sebright, appealed for him to the mass of those
country gentlemen whom Ms voice had once woke to victory.
The motion passed by a majority of 231 to 113.
He Avas free to begin the world again; after being tired
out, he writes to Swift, " AAdth suspense, the only insupportable
misfortune of life, and AAdth nine years of autumnal promises
and vernal excuses." Shut out from Parliament, the natural
sphere of his talents, he made - it his profession to be a
Maecenas to men of letters, and the pattern country gentleman
to his neighbours at Dawley, as in the old days when he pre
sided at the October Club. For his pohtical friends he was
the secret counsellor, who held in his hands the strings of
many a Parliamentary struggle. We find his SAvay equally
acknoAvledged by hterary chiefs, and by Wyndham's political

182 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
associates. Swift came to England, for the first time since
his friend's banishment, to do him homage. He brought over
a manuscript destined to overshadow the reputation of the
Drapier's letters themselves. Another writer of an influence
as yet almost of the future, but of more poAver to change
a nation's spirit than that wielded by the author of Gulhver
Mmself, soon joined the circle. Voltaire had been dazzled
by St. John in Paris. Observation of the ardour of English
admiration did not diminish Ms respect. To the contagion
of St. John's intellect is owing the infusion of an English
tone into Voltaire's Avorks. It is to be hoped that to no in
dorsement by Mm of a lying tale current about Lord Cowper's
family, and further distorted by the malice of SAvift, may be due
the account to be found in the ' Dictionnaire PhilosopMque '
of doctrines held by a pohtical adversary on the subject of
marriage : " II est public en Angleterre, et on A'oudroit le nier
en vain, que le Chancelher Cowper epousa deux femmes, qui
vecurent ensemble dans sa maison aArec une concorde singuhere
qui fit honneur a tous trois. Plusieurs curieux ont encore
le petit livre que ce Chancelher composa en faveur de la
polygamie." Without deserting hterary society, the devotee of rural
leisure immersed himself in pohtics as well. Walpole, he
conceived, by withholding his readmission into Parhament,
had forfeited all title to his gratitude. Tories mistrusted Mm
as a party leader. A Avay was opened by the jealous and
despotic temperament of the Premier for St. John's return to
pubhc hfe without open coahtion either with Whigs, or Avith
Tories. The Opposition, led by Wyndham, a Tory, and once
a Jacobite, and by Pulteney, an old Whig, and ancient enemy
of St. John, rested on a foundation both narrow and broad
enough for any principles. Its basis Avas hostihty, savage
and uncompromising, to the " sole Minister," the " grand
corrupter." Wyndham headed the remnant of the old
Cavahers, Avho had ruled at the beginning of Charles II.'s
Long Parhament, the Tories of sentiment, not Conservative
Tories, not the men of reflection and statecraft, who had been

Henry St. John. 183

represented by the Nottinghams, father and son. Pulteney's
classic Avit and eagerness of temper shone in the van of the
Whig revolters. Pulteney had long been the chief friend of
Walpole. Noav he agreed Avith St. John in regarding him as
a man, who " had usurped on his felloAvs, by wriggling, in
triguing, whimpering, and bargaining himself into the post to
AvMch he was not called by the general suffrage, nor perhaps
by the dehberate choice of his master himself." The tie
among these disaffected politicians throughout was unity of
wrongs. Their new colleague explained to themselves and
the pubhc the theory of Government which their conduct
in opposition illustrated. That the ruling faction should
not look upon all things from its own single point of view ;
that the party which had carried the nation Avith it in one
enterprise, should not assume all its objects were national
ones ; that, finally, though the will of the majority must
prevail, the majority at any particular time is not to deem
itself possessed of a right divine to oppress its adversaries,
are the doctrines wMch he devoted his later political hfe to
preach. By retrospective reference to them he now excused
the earlier stages of his wild career as a statesman. For the
present, he attacked Ministers, and not the Sovereign, in com
pliance with the modern constitutional text. He described
them, not as instruments of the Sovereign's will, but as usurp
ing tyrants over both him and the nation. The dynasty he
accepted as an accomphshed fact, though the deductions from
the fact of its establishment he rejected. As a writer, as the
author of a series of slashing leading articles, he did his main
part in the active struggle, though Opposition was indebted
also for many a clever Parhamentary movement to the inven
tiveness of the same energetic spirit. To him figuring as
" Humphrey Oldcastle," Pulteney's organ, the Craftsman,
commenced in 1726, owed its most stimulating passages. He
scourged the Ministry as " the Occasional Writer." As speci
mens of measured invective, emanating from measureless
intellectual contemptuousness and envy of success, it Avould
not be easy to match the letters by " the Occasional Writer," p

184 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.

m the February of 1727, on the subject of the Spanish
quarrel. All tMs time he had not declared open Avar with Walpole,
whose neutrahty had been essential to Ms return. But,
beside fierce attacks through the press, he was incessantly
intrigmng against Mm with the Duchess of Kendal, who was
jealous of the sway of any one over her royal lover. For
tunately for the Minister, the days when a Court favourite
could make or unmake a statesman had passed away with the
Sarahs and Abigails of Anne's reign. The defect of St. John,
as a pohtician, was that he loved crooked schemes. All
his experience had conduced to increase his constitutional
behef in the efficacy of back-stairs plots. He had ob
served Cabinets changed and rechanged, from neglect of
these minutiae, when a ruler at home. The Court of Louis
XIV., and the Regency, had confirmed Mm in the same
faith. When the sohcited interview, long sought in vain,
at length granted with the consent of Walpole to the
interested prayers of the Duchess, turned out a complete
failure ; Avhen St. John found the King unable to comprehend
the benefits of emancipation from a Minister, the mamstay
of the Act of Settlement, who relieved Mm of the entire care
of government, respected his sohcitude for Hanover, and paid
him his revenue regularly, baffled, not despairing, he patiently
set himself to weave another net, and tMs time for the heir
apparent. He began to concert measures for forming a
" patriotic " Mmistry with Lord Chesterfield, the gmde and
adviser of the Prince of Wales. Once more his plans were
disappointed, though formed with the most plausible prospects
of success. He had thought that the main object was to
conciliate the mistress. Lady Suffolk was installed lady-
patroness of the entire politico-literary coterie. She became
Pope's muse, and Swift's correspondent. The King died.
Walpole gave way to Sir Spencer Compton, the Speaker.
All Opposition was triumpMng, when it began to be whis
pered that actually to the wife, not the mistress, to the
metaphysical Carohne of Anspach, belonged the keepership

Henry St. John, 185

of the King's conscience. Walpole in a few days resumed
Ms places and influence, and St. John in despair withdrew to
Ms farming and hunting.
Never did there exist a more resolute and persevering mind,
along with equal vivacity and ardour. The disappointment
of Ms conspiracy with Lady Suffolk, as formerly with the
Duchess of Kendal, did not make Mm relax his efforts in the
Craftsman. His style is always animated. It is oratorical,
slightly rhetorical, and flavoured with satirical wit. Its defects
are the frequent use of an insinuation or a metaphor in the
place of argument, and a want of speciality, a vagueness in the
topics of declamation. Sometimes he enunciates an universally
received maxim, in heu of convicting his mighty adversary of
the violation of it, and sometimes he rings the changes on an
administrative triviahty, without demonstratmg the impolicy
of the end which it served. The peace with Spain, in 1729,
was in accordance with the general views, as he acknowledged,
of the negotiators of the peace of Utrecht ; yet he marshals a
most elaborate series of attacks upon details in the preliminaries.
His genius was better fitted for tracing and distorting a general
idea throughout the ramifications of a Cabinet's whole pohcy.
This talent sMnes out conspicuously in the series of letters
published in the Craftsman, under the signature of Humphrey
Oldcastle, entitled, " Remarks on the History of England."
There he endeavours to prove that, in the annals of our
country, the spirit of hberty and the spirit of faction have
never coexisted; that the Administration, in complainmg of
the seditious and sulky tone of public feehng, as > expressed
by the Opposition press, was condemning the tyranny of its
own rule. M. de Remusat is surprised at such sentiments
from the late leader of the Tories. He seems to suppose the
Tory party, subsequently to the Revolution, to have been
Conservative, interested, that is,, in maintaining the existing
state of things which secured the predominance of their op
ponents. In the ' Dissertation on Parties,' repubhshed in 1735,
with a sarcastic dedication to Walpole, St. John pleads with
all parties that they should unite in a common opposition.
r 2

186 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
He argues that the party boundary stones are, in effect, only of
antiquarian interest, though revived, and treated as realities,
by an Admmistration which found, its safety in dividMg its
adversaries; bribing some, persecuting others. A powerful
Young England party, the Patriots, comprehending a multitude
of men, condemned, as they professed, by the dictator to serve
their country, and not the King, rallied under him and
Pulteney, and accepted his essays as the exposition of then*
principles. They learned, catching Ms watchword, to declaim
against the man and the system Avhence sprang " the tyranny
of faction, by WMgs, factiously for the Government, and by
Tories factiously and rebelhously against it." Perfect in
dependence of pohtical theory is compatible with a combi
nation for the destruction of a Cabinet AArMch disdains equally
all theories. Not till that object has been attamed is the
impracticability of holding the reins of power, with an infinity
of open questions, discovered by the confederates.
Walpole did not submit quietly to these saArage attacks.
Pulteney's personalities had almost provoked a duel; St.
John's invectives against individuals, as impersonating vicious
principles, irritated him no less, from the recollections of a
lifetime of rivalry. He had little literary taste, and he could
not conceive the existence of a passion for letters m other
men. Swift he once invited to dinner ; but he dozed while
the Dean argued. So all the beaux esprits of the period were
treated by Mm. Writers, he thought, could be bought hke
votes, when the occasion came. The consequence was, that
the strongest Ministry ever known in England, the only one
to be compared with the French Governments of Richeheu,
Mazarin, and Fleury, or the Spanish of Ximenes and Alberoni,
has been traduced to posterity, though with a cause by no
means indefensible, and, most of all, by the miserable apologies
of its own hireling panegyrists. The finest geniuses of the
period sought the patronage of Chesterfield, St. John, and
Pulteney to them always generous. The Premier's press
retahated by vague charges of sedition, and true charges of
selfishness and disappointed ambition.

Henry St. John. 187

In Parhament, Walpole could defend his own cause man
fully against Craftsmen m the Commons, and, by deputy,
against the Rumpsteak and Liberty Club in the Lords.
Wyndham might bring forward motions of censure, and
Pulteney, his WMg coadjutor, thunder against " the monster,
the many-headed monster, Excise." He parried attacks
with more or less open menaces against the hidden worker
of the machinery. TAvice did Wyndham lead the onslaught.
Twice, in the Excise Bill debates, did the Minister pass
by the weaker foe, and strike at the traitorous anti-
Minister, whose Parliamentary agent he asserted Wyndham
to be. It was a desperate conflict. The majority of 125
on the earlier occasion diminished, by gradual desertions,
all through the long struggle, till finally it had dwindled to
sixty-one on the first reading of the Bill, and, on the second
reading, to sixteen. Another such victory Avould have
destroyed him. But Walpole was obstinate in nothing but
in clinging to office. He did not care to injure Mmself,
because Englishmen would not let themselves be benefited :
the third reading was postponed, and the Bill Avas
dropped. His majority rose again on the debate for re
pealing the Septennial Act to sixty-five. This was a change
too democratic for the old Whiggism of Pulteney, one of the
chief agents in passing the original Bill. It was forced on
the Opposition by St. John ; and his friends among the
Tories, Bromley, St. Aubyn, and Wyndham bore the brunt
of the battle. In this famous discussion, in rejoinder to
Wyndham's noble picture of a nation Avith an automaton
king, a king Log, and a tyrant Minister, Walpole drew the
companion portrait of " the mock patriot." " Suppose," he
exclaimed, " this fine gentleman lucky enough to have gained
over to his party some persons really of fine parts, of ancient
families, or of great fortunes ; and others of desperate views,
arising from disappointed and malicious hearts; all these
gentlemen, with respect to their political behaviour, moved by
him, and by him solely ; all they say, either in private or
public, being only a repetition of the words he has put into

188 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
their mouths, and a spittmg out that venom which he has
infused mto them ; and yet we may suppose tMs leader really
not hked by any even of those who so bhndly follow him, and
hated by all the rest of mankmd. We will suppose this anti-
Minister to be hi a country where he really ought not to be,
and where he could not have been but by the effect of too
much goodness and mercy, yet endeavouring, with all his
might and all Ms art, to destroy the foundation, whence that
mercy flowed. In that country suppose him continually
contracting friendships and familiarities with the ambassadors
of those countries which at the time happened to be most
at enmity with Ms own ; and if, at any time it should happen
to be for the interest of any of those foreign Mmisters to have
a secret revealed to them, which might be MgMy prejudicial
to Ms native country, suppose this foreign Minister applymg
to Mm, and him answering, ' I will get it you ; tell me but
what you want, and I will endeavour to procure it for you ; '
upon tMs he puts a speech or two in the mouth of some of
Ms creatures or new converts, and what he wants is moved
for m Parhament. . . . Let us, further, suppose this anti-
Minister to have travelled, at every Court where he was,
tMnking Mmself the greatest Minister, and making it his
trade to reveal the secrets of the Court where he had before
been, void of all faith or honour, and betraymg eveiy master
he ever served." It -was a crusMng indictment. But it
could not defer., the Dissolution, The Opposition was
mentally arranging its new Cabinet, and St. John planning
the resumption of his long-interrupted Parliamentary career.
The Dissolution came. The new House met ; and, to the
consternation of their foes, the divisions showed that Ministers
retained an assured preponderance. Bolingbroke perhaps feared
to provoke the realisation of the threats throAvn out darkly
against Mm; perhaps he and his promiscuous alhes were
mutually dissatisfied; perhaps his fortune could no longer
support the position at once of a patron of literature and a
party-leader. At all events, he resolved upon withdrawing him
self for a space from England. At fifty-seven he found Mmself

Henry St. John. 189

still half an outlaAv, with Ms means impoverished, the gay
witty mistress he had married in France old, sickly, and
dejected, and the mighty coahtion, into which he had infused
a meaning, ready to fall to pieces from hopelessness. The
Tory section recognised his aid, and with gratitude ; Pulteney's
Whigs were Avilling to forget their obligation. Pulteney
himself found Ms ascendency diminished by his contrast
Avith a bolder spirit, with a man never contented with an
inferior, or even an equal rank. The WMgs Avere frightened
by the scandal of their alliance with one whose old treason
had left its stigma in the shape of civil disabilities ; against
Avhom a Minister could launch, without any internal evidence
of improbability, charges of correspondence Avith the enemies
of our country. He was equally alien from them, whether
he were more really an absolute Radical, a species of
pohtician never much loved by the old Whigs, or a partisan
still of Tory and Jacobite principles, though no Jacobite or
positive Tory himself. He himself assigned as the cause of
Ms retirement a craving for literary leisure and rural
pleasures, without attempting to disguise his vexation at the
seeming impregnability of Ms opponent's position. But ne
also complains three years later, in 1739, to Lord Polwarth,
that " certain persons, who had supported themselves on his
exertions, thought Ms name and, much more, presence in
Britain, did them miscMef."
Chanteloup, or, as he writes it, Chantelou, a famous chateau
in Touraine, was his favourite place of residence ; but he also
possessed a hunting lodge, Argeville, on the borders of the
forest of Fontainebleau, of which a near relative of his wife
was ranger. There he read, and Avrote, or followed the chase
AAdth the royal hounds. Pope speaks of Ms hfe there AA'ith
enthusiasm. He of whom cynics hke Swift, and Pope, and
Voltaire, wrote, not only with admiration, but with respect
and affection, must have had some pecuhar radiance, not
only of wit, but of nature, to counterbalance the allowed
fitfulness of Ms temper. The earnestness with which
he could throw himself into- every different pursuit re-

190 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
commended to Mm by circumstances shows vivacity and
spontaneity of intelligence. He possessed, above ah, the
gift of undoubting self-reliance, which impresses us also in
SAAdft. He had always been a student of philosophy after
the manner of men of literary tastes. Now, he began to
apply his thoughts more exclusively, he AATites, in March,
1741, "to those abstract meditations whose objects are
generals and not particulars." He wished to wean his mind
from sombre reAreries on schemes of ambition frustrated, and
years spent in vain. The pursMt of philosophy Avas, we may
well beheve, not a mere veil to Mde, but a means of dis
pelling or healing, his chagrin. This result, it is to be hoped,
Avas more perfectly accomplished than Ms design of teacMng
the world. In the intervals of the chase, he undertook the
composition of a work, which should set at rest all the
more dubious questions of metaphysics, and cut away debat
able ground, through the simple method of demonstratmg the
nullity of the subject as a science. Most readers will be
satisfied to measure the extent of his success in tMs wide but
common enterprise of amateur philosophers by a perusal of
Pope's 'Essay on Man.' It was deliberately written to
embody the essence of those infallible processes of reasonmg,
wMch Avere to be fully, with all their steps, drawn out
in prose by the teacher. Little that is new occurs, either
in the noble verse of the disciple, or in the equally fine prose
of the master. The third Lord Shaftesbury had already
anticipated the praises of universal order, which so often
indicate a tendency toAvards deism. Master and poet-pupil
rather prematurely congratulate one another on having sur
veyed the entire circle of truth. They A-ery unwarrantably
assume that the assent of the Dean of St. Patrick's had been
given to their conclusions.
While, however, his hterary admirers were stimulating
his researches in the bewildering circle of metaphysics, his
pohtical friends had contmued to call for the aid of Ms pen
against Walpole. His league with the Opposition had at no
time been altogether interrupted. Correspondence with the

Henry St. John. 191

chiefs went on A'igorously ; and the secession from Parhament,
carried out, not to the advantage of the party, as secessions
never are, in 1739, had been planned from of old by him.
The occasion which the Opposition selected, the insignificance
of the Ministerial majority for the address of congratulation
on the convention with Spain, demanded rather, he thought,
an appeal to the country at large ; but he was decidedly op
posed to Pulteney's opinion that the declaration of war with
the same nation furnished a decent pretext for returning to
the House. Once a professional politician always one, is a
truth illustrated in every age and people. With an affecta
tion of regret, the veteran statesman openly resumed his
political machinations. The ' Letters on the Study and Use
of History ' was a work which had apparently been suggested
by Lord Chesterfield, the chief counsellor of Leicester House,
when George II. was Prince of Wales, and was addressed to
Lord Cornbury, whose influence was great over the present
occupant. The previous inhabitants of Leicester House, once
firm "patriots," had adopted the sentiments of their new
residence, when they migrated to St. James's. Now, the old
house Avas tenanted by a new Court, which followed the time-
honoured pohcy of the heir apparent of the dynasty, and, as
reformers untaught by experience hoped, with more sincerity.
In the ' Spirit of Patriotism,' Bolingbroke depicts to the
Prince, in glowing colours, a coalition, in aaMcIi parties should
be merged, and men allowed to think for themselves while
prosecuting, with all their energies, the feAv great common
objects of all lovers of their country. In the second of the
tAvo privately circulated letters to Lord Lyttelton, a confidant
of the same Court, is drawn the celebrated portrait of the
Patriot King, whose prerogative is limited simply by the
Avilhng obedience of a grateful nation, and not by the rights
of a dominant faction over the creature of their policy.
About the same period he had Adsited England, though with
an appearance of secrecy. His presence Avas barely known out
side the circle of his immediate friends ; nor did the spectacle
of the state of things incline him as yet to change his

192 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
residence. In the se\-enth year of Ms scarcely voluntary exile,
after a tumultuous session, Parliament was dissolved, and
Walpole found himself m a minority, or what would haAre
soon become one. He retired; and the contemporaneous
death of Bohngbroke's aged father, Viscount St. John, in
the spring of 1742, left him free in all ways, whether fear
or poverty had induced Ms expatriation, to resume Enghsh
citizensMp. He could become at discretion again an Enghsh
citizen ; not an English peer ; still less an Enghsh Minister.
The coahtion wMch he had nourished had in it no principle of
union, when once the enemy was overpowered. Its sections
and members had one common feehng, hatred to the holders of
office ; one common end, their dismissal. That end attained,
community of sentiment and hopes disappeared. Each then
had his hst of positive desires to be gratified, no longer merely
the negative passion of envy. All had accepted St. John's
co-operation in their need ; they were not ready to share their
booty with an old enemy. Worst of all, the eloquence,
acuteness, and friendship, wMch were blended together in the
fiery soul of Wyndham, in whom even adversaries confessed
that " everytiiing seemed great," had been already, in 1740,
quenched in death. He who had lost so many parties lost
few living friends ; and, of all Ms friends, Wyndham had
been the most tried, and found most faitiiful. Though a
vehement adherent of the Stuart cause, he had made that
no plea for deserting his ancient pohtical leader. He Avas
mainly mstrumental m effecting St. John's restoration, and as
loyally followed Ms counsels, when himself a cMef in Parlia
ment, as when a subordinate in Harley's Cabmet. Well
might St. John write, " multis fortunae vulneribus percussus
huic uni me imparem sensi." He had been the link between
the pohtician of a bygone generation and the politician of the
present ; and this link was now severed. In vain St. John
returned home. , He found no compensation for his toils from
Ms late companions. To tMs personal neglect has been con
fidently ascribed his discontent ; probably in a great degree
it Avas the cause. Can Ave blame the worn statesman ex-

Henry St. John. 193

cessively for murmuring at such forgetfulness ? But, if he had
been the purest and the least selfish of patriots, he must still
have cried out on men who, after having denounced Ministers,
rightly or wrongly, as a disgrace to Enghsh pohtics, then,
Avhen the outworks, to use his own metaphor, had been
stormed, capitulated with the defenders ; and, on this
condition, that the miners and their under-workmen alone
should enter in, and hold the fort jointly with the garrison ;
yet worse, on the old terms, which had been the sole pretext
for the assault, acquiescence, that is, in the system of Walpole,
and subservience to HanoArer.
He found himself, whether from conviction or private dis
appointment, perhaps from both, forced again to betake
Mmself to weaving those melancholy tissues of mtrigues,
Avhich were always doomed, at the decisive moment to be
swept away by some ordinary but unforeseen circumstance.
It is wearying to contemplate this absolute master of the
craft, like a squirrel in a revolving cage, seeing the goal
ever just within Ms grasp, then suddenly put back. He
might envy the fortunes of the old Duke of Leeds, Minister
both to Charles II. and William, never Avithout some dormant
impeachment overshadowing his name, yet climbing, through
all the gradations, to the head of the peerage. He might
meditate over the prosperity of his more immediate contem
porary, Sunderland, leader of the Tories and leader of the
WMgs. He might even contrast himself, not unfavourably,
with his late pamphleteering colleague, the former patriot, and
"Great Commoner" once, Pulteney Earl of Bath. Of him Lord
Marchmont writes to St. John, in 1744, that " he was mustering
a set of honest men, who should be free from the fury of the
Opposition, and consult the interests of their country without
regardmg the favour or offers of the Court ; " and, with what
great object of constitutional or social reform ? " To intimidate
the Court, so as to obtain the Garter." Amid the general
depravity of statesmen, St. John, who almost alone had his
deserts, chafed at his doom of perpetual disabihty, and thought
it hard to have been singled out as scapegoat for acting a few

194 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.

months as servant of the Prince, openly, AA'ith whom Marl
borough, and Walpole himself, did not refuse to maintain a
secret correspondence. Some quality in his disposition pre
vented Mm from retrieving a fall. There was a restlessness,
an incapabihty of stooping out of notice, till the gust of un
popularity had passed over, a taste for tacking in the tempest,
without caring AAdiether he made way or not, instead of
putting in and Avaiting for calmer weather. This tempera
ment made the one false move fatal ; it kept Mm continually
before the public in the light of an inveterate enemy
determined on revenge, or a jobber snatching at power.
On the formation of the " Broad Bottom " Administration,
in 1744, when he had taken up his regular abode at Battersea,
he soon discovered that Chesterfield, though delighting in his
wit and acuteness, did not care to act with Mm in politics.
The Earl's exclamation on defects in his friend's morals,
" Alas ! poor human nature ! " was a judgment also on the
politician's instability. St. John need not haAre asserted so
emphatically to him, his "joy in the priAracy, to wMch cir
cumstances and Ms own desire had reduced him ; and that all
he had to request of those who had come into power, was that
he might enjoy the private life he was in," without being ex
posed to what he calls avanies, that is, affronts from authority.
Pitt, though an ardent admirer of the " inimitable beauty of
style" in the Oldcastle essays, Avould have been more brusque
than Chesterfield in rejecting him as an official colleague. It
may be credited that he described the schemer who ventured
to lecture Mm as " a pedantic old man who quarrelled with his
wife." Pitt was of a higher spirit than all his contemporaries.
He did not understand the " astidia Itcdiana," wMch the
other had studied so exactly, and urged so cunningly. St.
John comprehended as little that majesty of conception and
singleness of policy, which Avere soon to astonish Europe.
All the energy he set down to passion and anger against
individuals, not to the confidence of original genius, and a
detestation of minute intrigues. He saw only that his
junior " of fair parts, but narrow, did not know much of

Henry St. John. 195

the world, Avas a little too dogmatical and extremely super
cilious." He writes bitterly, that, when he was a young man,
Sir Edward Seymour and Musgrave heard Mm with more
deference than had Pitt ; and that " the coalition, Avhich
neither Lord Chesterfield nor Mr. Pitt had formed, but himself
alone, younger men wished to manage and control."
We cannot look upon the relations of statesmen, especially
at times of such political vicissitudes, from the same point
of view as contemporaries. The succession of persevering
exertions, though with ever the eventual disappointment,
avMcIi forces many now, Avhen contemplating the political
history of the period, to end by pitying a statesman Avhoni
they can very seldom approve, would produce the contrary
effect upon adversaries whose own power was in instant
danger from those obstinately fierce assaults. It is too easy
a thing for posterity to be generous. If it seems unwise in
his enemies not to have relented at last towards the ruling-
spirit of Queen Anne's reign, it was far more unAvise in
Mm to battle against a destiny he ought by this time to
have considered irreversible. His position was high in
Europe. He Avas a patriarch among politicians; and Avas
recognised as a Destroyer of Cabinets, though himself
ostracised. Possessed of a competent estate by the death
of Ms father, and of exceeding fame, he might have
ended his days m a state of literary Epicurism. Round
him at Battersea, as on the banks of the Loiret, at Chante-
loup, the purlieus of Fontainebleau, and at Dawley, gathered
all the most emment in the ranks of the old Opposition.
Marchmont was there, always formidable, though shut out from
Parhament by the barren honours of a Scotch peerage ; Ches
terfield ; occasionally Pitt ; and, often, Murray, afterwards
greatest of CMef Justices. There he dictated to his intimates.
their pohtical and philosophical creeds, sometimes hearkened
to, and sometimes not, but always with an eloquence wMch
never lost its force or colour. Thence he beheld the growth
of Wesley's and Whitefield's influence, Avithout the clue
Avhich might have enabled him to comprehend the cause.

O

196 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
Though conscious of the httle direct effect he produced on
the national councils, he could never entirely forget pohtics,
nor resign the excitement of State intrigues. With eager
interest he watched every change- in the Administration;
contented with none ; bewailing the impending ruin of- Eng
land from the increase of the national debt ; and criticisms
the policy of our wars, in " Reflections on the State of the
Nation," composed in 1749. His fondness for- management,
after all Ms protestations five years before of a determination
to retire for good and all from the world, bore him into all
the agitations and mazes of Leicester House stratagems. He
sought to guide the youthful Prince as he had the reigning King,
in the vain hope of recovering, with the-accession of his pupil,
his old predominance, and exchanging the title, conferred by
the Pretender, for the coveted actual earldom, for the denial
of which he owed an undying grudge to Harley. Not till
the death of Frederick in March, 1751, ended Ms manoeuvres
for a complete restoration. His own days were now num
bered. Himself gradually pining aAvay under a cancer in the
face, and other acute maladies, he had the additional anguish
of seeing his wife, the Marqmse de Villette, "the comfort- of
Ms life in all its melancholy scenes," of whom, whatever Pitt
may have thought, he never speaks without love and affec
tion, go before Mm. In December, 1751, with the ardent
feehngs of youth still alive, with the consciousness of glorious
gifts, AvMch had only accomplished one positive Avork, the
Peace of Utrecht, the statesman, who seems to link together
the twilight age of the Stuarts and the grey dawn of visibly
modern times, dropped into his grave. He left a void
in the literature and politics of Ms day, which, at the
moment, attracted more notice and more emotion than had
attended upon his later hving efforts. Soon it was closed up
with new men and new interests. " It is strange," has been
said, " that, of all the events which constitute a person's bio
graphy, there is scarcely one, none certainly of -anything
like a similar importance, to Avhich the world so easily
reconciles itself as to his death."

Henry St. John. 197

St. John knew long before he died that he had failed as a
politician. He cherished a hope that he would survive and
rule as a philosopher. Here too in life he had experienced
disappointments. Thus he supposed that he had always been
able to govern the mind of Pope ; and had often, for Ms
use, meditated arguments against the dogmas of Warburton.
One of his chief employments, on his resumption of residence
in England in the AA-inter of 1743, was the confirmation of
his sovereignty OArer the poet's comdctions. Pope, in return,
most suspicious and most timid of men though he was,
ardently adored the genius of St. John. Probably, he had
a real love for St. John's philosophy, with a yet more
vehement fear of popular disapprobation. The history of the
conflict in Ms mind between trust in the orthodoxy of War
burton, and reverent admiration of the brilhant deist, has
been often recounted. His astonishment at discovering the
practical significance of the opinions, of which he had in the
' Essay on Man ' become the mouthpiece, Avas doubtless as
sumed. The " guide, philosopher, and friend," perceived, and
indulged the weaknesses in Ms votary's character. With his
approval Pope infused that ambiguity and vagueness into the
doctrine of his poems, which made it possible for Warburton
to defend them. But it was a cruel disenchantment to
discover that finally his disciple had been so half-hearted in
confidence in him as to choose his chief theological antagonist
for hterary executor. His wrath against Pope's memory may
be attributed much more to tMs evidence of wavering allegi
ance in the pupil in philosophy than to the discovery of
Pope's mean breach of faith in having had 1500 copies printed
secretly of the ' Idea of a Patriot King,' entrusted to Ms care,
instead of a score or so, according to agreement, and in having,
moreover, altered parts, both of this pamphlet and the ' Letters
on the Spirit of Patriotism,' and shown them to Warburton.
Still, though his success in the conversion of a poet had been
so very partial, he expected better things from the great
public wMch should be illuminated by the collected mass
of Ms inquiries. He bequeathed Ms pMlosophical MSS.

198 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
to Mallet for posthumous pubhcation. His vanity was
apparent in his want of heart to suppress such splendid
evidences, as he certainly esteemed them, of his powers of
reasomng and breadth of thought ; his cowardice, in that be
was not ashamed, according to Dr. Johnson's indignant
expression, " to leave half-a-crown to a beggarly Scotchman
to draw the trigger," for which he had not nerve himself.
Could he have replied to this accusation, he would have
argued, as on a similar occasion, that his writings were " a
Abdication of reason against philosophy, religion against
divinity, and God against man ; " that he " not only disowned,
but detested the character of esprit fort, a character usually
applied to them whom he looked upon as the pests of society."
But Ms defence of religion was an assertion of the govern
ment of the world by general laws alone, without the inter
vention of any particular providence ; he advocated the
encouragement of religion as a matter of police, " as a curb
in the mouth of that wild beast, man, Avhom it would be well
if we could check by half a score others." With the same
plea, no doubt, to Ms own conscience, he attended his parish.
church at Battersea, and held forth, to the admiration of the
parishioners, that " quarto Common Prayer-Book, fit for a
decorous lord of the manor," avMcIi Ave find him commission
ing a correspondent to purchase for Ms use. There is con
solation in knowing that the bequest turned out most un
profitable to the literary executor, though not so much, we
fear, pubhc conscientiousness and disgust caused the writings
to accumulate dust, as the want of that adventitious incentive
to curiosity, which partisanship lends to performances out of
a hving statesman's track. Horace Walpole need not have
complained that the cause of Moses and St. Paul was taken
up fiercely by men who had applauded the author's patriot
ism, philosophy, and heroism, when he broke the ties of
friendsliip, and plotted against his benefactors. The pub
lisher's balance sheet is the true and mortifying measure of
the efficacy of his attack upon revealed religion. The refuta
tion by Warburton, the presentment by the grand jury of

Henry St. John. 199

Middlesex of the works, with a A'ieAv to a bill of libel, the
prosecution commenced by the Archbishop of Canterbury
against the printer and editor, and the address of the London
clergy to the King against the publication of dangerous and
irreligious books, could not attract popular attention to the
contents. The dissertations themselves, apart from the
author's name, are too destitute of merit, except the grave
chgnity of style and correctness of emphasis, which never fail.
Their composition and pubhcation are chiefly Avorthy of
remark as closing in England an episode of fashionable
deism. Bolingbroke had been the centre of a strong hterary
and pohtical party, avMcIi, Avith Hobbes, pretended to reverence
Christianity as an institution well adapted for maintaining
order. They sought to construct in the place of dogmas,
Avhich they Avere too proud to take upon authority, a shadoAvy
scheme of natural piety. Voltaire recognises Bolingbroke
from this point of view as the philosopher of the eighteenth
century; and his name hves on the Continent as that of a
master in the school of unbelief. But the love of virtue for
virtue's own sake, which he inculcated, was, m Ms teaching, as
he sliOAved in Ms practice, too vague a principle to coerce men's
passions, or satisfy their affections. The positive part of his
system has been long forgotten, the negative and destructive
alone is remembered. He was a sceptic in philosophy as he
Avas a sceptic in politics. For a man of powerful administra
tive genius, few spheres could have been more discouraging
than an atmosphere of perpetual conspiracy ; for intellectual
vanity like his, no retribution more humiliating than the
utter neglect which, the fear of retahation and the motives of
curiosity once removed, attended the cherished offspring of his
meditative leisure. Yet many will part reluctantly from the
spoilt child of the eighteenth century, from the plotter against
the Constitution, the sophist in statesmanship, morals, and
theology ; they cannot help sympathising with Ms own gene
ration, wMch, while it never fully granted him his own way,
never took his manifold delinquencies so seriously as to
punish them condignly. o

200 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.

WILLIAM PULTENEY.

To Lord Bolingbroke, with all Ms intelhgence, Ms persis
tent exclusion from national confidence, and from a practical
share in the party triumphs wMch had, mainly by his inter
vention, been won over Walpole, was an inscrutable problem.
He never beheved in the genuineness of pubhc opimon, and
fancied that he could hoodwink it at his pleasure. He per
ceived its force, and tried to make it his tool. He did not
understand its sincerity, and that it had its- positive objects,
and was resolved to choose its instruments and representa
tives for their accomplishment. Far from desiring to re
pudiate and rescind the Revolutionary settlement, it Avas
fighting against the contradictions in the practice to the
theory wMch 1689 had estabhshed. For the overthrow of
the despotism of the great Whig houses, it used the feuds and
jealousies of the same order. For these reasons, it selected
Pulteney, a WMg of the first rank, to OA'erturn a system of
Whig oligarchy ; and the leader of Piccadilly was the favourite
alike of the City and of the petty farmer. When the long
conflict ceased, and the cause Avas victorious, it was not
his silence about social reforms aaMcIi brought doAvn from
Ms lofty pedestal the popular idol in a tempest of popular
indignation and contumely. A few Aveeks could not have
been expected to bear legislative fruits. It was that m his
day of power, and when his decree was absolute, Pulteney
sanctioned the system he had been commissioned to over
turn. Men disbelieved the original sincerity of the antagonist
of Walpole, who could leave his nominees and accomphces
in office.

William Pulteney. 201

National aversion to the divine right of the Whig oligarchy
Avas the keystone of the success of this famous Opposition.
The people did not desire to elevate men of the people ; but
they avouM not allow a small, close body to claim a right of
co-optation Avithout respect to fitness for office. They AArere ever
ready to catch at any symptom of mismanagement to utter,
in a burst of rage, their protest against the whole system,
their suspicions that their representatives were no representa
tives. They had a sense of want ; they had formed no posi
tive conception of wants ; and their' chiefs did not and
could not interpret for them. The absence of social popular
cries from the Opposition vocabulary is a curious and disa
greeable feature in the history of the contest. It imparts an
air of barrenness and unreahty to the whole. Perhaps it
Avas to be expected. The instrument must be first created :
the work is subsequent. But it accounts for the evanescence
of the fame of politicians, none of whom ever broke out into
a proposal of electoral enfranchisement, sonie great scheme of
education, a modification of oppressive poor laws, or a large
project of trade. All that they did was to veto, unless the sub
ject were war. War was always welcome, because the Minister
loved peace, from his dread of financial embarrassments.
Pulteney was not more a statesman than the other cham
pions of Opposition. A true orator he was, and he could run
over the scales, from the sublimest , tones of patriotism to the
hottest blasts of indignation and the stormiest gusts of
ridicule. Well might the harassed Minister exclaim, that he
feared Pulteney's tongue more than another man's SAVord.
From Pulteney the rest took their key. He surprised his
followers and adversaries with a scope of eloquence which
enlarged and rose with the occasion. All Ms contemporaries,
whether friends or foes, agree as to the astonishing compass
of Ms oratory. v'He could state and explain the most intri
cate matters, even in figures, with the greatest perspicuity,"
writes Chesterfield, who had envied, and affected to scorn
him after his death. " He was a most complete orator and
debater in the House of Commons ; he had arguments, wit,
Q 2

202 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
and tears at Ms command." OnsloAV, Walpole's Speaker,
Avhose position Avas constantly being menaced by the assaults
of Opposition, avIio watched a debate only to detect some
breach of order in the harangues of his adversaries, was
amazed at tMs man's eloquence. " He had the most popular
parts for pubhc speaking that I ever kneAv ; animating every
subject of popularity with the spirit and fire that the orators
of the ancient commonwealths governed the people by ; was
as classical and eloquent in the speeches he did not prepare,
as they were in the most studied compositions ; minghng wit
and pleasantry, and the apphcation even of httle stories, so
properly to affect Ms hearers, that he would overset the best
argumentation in the world, and win people over to his side,
often against their own convictions, by making ridiculous
that truth they were influenced by before, and making some
men to be afraid and ashamed of being thought witihn the
meaning of some bitter expression of his, or witiiin the laugh
that generally went through the town at any memorable stroke
of his AATit." He had trained himself carefully, long confinmg
his part in Parhament to short business speeches. That he
had not commenced orator at once was no bar later on to
strains of continuous and impassioned invective. The habit
of being ahvays ready and able to speak to the pomt re
mained of essential service in the perpetual guerilla warfare
which, as leader of His Majesty's Opposition, he had to direct.
The quahty of his style, which his enemies called " miscel
laneous incoherence," was reckoned by Ms friends, and by the
judicious among Ms opponents, as the perfection of debating.
In his private character defects there certainly were, and
many of them. Not only filial resentment made Horace
Walpole ascribe all the inspiration of his writings to " am
bition and acrimony." Not only jealousy of superior power,
talents, and honesty, or the passion for epigrams and point,
led Chesterfield to declare, in his exaggerated style, that
" resentment made Mm engage in business ; that he could
equally detect and practise sopMstry; that Ms breast was
the seat of all those passions which degrade our nature, and

William Pulteney. 203

disturb our reason; that there they raged in perpetual
conflict ; but avarice, the meanest of them all, generally
triumphed, ruled absolutely and most scandalously ; that
nothing exceeded his ambition but his avarice." Party
feeling exclusively did not prompt Speaker Onslow's criticism
on " the mixture in him of such natural defects and Aveak-
nesses, that no time, I believe, can produce an instance oi
a man of so variable and uncertain a mind, who knew not
that he Avas so, and never designed to be so." Not a little
in all this was true. He Avas ambitious and acrimonious;
he Avas sophistical. He could be capricious in conduct,
and Avas ever so in temperament. He Avas in petty
matters ludicrously economical. It is told how his coach
and six, outriders and all, were suddenly checked, to alloAv
the opulent and compassionate Lord Bath time to grope in his
pocket for a halfpenny to bestow on a decrepit old beggar.
He haggled AAdth his ward Colman about a few pounds for
tutor's fees, and bestoAved on Mm most earnest advice to look
about for second-hand laAv books. Yet he could be nobly
generous to a friend, while he esteemed it a reflection on his
understanding to yield a " point in the way of bargain."
Chesterfield's sarcasms on his ruling vice, it seems, arose
from his refusal to sell some frontage land in Hyde Park
for less than its market price, and are somewhat out of place
from the great noble who bequeathed to his mistress, the
mother of his son, £500, as some " small " (small indeed !)
" compensation for the injury he had done her." That
Pulteney had not been heroic or eccentric enough to disclaim
a devise of the Bradford estates, Avas converted into another
grave charge against him. But never was a demand made
upon his liberality for pubhc objects, or upon his sense of
equity, in vain. Bishop Newton, Avho knew Mm perfectly,
tells us that he was a constant and generous patron of
literature ; that many youths Avere brought up and advanced
at Ms expense ; that " the charge of gaining intelligence and
of printing and pubhsMng, and the hke, for the party, Avas
almost all his OAvn; and there were very few who assisted

204 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
now and then with so much as a subscription of five guineas."
A man who, we learn on the eAddence of Bishop Pearce,
yearly bestowed more than a tenth part of Ms Avhole income
in charity, and undertook the payment of the enormous debts
of Ms deceased son, Lord Pulteney, voluntarily and Avithout
liability, could hardly haA^e been the mean, ungenerous, even
dishonest miser that family enemies and em-ious companions
delighted to prove Mm. The country rated these calumnies
at their proper worth. The West End might echo with
wMspers of a clever bargain, or a piece of minute economy ;
the nation at large knew Mm as the millionaire who rejected
the lures of sinecures and pensions, who, from the time when
first he entered public life, had always subscribed to every
patriotic loan, however hazardous, whose accumulated Avealth
was avadable for all popular objects. It Avas ready to
sympatliise Avith Ms indignant outburst at being contrasted
for a " sparing, scraping nature," with the magnificence and
prodigahty of the statesmen of the age : " Dost thou call the
profusion of the pubhc treasure on a AA'ortMess crew of
pimps, spies, projectors, and abandoned scribblers, for thy
own secret service, instances of personal generosity ? At this
rate Catiline was a man of a frank, hberal heart."
His enemies reproached him with " outrageous bursts of
sudden passion, with an affectation of good nature and
compassion ; " they did not deny that Ms fierceness of tone
" was supported by great personal courage," and that,
" perhaps, Ms heart might feel the misfortunes and distresses
of Ms fellow-creatures." His friends could add, that he was
religious in an age when scepticism was fasMonable, and
moral in a period of habitual sensuality; that in private
life he was " so familiar and engaging, that you could not be
with Mm half an hour, but you felt yourself entirely at
ease ; " that he never forgot the ties of school friendsMp, or,
in his triumph, gave the rein to his thirst for Arengeance;
that he condescended to no low intrigues to embarrass
his adversary ; rejecting for instance, the proffered services
of a man skilled in opening and re-seahng letters with the

William Pidteney. 205

utmost scorn and- loathing, though the Treasury did not;
that, wliile leaguing Avith men of all denominations in politics,
he had never deserted his ancient pledges, or in his anger
Avith the Sovereign plotted with the Pretender.
William Pulteney entered public life with favourable pro
spects. His father had done little to increase the distinction
of the family, Avhich took its name from its original seat of
Poultney, at Misterton, LeicestersMre, and Avas of Norman
descent. But his, grandfather, Sir William, had long been
member for Westminster, and his memory introduced his
descendant at once to the heart of the Whig party. From
Westminster he went to Oxford. At Christ Church, his
Latin verses, spirited, but Avith no ideas above a schoolboy's,
recommended him to the favour of Dean Aldrich and for the
post of speaker of a very smooth and very tame address to
Queen Anne, on; her visit to Tory Oxford, notwithstanding
his WMggish connections. On leaving college he made the
grand tour. He entered public life at the stormiest period of
our political history, full of hereditary prejudices, and with a
disposition to Adew, all, things through a medium of suspicion
of men's motives. Wealth, which flowed in till Ms fortune
SAvelled to the, then gigantic bulk of £1,200,000, perhaps
aggravated the ¦ natural blemishes of his temper. Love of
money, confirmed by the growth of Ms possessions, rendered
him envious of the illicit gains of his old friends and col
leagues, while the consciousness of perfect independence in
point of fortune encouraged him in an eccentric and im
practicable opposition.
On his first entrance into Parliament, where he obtained a
seat through the influence of Guy, the Secretary to the
Treasury, for the Borough of Hedon, such defects were singular
merits. All England was become one turbid scene of intrigue,
and disaffection. Party spirit had all the narrowness and
sordidness of private selfishness. The Sovereign herself Avas
looked upon as a conspirator against the principles which
had set her on the throne by the vast party by which those
principles had been defended. The defeated adherents of

206 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
her brother Avere divided between sympathy with the Queen
as secretly their supporter and fellow-thinker, and dishke
to the usurpation AvMch they were obliged to deem her
sovereignty. Pulteney's wealth and name soon gave him
Aveight in the deliberations of the Whig confederacy. His
first speeches did not, nor was it intended that they should,
produce much impression on the House. The Place Bill
called Mm to Ms feet ; but the country was first warned to
expect a leader by his earnestness and vehemence in the
prosecution of Saclieverell.
Through all the period of dejection, and, sometimes, despair
for Ms party, Pulteney shrank from no part of the burden.
The Tories testified their opinion of Ms resoluteness by
dismissmg Ms uncle, no violent partisan Mmself, from the
Board of Trade. When Walpole was imprisoned for a trans
action by him as Secretary-at-War, on abstract principles
unjustifiable, though, according to the morahty of those days,
to the credit of Ms heart, Pulteney, who had been more par
ticularly welcomed into the arena of politics by him, stood
by Ms old patron. He was proud to be admitted as a partner
in the games of nine-pins with which the silence of the Tower
was often broken. When the ' History of the Last Parlia
ment ' came forth from Walpole's pen, Pulteney was selected,
and gladly consented, to take the office of editor. With
Walpole and Stanhope he was St. John's guest in Golden
Square, when that Minister, having deposed Harley, had
discovered, in Ms turn, in the plenitude of his absolute sway,
the inconvenience of being a single party's nommee and
slave. He never lost courage, though he could hardly have
foreseen that the very crisis, when it appeared to most that ,
all hope for the old Whig houses Avas gone, that nothing
remained but to negotiate the best terms possible with the
conquerors, was the beginning of the ruin of the Tories,
and of their subjection to their adversaries for half a
century. On the final triumph of his friends, Pulteney's claims to
office were recognised. He Avas appointed Lord-lieutenant

William Pulteney. 207

and Custos rotuloruni of Yorkshire, and admitted to the Privy
Council. In defiance of the opposition of the Commander-
in-Chief, the Duke of Marlborough, to any adherent of
Walpole's, he Avas elevated to the post of Secretary at War,
Avhich in his case, as in those of St. John and Walpole, Avas
regarded as a stepping-stone. Still, though high in the
ranks of Ms party, he was but the folloAver of Walpole.
He was not formed for a leader. He had no taste for res
ponsibility, nor the steadiness required for such a character,
and the necessary patience. Circumstances alone forced him
into the post; and then his trophies were gained in the
desultory Avarfare of an Opposition which can pick its own
time for an assault. Never of his own choice was his
eloquence employed in promoting a positive course of policy.
He had acuteness at will to detect a flaAv in the policy of
an enemy, not the subtlety wdiich elaborates a plan of
action. Under the guidance of Walpole, he was a con
spicuous advocate of a triple alliance between England,
Holland, and France, which, under the Orleans Regency, had
laid aside the ambitious schemes of the former reign, and
promised to be the guardian of peace in Europe. However,
soon again he reverted to the negative character, and burst
forth with a display of that fierceness which he had, in words,
ever at command. To him it fell to impeach Lord Widdring-
ton for the rebellion of 1715 ; and Ave find him, about the
same time, haranguing against amotion to address the Crown
for a proclamation of amnesty to all rebels laying down their
arms. Soon, too, he was hurried into opposition, a state from
Avhich he never again completely emerged, even during the
ascendency of his friends. He had felt obliged to send in
his resignation in 1717 when Walpole's influence proved
inferior to Stanhope's in the Cabinet ; though it seems from
the correspondence of Stair with Stanhope in January, 1718,
that Pulteney, then at Paris, was averse from that open
union between the Tories, as Tories, and Walpole's followers,
which had led, the year before, to the acquittal of the Earl
of Oxford, Unlike Walpole, who affected, to excess, the

208 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
character of an old-fashioned English country gentleman,
Pulteney had not even a country seat. He loved London and
the Continent. His present residence abroad may have been
connected Avith Ms perplexity at Ms position as a seceder
from the Government Avhile he felt bound in conscience not
to oppose its measures. He was discontented with Walpole
for having implicated him in a factious policy. He had more
enduring cause for dissatisfaction when Walpole's schemes
for a return to power were crowned with success, through the
reconciliation of the King and Prince, and the troubles
consequent upon the South Sea Bubble. The zeal and
eloquence of Pulteney had been among his chief resources,
yet no worthy place was reserved in the edifice of Ms grandeur
for the devoted friend, even when he became First Lord of
the Treasury, in April, 1721.
It has been the fasliion to blame the Minister for folly
m having, by Ms suspicions and jealousy, himself collected
the force wMch destroyed Mm. " He could forgive great
faults, not great talents." With a different policy, he could
not have grasped or retained that autocracy, wMch he
enjoyed, so long as Hanover was safe, and enriched by
Enghsh gold, without a murmur from the King, and, while he
held the keys of the .Treasury, with no need of yielding to
troublesome demands of confidence from Ms subordmates.
Though he had kept the nominal cliieftainsMp which already
the partnership of Stanhope had once wrested from his grasp,
and that of Townshend threatened, he could not have played
the dictator with Chesterfield and Pulteney asserting equal
rank, and ready to snub every gesture of supremacy.
Walpole was not a man to care for an empty name. He loved
the reality of power, to feel other wills boAving beneath Ms
OAvn. Though cold-hearted and prosaic, he resembled the
elder Pitt m the , self-reliance which, prefers the feeble
Pelhams as coadjutors to the sharing of authority and re
sponsibility Avith minds of larger proportions. Warned by
Ms friend's reluctance to change principles with position, he
embraced the opportunity of Pulteney's sacrifice of high office

William Pulteney. 209
in sympathy with himself, to leave him permanently outside.
It was mean conduct, and its moral is the day Avhen, deserted
by all, with the Avhole nation apparently thirsting for Ms
blood, he gave way to his former liegeman.
For the present, Pulteney's enmity smouldered. Walpole
did Mm the honour to be sufficiently jealous of Ms possible
rivalry to offer a peerage, in the hope that his well-knoAvn
AAdsh to found a noble house might seduce Mm to a desertion
of the natural sphere of his eloquence and popular manners,
the (House of Commons. The offer Avas declined ¦ civilly ;
the motive was indignantly detected. Pulteney was the
more bitter internally that it was impossible to commence
opposition on purely personal grounds. He continued to
support the side wMch Ministers advocated; perhaps Avith
the greater vehemence, to avert the suspicion that his noAv
known dishke was inspired by private grievances. He
moved the confiscation of the ill-gotten wealth of the South
Sea directors. When Bishop Atterbury was accused of com
plicity in the Stuart plots, he moved the bill of attainder
and the address of congratulation to the King. He con
descended to ask for the post of Cofferer of the royal
household, to prove Mmself, he argued, no renegade from
his party, and not disaffected to the dynasty he had ever
supported. Then, finding that Walpole looked upon Ms
acceptance of the place as a pledge of peace, he determined
to show that he was not compromised. In accordance with
the tradition rather than practice, that office bound the
official to the Sovereign, not to the Minister, he concerted
a plan of opposition the most irritating, a system of perfect
independence. He interpreted his place as letters of marque
granted by the monarch against Whig and against Tory. He
had plenty of allies in ' the mass of malcontents the Minis
terial policy towards persons had made. As the year 1725
drew on, a very serious storm AAras seen blackening the
political horizon. Walpole was determined not to part with
a jot of his absolutism ; he thought that the proffer of . a
Secretaryship of State to Pulteney was not really a departure

'210 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed,
from that resolution. Pulteney was Avise enough to see that he
Avas too far compromised to go back, or resentment stood him
in the place of sagacity. To a hint that Townshend might
soon cease to hold the seals, he replied with a bow and smile.
To a second and recent offer of a peerage he had already
bitterly responded : " Sir, if ever I should be mean enough
to be sold, I promise you that you shall never have the
selling of me. A peerage is what, some time or other, I
may be glad of accepting, for the sake of my family ; but
I will never obtain it by any base method, or submit to have
it got for me on such terms by you."
A cry was still Avanting ; and a cry the Opposition at last
prevailed upon itself to think it had found. When the
nation rose against Walpole, it did not mean to impugn the
Revolution of 1689. The people were incensed against the
Ministry, inclined to sneer at the Sovereign, and had no
sympathy AA'ith the aristocracy. Yet they could not under
stand the point of vieAv of those pohticians who wished to
lodge the little Court of Compiegne at St. James's. " Whig "
and " Tory," though become someAvhat obsolete, men recognised
as old party names, and were ready to beheve Enghsh prin
ciples were represented by them ; the indefeasible title of the
Stuarts was beyond the reach of their imagmation. To the
Revolution, and to the Whig principles on wMch it was
founded, Pulteney and his allies appealed against the Whigs
in office.
The Revolution had, once for all, marked out the boun
daries between Prerogative and Privilege. There Avas no
danger from Prerogative. Parliament had perfect liberty to
act, if it would, for the kingdom's general welfare. To the
nation, then, Pulteney preached, that it was betrayed by its own
guardians, that the power it had extorted from the crown for
them, they used for themselves ; that the theory of the Con
stitution was mfallible ; that the Whiggism of the Revolution
was the true political faith, but that the practice of the
priests was corrupt. He bade them look to the Bill of
Rights and the Act of Settlement, and see whether the

William Pidteney. 211

Revolution had not pledged their rulers against threaten
ing their liberties with standing armies, or with armies of
placemen, the Janizaries of a government ; against robbing
England for the gain of a foreign principality. He de
nounced the Treaty of Hanover, the Secret Service funds,
Hessian and Hanoverian mercenaries. " The time might yet
come," he exclaimed, " when we should see a tyrant Minister
driving about with six members of Parliament behind his
coach ! " To the Parliament he employed a different tone.
To the Whig rivals of Walpole, angry at want of place, he
addressed one common argument. All were Adctims of the
Minister's jealousy. In each the Minister saw a possible
rival, and each who had no sufficient post conferred upon
Mm, might deem himself not despised, but feared. Walpole
was too needy and prodigal, he warned them, to let them
share the pubhc treasure. Houghton needed all that Avas
left from the buying of votes and of boroughs. He pointed
to a crowd of Whigs, known statesmen, ejected by the
usurper ; he terrified aspirants with the prospect that every
year of the despot's rule was rendering him more absolute.
To the independent he spoke of the Avorthlessness of their
votes and wisdom, when one man had the command of wealth
to purchase a majority at any time ; to the corrupt, of the
growing strength of their "grand corrupter," which would
soon make votes a drug, and of the growing rage of their
constituencies. The Jacobites he terrified with the friendship
between Fleury and the Walpoles. Constitutional Tories
were roused with the hope of emancipation from their
political disfranchisement, by glorious prophecies of a future,
when party should be no more, and by declamations against
the present perversion of party badges into standards of
faction and the watchwords of licensed robbers.
The charge of general corruption of Parliament sapped the
foundations of the strength of a Ministry wMch existed by the
will of a Parliamentary majority. The people could not tell
what statesman on the Ministerialist side was guilty or not,
what measure was the product or not of bribery. All alike,

212 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
both men and measures, they Avere inchned to condemn, m
order to crush the guilty thing at all events. Every vote for
Walpole was looked upon as the possible fruit of corruption ;
consistency in voting ahvays on the Minister's side would
be thought consistency in corruption, variableness would
lose a man the confidence of friends and foes. One way was
open to no doubt. Co-operation with the tactics of Opposition
was a safe pohcy. No suspicion of bribery could attach to
the adherents of the struggling cause. A member coidd not
suspect Ms own candour, when he decided against Ms mani
fest mterest. To the dishonest themselves that manifest
interest was become dubious. With the country rismg
against the Government, Avith all the talents ranged against
it, victory and the spoils of the vanquished were the sure
reward of Opposition, sooner or later.
Pulteney was from the first not alone. He could reckon
on the enthusiastic declamation of Wyndham. Many a fierce
sarcasm pomted by Bolingbroke, and. many a lummous idea
hammered out m the fiery forge of that statesman's mind,
shone forth amid the full Aoav of 'Wyndham's oratory. For
an elaborate and sustained attack, Wyndham produced a
greater effect than Pulteney ; he had not the same A^ariety and
animation, not the readiness and spontaneity. Commonly,
though not always, Shippen ranged himself on the same
side Avith his fifty followers, that systematic partisan, Avho
could forget the old services of St. John and refuse to vote
for Ms restoration, who could even in the final struggle sup
port Walpole, consistent in the resolve alone to make all
parties and doctrines his tools. More trustworthy Avas Samuel
Sandys, a master of statement, provided the topics were sup
plied to Mm. Pulteney had Sir John Barnard, the repre
sentative of the section of the moneyed interest opposed to
the bank directors, Walpole's staunch supporters, for his
preceptor on all financial questions. Later, he could look
for the aid, in the Upper House, of Chesterfield, the most
finished, but not, therefore, the most effective orator of his
time, Avith his studied passion and quaint though tfulness.

William Pulteney. 213

Among Ms enemy Walpole's enemies, rather than among his
own folloAvers, Avere arrayed in the Commons also the polished
taste of George Lyttelton, and the majesty and truthfulness
of Pitt. Pitt almost alone in the epoch had an actual object,
a positive policy, to be elaborated in some future Utopia
after the fall of the reigning Cabinet. About Pitt alone
there is, in those artificial times of " Roman virtue and
patriotism," an air of reality. It is strange that he was
doomed tiiroughout the Avhole of his political career to
association with the least magnanimous and deserving states
men of the period. Driven into opposition for a single vote
given against Walpole, he became an intimate of Leicester
House, without losing his uprightness in that hotbed of
intrigues. His misfortune was to lack riches and influence
enough to stand by himself in a tainted age. He was not
a professed member of Pulteney's party, though he voted on
Pulteney's side, and aided it by Ms eloquence. The Opposi
tion could never thoroughly understand or control his flights,
while it often profited by them.
Of George II. when Prince of Wales Pulteney had
been a consistent courtier. He had been excluded from
official knowledge of the negotiation, which led in 1720 to a
reconcihation between the Prince and the King ; and he
never forgave Walpole for a reserve Avhich, he believed,
originated in jealousy. He was the more irritated that the
communication to him of each step of the treaty by Mr. Edg-
cumbe, proved that others Avere thought worthy of initiation
into the mystery! He went so far as to warn the Prince
against letting himself " be sold to his father's Minister by
persons who considered nothing but themselves and their
own interest, and were in haste to make their fortunes."
"What," he declared he had said to Walpole, when told
that, as the reward for the pacification, the Prince was "to go
to Court again, and have his guards, and such fine things,"
but not to be left Regent in the King's absence from Eng
land—" What ! have you stipulated for a share of royalty for
yourself, and is the Prince to live as a private subject of no

214 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed,

consequence in the kingdom ? " When the Prince had dis
covered that his adviser was right, and that Ms interests
Avere totally disregarded in the new arrangements, he reverted
to opposition. At Leicester House the campaign Avas con
certed, and the vivacity of Mrs. Howard and the judgment of
the Princess Caroline furmshed useful suggestions. There
met all the wit and learning which had survived the establish
ment of the neAv dynasty. Pope and Gay were welcome
guests ; and an occasional letter from Ireland would remind
the town of the mighty intellect ever expressing hatred
for mankind, but lashing its oppressors, and projecting
measures of enlarged philanthropy. Mrs. Howard gathered
her habitual train of admirers, her Peterborough, and her
poets, Avhile uoav and then a Butler, or a Clarke, fresh from
some discussion before the Princess, on the depths and
heights of metaphysics, mingled in the mistress's more
brilliant levee. The Heir Apparent's Court was a pleasant
contrast to the dull formalities of St. James's, where Walpole
discoursed in bad Latin with his Sovereign, and Baroness
Kilmanseck and the Duchess of Kendal held heavy sway.
Leicester House was the natural centre of the belligerents.
The spirit which had animated the clubs of Queen Anne's
reign had evaporated ; the end and object of pohtical com
binations were not measures but men ; no recognised social
fellowship could iioav be formed on a basis sufficiently broad
to comprehend all the members of an Opposition resting on
motives of personal connection, rather than principles. The
tendency of society was against such institutions ; there could
be no sympathy between Grub Street and Piccadilly, now
that the denizens of Piccadilly actually made their mansions,
instead of the coffee-house and the tavern, their homes. The
charm of the Kit-Cat Club, of which Pulteney was a
member, arose from the meeting of wit on terms of social
equality Avith Avealth and rank. It sat as a critical tribunal,
adjudicating not only upon pohtics but upon literature.
When Avit Avas forced to show a pecuniary qualifica
tion, the ease of such associations disappeared altogether.

William Pulteney. 215

They were exchanged for the clumsy humour and unadul
terated politics of aristocratic gatherings, such as the ex
clusive Beef-steak and Liberty Club. From the coffee-houses
and taverns of Charles II.'s reign the passage had been
smooth to the more select commonwealth of a club. Thence,
under the Georges, the transit was abrupt to pohtical
conferences in drawing-rooms, and especially at Leicester
House. Tories who were not Jacobites, rejoiced to predict the
growth from Leicester House of a true Conservative policy
wMch should be consistent in not challenging the Revolution
and, at the same time, in discouraging fresh changes. Dis
contented Whigs beheld in it the seat of a prince who had no
title but from the Act of Settlement, but was bound to the
principle, and not to a special group of its official advocates.
Radicals, lastly, men Avhose minds had contracted a bias to
perpetual alterations, or whom the new order did not exactly
smt, found there a delightful hurly-burly of murmurs and
complaints, nothing positive to be opposed, but a fashion of
resistance to all that existed.
Pulteney's place was high in the little Court, though he
was no favourite personally with the Prince or Princess.
After all, George II. and Carohne were as Hanoverian as
'George I. The measures Avhich the Prince opposed as Heir
Apparent he really loved. Walpole's cold temper and un
imaginative method of government were, in spite of her esprit,
much more in harmony with Caroline's German feelings than
the cleverness and popular ways of Ms rival. The men of
"letters Pulteney introduced, who gave the Court an air of
patronage of learning and wit, were men of Queen Anne's
day, and more naturally betook themselves to flattering
Mrs. Howard than her mistress. One lady his influence
brought in, whose name was destined to become sufficiently
notorious at a later period. The shameless Duchess of King
ston, the convicted of bigamy, and the mortal foe of Foote,
was, as Miss Chudleigh, patronised by the statesman, who
obtained for her the place of maid of honour. He conde
scended to watch over her studies, seeking to imbue her with
E

216 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
a taste for good reachng ; but, with all Ms wit, the accom
plished Pulteney, as a preceptor, seems to have proved a dull
companion for the young lady. The men of letters, Gay
and Swift, Pope and Arbuthnot, who met at Leicester House,
as formerly at the table of Harley, or the dinners of the
Brothers, had gained admission as his friends. They fell off
from it when Ms interest there declined. Originally they
had been no companions of Ms. A common antipathy was
the bond among them ; and Pulteney had the art to convert
political fellow-feeling into personal friendsMp. Chesterfield,
a competent judge, declares Mm to have been " formed by
nature for social and convivial pleasures, to have had hvely
and shming parts, a surprising quickness of Avit, and a happy
turn to the most amusing and entertaining kinds of poetry,
as epigrams, ballads, odes." " Good humour and the spirit of
society dictated Ms poetry," writes the generally contemp
tuous Horace Walpole. " So familiar and engagmg was he
that you could not be with Mm half an hour but you felt
yourself entirely at ease. He gained admiration by not seek
ing it ; Ms wit was all natural and easy, arising from some
thing then said or done," is the testimony of Bishop Newton.
For social talents, Mrs. Grenville, who often saw all the chiefs
of Opposition together at her husband's table, thought no-
one comparable to Mm. A bon mot of his echoed through
the town, as Ms speeches roused the kingdom. In addition,
it was not forgotten that he was wealthy, and not sparing,
of his riches, at all events, at the call of literature. Gay, his
rival in glory and odium, as SAAuft styles him, he, as all, loved -r
he admired Pope, and Pope admired, or affected to admire, Mm :
" How can I Pult'ney, Chesterfield forget,
"While Roman spirit charms or Attic wit."
With the great Dean over the water he maintained an
mtermittent but cordial correspondence. If there was not
enough of earnestness or steadiness in Pulteney's character to
satisfy Swift altogether, neither at present discovered the want..
As an affectionate friend Pulteney invites Swift to England,
engagmg there shall be one and that an ' undisguised ' dish ; he

William Pulteney. 217

shall have Ms cup of mixed small beer and wine, " no women at
table if you don't like them, and no men but such as like you."
It is strange to find one of their most rancorous opponents
received thus into the circle of the Brothers ; it is stranger
to see Mm and Bohngbroke, on Bohngbroke's restoration
in fortune in 1725, become the firmest of alhes. Of all
men these • two, having been once foes, seemed least likely
to coalesce: There was the opposition, not of contradiction,
between them, but of relation. Each united with wit and
eloquence a pohtical instability, which, in the one, originated
from infirmity of will ; in the other, from too absorbing and
constant a contemplation of distinction as the sole end of life.
Each was possessed by an overweemng vanity. In the one
it took the form of a determination to give the tone to every
measure, and to society at large ; in the other, to submit to no
dictation. . Resentment against Walpole, to whose character
theirs were equally contrasts, was the bond of union. It
silenced the antagonism of conflicting egotisms until his
despotism Sad been shattered. The presence of Bohngbroke
in the confederacy is its most interesting feature. His
unscrupulous originality and individuality are set in relief
by the nervelessness of his fellow-workers, even of their
leader, men who made dislike of an individual the clue to
guide them to a national policy. Sandys and Barnard, Bubb
Dodington and Lyttelton, were indebted for their existence as
pohticians to the ungraciousness of a Minister. Pulteney
Mmself might have been Secretary of State, or Premier, in
other circumstances ; he owed it to Ms rival that he became
"the Great -Commoner."
St. John must have been marked and famous at any period
of Mstory. -- He flits hke a dark shade over the annals of the
first two Georges, like a ghost beMnd the arras, with a tale to
tell of the crimes of a bygone period descended as an inherit
ance to the present, wMch durst not confront the light of
day. With an outward semblance of conformity to the
established Constitution, he prompted measures inimical to
it, yet not favourable to the restoration of the old order.
K 2

218 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
He assailed the Minister with strokes that fell with equal
effect upon the throne and upon society. He argued as if
all institutions were on probation, as if every pohty stood on
the same footing of propriety and plausibihty, from an
absolute monarchy down to a republic.
The junction of St. John, while it terrified Walpole, fur
nished him with a whole armoury of weapons against Ms
Parhamentary adversary. Pulteney had been the most vehe
ment member of the committee which condemned the Peace
of Utrecht ; he was asked why he had leagued with the author
of that peace ; why, a Whig, he called for the head of the
champion of the Act of Settlement. The only answer, it was
suggested, could be that he was " ambitious and aspiring,
impatient and irresolute, unable to bear a superiority, con
ceiving unjust jealousies and discontents, full of himself and
his own extraordinary merit, and determined to hold the
highest offices in the State, and to censure and confound all
the measures of the Government under any other Administra
tion." Simply for these reasons he had " at length renounced
at once all former friendships and principles, vOwing the
destruction of those who had distinguished him by peculiar
regard, betraying private correspondences, and endeavouring
to distress that Prince to whom he owed the highest
obligation." That was the charge in the dedication of Sir
William Yonge's ' Sedition and Defamation Displayed ' to the
patrons of the Craftsman. Pulteney rejoined in his 'Answer
to One Part of an Infamous Libel ' that " a certain closet is
the only place in the kingdom where such assertions can gain
belief, or where the gentleman traduced can be thought a
Jacobite even for half an hour." " That he voted with Tories,"
he contended, " was no proof that he had gone over to them
rather than they to him." He worked in harmony with
Bolingbroke because enmity to the great traitor against the
liberties of England was a more patriotic motive than the
memories of old hostility, not that he repented of his past
measures. One same principle underlay his condemnation of
the treaties of Utrecht and Seville. At least, Bolingbroke had

William Pulteney. 219

never been equal in depth of guilt to Walpole. " If the Ministers
of that time did many things ill, -have not you, sir, done
things ten times worse ? " The bygone Administration had
been, at all events, free from the infamy of unlimited votes of
credit, profusion of presents, and secret service money. And
then, to compare the two chiefs in point of capacity ; what " a
pedler in politics " was the one by the side of the other ! But
charges of desertion of old pledges were out of date. The age
of parties was past, or revived as mere matter of speculation
by selfish placemen who gauged Whig and Tory principles by
the standard of co-operation with, or opposition to Government.
Now, " God be praised, the senseless distinction is almost
sunk in general concern for the national interest." That
was the text on which its original framer continually dilated
in the Craftsman, with an eloquence never before knoAvn
in the annals of English pamphleteering. Abandonment
of party spirit was the only point of view from which the
composition and tactics of Opposition could be cleared of
the shame of personal pique, or covetousness of spoils. By
it could be reconciled to the kingdom, and to the con
science of the Whig leader, private with national objects.
The thought had long been brooding and smouldering in the
breast of the people. Bohngbroke gave it a voice and a shape.
To this mighty party organiser, to the man who was never
aught but a partisan, whose measures, in power as well as in
Opposition, were carried always by way of conspiracy, Ave
owe the first steps towards an enlargement of the pohcy
wMch made the Constitution favoured by the majority a
tyranny for the minority, towards the development of the
principles of the Revolution of 1689 into a national creed,
and of the foreign dynasty imported by the Act of Settlement
into the nation's choice.
The protracted campaign or campaigns, between 1725
and 1742, began in the former year with a fierce onset by
Pulteney on the increase of pensions, wMch had exhausted
the civil hst and compelled an appeal to Parhament. " He
was not surprised," he said, " that some persons were so

220 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
eager to have the deficiencies of the civil hst made good, since
they and their friends had so great a share in it." Down to
tMs time he had preserved the semblance of amity with
Walpole and the Crown, and retained his place of Cofferer.
He even, on the tMrd readmg of the bill for paying His
Majesty's debts, voted with the AdmiMstration, on the ground
that, wMle he beheved it the duty of his office to resist the
growth of so permcious a system, he could not gamsay the
King's argument, that the Opposition was Mndering Mm from
being an honest man. The plea was a strange one. An
honesty might be left to shift for itself wMch can be saved
only by a transfer of the burden of debt to others. In any
case the MiMster, who had been cMefly assailed, did not see
much merit m Ms opponent's inconsistency. After a feeble
overture towards reconciliation from the side of the Court,
Pulteney was dismissed into hopeless opposition.
Yet it seemed not so at the time. The King was old and
infirm. There could be httle doubt that the Prince must
shortly succeed, and as httle that he would prefer the services
of men who had for years been flattering Mm, to a Mmistry
wMch rather embittered than sweetened the relations of St.
James's Palace and Leicester House. The King died ; Wal
pole's proffered help in drawing up the proclamation of the
accession of George II. had been coldly dechned; and
Pulteney was anticipating hourly a summons to Court. It
never came. Carohne, who veiled an absolute predominance
over her husband's mind under the appearance of unquestion
ing subservience, had only felt resentment at compliments
and homage wMch she shared with the Prince's mistress.
Bohngbroke and, through Mm, Pulteney, had been beguiled
into a double game wMch might have suited the Court of
Versailles, where it was learnt, but, to the credit of England,
led to disappomtment here. Moreover, the Princes of the
House of Brunswick, with many faults both of head and heart,
a narrow selfishness, and a Hanoverian patriotism looking
like treachery to their greater kmgdom, combmed an ahnost
preternatural mstinct of self-preservation, wMch taught them

William Pulteney. 221

that 1689 and the Act of Settlement had crowned them
sovereigns of England. Mere envy and jealousy carried four
heirs to the throne of England in succession into an undutiful
and almost revolutionary opposition ; yet tMs very conduct
bore the frmts of profound sagacity. It introduced a tone
of apparent loyalty into the spirit of faction, and reconciled
a powerful minority in the nation to government by a party,
through the natural expectation, that, with their royal chief
tain, they must succeed to that despotism in the State which
now crushed them. But, with the prerogatives, the Heir
regularly assumed the hereditary prejudices of the throne.
Liberal, almost republican tenets, which, never toucMng the
other distinctions of rank, had employed all their strength in
disproof of the absolute supremacy of the head over the
scions of the reigning family, lost at once their charm. In
their place he adopted mistrust of him who must, eventually,
succeed to his new station as he quitted it. A young King's
necessities enlisted him on the old side. The feelings of the
ruling caste did not change with the demise of the Crown ;
the owners of pocket boroughs, the great Revolution houses,
remained unaltered. With no majority in the Lords, the
lustre of St. James's would be dimmed. With a minority in
the Commons, how would the debts of the civil list be met 1
Where would be the civil list itself ? Speedily news came
that Spencer Compton, the King's confidant, had been allowed
to seek the aid of the Minister's experience in drawing up
the proclamation of the Accession ; and that Caroline had
accepted Walpole's pledge to secure her an income of
£100,000. Swift's presents of Irish cambric were neglected,
Gay insulted with the offer of a gentleman-ushership, and
the witty courtesies of Pope and St. John forgotten.
Opposition and the Craftsman exclaimed at the perfidy of
princes, and clamoured against the inconsistency of Ministers,
for condescending to serve one whom they had openly scorned
and ridiculed, who had as openly reprobated them. Then,
after a momentary pause, they recommenced at the point
at which they had left off; only, with redoubled ferocity.

222 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
The war was war to the knife. On three occasions a series of
pitched battles was fought. But the pamphlet conflict of the
year 1731, the debates on the Excise Bill, and on the Right
of Search, and the Convention with Spain, were preceded
and connected by a contimiity of savage sharp-shooting. In
1726, Pulteney had moved for a statement of the pubhc
debts, "with no other view than to give that great man
an opportunity to show Ms integrity to the whole world,
wMch would finish Ms subhme character." In 1727, the
old charges are repeated. The sinking fund, he argued,
was nothmg but a convenient cloak for embezzlement
of pubhc money. It was a popular fund, which the nation
was ever ready to keep supphed, and the Ministry had
ever at hand as a reserve for its own necessities. If there
were a deficiency, it had ways and means. It had nothing
to do but borrow on the credit of some other fund. At-
present Walpole staked his credit that by tMs fund the
national debt had been actually reduced. But what was
it that he succeeded in proving? Why, that of the
£6,648,000 by which the debt had been diminished, tMee
millions had come from a late Parhamentary grant, and the
rest been raised on the credit of the civil hst. Like the secret
service fund, it was a pretence which "made Parhament
a mere form, and screened corrupt Ministers." After the
appearance of the Craftsman the fury of the attacks-
deepened. The Craftsman began in 1726, with Caleb
D'Anvers, of Gray's Inn, as editor, but really under the
management of Pulteney and Bohngbroke. Though Bohng
broke gave it its leading theory, Pulteney's pen was as active
as his. The language used there he at length used also in the
House of Commons. In 1731, from the narrow boundaries
of the Treasury Bench, where Pulteney and Walpole both sat
as Privy Councillors, were bandied to and fro the cries of
" traitor to Ms country," and " factious demagogue." Hitherto,
notwithstandmg Pulteney's ejectment from office, and bitter
ness against the King and Queen, whom he accused of
treachery and ingratitude, the road had not been absolutely

William Pulteney. 223

barred to a pacification. Negotiations Avere opened by Queen
Carohne, some of whose especial favourites, as Bishop Pearce,
were friends of the popular champion, on the terms of an
independent coahtion between Walpole and Mm. They were
put an end to by his assertion that he would never join a
Cabinet comprehending Walpole. Still, he had scarcely before
set up the standard of Parliamentary rebellion, and thrown
Mmself upon the country. The temptations of pamphleteer
ing drew him into a position of pronounced and reckless
antagonism both to the Cabinet and to the Sovereign.
The Minister became conscious of the need of stronger
hterary auxiliaries than his raw recruits from the ' Dunciad '
battalions, and his " Turkish army of scribblers." He had
authorised Sir William Yonge to compose his ' Sedition and
Defamation Displayed.' Pulteney never attempted to re
strain Ms temper. He seems to have been persuaded by
the flatteries of the popular party, against whose enemies his
irascibility was usually called into play, to deem it a virtue.
He was the more wrathful now, that rumour ascribed the
authorship of his caricatured portrait in the Dedication to the
patrons of the Craftsman to a former friend and pohtical pupil,
Francis Lord Hervey, the Lord Fanny of Pope's scurrilous
satire. He had replied with the biting personalities which
terrified Ms adversaries in the Commons. Hervey was brave,
though puny and sickly. The malignant insinuation of the
author of the memoirs of ' Pulteney's Life and Conduct,' that
Walpole stirred him up, by false misrepresentations of facts,
to challenge his libeller, " in hopes that the point of the
young gentleman's sword would despatch his rival," rests on
no foundation. Freely and spontaneously he challenged
Pulteney in a cause with which he had properly notiiing to
do. The result was a meeting in Kensington Gardens, a
slight wound given and received, but no reconcihation.
The personal controversy did not end with an exchange of
scratches. In the Craftsman of May, 1731, Bolingbroke,
under his usual signature of Oldcastle, assumed the odd part
of a witness to character, and vindicated his confederate from

224 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
the reproach of treachery to the WMgs, imputed by Yonge.
" They have left him, because they have left the principles
they professed. He left neither. He inveighs against pubhc
profusion and private corruption. He combats both with a
constant inflexibility, which might have done honour to a
Roman citizen in the best days of that Commonwealth.
They have left both Mm and virtue." Not spite had moved
him to tMs course, but the dangerous ambition, insatiable
avarice, and msolent behaviour of the Mmister, exaggerated
by the remembrance that to Pulteney he owed Ms elevation.
" Which," the writer proceeds, " of the two was the more
hkely to have been actuated by private interest ? Whose
circumstances reqmred most an increase of wealth ? WMch
had given greater proofs of vindictiveness of temper, of avarice
to gather, and profusion to squander ? The one laid doAvn a
good place, and forced MiMsters to take another way; and, if
I am rightly informed, it will be hardly even in the power of
the greatest man in England, to persuade him to accept of a
third. There is the ambition of doing good, and of receiving
the reward in fame. If any man in one age and country hath
reason to be satisfied with Ms success in the pursMt of this
ambition, it is the gentleman of whom we speak." Forthwith
appeared in answer, ' Remarks on the Craftsman's Vindica
tion of Ms two honourable Patrons,' full of personal abuse of
the Opposition leader's conduct in all the relations of life.
Pulteney thought he recognised in the topics of tins paper, if
not m its style, Ms prime rival's own hand. He writes to
his brother-in-law, F. Colman, then Mmister in Tuscany,
that he must now " dip Ms pen in gall," to answer a pampMet
by Walpole himself.
It is not difficult, independently of external evidence, to
distinguish the contributions of Pulteney and Bohngbroke,
respectively, to their party-organ. The same animosity
agamst the Premier marks both ; but m the elder statesman's
invectives is discoverable a sohd substratum of constitutional
and theoretical opposition ; Ms companion supplies the place
of this by personal allusions. Against Bohngbroke had been

William Pulteney. 225

brandished in no equivocal language by the Minister and his
scribes the menace of Westminster Hall or Tower Hill ; he
retorted by a glowing appeal, to the nation against pre
judgment by a faction. Pulteney's wrath and patriotism had
been interpreted as the growth of malice, disappointed
ambition, and all the littleness of spite. He was stigmatised
as a brother conspirator with " the infamous retailers of lies,
scandal, sedition, and treason, and as a copartner with hireling
authors of Billingsgate, who applaud the Dutch precedent of
De Witt for dealing with a political foe. But he must know
that a man is not a patriot because he desires another revolu
tion, nor fancy that the strutting and swelling Wat Tylers and
Jack Straws of our days resemble the Northumberlands and
Warwicks of old, or hke them can make and unmake kings."
In response the leader of the parliamentary Opposition, unlike
the statesman of Queen Anne's reign, evolved no profound
theory. He replied by a string of innuendoes, most of which
cannot have been intelligible beyond Hyde Park. Mistaking
the author, he levelled at the wrong man the most unmitigated
abuse. " The little quaint antitheses," he writes, under the
name of D'Anvers, " the great variety of rhetorical flourishes,
affected metaphors, and puerile witticisms in this political
nosegay," had at first made him ascribe it to some precocious
Etonian, then to a boarding-school Miss, till at length he
was, in great confidence, told that it was by " that circulator
of tittle-tattle, and bearer of tales, and teller of fibs, that
stationed spy, pretty Mr. Fairlove." WMle opining " that
the toil of forty pages, even of such stuff, must have been
almost too great for the dapper httle author's delicate brain,"
and recommending in future a fan instead of a pen, he makes
a fierce onslaught upon his patron. " A person," he burst
forth, " of tolerable second-rate parts, below a genius, above
the vulgar, of industry inferior to few, of impudence superior
to most men, with a low education, mean habits, and a narroAV
fortune ; an adventurer never caressed by the greatest general
or the greatest statesman of their time ; buoyed up by the
stream of party, and a series of lucky accidents ; this child

226 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
of fortune rises to the first post of Government, with talents
scarce equal to the tenth, and morals unworthy of the lowest.
He never gained either man or woman but as he paid for
them. Giddy with power, base to those who assisted Mm in
Ms distress, ungrateful to those who were the instruments of
Ms advancement, and treacherous to those who preserved him
from disgrace, he endeavours to divert the general hatred of
the people from Mmself by putting Ms master upon measures
which naturally tend to alienate their affections."
The taste of that period did not condemn the style, or
think it misbecoming the character of a Prime Minister to
emulate it. In the ' Remarks on the Craftsman's Vindi
cation of his two honourable Patrons,' which if not from
Walpole's own pen was inspired by Mm, Pulteney was
denounced as "a turn-coat and tool of veteran Jacobites."
He was represented as " a sopMst, who would prove that his
Sovereign, by his natural affection for Hanover, had violated
the Act of Settlement, and thereby broken the solitary hnk
by wMch Ms house held their crown." He was reproached
in the same document with blind inconsistency, in assaihng
as traitors the negotiators of those treaties, to which he
had himself, when in office, been a consenting party, and in
raihng at a systematic corruption by wMch he had once not
disdained to profit. Pulteney, with Ms views of the latitude
of controversy and particular talent for abuse, was, as we have
seen, nothing loth to accept the report of the authorship of
the paper. Taking it for certain, he at once assumes, in his
'Answer to One Part of an Infamous Libel,' that he has
convicted the Minister of a breach of confidence, in having
divulged certain unpalatable facts to which he imagmed no
one privy but themselves. Thence, with that dangerous in
capacity to pass by an occasion for an attack, wMch m some
measure justified Horace Walpole's sneers at " Lord Bath's
treachery," and the more modern censure of Lord Stanhope,
that "he sometimes attempted to prove that he could keep
new secrets by revealing old ones," he inferred a right to
unclose audaciously the floodgates of political confidences.

William Pulteney. 227

" Now that they were upon the heads of secret history,
which Walpole had opened," was the time for putting the
public right as to the reconciliation between the late and
the present monarch, wMch had led to the present quarrel
between the two statesmen. As in that transaction, he
attempted to show, Walpole had only learned to honour the
present King when he could be advanced by Mm, so he still
confounded servility to the Minister with loyalty to the
Sovereign, and the lavishing of the pubhc treasure on
himself and Ms family, down to his menials, with pubhc
muMficence. Pulteney, the pamphlet continued, had been
upbraided with inconsistency in reviling the man now,
whom he had formerly loved. But had he ever loved or
respected Walpole ? " Do you think, most noble sir, that all
those that played at nine-pins with you in the Tower, had
for that reason regard for you on account of your personal
mtegrity ? " As it was in defence of sacred principles that he
then sympatMsed with Mm, so now he would accept the help,
in aid of Ms country, of men, whether WMgs or Tories, not in
aid of factiousness or intrigue, as the other did, "when a
country gentleman, nay, as he does now." " You, sir, have
been an intemperate zealot against France, a most obsequious
dupe to France, and seem to be now relapsing into your old
aversion to the same." Pulteney had neither countenanced nor
shared the "dirty job," by which the Premier, having had
himself, for form's sake, constituted, in addition to his regular
office, a Secretary of State, on the absence abroad of the two
actual Secretaries, claimed the salary, even the plate of a
Secretary of State, nay, even the secret-service money, though
with no possible secret missions to defray. It had been
asked why, if Pulteney could, through Guy the Secretary of the
Treasury, whose heir he was, derive £9,000 a year, should the
actual head of the Treasury be grudged his hard earnings ?
" Impudent and silly falsehoods these ! " £50,000 in all was
the sum of Guy's bequest. By the economy necessary to
keep a man independent of the smiles and favours of a Court,
he had made it, with the addition of his paternal and Ms

228 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
wife's inheritances, into a fortune wMch raised Mm above the
suspicion that his wrath arose from vexation at the loss
of an office however lucrative. Could Walpole, a man
unable at one time to have obtained £100 upon Ms personal
security, account for Ms estate and expenditure in the same
way, for that profuseness, miscalled generosity, to spies, and
" the scribblers of the atheistical stuff, and vile political
magazines, propagated by him at the pubhc expense," for
Avliich he was accountable in a much stricter sense than was
Pulteney for the Craftsman ? Lord, sir, if an inquiry was to
be made into your estate, what a scene of iniquity would
be disclosed." How much would be traced to the Treasury,
how much to 'Change Alley ! What jobs we should discover
it took to build the new house, how many manors were bought
by the sale of so many peerages and garters, places, pensions,
pardons ! In the list would be secret-service money,
exchequer bills, debentures, and pubhc securities, " from the
infamous Bank contract down to the last bargain you made
with the East India Company ! " " Only one other establish
ment had ever been scraped together by such means, his
whom you last saved from the gallows, from sympathy."
Well, " that pedler in politics " might go on misapplymg the
pubhc treasure, and prostituting Ms royal master's name in
his own dirty service ; sooner or later the time of vengeance
would come. He had already, doubtless, often seen Pulteney
m Ms dreams, armed with axes and halters ; he had, doubtless,
often felt "the same terror which, on the revelations of a
penny-post letter, made him hurry, pale and trembhng, to
secure that gentleman's protection, as Ms neighbour, from
incendiaries." From disclosures affecting the private re
putation of Ms family he was safe through his, antagonist's
honour. From menaces of illegal personal violence he was
also secure. " But let him know that the first condition in
any treaty with His Majesty's Opposition, must be to deliver
up the gMlty Minister to the justice of Ms country."
Amidst all tMs controversial frenzy, personal intimacy Avas
not altogether dropped. The thin veil of anonymous author-

William Pulteney. 229

ship, or the pseudonyms eked out by a "noble sir," and
" honourable gentleman," enabled the adversaries to inter
change calls and civilities, chats on the Treasury bench, and
good-humoured bets, with epithets and imputations not
equalled by the yells for vengeance upon a Strafford or a
Danby in the previous century. The details of such a state
of society, picturesque as they may be, are rather painful.
Between the hot wrath of a nation, which was, or certainly
beheved itself misgoverned, and the mutual complaisance
of the statesmen, who, while they echoed or ridiculed. that
indignation, could tranquilly negotiate about leases and fee-
simples, or bandy compliments, there is too abrupt a gap. The
generosity of a rival, who could beg a deanery for a friend,
and urge upon the new dean the obligation on him to employ
all his electioneering influence for the Government, was.
sincere, and even romantic ; at the same time, it jars with a
political vocabulary in which the Mmister thus to be sup
ported by votes, is always a "traitor," and a perjured "wretch."
It produces a suspicion that the popular champions felt
themselves a distinct caste from the people they affected to
represent. An undercurrent of social familiarity and recogni
tion of common responsibihty to the bar of the inner circle
to wMch they with their antagonists belonged, went on flow
ing beneath the surface of outraged patriotism. The student
of the period derives from it an impression that'the patriotism,
though not hypocrisy, as it seemed to Walpole, must have
been hollow and artificial.
So in the essence it continued to the end, as the circum
stances of the close of the contest showed, to the disgust and
disenchantment of the country, which throughout had been
m real earnest. Nevertheless, gradually, as the disputants
warmed, they began to appear to be almost in earnest
themselves. Walpole at any rate was combating for the
only existence he valued. His place was bemg struck at,
and he retaliated in kind. His notion of a final rejoinder to
the ' Answer to One Part of an Infamous Libel ' was to turn
Ms critic into a martyr. The King himself had been equally

230 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
exasperated. All that Pulteney had revealed of Walpole's
language on the reconcihation of the Prince with the late
King, was true ; but it was a most unsavoury truth.
George II. had quietly swallowed the feeling, that Ms
Mmister had once despised Mm, perhaps despised Mm still.
He could not do without him, or he would have had Compton ;
and now here was the whole world informed of the opinion
conceived of the monarch by so sagacious an observer as Sir
Robert. He was pushed into the disagreeable predicament of
havmg to choose between sanctioning that opinion, by re-
taimng about Mm the person avIio had formed it, and the
impossible alternative of dismissing the friend of Hanover
and master of finance. He was, at all events, resolved to
avenge Mmself on the author of Ms perplexity, and readily
fell in with his Minister's view. Pulteney was forthwith
struck off the Privy Council, and ceased to be Custos rotu-
lorum of the County of York. Popular adoration converted
his disgrace into glory ; but he does not seem to have
appreciated it, and tMrsted for an opportunity to strike back.
In 1733, an occasion offered for bringing to bear upon the
Commons, impregnable by unaided Parhamentary eloquence,
the pressure of external opinion. Walpole, a profound and
economical financier, had planned the conversion of the
customs into duties of excise. He hoped to augment the
revenue, prevent frauds and smuggling, save disbursements
on the preventive service, and simphfy the collection. The
imposts were never meant to be extended to necessaries or
raw materials, and he mtended to apply the scheme, m the
first place, tentatively to one or two commodities. As a
bribe to the House, he offered to abolish the land-tax, the bug
bear of the country gentlemen. The project was divulged.
Though recommended later by Adam Smith, it was denounced
with all that fury which the threat of an importation of the
Dutch excise, system had once before in our history raised, in
the reign of Charles I. The necessarily inquisitorial powers
of the officials have always rendered excise odious, notwith
standing its economy. Before the plan was mooted in

William Pulteney. 231

Parhament, it had been compared out of doors to " a monster
feeding on its own vitals," or "the Trojan horse, wMch con
tained an army m its belly."
The Craftsman led the chorus of execrations, and its
attacks were republished weekly, in the form of 'Arguments
against the Excise.' The Opposition sought to force the
Cabinet into bringing forward the bill while the whole
kingdom was in a ferment, and every town was menacing
or encouraging its members. Pulteney dragged it into a
debate on alienating part of the sinking fund. " There is
another thing," he suddenly broke out, " a very terrible
tiling, impending ! A monstrous project ! yea, more mon
strous than has yet been represented ! It is such a project
as has struck terror into the minds of most gentlemen within
this House, and into the minds of all men without doors,
who have any regard to the happiness or the Constitution
of their country. I mean that monster the Excise ! that
plan of arbitrary power which is expected to be laid before
this House in the present Session of Parhament." Wyndham
seconded this assault, discussing, as an abstract question,
" whether we should sacrifice the Constitution to the preven
tion of frauds in the revenue." Sir John Barnard, the
Opposition Chancellor of the Exchequer, without whose aid
Rulteney confessed he could not have competed in finance
with his rival, bore witness to the detestation of the bill
by the trading classes. Walpole reserved Ms defence for
Ms motion for leave to bring in the bill. " Such a scheme
as a general excise, he denied had ever entered his head, or,
for what he knew, the head of any man with whom he was
acquainted. His thoughts had been confined solely to the
revenue arismg from the duties on wine and tobacco." His
argument from the frauds inseparable from custom dues,
was met by the bold assertion, that losses from tMs cause
were rated by the Commissioners of Customs themselves
merely at from £30,000 to £60,000 a year. To Ms details
of the generous intention of Government, should the bill
become law, to give up the land-tax, as well as the ^income
s

232 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
accrumg from forfeitures and fines, Pulteney rejomed : " The
honourable gentleman was pleased to dwell on the generosity
of the Crown, m giving up the fines and seizures to the
pubhc ; but, in my opinion, it Avill be but a poor eqmvalent
for the many oppressions and exactions wMch the people will
be exposed to by tMs scheme. I must say, that he has been
of late mighty bountiful and hberal in Ms offers to the
pubhc. He has been so gracious as to ask us, Will you have
a land-tax of 2s. m the pound, a land-tax of Is. in the pound,
or will you have no land-tax at all ? Will you have your
debts paid ? Will you have them soon paid ? Tell me but
what you want. Let me but know how you can be made
easy, and it shall be done for you. These are generous offers ;
but there is somethmg so very extraordmary, so very farcical,
in them, that really I can hardly mention them without
laughing." Agam Wyndham seconded the attack led by
Pulteney, and threatened the Premier with the fate of Empson
and Dudley. In his reply, Walpole, though he had hot at
first caught the Mstorical allusion, aptly inqmred how the
punishment of the revivers of obsolete laws could be adapted to
the mover of what was represented as a dangerous mnovation.
To Ms WMg antagonist he returned sneer for sneer : " I know
that my pohtical and Ministerial hfe has been by some
gentlemen long Avished at an end ; they may ask their own
disappointed hearts how vain these wishes have been."
But neither Ms proof of its virtues, nor Ms proffered
repeal of the land-tax could save the project. Members
were intimidated by their constituents, and by a vast mob
wMch thronged' all the avenues to the House. Inch by inch
the ground was contested, and the Admmistration saw its
majority dwindle from 61 on the first to 17 on the third
division. The country was in a state of agitation, to which
the Minister could not blind himself. His protest against
the crowd at the doors as " sturdy beggars," by wMch he
explained he meant merely that they were petitioners,
became a gathering cry against him. He was too cold a
politician, too sincere a lover of power, to sacrifice what he

William Pulteney. 233

thought sober realities to visions of reform. He summoned
his colleagues, and told them, that, " if their resolution was,
as it seemed, to proceed with the bill, he would mstantly ask
his Majesty's permission to resign ; for he would not enforce
a tax at the expense of the blood which must, in the present
state of popular inflammation, be shed." Immense was the
exultation of the large towns, where the scheme gave a blow
to Walpole's old popularity with the trading interest. The
Monument m London was illuminated. Oxford ran riot.
"' The' night that the news came here that the Excise Bill
was dropped," writes the Rev. Mr. Meadowcourt to Horace
Walpole, " bonfires were made, moppets with stars and blue
garters were burnt, and the old cries of Ormond, Bolingbroke^
King James for ever, revived."
Walpole could not help dissolving. He had to go to
the country, with the cry of " No excise " agamst - Mm, in
the midst of the popular madness. The result showed
how incomplete was the representation, and how potent
the influence of Government and borough-mongers. The
new elections gave Ministers an assured majority, and all
the hunters after place were in despair. Bolingbroke with
drew for a season to a noble mansion in Tourame, and the
delights of the chase in the Royal Forest of Fontainebleau.
Walpole's famous peroration on Wyndham and Bromley's
motion, discountenanced by their Whig alhes, for repealing
the Septennial Act, with its menacing portrait of the mock
patriot, may not have been without its share in his retire
ment. His own account attributed it to general dejection,
while Pulteney ascribed it to a love of display, and a
prodigality wMch had exhausted Ms moderate means. His
main motive undoubtedly was, as he hinted, a want of sym
pathy between Mm and the cMefs of Opposition. But the
despondency was universal in the ranks of the party, and in
proportion to the confidence with which they had marched to
the assault. It is very visible in the irregular, but most
interesting, correspondence between Swift and Pulteney.
Pulteney himself had peculiar matter for discouragement.
s 2

234 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.

The captam of a mighty league, he had after the deaths of Ms
cousin, Darnel Pulteney, a deadly foe of Walpole on account
of that Minister's estrangement from Sunderland, Ms patron,,
and of Mr. Watts, Ms right hand and Ms left, as he called
them, positively no staff in wMch he could confide. The
temper of society and the nature of pohtical confederacies
had changed since the time when the Kit-Cat and the Brothers
were recognised by their respective parties as representative
committees, available both for supplying lieutenants, and for
feeling the pulse of the pubhc. His followers were but
loosely kmt together, and still less bound to their leader.
Not a few hated Mm as a WMg ; many affected to despise
Ms popularity as the sign of a radical and demagogue, though
they were not therefore the less jealous of it. He was not
sure of Bohngbroke, whom the contrariety of their moral
sentiments, and the similarity of some of their mtellectual
endowments, had always led him to mistrust, but with whom
the influence of Daniel Pulteney had persuaded Mm to umte.
He could no longer calculate with certainty upon the services
of that redoubtable pen. Ill-health, besides, was operating
upon him. A fit of sickness, wMch resulted in attracting to
Mm, he writes, " the attacks of five eminent physicians for
five months together," at the end of the year 1736, had, in
the summer of the same year, reduced him so low as to
induce Mm to receive attentions from the Court with civility.
He displayed to the elder Horace Walpole, at the Hague, a
lowness of spirits, wMch, to the envoy's hopeful eyes, seemed
rather to arise from Ms bemg dead-hearted than sick m body.
He and Ms party had no real right to complain. Though
their assault m the last Parhament had been withstood, the
Aictory of the Government was one of those wMch are virtual
defeats. The rottenness of its defences had been discovered.
Lords Chesterfield, Burhngton, Clinton, and Marchmont, with
many Commoners, for agitating agamst the Excise Bill, were
turned out of their posts at Court and elsewhere, with circum
stances of rudeness wMch drove them tiiirsting for revenge
mto the opposite camp. In the Commons, Pitt, and Lord

William Pulteney. 235

Polwarth, the friend and correspondent of Bohngbroke, helped
to hamper the plans of the Administration. This accession
of force may not have been altogether agreeable to Pulteney
personally. It introduced too many cMeftains of mdependent
pretensions into the confederacy. They were not ready to yield
proper obedience, and some brought the disrepute and bad
habits of veteran placemen under a corrupt Government.
Very soon after the sudden influx into the ranks of Opposi
tion, we discover hints in the correspondence of Lyttelton
and Chesterfield of a factious repugnance to Pulteney's
supremacy. Measures Avere on foot for the construction of a
Parhamentary cabal, in direct contravention of the views of
their leader, who beheved that the straightforward main
tenance of "pubhc and national" interests would secure them
the sympathies of the people much more fully than such
conspiracies. But if the secession from the Ministerialists
increased Pulteney's difficulties of management, the mutiny
was fatally ommous for Walpole; it indicated a decay of
faith in Ms stability.
The attacks upon Mm were resumed in the new Parliament
with unabated spirit, and in both Houses. The House of
Lords now begins to share with the Commons in the interest
of the conflict. After a set of the usual charges against
Ministers of a plot to introduce an extended excise, and of
general corruption, a Parliamentary provision was asked
for the Prince of Wales, lately married, of £100,000 a
year. The motion was sufficiently reasonable. At the same
time, it was admirably adapted to stir the King's jealousy
of Ms son's independence, to compromise Walpole with
the Heir Apparent, and to give Opposition a hold on the
gratitude of the future sovereign, which, had he lived, he
would doubtless have quickly evaded. The address on
Frederick's marriage with Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha
had been the occasion for Pitt's maiden speech, wMch, we are
told, electrified the House. Lyttelton, another of the Prince's
especial courtiers, had then spoken excellently. They now
again, witb Pulteney, produced a great effect. Pulteney

236 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
laid especial weight on the precedent of the present King's
allowance as heir. Only by the help of SMppen and forty-
five Jacobites, from dishke, they said, of Parliamentary
interference with the King, though, it was suspected, more
really from displeasure at seeing the Prince assume the
authority among the Opposition wMch they thought the
.right of the Pretender, was the Government able to defeat
•the motion by 234 to 204.
In 1738 Pulteney moved for the production of papers on
the exercise by Spain of its alleged right of search. A defeat
did not Mnder him from declaimmg against the infamous
pusillanimity of the Administration in not havmg taken
-vengeance for the manifold wrongs done by Spanish officials.
The conduct of Ministers on the capture of our merchant
vessels, he would, he said, illustrate by the story of a gentle
man, who, upon receiving a box on the ear, asked Min that
gave it if he were in jest or in earnest ; upon the other
answering he was in, great earnest, the honest gentleman
replied only, " I am glad you are, sir, for I do not hke such
jests." He called for vengeance, not restitution or reparation
now. " The captain or the governor must be hung m chains
npon the island where the outrage was committed." Bloodier
measures stilL he cried, were needed to compensate England
for what Burke has called the "fable of Jenkins' ears."
Apparently, that mariner's grievance of the croppmg of Ms
ears, except perhaps in the pillory, was as fictitious as the
counter anecdote in vogue in Spain, of the two noble
Spaniards who had been forced by some of our half-priva>-
teering men-of-war's crews to devour their own noses.
However, the captain's narrative evoked a gust of rage
throughout the kingdom. Amid the indignation against
Government and the Bourbons, Pulteney proposed a series
of resolutions, comprising assertions of our right freely to
navigate the Southern Seas, and to cut logwood in Cam-
peachy Bay. Walpole by Ms argument on the insolence of
setting before Spain a carte blanche to sign, when a con
ference was , to conlmence, obtained a postponement of all

William Pulteney. 237

but the first. Yet an address to the King was carried to
demand redress of Spain. In the House of Lords, even the
Ministeriahsts consented to put on record a solemn denial of
the Spanish right of search.
In January, 1739, the Anglo-Spanish Convention was
signed. Pitt first, in a masterly speech, and, a little
later, Pulteney and Wyndham, made fierce attacks on it,
repulsed by majorities only of 260 to 232, and 244 to 214.
But the thirty were stanch ; and it was resolved to appeal
to the country from the present Parhament by a secession.
The responsibility for the step has been disputed. Bohng
broke, still in France, admitted he had- recommended the
pohcy, but not the occasion selected. Pulteney doubted, but
suffered Mmself to be overruled. It did their party no good,
as a desertion of the trust committed by their constituents to
members never will. Wyndham in vain defied the House
as he bade it farewell. He hoped to rouse the sympatMes of
the country by being sent to the Tower for the statement
of Ms regret that not even for once would his opponents be
won over " by unanswerable arguments to distinguish them
selves from a faction against the liberties and the properties
of their fellow-subjects." The experienced Premier re
strained Pelham's eagerness, and expressed Ms joy that
Ms adversaries had declared themselves : " We can be," he
exclaimed, " upon our guard against open rebellion, but it
is difficult to guard against secret traitors." He frustrated
the calculation that a call of the House fixed for the next
Monday would give his adversaries the excuse of compulsion,
and enable them to return to their seats without shame ; for
he moved that the Commons should adjourn over that day.
The secession had been abortive. Circumstances favoured
the seceders. The WMg Duke of Argyle had, as all readers
of Scott know, been patriotically indignant at the Porteous
Bill of 1737 against Edinburgh. To the surprise both of
Pulteney and of the ever caballing Duchess of Marlborough,
who equally disliked him, he now came over to the Oppo
sition, and converted their hatred into ardent affection.

238 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
Pulteney had previously, when the negotiation was going
on, taken advantage of the presence of the Duke in the
Commons, to break out mto a panegyric on Ms splendid
qualities, concluding, " He wants notMng to make Mm still
greater, but to be stripped of all the posts, of all the places
he now enjoys; but that they dare not." This was one
fortunate event; another was the refusal of Spain to ratify
the Convention, and its consequence, a declaration of war
in October. The nation exulted ; hostihties were a triumph
over the Government. The Prince of Wales accompamed
the heralds to Temple Bar, and, at the Rose Tavern, drank
success to the war. The contest was, men thought, to be one
succession of victories ; the galleons should pay the fleet ;
the kingdom would have the mines of Mexico and Peru.
" They may ring the bells now," said Walpole, in the stram of a
Greek chorus, " before long they will be wringing their hands."
In November, 1739, Parhament met : and all the seceders
were there. Pulteney, after various wild remarks, that he
would go no more to the House, though he should be sorry
were others to follow his example, was among them. Mims
ters, he declared, had confessed themselves in the wrong;
for, if the war were now necessary, so was it then. He and
Ms friends consequently had returned. He hoped that the
meanness, tameness, and submission, wMch had resulted in
the shameful Convention, would not operate to make us
resign our conquests on the restoration of peace. Walpole
sneeringly retorted, that Parhament was glad to see gentle
men return to their duty, but had not felt their absence.
The common accusations of corruption had been launched.
" The stale argument of corruption never shall have any
weight with me," said Walpole ; "it has been the common
refuge of the disappointed and disaffected ever smce govern
ment had a being ; it is an accusation that, hke all other
charges, though unsupported by proof, if advanced against
the best and most dismterested Admimstration, and pushed
with a becoming violence, will never fail to meet applause
among the populace." His demeanour was Mgher than ever;

William Pulteney. 239

but* he felt power slipping from him, as he perceived the
growing disaffection of Ms partisans. He had to turn aside
the edge of Wyndham's philippic, by allowing an Address
to be sent up to the throne against any peace by which the
Right of Search should be allowed. The death of that orator
in June, 1740, though it broke the chief hnk between the two
sections of Opposition, did not save the Mimstry.
Yet 1741 came, and Sir Robert had, at least, the pleasure
of seeing his foes once more baffled. Supposing, from their
neAv strength in the Lords, and their compactness m the
Commons, that the time was ripe, they let loose Sandys,
the motion-maker, as he was called, upon him on February
13, 1741. Sandys ascribed our want of allies to the friend-
sMp with France and the treaty of Hanover. Corruption, the
waste of public money on " Spithead expeditions and Hyde
Park reviews," wMle Haddock's and Vernon's fleets were desti
tute, the criminal lenity to the South Sea Directors, and the
dismissal of officials for their votes, were, he asserted, all due
to one " who had usurped regal power, who had arrogated to
himself a place of French extraction, that of Sole Minister."
Were he not guilty, " in a free government too long a possession
of power is MgMy dangerous." The charges could not be
examined wMle he kept Ms office. Besides, " he is bewildered
in treaties, and has forfeited his word with every Court in
Europe." Pitt declared, with a prevision of his own career,
that " when the greatest scene is opening to Europe that has
ever before occurred, he who had lost the confidence of mankind
should not continue at the head of the King's Government.
Pulteney, flushed with an easy triumph over Walpole's bad
Latin, " nulli pallescere culpa,," and his winnings of a guinea,
" the only money he had received from the Treasury for
many years, and, he .hoped, the last," followed with thunder
against the treaty of Hanover, " the source of all subsequent
degradations." The bombardment was ineffectual after all.
The vagueness of the indictment, and the ominous sound
of cumulative and constructive guilt, and credibility of
common report, brought to the Minister's aid not only

240 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
Stephen Fox and Pelham, but the Tory Lord Cornbury.
Edward Harley heaped coals of fire on the head of the
persecutor of Ms brother, Lord Treasurer Oxford, by chal
lenging for Mm a different treatment to that he had meted
to the Earl. Other alhes rallied round Mm. Shippen and
thirty-four Jacobites withdrew; their ringleader, who had
been bribed perhaps with an mdenmity, remarkmg, "that
the motion was but a scheme for turnmg out one Mmister
and bringing in another." Walpole rose to the level of the
occasion, and made good Pulteney's opmion, that he could
be a great orator when he pleased. He classed Opposition
members as " Boys," " ripe Patriots," and " Tories." Demerit
with Tories ought to be a merit with the nation. Never
theless the Tories he respected. His greatest crime agamst
them had been the duration of Ms power ; but would they
endure to be partners of such mean creatures as rebel
Whigs, after having divided the pubhc opinion of the whole
nation j Could they share with " the men of yesterday, the
boys in pohtics, who would be contemptible, did not their
audacity render them detestable ? " The patriots he simply
despised. "A patriot, sir! Why, patriots spring up hke
mushrooms. I could raise fifty of them within the four and
twenty hours. I have raised many of them m one night.
I have never been afraid of making patriots. They clamour
for change of measures ; they only mean change of Minis-
ters." The dismissals for contrary totes he excused as the
acts of the Kmg, who might wish "Crown favours to
circulate." He appealed to Ms financial services, — "Is not
credit at an incredible height, and to whom must that he
attributed ? " Where, lastly, were the proofs of the crimes-
he had perpetrated while mvested with that " mock dignity
of Prime Mmister 1" "A strange phenomenon ! a corrupter,
himself incorrupt ! "
A clear majority of 184 pronounced him free of all the
charges. This great majority proved Walpole's rum. It
threw him, wrote a contemporary, into a lethargy of power.
Loss of memory, and other maladies of years, began to mipair

William Pulteney. 241

his energies and destroy the trust of his followers in their
chief. From over confidence in his strength, or carelessness,
he gave, on the meeting of a new Parliament in December,
1741, an excuse for a rebuff to Government by proposing for
chairman of Election Committees the unpopular Gdes Earle.
The consequence, the election of Dr. Lee, a member of the
Opposition, cost the Government a most important advantage.
The unseating of the members for Westmmster, two Minis
teriahsts, by a majority of four, and the Berwick election
decision, warned Mm of his mistake when it was too late.
He once more shook off Ms fits of silence, alternating with
fretful captiousness, to deliver, a masterly answer to Pul
teney's motion of January 21, 1742, for referring the papers
on the war to a secret committee. The self-compassion
ating old Whig houses congratulated themselves on their
preservation by this speech, and by the timely conversion
of two Tories, from four and twenty tyrants. The division
was close. Ministers had been deceived as to the purport
Of the motion ; the ranks of the Opposition were full, though
only the chiefs had been told the cause. "Sir William
Gordon was brought m like a corpse ; some thought it had
been an old woman in disgMse ; others, who found him out,
expected him to expire every moment. Mr. Hopton was
carried in with crutches." TMs victory was the last. The
substance of the same motion was agreed to without a
division in a few days; and the decision on the CMppen-
ham election against Government by a majority of one on
January 28, was followed on February 11 by the resignation
of the invincible " Prime Minister." He would have fought
on but for the cowardice of his colleagues. More loyal
behevers had predicted that he would never give up. They
reckoned that he could, if matters came to the worst, bribe
the whole Opposition into submission by the offer of a few
sinecures. The timorous officials were right.
It had been a hard tiling to gain the victory. To divide the
spoil satisfactorily was an insuperable task. The conquerors
acted hke the brigands who prepared poison for their comrades,

¦242 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
and then drank deep of the deadly flasks. Each esteemed Ms
own merits engrossing, exclusive ; the veterans of Opposition,
because they never had taken a place ; the ex-Ministeriahsts,
because they had sacrificed so much, and so recently. At
all events, they could with one consent fly at Pulteney.
Many of them thought Mm not sufficiently decided in the
struggle; some malignant minds imputed to him, and Ms
friend Carteret, systematic treachery. "They desire to get
m," had written Chesterfield in the September of 1741, " by
negotiation, and not by victory with numbers, who, they
fear, might presume upon their strength, and grow trouble
some to their generals. . . . The only effect of our strong
minority will be to raise the pride of Pulteney. He has a
personal influence over many, and an interested mfluence over
more. The silly, half-witted, jealous WMgs, consider Mm as
the only support of Whiggism ; the interested WMgs, bemg
persuaded that he has opened the door of the Court a httle,
will hold fast by Mm to squeeze m with him." All believed
Mm to have a paramount influence; so that anytMng not
done to please them was left undone through Mm. Both Tories
and calculating WMgs deemed his professions of purity a
screen for motives no better than their own. Walpole did all
he could to encourage the scMsm in the camp of Ms enemies.
He hoped in the discord to escape an impeachment.
Pulteney had an apparent supremacy enough to explain
though not justify Ms hardly loyal language, "If the
King wished to open any treaty." But Ms positive power was
gone with the accomplishment of the object for wMch it had
been placed in Ms hands by the nation. He had no large
principles of pohcy to expound ; he had not even experience
in the commonplace system wMch Ms predecessor had
administered. He had been, for all Ms mature political life,
feeling Ms way along the path engineered by the man he was
pursmng to the death. The flight of Ms enemy left him
alone in the dark forest ; and the road, as an American
poet has said, suddenly turned into a squirrel track and
ran up a tree. He had no right to complain that he did not

William Pulteney. 243

remain the popular idol ; neither, for that, had the people, that
he had deceived them. He had done their work in casting
down Walpole ; they had helped Mm to attain Ms revenge.
It was Ms own fault and Ms own merit too, that he missed
the opportunity of striking a blow for his sovereignty. He had
appeared to be " once in the greatest point of view in wMch a
subject has been ever seen." To him was confided the choice
of a plan of reformation, or a revival of old systems. To
please all was impossible. As a contemporary, Lord Egmont,
remarks in Ms ' Faction Detected,' a Place Bill was, in some
men's eyes, good government ; others were for annual Parlia
ments ; others desired a reduction of the civil list. Some cried
for justice on the Minister, and others for pensions for them
selves. The plans for his guidance were as various as the
sections of the Opposition he had led. Many of them might be
good;; very few were feasible in the struggle of party feeling. He
could have pleased most by houndmg them on to the destruc
tion of Ms late rival. Nothing was easier ; but he was not a
man of blood, and " had meant by the Minister's destruction
the anniMlation of his power, not of his person." Perhaps it
would have been Ms most popular course to constitute Mmself
absolute Minister in Walpole's stead. He would have been
overturned, and more speedily than Ms predecessor, but the
fall would not have been ignominious. The rage of the
people was not unjustly excited that he had won a signal
triumph by their help, and then led them round by another
route, not only to the old system, which they might have
pardoned, but to the old officials as well.
The not unreasonable pubhc disgust had plenty of mouth
pieces among Ms unsatisfied followers. When there were
forty or fifty claimants of seats in a Cabinet, it could not
have been otherwise. He rashly alienated Chesterfield,
whom he left out of his arrangements, from a notion that he
had betrayed the party once to Queen Caroline ; also Bubb
Dodington, that magnificent lover of Mmself in deep brocade
and embroidery, tie periwig, and laced ruffles, who used to
amuse Mmself with politics and sigh for a peerage ; lastly,,

244 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
Lyttelton and Pitt, immediate , retainers of the Prince.
TMee hundred, Peers and Commoners, met at the Fountam
Tavern, to arraign their leader. Argyle observed, in
allusion to Pulteney's wealth, that a grain of honesty was
worth a cartload of gold. He asked where was the extinc
tion of party, if the Tories were to be excluded from the
Ministry. Pulteney, although ever shrinkmg from general
party meetings, and steadily refusing to call them at Chester
field's and Dodington's suggestions in former times, took up a
bold attitude. He declared, in what seems an official manner
by the side of Ms old style, that " Government neither can,
nor will, nor ought to be, taken by storm ; " that all the old
Mimsters could not' be turned out; that "it must depend
upon the prudent conduct of the Tories themselves to abolish
the odious distinctions of party ; " finally, that " it was not
just, dutiful, or decent, to dictate to the King how to dispose
of every preferment." His remonstrances did not cany
conviction ; and a second meeting, confined to the cMefs,
was held in the presence of the Prince of Wales, when the
Tories were promised that one of them, Sir John Hynde
Cotton, should be a Lord of the Admiralty.
For Mmself, Pulteney had demanded an earldom and a
seat in the Cabinet without office, conceivmg Mmself bound
by a foolish vaunt in the past that he would never again
be a placeman. He was tired of the responsibilities both
Of a leader and of a member of the House of Commons.
He had some time back complained, " that he was weary of
being at the head of a party ; he would rather row in the
galleys, and was absolutely resolved not to charge Mmself with
taking the lead." The events of the last few months had
proved to Mm the truth of Ms own comparison — used to
Hardwicke and Newcastle when they came from the Kmg to
drink negus and talk of a Cabmet — of the head of a party to
" the head of a snake which is carried on by its tail." As
well dislike of the duties of a chief in the Commons, as his
desire to add hereditary rank to fortune, decided Mm to go up
to the Lords. He was glad to' quit the Commons while his

William Pulteney. 245

fame was fresh and living. The Court and King, originally
reluctant, had been taught by Walpole to consider this
elevation the best means of disarming a dangerous demagogue.
The late • Mmister exulted in having turned the key of the
Closet upon his rival, at last brought to a conference with the
Sovereign.- He had a true perception that the public would
not discriminate between one seemmg confidant of the Court
-and another. It was not the mere peerage which irritated the
popular mmd against its former hero. On the contrary, his
delay in taking the earldom, though it arose from the futile
hope of passing a bill against bribery at elections, of forcing
LOrd Hervey from Court, and especially of procuring a show
of royal favour for the Tories, was imputed to greedy hagghng
after a higher price for his mercy to Walpole. An old
calumny !as to the terms on wMch he had exchanged Ms long
lease of part of Piccadilly for the fee-simple, was vamped up.
Against such charges it might have been thought he was
proof. He would not have taken them to heart, except for
the evidence he knew their facile acceptance bore to the in
tensity of Ms present discredit. In his agony on discovering
the change wMch had come over the spirit of Ms adherents,
he appealed to the King to take back Ms earl's patent ; he is
said, when it was delivered to him, to have stamped and
trampled upon the parchment, in a paroxysm of angry
mortification. Walpolei had despised the motives of Ms opponents too
much to arm against then? reasoning. He was himself by
no means guiltless as a statesman, or a mere scapegoat of
popular prejudices. His partisansMp treated Toryism as
necessarily' treasonable. He disgusted the nation at large
with sound WMg principles by a bigoted and exclusive
adherence to a few maxims embodied in the Revolution
of. 1689. A radical defect of Ms organisation was that
he looked on a temporary state of things as the pre
ordained and permanent rule. He could never emancipate
Mmself from the ideas of the tempestuous period when he had
himself entered public life. He could not help believing

246 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
that the nation still abdicated the privilege, in abeyance
during a crisis, but assured to it by the Bill of Rights and Act
of Settlement, of tMnking for itself on pohtics, and choosmg
its own legislators and Ministers. Attending only to the
moods of the Sovereign and of Parliament, taking them as Ms
infallible gauge and test of pubhc opinion, he at length
fell into the fatal delusion, that to persuade them, no matter
how, was the one duty of a statesman. Not endeavour
ing to guide Parhament by external pubhc opinion, but
maMng its consent or opposition his single measure of popu
larity, he ghded naturally into disbelief in the superiority
of one member of that assembly, or of one1 argument, to
another, into an arithmetical computation of men's powers by
the votes they could command. He miscalculated most of
all the determination and perception of the people. He
allowed too httle force to the length of time during which
the passions of the previous century had been cooling down,
and to the weariness of Ms own protracted predominance,
unvaried by any danger to remind the Whigs themselves
of the advantages of his judgment and foresight.
But if Walpole had, in Ms arduous position, failed from a
misconception of the times and circumstances, and Ms oato
relation to them, the failure of Ms opponents, with their lofty,
pretensions,, was infinitely more egregious. Walpole was
their mark. As long as he was in office, their principles and
their tactics were always the same. ' Corruption in Parha
ment, and without ; care for Hanover ; peace ; financial
parsimony; and a confederacy with France, had been the
key-stones of Walpole's pohcy in the reign of George I.
They remained the same in the reign of George II. They
furnished the sole themes of the declamation of Ms rivals.
We search vainly for evidence in their oratory and acts
that they had conceived any idea of an administrative
plan or doctrine by which they expected better than by
Ms to secure the welfare of the kingdom. The repudiation of
worn out party badges is a noble cry. Though we know that
they adopted it from self-interest, we should still have had

William Pidteney. 247

reason for gratitude to them if they had realised its meaning,
and testified to their personal faith in it by their conduct.
Not a fragment of proof to that effect can be discovered in
their measures whether rejected or carried. Their attacks
on the Administration indicate freedom from party spirit as
little as the defence by the Ministry of its emoluments. Whig-
seceders were as frightened as any placeman of the reproach
of desertion of their ancient Whig standard, wMle the battle
Avas proceeding. When the enemy's camp was in their hands
their course evinced no genMne understanding of the motto
on the flag they had Avaved. Dislike of party is a profession
easy to make, and hard to disprove, Avhen there exists a
multitude of common topics of hostility to those in power.
The points on avMcIi any two bodies of disappointed poli
ticians disagree with a third body in office are so many as
to make their junction the easiest thing in the world.
When the battle is over the time comes for proving the
truth of their professions of unanimity. If the tAAro sets of
leaders unite then, on an equal footing, in forming a Govern
ment, and if, as a Government, they think out and pursue
a common pohcy, their coalition from the first is entitled to
praise for good faith and unselfish public spirit. Judged
by this test, Pulteney's and Bohngbroke's Whig and Tory
Opposition cannot claim from posterity a reversal of the con
demnation passed upon it by its own age. The most positive
end it accomplished was to elevate to official supremacy the
paltriest statesman who ever trafficked in a nation's fortunes.
Pulteney and Bolingbroke tore the control of patronage
from Walpole that the field might be free for the Duke of
NeAvcastle to hawk it about.
The personal collapse of Pulteney's influence Avas yet more
remarkable than that of Ms party. He would have liked
always to overshadow the Minister for the time being Avithout
substituting himself. He did not comprehend the impracti
cability of such a character, until he had lost his chance of
changing it. In 1743, Lord Wilmington, the First Lord, died ;
and Pulteney's old associates, jealous of the suspected secret
T

248 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
preponderance of Walpole Avith the King, persuaded him
to retract Ms resolution of never accepting place, and ask
for the Treasury. The King coldly declined his services,
and nominated Mr. Henry Pelham. The loss of Ms import
ance was subsequently again indicated to him. The Privy
Seal wMch he demanded for Lord Carlisle Avas given to
Lord Cholmondeley, Walpole's son-in-laAV, and his remon
strances against the return to office of Henry Fox, one of the
most corrupt of the old Administration, were qMetly neg
lected. The glimpse of power, called " the Revolution of
three days," which visited him in 1746, only lighted up the
barrenness of his political prospects. George had found the
yoke of the narrow-minded, selfish bureaucracy, represented
by Newcastle, intolerable. He entreated Lord Bath to over
throw it. The commission was accepted; the financier
Gideon and the moneyed interest agreed to countenance
the plot, and Granville was suddenly nominated Secretary
of State. It was just such a conspiracy as might have been
expected from Carteret, who, always drunk with claret or
imagination, loved a combination in the inverse proportion to
its practicability, and from the eagerness and reminiscences
of Pulteney, avIio had once been able to gather a host about
Mm by a nod, and forgot he had abdicated. An official
mutiny ensued ; all the Ministers had at once resigned ; Lords
and Commons refused to have anything to do Avith the plot ;
the nation looked on Avith the most irritating apathy; and
Granville and Pulteney had to retire disgracefully. "Your
Arictory is complete," wrote Chesterfield from Ireland, where
he was viceroy, to Newcastle. " Good pohcy, still more than
resentment, requires that Granville and Bath should be
marked out, and all their people cut off. A general run ought
to be made upon Bath by all your followers and runners."
Persecution was not necessary. Pulteney was not, m the
Lords, a pohtician to be feared even by Newcastle. He could
not comprehend the flight of his popularity. To himself he
appeared the purest of patriots, because he had constantly
refused office. But, though he could not explain Ms domi-

William Pulteney. 249

fall, he was fully conscious of it. The satirical odes of Sir
Charles Hanbury Williams inflicted, says Horace Walpole,
deeper Avounds on Lord Bath than a series of Craftsmen
by him and Bohngbroke for several years could inflict
on Sir Robert Walpole. Akenside, once a hot radical
admirer, hurled an angry ode at his retirement from the post
of tribune, which would touch him less sharply. Pulteney
Avas a member of a different world to Akenside's. He was
much more provoked by the epigrammatic irony of the
fashionable Avriter of vers de societe than by the wrath of the
poet of Imagination.
In that world of'wMch he was an ornament he found many
consolations for his disappointments. He was the guide
and friend of the great original of modern hterary ladies,
the celebrated " blue-stocking," Mrs. Montagu. Through her
he was admitted to intimacy with Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, the
translator of Epictetus. With them he could develop to the
uttermost Ms genius for Greek and punning, suffer himself
at Tunbridge Wells to be dragged up the rocks of Mount
Ephraim, and be inveigled into spending his money on
nosegays. He was playful, affectionate, and in private hfe
universally courteous. Friends who half hved in his house,
Bishop Newton, originally his chaplain, and Bishop Zachary
Pearce, bear testimony to his unvarying kindness, goodness
of heart, and even munificence. He loved Ms wife, and
was loved in return. " She," says NeAvton, " was a Avonder-
fully agreeable woman Avhen she pleased, but Avas often
clouded and OArercast." By her love of speculation and
hoarding, wMch made her brother call her dressing-room,
with its levee of moneybrokers, " the Jews' synagogue," she
encouraged her husband's natural love of money, till it
became a deformity in his character. He had not accumu
lated without an object; all Ms thoughts and hopes were
concentrated on Ms only child, Viscount Pulteney, a young
man of moderate abilities. His son died abroad. The
intelligence had reached the guests at his table before Mmself.
He learnt it from their faces Avhile he was drinking the dead
T 2

250 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
man's health and happy return, as may be read in a pathetic
narrative by Newton. Thenceforward he became indolent
and indifferent about the disposal of Ms riches. From want
of mterest, not, as his enemies insinuated, from reluctance to
repeat those self-denymg words, " I give and bequeath," he
left the whole, to the amount of £1,200,000, in a few words
to a cousin.
Letters to Ms adopted nephew, the brilliant, but indolent
George Colman the elder, picture the statesman m old age.
We see Mm careful before his son's death of any device by
AAdiich he might save five pounds, informing Ms young
correspondent that he must get Ms living " by toil and drud
gery ;" that he will be " closely watched at Lincoln's Inn."
At another time, he remmds him of a debt to himself — " the
first thing that an honest man has to do is to pay Ms
debts " — and warns him against wasting Ms time and money
on going to the theatre. With all this, there is much
affectionate thoughtfulness manifested; and he regrets Col-
man's absence from any scene he had enjoyed. He writes
from Spa, that it is a pity he had not been there, " to play
Avrits with a vast number of princes and princesses at two
pence a corner." We can perceive, also, mdications of the
old tendency to love Avhatever was popular, in Ms sudden
acqMescence in Ms nephew's dramatic pursuits, and willing
ness to have ' The Jealous Wife ' dedicated to him, with his
eagerness to cultivate Garrick's acquaintance. Whether at
Spa, Bath, or Tunbridge Wells, he betrays the same concen
tration of interest and curiosity on the Avorld of London.
He requests Colman to be sure to send him, Avith Churchill's
new poem, wMch he admired, " all the chit-chat he can pick
up, Avhether in Lincoln's Inn, in Grub Street, or St. James's,
let it be private scandal or pohtical falsehoods."
In 1760, his dormant passion for pamphleteering revived.
His anonymous ' Letter to Two Great Men,' Pitt and New
castle, on behalf of the retention of Canada, triumphed in
the coffee-houses, though by statesmen in office not more
heeded, asserts Horace Walpole, than would have been their

William Pulteney. 251

OAvn effusions, had " they survived patriotism and poAver
twenty years." In the same year the influence at Court,
wMch he flattered himself he had never lost, became more
actual on the accession of George III., who remembered Lord
Bath as an amiable and lively visitor at Kew in the days
of his father. It roused the jealousy of the Ministry; but
an old man of seventy-eight was not a very dangerous com
petitor for poAver. A proof was the ill success of his efforts
to gain permission for the exhausted Bishop Pearce to resign,
and to procure the translation of Dr. Newton to a richer see.
During the year and a half by which he survived his son,
he ceased to cherish political schemes, either occupying
himself with pious meditations, or innocent gaieties. His
enemies saw in him only a politician avIio had been
the tool of his allies, and a miser. Horace Walpole
sums up Ms character, " he died very rich ; " and Lord
¦Chesterfield, on the neAvs of his death in 1764, spitefully
writes to Ms son, " the public, AAdiich was long the dupe of
Lis simulation and dissimulation, begins to explain upon
him." But there had been much happiness in the life of
Pulteney, and some adArantage to the nation. Of neither
could impersonations of polite society, such as Chesterfield
and Horace Walpole, form any idea.
To us the period in AAdiich Pulteney flourished is the stock
and source of our present stage of political and social history.
The fashion of our modern literature, our everyday language,
much in our manners, and almost our modes of thinking, can
scarcely be traced to a higher fountain-head. The same social
interests as now, the same pohtical questions, tho reciprocal
calumnies of the opposed coteries of fashion, the whispers of
Mayfair, and the gossip of St. James's, the balance of power,
the pohcy of subsidising foreign states, or the limits and
expediency of direct taxation, AA-ere the topics of discussion.
Except one broken range of hills marking the epoch of the
French Revolution, there is little to intercept the view over
the vast plain which embraces our times and his. This space
comprises many modifications of feeling, and of the relations

252 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
of classes ; but there has been, since the strife of Bohngbroke,
Walpole, and Pulteney, one continuous progress of reform.
There have been various constitutional transitions, but no
mental revolution. Readers find few Auolent contrasts Avith
our OAvn day to fix their attention, and are not tempted to
dwell on discussions and contests apparently on the same
questions with those now agitated. History engaged with
the topics and in the form of a file of old neAvspapers is un
attractive. Far from a deficiency of materials being the
explanation of the neglect of the period, their abundance has
tended to that result. Letters, biographies, and anecdotes
are among the genuine sources of history; they are by no
means Mstory itself. Politicians and gossip-mongers haA'e
always found occupation in the last century. The period .
has been used, like the palaces and temples of old Rome, as a '
quarry whence to house the thoughts and fancies of the present \
the surrounding country has become a desolate campagna,
where the student is unwilling to linger. No novelty or
certainty of conclusions is anticipated from a Parhamentary
history crowded with discussions about yet unsettled and
open questions, and little amusement from lives which have
already furnished collections with their tritest stories, and
supplied the moral of many an obvious proverb.
Yet in that wilderness he concealed many pleasant spots ;
and grand torsos may still be dug up from among its for
saken monuments. To include the Avhole in one immediate
and comprehensive survey is all but impossible. There are
too many seemingly distinct centres of action to allow
of such a treatment. No one great idea pervading and
tempering all the rest at first can be discovered. The most
that can be done is to trace in some section of the group of
events an mdex and type of the rest ; to fix our attention
on the life of some representative man, some disposer of
circumstances, over the formation of whose character we
have a right to consider the diverse circumstances of his
age must, by the law of action and reaction, have had in turn
a control. The nature of the time invites to the use of

William Pulteney. 253

such a method. With all its air of flatness it is the most
individualising period of our history. Unlike the half-heroic.
half-feudal age of the Tudors, it Avas not an age in Avhich
great minds monopolised history ; it Avas not, as the reigns
of the Stuarts, remarkable for distinctions of doctrine and
sentiment; it was not diversified by the socio-political
turmoil, the clubbist tendencies of the three post-Common
wealth reigns, Avhen Mgh-born and low-born, statesmen and
writers of squibs, courtiers and poets, had each Ms engross
ing political programme to elaborate, Avhen every private
circle had its public objects, and social distinctions were in
the pervading excitement ignored, though not effaced or for
gotten. It displayed very little national sentiment. The
biographical age of history, it yet adds scarcely any but the
post-dated portraits of Bolingbroke and Wyndham to the
Avorld's gallery of types. Above all others, the age of Walpole
was the era of social badges, when society loved a coronet
cMefly for the personal precedence it gave, honoured a duke
dom less than a blue riband, and Avealth combined with
fashion more than either. The boundaries of the social line
Avere strictly defined ; those of long descent were lightly
overleaped. Society became all in all, and avenged itself
for having been absorbed in a former reign by pohtics,
by drawing politics within the relaxing fascination of its own
sphere. This close union between society and politics, and their
inverted relation invest the period Avith its most picturesque
hues. Norman blood was disregarded, but eminence m the
recent epoch of the Revolution was admitted as a source of
distinction, a circle within a circle. Many pocket boroughs,
or the commanding, even crushing, endowments of a Pitt,
were required to mate the arrogance of famihes which boasted
a representative among the founders of the Kit-Cat, or some
champion on one side or the other in the mortal conflict
between Harley and St. John. WitMn tMs line every one
of riches sufficient for moving in the same social sphere
knew every one. St. James's Square and Piccadilly had a

254 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
vested right in the distribution of offices, or to be consulted
on the strategy of the Opposition. Each new Ministry was
a family, or a drawing-room, compact ; and the choicest
artillery of pubhc warfare was draAvn from the storehouse
of private life and old familiarity. Individuals, to be fit re
presentatives of the period, must have been leaders of society,
as well as of Parliament. They must not have been too much
above slander themselves, or of characters too elevated, to
avail themselves of similar Aveapons. The first half of the
eighteenth century is not a time of heroes in pohtics, or of
arcMtects of a national policy. It was a time which had its
heroes, though incomplete. Its records can shoAV pohticians
of undaunted courage, inflexible against threats, caresses,
and bribes. Eloquence had not died AA'ith St. John's expatria
tion ; while losing something of its fire and strength, it had
gained in variety. Jest and earnest, comedy and tragedy are
observed mingling in the Parhamentary drama. Even that
retribution which always, sooner or later, waits upon the di
version of pubhc spirit to private ends, and the awakemng of
national passions for the gratification of private animosity, is
not wanting. All their wealth and reputation, their powers
of mind, and the patriotism which some possessed, did not
save the chiefs of the mightiest Opposition ever known from
an utter and irreparable fall. We are not left for a moment
in doubt of the moral of the series of events. The morrow
of their triumph witnessed their humiliation.

V.
AN AMERICAN REVOLUTIONIST
AND
AN ENGLISH RADICAL.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,
1706-1790.
WILLIAM COBBETT,
1762-1835.

( 257 )

BENJAMIN FEANKLIN.

Stages of history, as I have already intimated, will not keep
symmetrically to centuries. In many respects the eighteenth
century terminated, and the nineteenth opened, long before
the end of the former as reckoned by years and calendars.
The period in which the career of Franklin became in
separably blended Avith English history sIioavs little of the
spirit of the eighteenth century as manoeuvred in pohtics
by Bolingbroke, and dictated to in literature by Pope.
The lines of the era to which he is assigned must be draAvn
so as not to shut out- Cobbett, and the dawn of modern
.Radicalism. Theirs was a season no longer of pamphleteer
ing skirmishes, and spectacular Parliamentary tournaments.
It occupied itself with the tearing asunder of nations' flesh
and blood. Its combats were betAA7een causes wrestling in
grim earnest for nothing less than death and life. The battle
raged first on the other side of the Atlantic for State in
dependence. It did not close there. When American
liberties had asserted themselves, the scene of the strife
sMfted to England. France caught some of the impulse, and
England some. The Thirty Years' War for the rights of
English citizenship wliich lasted till 1832 Avas a sequel to the
American War of Independence. Different as were their
forms, the two revolutions, in America, and in England, were
animated by principles of kindred origin. The victory of
Enghsh Parliamentary reform was Avon in part across the
ocean. Franklin's demonstrations of the rottenness of the
administrative Avork of a corrupt representative system pre
pared the Avay for the battering-ram swung with beneficial

258 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
results, if not from the most scrupulous motives, against the
crumbhng edifice by the editor of the Political Register.
If the several causes of the foundation of the Republic of
the United States were ranged according to their respective
importance, first of all would come the perverse pohcy of Mr.
George Grenville, and the want of moral courage in Lord
North to resist the unenlightened obstinacy of George the
Third. If not demerits but only merits were classified, an
equal rank, and that the highest, must be assigned to George
WasMngton and Benjamin Franklin. So far as any historical
events can be appropriated to individuals, those two men were
the joint authors of the great Republic. The common
English impression of Franklin recognises only two stages in
Ids career. From the struggling printer he is transformed
at a bound into the powerful diplomatist who rent in twain
Great Britain and her American colonies. The actual
Frankhn rose gradually to this enormous influence. He had
already become independent in fortune before he engaged in
pubhc affairs. When he had once taken to public life, he
made it Ms profession, though he sighed after science. Step
by step he grew to be the most prominent citizen of
Philadelphia. He was appointed Clerk of the General
Assembly of Pennsylvania ; he became a justice of the peace,
an alderman, a burgess of the Assembly. He estabhshed the
first public library in America. He founded an academy and
an hospital. He set on foot a militia force for the defence of
the province against the French in Canada. " There was,"
he writes in his Memoirs, " no such thing as carrying a
public-spirited project through without my being concerned
in it." If it were so small a matter as clearing away the
dust from the roadways or lighting the city, he had to set
the example. One question Avas always asked when sub
scriptions for an improvement were requested : " Have you
consulted Franklin, and what does he tliink of it ? " From
Pennsylvania his influence spread tiiroughout the American
colonies. He Avas appointed Postmaster-General for America.
That office he kept for over twenty years. His enemies in

Benjamin Franklin. 259

England often hoped to taunt Mm into surrendering it. But
he lacked, he was in the habit of saying, " the Christian
virtue of resignation." It Avas his rule " never to ask for
offices," but also " never to resign them." Frankhn had
passed Ms seventieth year before he arrived at the Court of
France as the champion of American independence. A long
and active hfe had preceded his greatest exploit, the con
clusion of the Peace of 1783.
In view of an impending war Avith France in 1754, he drew
up a plan for " the union of all the colonies under one
government, so far as might be necessary for defence, and
other important general purposes." The scheme roused
jealousy in England, and Franklin attributes to that feehng
the despatch of General Braddock from England with two
regiments of regulars for the expedition against Fort
Duquesne. Though the project of the campaign was not
Frankhn' s, only by his help was the army able to move a
step. Horses and carriages could not be procured until
Franklin had personally guaranteed payment to the lenders.
He accompanied the force, and in vain endeavoured to dissuade
the General from marching in a slender hne nearly four miles
long through a country infested by hostile Indians. The
General's answer was : " The savages may indeed be a
formidable enemy to your raw American militia ; but upon
the King's regular and disciplined troops, sir, it is impossible
they should make any impression." In the panic which
followed Braddock's defeat, Franklin carried a Bill in the
PennsylvaMa Assembly for the embodiment of a militia
force. To concentrate more attention on the movement, he
persuaded the Governor to proclaim a fast, that " the blessing
of Heaven might be implored on our undertaking." He even
obtained subscriptions from Quakers for gunpowder under the
euphemism of " bread, flour, wheat, and other grain." He
raised and commanded a regiment, Governor Dunbar offered
to commission Mm as general of a force which he was to raise
and lead against Fort Duquesne. Frankhn had the modesty
to decline the service which had proved fatal to Braddock. u

260 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
But he might reasonably have esteemed himself not much
inferior in soldierly competence to incapables such as the
British Government thought good enough for colonial
commands. Of Braddock's successor, Lord Loudoun, he
writes : " I wondered much how such a man came to be
entrusted with so important a business as the conduct of a
great army ; but having since seen more of the great world,
and the means of obtaining and motives for giving places, my
wonder is diminished."
In the years between 1743, Avhen he began to have leisure
for pubhc affairs, and 1757 AAdien he came to England as
Agent for his province, he was preparing the lesson he
applied eighteen years later. He was learning to despise
the Home Government's method of managing colonial affairs,
and to value aright the internal strength of the colonies for
their own defence. He arrived in London on July, 27, 1757,
no obscure stranger, but the most prominent citizen of
the most important foreign possession of the Empire. The
object of Ms journey had nothing in it of hostihty to the
CroAvn. The real sovereigns of Pennsylvania were not the
House of Hanover, but the family of William Penn. The
heirs of Penn appointed the Governor of the province, and
their governor's one care was to see that none of the pubhc
burdens touched the vast estates of the Proprietary. Their
nominee, the Governor, refused his assent to any tax from
which Ms principals were not expressly exempted. At every
step for the protection of the province by the maintenance of
an efficient militia, the Assembly found itself checked in its
measures for raising the necessary revenue by a veto from
the Governor. Frankhn was the most energetic enemy of
the Proprietary. His future implacabihty against the Ameri
can " Loyalists" originated probably in his early resentment
against the Penns, who were among the foremost of them.
So far the province felt itself drawn to the Crown through
their common interest in defensive measures against hostile
Indians and Frenchmen. Indeed, at the Privy Council, Lord
Mansfield used his authority to break down the Proprietary's

Benjamin Franklin. 261
obstinacy. Yet even so early as this, Franklin's indignation
Avas stirred by the exorbitant claims of the Crown to autho
rity over the colonies. Within a few mornings after his arrival
in London the accomplished and eccentric Lord Granville,
better knoAvn as Carteret, who was President of the Council,
granted Mm an interview. Lord Granville then surprised
Mm by the statement that "the King's instructions to his
governors, being first draAvn up by judges, then considered in
council, after avMcIi they are signed by the King, are, so far
as they relate to you Americans, the Mav of the land, for the
King is the legislator of the colonies." " His lordship's con-
\~ersation," Avrote Frankhn, " a little alarmed me as to what
might be the sentiments of the Court concerning us." For
the moment Frankhn's aim Avas to extort liberty from the
ungenerous domination of a private family. He registered,
hoAvever, the pretensions of the royal prerogative as matter of
Avarning. On Ms second visit to England he bore originally a com
mission only from the Pennsylvanian Assembly. To the
Agency for Pennsylvania Avere gradually added the Agencies
for Georgia, Massachusetts, and New Jersey, as the colonies
found that what had been only a theory of the royal preroga
tive was in process of conversion into practice. He had
come once more in 1763 to intercede against the King Log of
the Proprietary Constitution. He found Mmself confronted
Avith much more formidable claims of the British nation and
Parhament. He still is seen, as in old days, appealing to
the Sovereign; only formerly it was against the Penns he
besought his aid, now it is against the King's own Ministers.
The Stamp Act was passed by Parhament on the pretext of
reimbursing this country for the cost it had defrayed in
expelling the French from Canada and Nova Scotia. Frank
lin, by conversation, by private letters, and in the public
press, Avas always forward to deny that the colonies owed
any debt to the mother-country. The mother-country had
engaged m Avar with France for its OAvn ambitious purposes.
The war was not a colonial, but an imperial war. The
X

262 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
colonies had, he Avould have admitted, benefited by the results
of the war. He was always forward to express Ms dehght at
the subjugation of the French territories. But he rejoiced
" not merely as a colonist, but as a Briton." A moral duty
lay on the colonists, their Agent confessed, to pay their share
of the expenses because they were Britons. The fact, how
ever, he asserted, was that they had already paid their share,
and more than their share. "Every year during the war
requisitions were made by the Crown on the colomes for
raising money and men. They made more extraordinary
efforts in proportion to their abilities than Britain did."
What was that proportion, he urged, was! matter for grave
consideration. He complained that it was a favourite device,
"in order to render the taxing of America a popular measure,
to insist continually on the topics of our wealth and flourish
ing circumstances, whil'e this country is loaded with debt,
great part of it incurred on our account." The truth was,
according to him, that, magnificent as he accounted American
prospects, the present was discouraging. Colonies, he forcibly
argued, are not, like their countrymen at home, heirs to many
generations of laborious ancestors. They have to do all for
themselves ; their expenses press so closely on the heels of
their resources that a great part of the charges for the rout of
Braddock and the triumphs of Wolfe and Amherst " lies still,
in 1766, a load of debt upon them."
Even had Great Britain made them its debtors by relieving
them from the perpetual terror of French attack at its oato
sole cost, the discharge of the moral debt should have been
matter of mutual arrangement. But the colonies were being
taxed by a Legislature in which they were not represented.
When their aid in money had formerly been required, the
custom had been to ask it of their Assemblies, as the Ciwn
asked it of Parliament. On all proper occasions they were
ready to grant aid as Parhament granted it. " We of the
colonies have never insisted that we ought to be exempt from
contributing to the common expenses necessary to support
the prosperity of the Empire." They did insist that the

Benjamin Franklin. 263
money of the King's subjects in America could no more be
taken from them without their own consent, obtained through
their representatives, than from the King's subjects in Eng
land. " If the Parliament has a right thus to take from us
a penny in the pound, where is the line drawn that bounds
that right, and what shall hinder their calling, whenever they
please, for the other nineteen sMllings and eleven pence ? "
Franklin's theory of the relation of the colonies to Great
Britain was that they were " oMy connected, as England and
Scotland Avere before the Union, by having one common
sovereign, the King." The founders of the colonies expressly
went to the New Wdrid to escape from the tyranny of
English statutes. " They took with them, however, by
compact, their allegiance to the King, and a legislative
power for the making a new body of laws with his assent, by
wMch they were to be governed. Hence they became distinct
States, under the same prince, united as Ireland is to the
Crown, but not to the realm, of England, and governed each
by its own laws, though with the same sovereign, and having
each the right of granting its own money to that sovereign."
The weak point in Franklin's theory of colonial rule is
that it imphes the King could come to the consideration of
colohial questions as if for the time he were transported
bodily, and unattended by any of his Parliamentary advisers,
across the Atlantic. Franklin would have been as unwill
ing that Lord Hillsborough should dictate to the colomes
under cover of the King's name as that Parliament should
dictate. Probably he would not have been disposed to deny
the difficulty of emancipating the King whenever he had to
exercise his colonial prerogative from an Enghsh sovereign's
deference to the Ministers delegated by Parliament. But
when Englishmen dwelt upon the " inconvemence " of a
theory which supposed the division of " an empire into many
separate states," he answered that "an inconvenience proves
nothing but itself." It was, however, Ms consciousness of
the difficulty of fastening upon the King double functions
which doubtless suggested to him, as to his friend Lord
x 2

264 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
Kames, a consohdating union of Great Britain and the
American colonies as the way out of the dilemma. If the
colonies sent members to Parhament, Parliament in taxing
them would not have been disjoining taxation from represen
tation. The King, in exercising Ms colonial prerogative
at the instance of his Parliamentary advisers, would have
been exercising it with the implied assent of his colonial
subjects. Franklin's logical objection to the actual mode in
wMch the King and the British Parliament claimed to rule
the colonies was that colonists were treated as possessed of
inferior liberties to their fellow-subjects here. They were
governed without having a voice in their government. The
grant of proportionate representation in the Imperial Parha
ment to Pennsylvania and the rest would have brought then.'
subjection to the supremacy of Parliament at all events into
logical conformity with the theory of the British Constitution.
That any such Parliamentary union with the North Ameri
can colonies would have been permanent it is impossible to
beheve. Franklin affected to think " it would probably subsist
so long as Britain shall continue a nation." On the contrary,
the first occasion on which the colonial representatives had
been overborne by the English and Scotch members would
have dissolved it. Franklin himself would have been the
first to denounce a connection in which British representative
heads were counted as against colonial. Great Britain and
the American colonies were doomed to part by the very
incompatibility of their rival greatness. The projects Frankhn
and some of his Enghsh and Scotch alhes devised with a
view to averting the catastrophe carried on their face proof of
their want of reality. It was, however, a gratmtous addition
to the shock of predestined separation that British pohtics
should at the time have been passing through a stage of
moral degradation which intensified the violence of the
wrench. Almost more grievous still was the coincidence that
it was the fate of England to have Frankhn, of all men, for
witness to the decay.
In the earlier years of the reign of George III. the whole

Benjamin Franklin. 265
body of British pohtics Avas sick, it seemed, to death. Frank
lin's letters home reveal it in all its ghastly infirmities. The
few statesmen who were incorrupt were technical fanatics, hke
Mr. George Grenville, or " inaccessibles," like Lord Chatham.
Public men Avere commonly of a much weaker moral or mental
fibre. There was the careless King's Minister, like Lord North,
who for the sake of peace with his colleagues, " some of whom
could not be brought to agree to the repeal of the whole
Stamp Act," suffered his better sense to be overriden, and
consented to maintain " the duty on tea, with the obnoxious
preamble, to continue the dispute." There was the man of
pleasure, like Lord Clare, who, " after we had drunk a bottle
and a half of claret each, hugged and kissed me, protesting
he never in his hfe met with a man he Avas so much in love
Avith." There was the official, incapable of understanding
that a colony could have rights, like Lord Hillsborough, " whose
character is conceit, wrong-headedness, obstinacy, and passion."
There was the Minister with an instinct of equity, but with
out the moral courage to adhere to it, like Lord Dartmouth,
" with dispositions for the best measures, and easily prevailed
with to join in the worst." There was the mob of peers, not
vouchsafing even to consider, still less to understand, Lord
Chatham's plan for pacification : " Hereditary Legislators !
There would be more propriety, because less hazard of mis
chief, in having, as in some University of Germany, hereditary
professors of mathematics." There was a House of Commons,
costing " no less than four thousand pounds for a member."
There was the abandonment of London for days to " a drunken
mad mob," wMch had made a hero of " an outlaw and an exile
of bad personal character." " I went last week to Winchester,
and observed that for fifteen miles out of tOAvn there was
scarce a door or window-shutter next the road unmarked with
'Wilkes and Liberty,' and 'No. 45.'" There was, at least
in the American's eyes, " in short, a whole venal nation, now
at market, to be sold for about two millions, and able to be
bought out of the hands of the present bidders, if he would
offer half a million more, by the devil himself."

266 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
This was a population which talked of " our colonies," as
if Pennsylvania and Massachusetts and Virginia were private
possessions of every ignorant Englishman. To Englishmen an
American's apology for existence was that he made a market
for English goods. These people, who thought themselves
competent to legislate for America, could scarcely point out its
place on the globe. They would not of themselves have seen
any incongruity in Franklin's jest that the King of Spain had
contracted for the casting of a thousand guns at Quebec, or
detected the absurdity of Ms assurance that " the grand leap of
the whale in the chase up the Ealls of Niagara is esteemed, by
all who have seen it, as one of the finest spectacles in nature."
For a time the King was the refuge of Americans enraged and
outraged by the pretensions of men they despised to lord it
over their superiors in character and public spirit. Frankhn
records with dehght so late as 1772 how " the King has been
heard to speak of me with great regard." He loved to con
trast the goodness of the Kmg with the stupid selfishness
of the nation. But gradually he begins to " suspect, between
you and, me, that the late measures have been very much the
King's ,own, and that he has in some cases a great share of
what his friends call firmness." He hopes still that, "by
some painstaking and proper management, the wrong impres
sions, the, King has, received maybe removed." At length
the suspicion becomes certamty, the hope fades, and he is
forced to the conclusion, wMch was unhappily only too true,
that "the, King hates us most cordially "in the aggregate,
and " that msidious man," Franklin, in particular.
King. George thought all who, disagreed with him madmen
or rogues. , We know from the Shelburne Correspondence
how he consoled himself at the end of the American war
with, the reflection that " knavery seems to be so much the
striking feature of the inhabitants, that it may not in the
end be an evil that they will become aliens to this Kingdom."
At all events, his instinct of aversion from Franklin did not
deceive him. Whatever was vicious and out of joint in the
relations between England and its colonies showed uglier and

Benjamin Franklin. 267

more misshapen as reflected through Franklin's eyes. It was
hot by any design or desire of Franklin that Ms mission in
England irritated every disposition in the two peoples to
quarrel. His correspondence shows that, though he could not
avoid perceiving the blunders of Enghsh dealing with
America, he would have been far from disinclined to aid in
correcting them. He had shown himself so temperate a
mediator between the two countries, that Avhen the Stamp
Act was promulgated in America in 1766, his house and
family in PMladelphia were threatened by a mob. His
complaint in 1768 had probably not been insincere that, as
he had rendered himself suspected in England of being " too
much an American," in America, on the contrary, he was
suspected of being " too much an Englishman." He argued
that " between the governed and governing every mistake
in Government, every encroachment on right, is not Avorth
a rebellion." To the very eve of the civil war he was
ready to discuss ways by which it might have been avoided.
Yet an agent of the colonies much less acute, much less of an
impassioned enthusiast for peace, with a far inferior title to
gain an audience of Ministers and orators, would have had
more chance of success in appeasing the feud. As we read
the correspondence which Mr. John Bigelow has compiled and
condensed in his ' Life of Franklin,' published in 1879, Ave feel
the issue of the controversy to be a foregone conclusion.
Frankhn taught his countrymen to despise the mother-
country. He seemed always to be presenting an ultimatum.
In 1766 he writes of the Stamp Act: " As to executing the
Act by force, it is madness, and will be ruin to the whole."
In 1771 he writes to the Massachusetts Committee of Corres
pondence about the exaction of customs in America by
Parliament, that civil war is the certain result. " The
bloody struggle will end in absolute slavery to America, or
ruin to Britain by the loss of her colonies ; the latter most
probable from America's growing strength and magnitude."
Another representative of the colonies would probably have
begun by assuming the indissolubihty of the bond which

268 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
united Great Britain and its American settlements. Franklin
showed himself to his countrymen perpetually in the act of
testing the chain, to judge where were the Aveak links at
which it might be expected to break. Instead of a mediator
come to negotiate a remoA-al of colonial grievances, he
appeared in the character of a judge pronouncing a divorce
of the Colonies from Great Britain for British infidelity,
cruelty, and general desertion of duties.
Jobbing Enghsh politicians felt and resented the tone of
scornful superiority in Franklin's remonstrances on behalf of
his constituents. They exulted in the opportunity afforded
them for a retort by his appearance before the Privy
Council to give evidence on the petition of Massachusetts
for the removal of Governor Hutchinson and Lieutenant-
Governor Andrew Oliver. The ground of the petition was
that correspondence Avhich had fallen into Frankhn's hands
between them and a Mr. Whately, who had been private
secretary to Mr. George Grenville, convicted them of having
incited the British Government to the measures whence had
issued the strife between it and the colonies. The scene in
the Council Chamber on the Mstorical 29th of January, 1774,
was an explosion of wrath long pent up. The whole, as
Frankhn Avrote to Mr. Cushing, was " in all probability pre
concerted." The tiiirty-five Privy Councillors, forgetting that
they were sitting as judges, " frequently laughed outright," as
Dr. Priestley narrates, " at the sallies of " Mr. Wedderburn's
sarcastic wit." They were charmed to retaliate thus on the
Transatlantic morahst who, they well knew, had been for
seventeen years cataloging their follies and corruptions.
They were not altogether wrong in condemning the conduct
of Frankhn in that transaction. It is not necessary to
accept Wedderburn's insinuation that Frankhn had employed
his opportunities as American Postmaster-General to intercept
Governor Hutchinson's letters home. Mr. Charles Francis
Adams's account is probably true, that the papers were
delivered to Franklin by Sir John Temple. Not the less had
both Franklin and the Assembly of Massachusetts violated, in

Benjamin Franklin. 269
the use they made of them, the confidence of private corre
spondence. Franklin's defence has been commonly accepted
by Americans. It was that private letters written by a
highly placed official on public questions to a member of the
British Parliament could not be described as private letters.
That was the conclusion also of the Massachusetts House of
RepresentatiA-es. The fallacy of such a position is apparent.
It is at least as extraordinary that Franklin should have
thought the misuse of Governor Hutchinson's correspondence
balanced by the publication and despatch to the Enghsh
Government of the letters sent by Franklin as the Agent of
the Massachusetts Assembly to the Assembly. Obviously
publicity, though Avithin a limited circle, was contemplated
by the writer himself as a property of the letters to the
Assembly, and privacy as a property of those of Governor
HutcMnson to Mr. Whately. Most extraordinary of all
Avas Franklin's profession of amazement in the account he
published of the Avhole transaction that the British Govern
ment should not have profited by the occasion and left
Governor Hutchinson and his brother officials " like the
scapegoats of old to carry away into the wilderness all the
offences which have arisen between the two countries." He
did not understand, any more than after the war, when
Great Britain interceded for the restoration of the Loyahsts
Avho had suffered in its cause, that a Government cannot with
any self-respect cast the consequences of its blunders on
subordinates who have served it. He actually appears to
have anticipated gratitude from British Ministers for the part
he had played in the miserable business. " A Court clamour,"
he exclaims in his narrative, " was raised against me as an
incendiary ! The very action upon which I valued myself
as, it appeared to me, a means of lessening our differences, I
Avas unlucky enough to find charged upon me as a wicked
attempt to increase them. Strange perversion ! "
The 29th of January, 1774, shattered Avhat Frankhn was
fond of calhng that " China vase," that " beautiful porcelain
vase," the British Empire, as then constituted. From that

270 Some Verdicts of History Revieived.
day, though Frankhn himself was possibly as yet unconscious
of the catastrophe, no hope remained of reconcihng the claims
of Great Britain to sovereignty, and of the colonies to equahty.
On the day following the baiting at the Council Office, he was
informed that " his Majesty's Postmaster-General had found
it necessary to- dismiss Mm from the office of Deputy Post
master-General in North America." He lingered m England
for another year and four months, observing " a cool, sullen
silence " to Ministers. He kept, he writes, " a separate
account of private injuries, Avhich," he adds, " I may forgive."
He certainly never forgave them. But, though henceforth he
did not court, neither did he reject, overtures for an arrange
ment of the difficulty between the two kindred peoples.
Interminable negotiations passed betAveen Frankhn on one
side, and Lord Howe, Lord Hyde, Dr. Fothergill, Mr. David
Hartley, and Mr. Barclay, on the other, for a basis of settle
ment. Frankhn visited Lord Chatham at Hayes, to consult
on possible means of accommodation. The great man's
equipage was seen at Franklin's door in Craven Street, "on
the very day twelve months," as Franklin proudly notes,
" that the MiMstry had taken so much pains to disgrace me
before the Privy Council." Frankhn by no means repulsed
the assistance thus proffered for the reunion of the two
countries. He remarked, with pleasure, the sympathy of
Dissenters and Irishmen, and other victims of English
legislative exclusiveness, with the resistance of the colonies,
and their belief that " the salvation of English hberty de
pended now on the perseverance and virtue of America."
The negotiations went on as merrily as if none of the parties
to them entertained any suspicion that the subject-matter
of their conferences had ceased to exist, that the British
Plantations in North America had expanded into a nation.
Even at this distance of time, an English student is sensible
of a sort of despair, from the consciousness how only the
surface was stirred by these elaborate discussions. The
deliberations commonly accompanied or followed a game of
chess between Franklin and Lord Howe's sister. They had

Benjamin Franklin. 271
neither less nor more of seriousness about them than the
tournament of the chessboard. On points of detail Franklin
was ready enough to give way. He offered to pledge his
personal security for the repayment to the merchants of their
losses on the tea thrown into Boston harbour. When it came
to the question of conceding legislative independence to the
colonies, neither could he abate, nor the English volunteer
pacificators yield, a jot. The utmost to which Franklin's
Enghsh friends felt they could even offer to pledge the
British nation was, that the bare right of Parliament to
supremacy should be so guarded in its exercise as to be
practically dormant. Chatham Mmself could not presume to
ask of the nation at large anything Mgher. When, moderate
as was Chatham's plan for a settlement, and enormous as was
Ms personal authority, the Peers would not so much consider
it as to aUow it to lie on their table, it may easily be con
ceived how utterly insoluble had the crisis become.
Yet of the two sides there was on the Enghsh more, it
may almost be said, of good faith than on the American.
We are far from imputing conscious insincerity to Franklin.
He foresaw war as the necessary consequence of a failure to
repair the breach ; and Ms common declaration may be be
heved, that he was almost inclined to think "there was never
a good war, nor a bad peace." He was no fanatical admirer
of particular forms of Government. But circumstances,
he obviously felt, had cut off from England its American
Colonies, and there was no possibility of healing the wound.
His Quaker, Dissenter, and Chathamite friends could scarcely
believe in such a scMsm in the imperial unity. At the moment
of recogMsing the independence of the United States, seven
years later, statesmen looked forward to a possible return of
the colonies to their allegiance. No Englishman could com
prehend, as could Frankhn, the capacity of the colonies
for standing alone. In exhorting, when the British Ministers
had shown themselves unbending in 1775, the Americans to
resist, for that " notMng could secure the privileges of America
but a firm, sober adherence to the terms of the association

272 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
made at the Congress," men like Barclay and Fothergill
hardly suspected that the firmness meant final separation.
In asserting that " the salvation of English liberty depended
on the perseverance and virtue of America," they were think
ing of Americans as fellow-subjects, whose voices in favour of
liberty would be added to their English voices in right of
their common country. We can see more clearly in these
days, and so could Franklin in his. An United American
Congress was sitting at Philadelphia, and Benjamin Franklin
had been scolded and sneered at by the Solicitor-General of
England and the King's Councillors as a thief. It would have
been wonderful surgery to reincorporate the bleeding limb in
the old body. It would have needed nothing less than a
miracle when the fragment torn from the mutilated British
trunk was itself grown into a breathing being.
Frankhn shook the dust of England from Ms feet as a
subject of King George when he set sail for America in 1775.
When he returned to Europe it was to watch and to baffle
from Passy the clumsy efforts of British Ministers to make
a solitude where they had failed to maintain peace. He was
so far a diplomatist that he had studied human character for
seventy years. Yet in England his diplomacy had only
exasperated. In France he accomplished as much against
England as Washington with all his victories. His know
ledge of French was so indifferent, that on one occasion
during the sitting of the Academy he was observed to " ap
plaud the loudest at his own praises." " He did the work, he
never learned the dialect, of diplomacy. He was that strange
creature, a Republican at the Court of a pure monarchy. In
Paris his defects Avere virtues. His scientific fame spoke for
itself in purest Parisian French. As a politician, he Avas to
the Court the dire enemy of England ; to the jaded society of
Paris he was the representative of a new world of feeling and
thought. His New England astuteness seemed to Parisian
courtiers patriarchal innocence. His naive stories and illus
trations, which a thousand admirers were ready to translate
and repeat in every circle of the toAvn, were as bracing as

Benjamin Franklin. 273
quinine. His very costume, " his hair hanging, his spectacles
on Ms nose, his white hose, and Avhite hat under his arm," in
the midst of absurd perukes and brocaded suits, came like a
revelation of free nature to the slaves of fashion. He became,
to his own amusement, the idol of Paris. " Mr. Franklin,"
writes a contemporary Parisian, "is besieged, followed, ad
mired, adored, wherever he shows himself, with a fury, a
fanaticism, capable no doubt of flattering him and doing him
honour, but which at the same time proves that we shall
never be reasonable." He tells his daughter that incredible
numbers had been sold of clay medallions of him, " some to
be set in the lids of snuff-boxes, and some so small as to be
worn in rings." "Pictures, busts, and prints have made
your father's face as well knoAvn as that of the moon." A
great Parisian lady wrote fifty years later to the respect
able Ticknor in language which implied that she thought
Bostonians and Patagonians kindred peoples. After the
same fashion, Versailles was never perhaps quite certain that
the New England philosopher was not of Red Indian descent.
But love does not reason. Paris had fallen in love with Frank
lin, and in homage to him grew enamoured of simplicity.
No Englishman Avas ever so caressed in Paris, for the very
reason that Franklin Avas, and was not, an Englishman. As
the American sage and philosopher, he performed as much
for his country as he accomplished by his diplomatic skill.
But he was a diplomatist too, and of high rank in the art.
Colleagues and rivals, like Ms detractor Arthur Lee, or even
Jay and Adams, who, as Mr. Fitzherbert wrote, in a letter
quoted by Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice in his Life of Lord
Shelburne, " rather fear than are attached to Mm," might be
pardoned for inability to understand the source of his influ
ence. They did not venture to deny the fact. In the only
serious instance in avMcIi, Avith reference to the disputed fishery
and boundary rights, he Avas accused of neglecting the inter
ests of his countrymen, his colleagues certified that he had
defended those interests with his counsels and his authority.
On another and more important point, he not merely co-

274 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
operated but took the initiative. Enghshmen and Canadians,
who mutually cherish the connection of the DomiMOn with
Great Britain, may well shudder at the contemplation of the
extreme risk that connection ran from British statesmen's
weariness of tne war, and from Franklin's superior diplomatic
keenness. A man who had gone through the campaign with
Braddock, who had shared in the alarms and labours of
the period which followed the British defeat, and- exulted.
in the triumph of Wolfe, was not likely to depreciate the
value of Canada. The moral' right of the colonies to the
old French possessions in North America had been a
special question in the futile negotiations between him
self and Lord Howe in England. When the war commenced,
he sought to induce France to help the colonies to wrest
Canada and Nova Scotia from England. As soon as the
negotiations for peace with England opened, his great efforts
Avere directed to persuade the English Commissioner, Richard
Oswald, to see the utility of ceding those territories as proofs
of a desire for that " sweet " thing, a " reconciliation," and as a
safeguard against future causes of strife. Oswald, a prosper
ous Scotch merchant, was, as Frankhn says of Mm, an old
man who had " nothing at heart but the good of mankind,
and putting a stop to mischief." He does not seem to have
been fit to cope with a philanthropist like Frankhn. He
had happened to let fall an opinion, that " the givmg up of
Canada to the Enghsh at the last peace had been a politic
act in France, for that it had weakened the ties between
England and her colonies, and that he himself had predicted
from it the late revolution." Frankhn, who had been pre
paring the ground by asserting the title of the UMted States
to reparation over and above the mere grant of peace for the
injuries England had inflicted, proposed that Canada should
be given and accepted as such reparation. He applied Os-
Avald's OAvn argument to the future : " I spoke of the occasions
of quarrel that might be produced by England continuing to
hold Canada, Mnting at the same time, but not expressing
too plainly, that such a situation, to us so dangerous, would

Benjamin Franklin. 275

necessarily oblige us to cultivate and strengthen our union
with France." Oswald "appeared much struck with my
discourse." Franklin had already developed a scheme on
paper which he lent to Oswald to read and meditate upon.
The plan was, that " Britain should voluntarily offer to give
up the provmce, though on these conditions, that she shall
in all times coming have and enjoy the right of free trade
_ tiiither, unencumbered with any duties Avhatsoever ; that so
much of the vacant lands shall be sold as will raise a sum
sufficient to pay for the houses burnt by the British troops
and their Indians, and also to indemnify the Royahsts for the
confiscation of their estates." Oswald, he says, "told me
that notihng in Ms judgment could be clearer, more satisfac
tory, and convincing, than the reasonings in that paper ; that
he would do Ms utmost to impress Lord Shelburne with
them." Franklin, in reporting by letter this conversation to
his brother Peace Commissioner, Adams, describes Oswald's
remarks rather more fully than in the semi-official journal he
kept. He tells Adams, on April 20, 1782, Ms proposal about
Canada : " Mr. Oswald liked much the idea, but said they
were too much straitened for money to make any pecuniary
reparation ; but he should endeavour to persuade their doing
in tMs way." Oswald went to England to confer with Lord
Shelburne, taking Franklin's paper with him. On his return
to Paris, he informed Frankhn that " it seemed to have made
an impression, and he had reason to believe that it might be
settled to our satisfaction towards the end of the treaty ;
but in his own mind he wished it might not be mentioned at
the beginning ; that his lordship indeed said he had not
imagined reparation would be expected, and he wondered I
should not know whether it was intended to demand it." A
clay or two after, Franklin conversed again on the subject
with Oswald. " Oswald repeated to me Ms opinion, that the
affair of Canada Avould be settled to our satisfaction, and his
wish that it might not be mentioned till towards the end of the
treaty." Franklin relied on the assistance of French states-
mansMp in pressing Ms advantage against British dejection.

276 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
But the extracts from French despatches printed in M. de
Circourt's translation of Mr. Bancroft's history demonstrate
that no one Avas more bitterly opposed than the French
Ministers to the annexation of Canada to the United
States. Eager as they had been to promote the separation of
the British provinces in America from the mother-country,
M. de Vergennes was entirely opposed to any extension of
the emancipated territory. Perhaps he still cherished a hope
that the French provinces in America, AAdiich had been con
quered by England only twenty years before, might one day
be brought back to their allegiance to the Court of Versailles.
Franklin, as a diplomatist, AAras not peremptory in insisting
on abstract rights of his country, still less on his own dignity.
But he studied the French men and the French women who
ruled France, and he probed to the bottom the instincts of the
French governing class, without losing his own. About alli
ances in general he was not solicitous. Before he started on
his own mission to Europe he had in Congress, though in vain,
deprecated the sending a "virgin " republic " suitoring " for
the friendship of European Powers. " It seems to me," he
Avrites, " that we have in most instances hurt our credit and
importance by sending all over Europe begging alliances,
and soliciting declarations of our independence. The nations,
perhaps, from thence seemed to think that our independence
is something they have to sell, and that we do not offer
enough for it." Writing to Jay, at Madrid, in April 1782, he
exclaims : Spain has taken four years to consider Avhether
she should treat with us or not. Give her forty, and let us in
the meantime mind our OAvn business." Five years before,
in 1777, he and his felloAv-representatives of the United States
in Europe had received instructions that, " in case France
and Spain will enter into the Avar, the United States will
assist the former in the conquest of the British sugar islands,
and the latter in the conquest of Portugal, America desiring
only for her share what Britain holds on the continent."
Americans must blush to think that their neAV-born common
wealth should have condescended to purchase aid towards

Benjamin Franklin. 277
its emancipation by offers to help in enslaving another free state
avMcIi had never done it any injury. We are glad, for the
credit of Franklin, that he simply recites these instructions in
a letter to Arthur Lee, who Avas at Burgos. He adds not a
word implying approval of the dishonourable bribe to Spain.
He cared indeed little for European alliances except the
French. To consolidate that he Avas all complaisance. His
tact alone prevented a rupture Avith the French Ministers
through the signature, in December 1782, behind their backs,
of the preliminary treaty between Great Britain and the
United States. His brother Commissioners, Jay and Adams,
suspected that the French Government wished to protract the
negotiations for its OAvn objects, however the United States
might suffer by the prolongation of the war. Their suspicion
was not without foundation ; and Franklin, when he under
stood the facts, concurred with their decision to proceed
independently. But he had the wisdom, which his colleagues
lacked, to be content with starting peace on its route without
breaking down the bridge by which it had crossed before he
knew AAdiether it might not be useful for a retreat. To the
French Minister's reproaches on the departure from good
felloAvship, he replied by the soft answer which turns away
wrath. He defends himself, and Jay and Adams, against the
charge of anything worse than " indiscretion," and " neglect of
a point of bienseance." To those two offences he pleads guilty.
But he warns M. de Vergennes not to forget the effect of a
quarrel upon "the English, who, I just now learn, flatter
themselves they have already divided us." The friendly
.relations of France and the United States had seemed in
danger of being completely overclouded when Franklin's
amiable apologies restored peace. Two days after the French
Ministerial remonstrance, the United States actually received
from the French Treasury a loan of six million francs, which
infused new life into their military operations. Jay and
Adams, " who," observes M. de Vergennes, " do not pretend to
recognise the rules of courtesy in regard to us," could never
have obtained that aid. Franklin's brother Commissioners Y

278 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
underrated the gain to the United States from French
sueeour. Without the diversion France created in Europe,
and the subsidies she granted, it is almost impossible that
the Congress should not have been compelled to conclude a
humihating peace with King George. Franklin understood,
that the French alliance was vital to Ms people, and he spared
no pains that he might confirm it. As Jefferson said of Mm,
in extolling Ms diplomatic dexterity, he, by his reasonable
ness, moderation, and temper, so won the confidence of the
French Ministers that " it may truly be said they were more
under Ms influence than he under theirs."
Enghshmen were not so criminal, nor was England so near
to the close of its greatness, as Franklin supposed. On the
other hand, neither was the power of-France so deeply roqted
as it appeared to Ms friendly eyes, nor- French assistance, to
the struggling Republic so generous as he habituated hhnself
to represent it. While he -was- quick to detect the. perversion
of free institutions to the purposes, of selfish corruption in
England, he -chose to be for- the most part utterly blind to
the more radical vices .of French government and society.
He remarks, almost as if it were matter of praise, that " the
noblesse always govern here," and that " trade is not their
admiration." On Ms journey, in 1785, through France to
Havre, where he was to embark for America, he was enters
tained.at the, magnificent chateau of the Archbishop of Rouen,
Cardinal Rochefoucauld. He seems not to have felt the
Revolution in the air, and goes out oj;. Ms way to testify that
" the Cardinal is much respected and beloved by the people
of this country." In England the foundations were sound.
Much practical liberty, and even good administration, were
compatible with electoral dishonesty and pohtical perversity.
But Franklin could perceive no hope of a remedy for the
inconsistencies between theory and practice which disgusted
Mm. Not altogether in jest does he advise Enghshmen to
" dissolve your present old crazy Constitution, and send
members to Congress." - The entire order of things m France
Avas rotten at the core,yet Franklin was morethan half inclined

Benjamin Franklin. 279
to hVe and die there. When the tempest had actually begun
to rage, he still regarded it as a passing gust. He writes in
October, 1788, to his friend M. le Veillard : " When this fer
mentation is over, and the troubhng parts subsided, the wine
Avill be fine and good, and cheer the hearts of those who drink
of it." Had his hfe lasted a httle longer, he would have had to
lament the deaths on the scaffold of the correspondent to whom
he wrote thus confidently, and ' a multitude of other friends.
' Franklin simply did not see the instability of that charming-
Parisian society to which he discoursed in his shrewdly witty
parables. We suspect that he only affected not to perceive
the selfish motives at the bottom of the invaluable assistance
the French nation and Government afforded Ms country.
CMvalrous Frenchmen like Lafayette, in adArocating the
American cause, were protesting more against Court abso
lutism at home than against the imperial' tyranny of Great
Britain. Frenchmen generally and their rulers, when they
succoured the United States, Avere merely fighting, as they
had fought a generation earlier, England in America. They
longed to recover' Canada. When they had convinced them
selves that their American allies would hot' consent to their
return as sovereigns to any p>art of the North American
continent, they liked better to leave their old dominions in
the hands of England than struggle for their transfer to the
emancipated British colonies. Whilst Great Britain remained
still a neighbour they believed the Republic would not be able
to dispense with the shelter of French protection. Franklin,
who weighed human motives, especially when not, altogether
noble, with unerring sagacity, was pOssibly more desirous to
convince Robert Livingston than himself convinced, when he
Avrote : " The ideas of aggrandisement by conquest are out of
fasMon. The wise here think France great enough ; and its
ambition at present seems to be only that of justice and
magnanimity towards other nations, fidelity and utility to its
alhes." With this amiable construction wMch Franklin puts
on the motives of French kindness to the American colonies
of England in 1783, it is interesting to contrast his view of
Y 2 ,

280 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed,
French official ciAdlities sixteen years before. In 1767, after
Ms examination by the House of Commons on the subject of
the Stamp Act, the French Minister Plenipotentiary in London,
M. Durand, called upon Mm. " M. Durand," writes Franklin
to his son, "is extremely curious to inform himself on the affairs
of America : pretends to have a great esteem for me ; invited
me to dine with him, was very inquisitive, makes me visits. I
fancy that intriguing nation would like very much to meddle
on occasion, and blow up the coals between Britain and her
colonies ; but I hope we shall give them no opportunity."
The certainty that, had the American connection Avith
Great Britain survived the Stamp and Tea Duty Acts, it
must have collapsed in wider ruin a little later, produces a
feeling 'of indifference to the personal incidents wMch contri
buted to the actual catastrophe. Otherwise, English readers
of these volumes might be disposed to repine that Franklin
should not have bestowed on the task of reconciling England
and the colonies some of the unfailing bonhomie avMcIi kept
the peace between the United States and France. As, when
the AArar was once begun, every feature in the French national
and political character was interpreted by Mm too kindly,
so all in the English Avere interpreted too harshly. He made
no account of the difficulties inherent in the relations of the
colonies and the mother-country. To Mm there could be no
fault on the former side, because there was nothing not
faulty on the latter. - He hears with delight of the ven
geance of which the " No Popery '' mob was the unconscious
instrument upon Lord Mansfield and Governor Hutcliinson.
" Lord Mansfield's house is burnt. Thus he who approved the
burning of American houses has had fire brought home to
him. He himself Avas horribly scared, and Governor Hutchin
son, it is said, died outright of the fright." He speculates
with pleasure on the possible wreck of the whole British
Empire : " If the English lose their Indian commerce and one
battle at sea, their credit is gone, and their power follows."
He foretells that the war " must end in the ruin of Britain, if
sho does not speedily put an end to it." He believes every

Benjamin Franklin. 281

tale of the " cruel captivity " to Avhich " our brave country
men," " martyrs to the cause of liberty," are subjected, " fed
scantily on bad provisions, without warm lodging, clothes, or
fire." He denounces the war " on the part of England as, of
all the wars in my time, the Avickedest, having no cause but
malice against liberty, and the jealousy of commerce." He
despairs of seeing its end because, he Avrites to an Englishman,
"your thirsty nation has not drunk enough of our blood."
EA^ery Englishman is held by him guilty of complicity.
But he attached especial guilt to politicians. He had written
while fresh from England, in 1775, to Ms old friend, William
Strahan, the King's printer : " Mr. Strahan, you are a Member
of Parhament, and one of that majority which has doomed my
country to destruction. You have begun to burn our homes
and murder our people. Look at your hands; they are
stained with the blood of your relations. You and I Avere
long friends; you are now my enemy, and I am yours."
Guilty above other Members of Parliament Avere, in his eyes,
the King's Ministers. "I never think," he writes to Mr.
James Hutton, in 1778, "of your present Ministers and their
abettors but with the image strongly painted in my view of
their hands, red, wet, and dripping with the blood of my
countrymen, friends, and relations." Upon King George him
self, once his admired mediator between a despotic Parlia
ment and oppressed colonies, he pours out all the vials of his
wrath. He charges upon the King the destruction, "in a
continued course of bloody Avars, of near one hundred thou
sand human creatures." To Franklin the King must account
for two thousand scalps torn from defenceless farmers, their
wives, and children, by the savages he hired. To Franklin the
royal wickednesses are the best evidence of immortality. " The
more I see the impossibility, from the number and extent of
his crimes, of giving eqmvalent punishment in this hfe, the
more I am convinced of a future state in Avhich all that here
appears to be wrong shall be set right."
The disposition in Franklin to misjudge England im
presses readers of his correspondence the more that he was by

282 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
theory and practice generally indulgent to principles and
conduct differing from his own. So ostentatiously violent are
his outbursts of anger at the .English King, Ministers, and
nation, and, Avith this exception, so universally philanthropic
and moderate are Franklin's general sentiments and language,
that it is sometimes hard to smother a suspicion that the
harshness against Ms former fellow-subjects and Sovereign
was a species of affectation. A more probable hypothesis
avouM be that it was nature's revenge for the regular and
continued repression to which from early manhood he had
subjected Ms natural disposition. From the training Ms
Autobiography shows Mm to have undergone, we can infer
something of his original temper. In that unique work, now
fOr the first time, through Mr. Bigelow's care, printed as
Franklin wrote it, and with the addition of the last few pages
which had never before been published, Franklin alludes to
Ms native impetuosity, and to tiie means he took to correct
it. When young, he was, he says,, of a " disputatious turn,"
a very bad habit, he remarks, into which ," persons of good
sense seldom fall, except lawyers, university men, and men
of all sorts that have been bred at Edinburgh." Noticing
that "disputing, contradicting, and confuting people are
generally unfortunate in their affairs," he exchanged the
habit, after reading Xenophon's 'Memorabilia,' for the
Socratic method. "I dropt my abrupt, contradiction and
argumentation, and put on the humble inqmrer and doubter."
He became so expert a master of dialectics, that a conti\>
versial printer with whom he worked at Philadelphia would
at last " hardly answer me the most common question Avith-
out asking first, ' What do you intend to infer from that ? ' "
As that very irritating substitute for dpgmatism proved not
more likely to make friends than Ms former practice, he set
Mmself to curtail it. He retained of the Socratic method
" only the habit of expressing himself in terms of modest
diffidence." " I never use," he writes, "when I advance, any
thing that may possibly be disputed, tjhe words ' certainly,'
' undoubtedly,' or any others that give the air of positiveness

Benjamin Franklin. 283
to an opinion', but rather say, 'I conceive or apprehend a
thing to be so and so,' or ' It is so if I am not mistaken.' "
When he set up his "club of Mutual improvement," the
Junt$, the rules drawn up by Mm Avere framed on the same
principle. ''Everything Avas studied which might prevent
our disgusting each other." " To prevent Warmth, all expres
sions of positiveness in opimons, or direct contradiction, were
after some time made contraband, and prohibited under small
pecuniary penalties." Restraint at' the meetings Of the Junto
may be responsible in part for the freedom with which, when
patriotism seemed to license him, the unlucky Lord Hills
borough is characterised as a compound of " conceit, wrong-
headedness, obstinacy, passion, and insincerity." If King
' George once "the A^ery best king in the Avorld, 'and the
"most amiable," is condemned to Tophet for hot' -letting the
American colonies gO free oh their own demand, the warmth
of the denunciation may only have been compensation for
the careful vetieer of calmness upOn a nature apparently by
no means devoid of passiOn and excitability.
Franklin had brought himself to regard varieties of doctrine
and opinion as not WOrth the friction Of loss of temper, with
the one exception of the question of national liberty and inde
pendence. That appeared to him on a different level altogether.
On that he esteemed anger lawful and virtuous, and he seeifas
to have found an ocicasionarfit of temper by no meaUs disa
greeable. He could bear vituperation with the stoicism of
a tortured Indian, and then turn and wither up an assailant
'with lightning flash and fire. ; But the extraordinary feature
both in his tolerance and in his intolerance is that no one can
ever suppose his indignation Was not as much under his
command as his patience. His Autobiography and Correspon
dence are of high value as contributing to the Mstory of a
" great political and historical epoch. They possess as much
value of a different sort, as offering together the most marvellous
representation of a formed and built-up character to be found
in the Whole of the records of pyschology. There was the raw,
original Franklin, who might have developed in this or that

284 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
direction ; and there was a very different creature, the actual
Franklin, as Philadelphia, London, and Paris knew him. The
rough material had been hewn and carved and polished into the
finished moralist, statesman, diplomatist, fabulist, and general
Avorker in human wit, by a third self, a moral censor avIio was
continually surveying and criticising the new fabric as it grew.
Franklin Avas at an early period dogmatic. As we have
seen, he discovered that was an inconvenient character in
which to make the pilgrimage of life. He corrected it at first
by enquiring into the foundations of the dogmas of others,
instead of propounding dogmas himself. People liked no-
better to be obliged to render an account of their own beliefs
than to have another person's forced upon them ; so, Ms inner
monitor accommodated matters by engrafting a habit of sug
gesting an opinion. Whoever chose were left at liberty to sup
pose they had elaborated it out of their own heads. There
was restlessly free blood in the veins of the Franklins. His
father, Josiah, had quitted Ecton, in Northamptonsliire, for
Boston in 1682, for the sake of liberty of worship. He had
a hbrary of " books of dispute about religion," and Franklin
when a mere boy read them out of a mere natural " bookish-
ness." Later, when he was about fifteen, " some books
against Deism fell into my hands ; they were said to be the
substance of sermons preached at Boyle's Lectures. It
happened that they wrought an effect upon me quite contrary
to what was intended by them ; for the arguments of the
Deists, Avhich were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much
stronger than the refutations ; in short, I became a thorough
Deist." There worked the natural Franklin. But he argued
from Ms new point of view to such effect as to convert his
friends, and several of them ended by defrauding him. Con
sequently Ms monitor " began to suspect that the doctrine,
though it might be true, was not very useful." Deism was put
out at the door, and " trust, sincerity, and integrity," together
with an apparently very sincere faith in Providence, were
introduced instead. He accepted even Revelation, to such an
extent at any rate, as to assume that, though certain actions

Benjamin Franklin. 285
might not be bad because they Avere forbidden by it, or good
because it commanded them, yet probably those actions might
be forbidden because they were bad for us, or commanded
because they Avere beneficial to us." A man's belief is
commonly part of himself, the growth of his own nature.
Frankhn ceased to be a rationalist because his inner
monitor had examined the reasons for and against, and
arrived at the conclusion that it was for his general advan
tage, comfort, respectability, and internal satisfaction to be
unenthusiastically religious.
His own devotions he performed at home, but he had so
good an opinion of the utility of pubhc services that he
persuaded the Federal Convention to open its sittings with
prayer. Of the advantages of a regular liturgy he Avas
equally convinced. To popularise the Prayer Book he helped
the reformed Lord le Despencer, once the friend of Wilkes
and " Abbot " of Medmenham, in abridging it. For his share
he took the Catechism and the Psalms. This edifying work
was published by a bookseller in St. Paul's Churchyard in
1773. Franklin's heart, however, was at all times more
susceptible of charitable than of theological emotions. Writ
ing in 1758 to his sister of an acrostic on her name, in which
faith was described as occupying the Christian's ground floor,
hope the first floor, and charity the garret, he bids her " Get
as fast as you can into the garret, for in truth the best room in
the house is charity. For my part, I Avish the house was
turned upside down ; it is so difficult, when one is fat, to go
upstairs." Religion moved him, not dogmatic theology.
Every one knows his remark : " Orthodoxy is my doxy, and
heterodoxy is your doxy." He could not understand why
some American gentlemen desiring to officiate according to
the rites of the Church of England in the United States, whom
the Archbishop of Canterbury refused to ordain unless they
took the oath of allegiance, should not ordain one another. As
they objected, he asked the Papal Nuncio in Paris to direct a
Roman Catholic bishop hi America to ordain them. He was
surprised that the Nuncio insisted they should turn Catholics

286 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
first. Mr. Wliitefield, he mentions in the Autobiography,
" used' sometimes to pray for my conversion, but never had
the satisfaction of believing that his prayers were answered/'
Followers of Whitefield could specify the day and even the
minute of their conversion. Frankhn had his conversion and
its date too. But, as with Ms religious views and practices,
so his morality was done to order. The natural Franklin
Avas ordered by Ms ruling self " to acquire the habitude of all
the virtues." In the year 1728, being then twenty-two, " I
convinced the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral
perfection. I wished to live without committing any fault at
any time. As I knew, or thought I knew, what was tight
and wrong, I did not see why I might not always do the One
and avoid the : other:" He accordingly divided all the virtues
into thirteen, temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality,
industry, smcerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquillity,
chastity, and humility. Humility was not in Ms first draft. He
introduced it, " a Quaker friend having kindly informed me
that I was generally thought proud, being in conversation over
bearing and rather msolent, of wMch he convinced me by men
tioning several instances." He kept a kind of diary, with a page
allotted to each of the thirteen, and "determined to give' la
week's strict attention to each of the virtues successively."
Order he found the hardest of all the virtues' to acquired
" In truth, I found myself incorrigible with respect to order ;
and, now I am grown old, and my memory bad, I "feel Very
sensibly the want of it." Humility was another difficult Vir
tue. But, writes Franklin, " though I cannot boast Of much
success in acquiring the reality of this virtue, I had a good
deal with regard to the appearance of it." " On the whole," he
adds, "though I never arrived at the perfection! had'beenso
ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it/yet I was, by
the endeavour, a better and a happier man than I otherwise
should have been if I had riot attempted it." Mr.'Bigelow
found a marginal note appended to the original MS., from
which his edition of the Autobiography is printed : " Nothing
so likely to make a man's fortune as virtue." The natural

Benjamin Franklin. 287
Franklin Avas guilty, as his own censorious self often re
marked, of various " errata " in youth. In his Autobiography
and in his letters to friends he avows a Avish to have his life
come over again, that he might enjoy " the advantages authors
have in a second edition to correct some faults of the first."
But that probably was only a show of tribute to the virtue
of humihty. His conscience seems to have cleared itself of
all uncomfortable twinges for his youthful misdeeds. Of
misdeeds in after life, except in the matter of an occasional
second bottle and a preference of riding over walking, -he
shows no consciousness. Even the glass too much and the
bodily indolence brought their own sufficient penalty in
visitations of gout, which balanced the account.
Franklin's description of himself, both in the Autobiography
and in his correspondence, resembles a little too much the
portrait of a self-sufficient, self-made, pompous tradesman.
Vice is represented as Avant of practical wisdom, not as some-
tMng to arouse shame or moral indignation. Such a dis
position would have broken up an empire and plunged the
world in war in revenge for London not agreeing with a
PMladelphian alderman's estimate of Ms own merits. . He has
misrepresented himself. The universal testimony of America,
and France, and of a large body of the most upright and
honest Englishmen, pronounced Franklin the brightest, and
least egotistical of companions, the warmest of friends> the
most devoted and disinterested, of. patriots. George the
TMrd's condemnation of his " insidiousness " was testimony
to the frankness and simplicity which the King believed- to
conceal continual intrigues. The King was < similarly -pre
judiced against the French envoy, Rayneval, for having " the
appearance of an inoffensive man of business," since '.'. cunning
will be more dangerous under so specious a garb,'-' Franklin
was simply one of that class of men to whom the capacity
has been given of surveying themselves from the outside as
well as from the inside.,, He desired to judge Mmself as.a
stranger would have judged him. Some men do that towards
the close of their lives, when their careers are become to them

288 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed,
mere matter of history. He did it not in his Autobiography
alone, but in every incident of his busy life. The quality in
one sense is not very rare. But commonly they who are their
OAvn critics lose in courage and decision what they gain by
appraising themselves at their proper value. They escape the
danger of exaggerating their real merits, and they succumb to
the evil of frightening themselves Avith their own shadoAvs.
Self-consciousness and timidity chvarf in them all vigour of
growth. The happy peculiarity of Franklin's character was
that it remained buoyant and independent in spite of the
sense that at the end of each day it- was sure to be called
up to render an account of itself. His original self took
advice from Ms educated self, yet never ceased to be natural.
He studied humanity as mirrored in his own disposition.
There he traced the varying strength of motives, and the
mode in wMch they operate. What he saw he was ready
enough to expose to the view of other men. The world at large
was fascinated and charmed by being admitted to the contem
plation of the most masculine and capacious of minds, through
which its owner himself was always ready to act as guide.
The strength and variety of his friendships are among the
most conspicuous features of his career. We know the fact
by Ms correspondence ; and also why it should have been so.
As a lad he Avon predominating influence over more brilliant
acquaintances, like Osborn, the " eminent lawyer " with whom
Franklin "made a serious agreement, Avhich Osborn never
fulfilled," that " the one who happened first to die should, if
possible, pay a friendly visit to the other, and acquaint him
how he found tilings in that separate state." Keith the
Governor of Pennsylvania, Burnet the Governor of New York,
conversed with him, while a journeyman printer, as almost
an equal. Whitefield would not resign the hope of converting
so illustrious a moralist. Lord Kames, a forgotten Scotch
celebrity, Avhose fame once ranked Avith that of Hume and
Gibbon, was his intimate, with Avhom at various times he
" passed weeks of densest happiness." Though politics, and
perhaps the contrast between his measured equability of

Benjamin Franklin. 289

manner and Johnson's strongly accented temperament, kept
them apart, Boswell was proud to be his acquaintance and his
host. Cowper treasured the praises of his poems by " one of
the first philosophers, one of the most eminent literary
characters that the present age can boast of." Chatham
sought his friendship. Fox eagerly claimed him still for a
countryman. Lafayette haunted him, much to the disgust of
the English Peace Commissioners, who thought they could
understand Franklin, but not the French knight-errant.
Mirabeau was the bearer of letters of introduction from him
to America, and encircled his memory Avhen dead with the
halo of his meteoric eloquence. His successor at Paris,
Jefferson, agreed that "no one could replace Dr. Franklin,"
for the reason that no one could excite so much interest as a
man. Washington was proud to be counted among his
friends. He was honoured by all the kings he ever had an
opportunity of meeting, except his OAvn. He Avas loved by
the old lodgMg-house keeper in Craven Street where he lived.
None could have been better company. He could play chess,
and the next moment be AveaA'ing a new web of politics. He
could fathom the secrets of nature, and explain them as if he
were telling a fairy tale. He could make a real fairy tale the
vehicle for a moral lesson, and hide a political sarcasm in a
mock proclamation by the great Frederick. If the company
loved its wine, he could drink as stoutly as Dr. Jolinson. He
had no fear of the gout before his eyes when fair ladies filled
the glass, and wits Avere hanging upon his lips.
He enjoyed a large share of happiness in life, and was
grateful for it. He himself has written : " The felicity of my
life, when I reflected on it, has induced me sometimes to say
that, were it offered to my choice, I should have no objection
to a repetition of the same life from its beginning." At the
age of twenty-one, he nearly died of pleurisy. " I was," he
says, " rather disappointed when I found myself recovering,
regretting in some degree that I must noAV, some time or
other, have all that disagreeable work to do over again." As
hfe proceeded he found enough of Avhat was agreeable in it

290 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
to make up for the vexation of its finiteness. At the age of
sixty-three, he could say : " Take one thing Avith another, and
the world is a pretty good sort of world." He would have
been content to go on enduring its vicissitudes: "Though
living on in one's children is a good thing, I cannot but fancy
it might be better to continue living ourselves at the same
time." In one way old age itself, which otherwise he would
not object to have cured in himself along with other diseases,
had its advantages. , "As I grow old I grow less concerned
about censure." ¦ , As he grewold, he did not grow less willing
to continue that exertion of the energies which to him meant
happmess. At the age of seventy he accepted the dangerous
and delicate' mission to France. "I am," he told the Con--
gress, "but ia fag-end; you may have me for what you
please." At seventy-nine he still found enjoyment in -the
management of affairs. Two years later, at. the age of eighty-
one, his legislative inventiveness was of the greatest benefit
to the Convention, which met in 1787 to frame the defini
tive Constitution.- Though opposed personally to the system
of two legislative Houses, he made the project practicable by
his device that alb the States should be represented equally
in the Upper House, and according to population in the Lower
House. If he sighed over his toils at- seventy-nine, it was a
sigh of satisfaction at the prospect of being "harnessed in 'the
country's service for another year " as President of /Pennsyl
vania. My countrymen, he wrote with manifest pleasure to a
friend, " engrossed the prime of my life! They have eaten my
flesh, and seem resolved noAv to pick my bones." At the age
of eighty-tirree he still composed poetry, not very good, but
not worse perhaps than, that he was in the habit of writing
sixty years before. Attacked simultaneously, by gout, the
stone, and old age, he comforted Mmself that " OMy three
incurable diseases had fallen to his share, and that these < had
not deprived him at the age of eighty-one of his natuial cheer
fulness, his delight in books, and enjoyment of social conver
sation." If obliged, by his three assailants to anticipate death,
he solaced himself by thoughts of a, term of higher activity.

Benjamin Franklin. 291

and .therefore enjoyment, m another stage of existence. He
began to doubt whether the budding, his body, did not need
so many repairs that, in a little time the < oAvner would " find
it cheaper to pull it down and build a new one." He avowed
"a. growing curiosity to be acquainted with some other
world," and longed, " free from bodily embarrassments, to
roam through some, of the systems Herschel has explored,
conducted by oldcompaMons already acquainted Avith them."
His. only hesitation at, the age of, eighty-tAvo about dying is
Ayhether it were not a pity to quit this particular .universe at
a, .time of extraordinary "improvements in philosophy, morals,
politics, .and, even the conveniences of common living, and the
invention and acquisition of new and useful utensils andmstru-
nients." He whispers a wish that the. final advance had been
made in the, particular art of physic, that," we might be able to
avoM diseases and live as long as the. patriarchs in Genesis ;
to which I suppose, we should have little objection." It was
almost, ^as, well that, though in 1788 he had heard rumours
of John Fitch's." boat moved by a steam , engine rowing itself
agamst tidein our. river," and though he, appeared to think the
construction might be so simplified and improved as to become
generally useful," he could not foresee the full application
of the principle. It would have been too tantalizing to .know
hewas leaving life on the eve of such a revolution. , , ,
,.. The ..secret of , his happiness Avas his power of doing what
ever.. Avas his work for the moment with all his might. He
could enjoy the pleasures of life as heartily as he per
formed its toils.. Both were pleasures, if only one kind bore
the .name. .Every faculty of Ms. nature was permitted, and
even .commanded, to seek, in its turn occasions for exercise.
His baddy. senses were encouraged to gratify themselves as
weh as the mental. For a sage Franklin seems to have liked
¦good- eating and drinking, perhaps even a very little too
much. As a boy he .was trained to . be " quite indifferent
srhat kind of food was set before me, and so unobservant of
it that to,, tMs day, if, I, am. asked, I, can scarce tell a feAv
hours, after dinner what I dined upon." He took a httle

292 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
later on to a vegetable diet, and used the money he saved to
buy books. All the world knows Iioav at Watts's printing-
house, in Queen Street, Franklin drank water-gruel to Ms
companions' beer, and outworked them all on the diet. As
he became prosperous he acquired a decorous taste for less
hermit-like fare. He was fond of madeira. He confesses "for
one that if I could find in any Italian travels a receipt for
making Parmesan cheese, it would give me more satisfaction
than a transcript of any inscription from any old stone struc
ture." Parmesan had still some savour of Arcadia. But in
another letter from Craven Street he remarks : " Just come
home from a venison feast, where I have drunk more than a
phdosopher ought." Already at the age, for him very juvenile,
of sixty-two, he was becoming stout. He observes : " Men of
my bulk often fail suddenly." Paris was not likely to teach
him plain living ; parties accompanied by innumerable glasses
of champagne in Ms honour must have been so many chal
lenges to gout. At seventy-eight he writes to Strahan, whom
he had taken back into friendship, a letter of " cMt-chat be
tween ourselves over the second bottle." The next letter in
these volumes, addressed to Henry Laurens, begins signifi
cantly : " I write this in great pain from the gout in both feet."
His talk of the bottle perhaps savours a little of humorous
exaggeration. Certainly, in most points he would have con
tented Plato himself by his "temperance" and "justice" in
respecting the independence both of Ms neighbours and of
the various constituents of his own nature. It was this
admirable orderliness of his organisation wMch leaves on
those who only read what he wrote an impression of cold
ness and absence of generous fervour which his contempo
raries did not feel. Franklin, as English politicians knew
only too well, could be impassioned and fiery. There are
signs in abundance that his heart could be touched as
readily and more genially by private griefs and joys. If
his acquaintances included a cross-grained aunt and her
youthful niece, he could appreciate the tediousness of the
companionship for the girl, yet compassionate even more the

Benjamin Franklin. 293

infirmities of body and temper of the poor old woman.
" Invent," he writes to his younger friend, " amusements for
her ; be pleased Avhen she accepts of them, and patient when
she perhaps peevishly rejects them." He lifts up his power
ful voice in an appeal for mercy to the " numbers of little
innocents who suffer and perish " from its being unfashion
able in London, and yet more in Paris, for mothers to nurse
their children. In the midst of the turmoil over the Stamp
Act, he is anxious in London for news of his young grandson
in Pennsylvania : " You have so used me," he writes to his
Avife, " to have something pretty about the boy, that I am
a little disappointed in finding nothing more of him. Pray
give in your next, as usual, a little more of his history."
We are afraid his admirers must admit that he too easily
resigned himself to accept his wife's dread of the sea as a
sufficient excuse for their separation during many years. But
he thought she Avas happy with her walnut-trees and grand
son ; and he soothes the pangs of remoteness compelled by
" duty to my country," by choosing London novelties for her,
" a crimson satin cloak, the newest fashion," and a gown of
flowered tissue, sixteen yards, cost nine guineas ; I think it a
great beauty." While the Stamp Act was still in force he
would not violate the colonial self-denying ordinance by
sendmg Mrs. Franklin presents of British goods. The
moment it Avas repealed, in 1766, he despatches " a fine piece
of Pompadour satin, fourteen yards, cost eleven shillings a
yard." For his wife's comfort, so long as she remained at
Philadelphia, he is ready even to sacrifice the completeness
of Ms electrical apparatus. " If the ringing of the bells
connected Avith the iron rod frightens you, tie a piece of wire
from one bell to the other." I am, however, bound to say
that he adds : " Though I think it best the bells should be at
liberty to ring, that you may know when they are electrified ;
and when you are afraid, you may keep at a distance."
His purse was always open to a tale of distress. He had
an ingenious method of circulating alms, by charging it on
the honour of the recipient to pass on the gift to another
z

294 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
deserving object, if he should have the means of making pay
ment. He sends five louis d'or to an English clergyman, Avho
had been taken by a French privateer, or perhaps by Paul
Jones, and Avas in prison in Paris. " Some time or other,"
Franklin tells him, " you may have an opportunity of assisting
with an equal sum a stranger wdio has equal need of it. If
so, by that means you wdl discharge any obligation you may
suppose yourself under to me. Enjoin Mm to do the same.
Let kind offices go round." To an American in distress he
gives ten louis, bidding Mm follow the same course : " I hope
it may thus go through many hands before it meets with a
knave that will stop its progress. This is a trick of mine for
doing a deal of good with a httle money." He adopted the
same system with the salary he received, on quitting his
French mission, as President of Pennsylvania. He held that
" in a democratical State there ought to be no offices of
profit." An envoy might receive a salary, he appeared to
tliink ; and an American Postmaster-General might for
seventeen years receive the salary in London, and perform
its duties by deputy in America. But he drew the hne
short of Presidents of Assemblies and States. Accord
ingly, he bequeathed Ms Presidential salary and its accumu
lations on trust, among other things, for lOans to young
artisans. These loans, unlike Franklin's louis d'or, were to
be repaid Avith interest ; but the principle was the same. A
limited sum was to circulate inimitably in charity from hand
to hand. The scheme was unsuccessful, partly from the want
of proper objects, and partly from the fadure of the legacy to
reahse the amount it should, by Frankhn's estimate of the
profits of compound interest, have produced. By the end of
two hundred years, two thousand pounds, he computed, should
yield eight millions one hundred and twenty-two thousand
pounds sterling. As in the eighty-two years from 1790
to 1872 the two thousand produced only a httle over ten
thousand, that magnificent arithmetical vision would seem
to have had some flaw in it. However, the intention was
equally benevolent, though the trust in compound interest

Benjamin Franklin. 295
proved as much a broken reed in Franklin's benevolent hands
as in the exceedingly selfish ones of Mr. Thellusson.
His pen was as ready as his purse in the service of all
human kindliness. And Avhat a pen it Avas ! It could dis
course on metaphysics so lucidly as to make the finest
subtleties seem plain moralising. It could tear a sophism to
pieces by a query. It could make a simple tale read like a
pMlosophical argument. He could be grave and he could be
gay in a breath. On a ' Craven Street Gazette,' composed
to amuse an old lodging-house keeper away from home, and
probably fearful that the world, or the Strand, would be out
of joint before her return from Rochester, he could spend as
much Avit and humour as on a State paper designed to fire
America and sting England. In another tone he translates
into human language, for the amusement of a Court lady, the
reflections, in the garden of her house, of a grey-headed
ephemera, full seven hours old, on the vanity of all things.
His ' Petition of the Left Hand ' might have been composed
by Addison. In it the left hand bewails the partiality which
educates the right hand exclusively. Some of Franklin's
fables and tales have been so absorbed into the thought of
the world that their source is absolutely forgotten. In this
manner we may account for a plagiarism not long since by
an eminent sanitary authority of Franklin's 'Economical
Project for Diminishing the Cost of Light.' The economy
consists in rising at six o'clock instead of nine or ten. A
Avakeful Parisian is represented as having discovered to Ms
great astonishment that the sun actually began to shine at
that hour. He calculated the saving to Paris in candle-light,
should the city take advantage of the fact, at ninety-six
nullion francs. But the philosophers of the town denied the
fact. They proved by common notoriety that there could
have been no light abroad at six o'clock, and therefore none
could have entered from without. Their explanation was that
the "windows, being accidentally left open, instead of letting in
the light, had only served to let out the darkness." No one
who listened to the recent reproduction of this bright little

296 Some Verdicts of History Revieived.
satire appears to have doubted the re-discoverer's originality.
That is a tribute to its modern air. But, in truth, ideas such
as Franklin's never become superannuated. Few who use
the expression, " to pay dear for one's whistle," know that
the dear whistle was a purchase made by Franklin, when
seven years old, with a pocketful of pence. Franklin's store
Avas too abundant for him to mind, though some of his
fame went astray. "You knoAV," he tells his daughter,
" everything makes me recollect some story." It was not
recollection so much as fancy. His fancy clothed every idea
in circumstances. When the illustration had served its turn,
he was indifferent what became of it. If he cared at all, it
Avas that, Avhen borrowed by a newspaper or magazine, it
should have its proper allowance of long-tailed s's and italics,
and capitals to the substantives. With his old printer's
prejudices, he could not understand the modern "fondness
for an even and uniform appearance of characters in the line."
He Avas less delighted at the complimentary censure by Lord
Mansfield of his Avitty and bitter 'Edict of the King of
Prussia ' when reprinted in the Chronicle, than indignant
that the Chronicle should have "stripped it of all the
capitals and italics that intimate the allusions and mark the
emphasis of Avritten discourses, to bring them as near as
possible to those spoken." He thought such appeals to the
eye help to raise a Avriter to the level of a speaker, who has
at his command both accent and gesture to point his periods.
Franklin did injustice to himself when he fancied he wanted
such poor mechanical aids. His English had been learnt
from The Pilgrim's Progress and the Spectator. It had the
force of Bunyan Avithout his ruggedness. It had much of
the serene light of Addison, with more raciness and tenfold
the vigour. It sparkled with sarcasms as cutting as Voltaire's,
but all sweetened with humanity.
If David Hume might condemn here and there a sprink
ling of such words as " pejorate," it was not from poverty but
from exuberance of diction that Franklin exposed Ms vocabu
lary to criticism. Many of his inventions, or adaptations,

Benjamin Franklin. 297

such as " colonise," have long been stamped as current
English. But he did not covet the fame of an inventor,
whether in language, in morals, or in politics. In language
he was even a declared foe to change. Writing to Noah
Webster, the lexicographer, in 1789,he protests against the neAv
verbs, " notice," " advocate," and " progress." He had as little
ambition to be a classic as to be an innovator in English. He
wrote because he had something at the moment to say, with a
view to procuring that something should at the moment be
done. In religion he confessed to a certain liking for heretics,
all of whom, so far as he had acquaintance with the class, he
declared were A'irtuous men. What, hoAvever, he liked Avas
not their heresy so much as the spirit of self-sacrifice Avhich
led them to brave persecution. As a moralist he did not
aspire to alter the materials with Avhich he had to deal. He
Avas satisfied that men should make something more of their
life, as their life Avas, without expecting to transform them
into angels. When he proposed to himself moral perfection,
he was aiming at nothing superhuman. He pared his defini
tions of the virtues he had resolved to practise doAvn to the
moderate level to wMch he felt himself not unequal. If a
defect did not appear to be of a nature necessarily to injure
a man or his neighbours, he was not prepared to banish
it as a vice. Humility had forced its wray in among his
ostensible virtues. But humility in his sense is not incom
patible with a certain intermixture of vanity. " Most people,"
he writes, " dislike vanity in others, AAdiatever share they have
of it themselves ; but I give it fair quarter wherever I meet
with it, being persuaded that it is often productive of good
to the possessor and to others that are within his sphere of
action ; and therefore in many cases it would not be
altogether absurd if a man were to thank God for his
vanity among the other comforts of life." His model of
hfe was adapted rigidly to the ordinary circumstances of
humanity. If men seemed to be substantially the better
off for the ownership of a quality, Franklin inserted that
quality among his virtues. He was ahvays more ready to
admit a neAv candidate to his Olympus than to risk rejecting

298 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.

an addition to the sum of human happiness. He himself
belieAred in a ProAudence, and apparently in "a particular
Providence;" he was not disposed to deny to others the right
to disbelieve. When, however, Thomas Paine, whose work
on Common Sense he had AA^armly patronised, submitted to
him a manuscript treatise against "a particular Providence,"
he earnestly dissuaded its publication. He urged not only the
odium it would bring upon the author, but the danger of with
drawing from the weak, the ignorant, the inexperienced, and
the inconsiderate, the support which religion affords to virtue.
His ideas on the origin of evil wrere probably not very com
pletely developed. But he thought a Devil very useful for the
punishment of criminal wretches who cheated starving orphans
of the alms entrusted for their relief. Whatever quality could
prove by results that it had contributed to render hfe more
harmonious he was glad to enshrine in his Pantheon, as Romans
borrowed foreign gods. His ideal, in morals, in religion,
and even in politics, was entirely inductive. He examined
life and Mstory to see in Avhat circumstances of belief, educa
tion, and government men had enjoyed happiness. The same
circumstances might not haAre suited his character; but
he was content not to disturb what appeared to suit others.
One province of his nature there was in which, so far as Ave
are permitted to penetrate it, he was not always weighing the
dangers of zeal to the evenness of the balance he was con
stantly engaged in adjusting. In natural science he was an
enthusiast ; but that was a matter for himself and not for the
outside world. He just mentions in his Autobiography the fact
of his electrical experiments, and " the rise and progress of my
philosopMcal reputation," between 1746 and 1753, when the
Royal Society bestowed its medal. His Autobiography con
tains nothing more on the subject, and his correspondence very
httle. When his views were resisted, he was content to leave
them to the judgment of posterity. He writes to an admirer
in 1777 : "I have never entered into any controversy in defence
of my philosophical opinions. If they are right, truth and ex
perience wdl support them ; if wrong, they ought to be refuted
and rejected." He had been told King George had exchanged

Benjamin Franklin. 299
the rebel Franklin's favourite pointed ' conductors for blunt
ones. " If I had a wish about it," remarks Frankhn, " it would
be that he had rejected conductors altogether as ineffectual."
Physical science was too grand a tiring for him to care to sod it
Avith controversy. He would gaily dispute upon metaphysics,
morals, and politics ; upon the philosophy of nature never.
Though he loved riches reasonably, he would not mix up so
sublunary an application of science even as a stove with money.
TMs typical American Avas so un-American in one respect as
to set his face against monopolies in inventions. His love of
Ms science itself he limited by the sense of other duties. He
vigorously deprecates a friend's design to try a balloon journey
across the Channel in 1785 as a risk unfair to his famdy.
Except in science, so far as direct personal influence over
posterity is concerned, Franklin did not go the Avay to secure it.
" Poor Richard" was a great poAver in his own time, just because
the object of Richard's mission was not very sublime. For
the making of a hero and a leader in the ages to come an
admixture of divinity is needed. In Franklin's teaching there
was nothmg but what had been found in human life as it was.
The matter of the teaching Avas after all ignoble. The world
tired of it when it had come to perceive that the ideal pro
pounded was nothing but ordinary prosaic humamty with
something pruned off it. While the teacher survived there
were a strength and freshness about Ms doctrines which
came from Mmself, and kept them wholesome and pure.
Whatever they might be the man was not ignoble. Somewhat
earthy he may have been ; he was great in Mmself ; he Avas
greater in his power over Mmself. His fame was common to
two continents, and vital to Ms own. If George Washington
more than any one man saved America from bemg overrun
by German mercenaries, and American hberties from being
dragged in. the mire by the owners of pocket British boroughs,
it was Frankhn more than any one man who had made
Americans too self-respecting to consent to be slaves ; it was
Franklin who took the new-born Republic by the hand and
seated it among the nations.

300 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed,

WILLIAM COBBETT.

William Cobbett and Benjamin Franklin agreed in the
enjoyment of absolute independence of judgment and self-
reliance. But Franklin canonised humility as a virtue, though
in an appendix to his calendar, and sanctified rather out of
due time. In Cobbett's creed, humility, modesty, or by what
other name it might choose to be known, was nothing but a con
temptible meanness. In the dusty volumes of the Political
Register their extraordinary editor cari be most accurately
studied ; and their foremost and most obtrusive characteristic
is his amazing egotism. Not a measure was debated in
Parliament, not a treaty was negotiated by the Foreign
Office, but Cobbett claimed to assist as the self-appointed
representative of English popular rights. He seated himself
like a Roman tribune by the senate doors, and protested if
he could not veto. This egotism is so candid that it never
seduces Mm to colour facts in his own defence or glorification.
It is so restless, intrusive, and universal that a student of his
career is led by him into the inmost recesses of national
pohcy and individual character. His criticisms of acts and
motives are often as far as possible from being equitable or
right. Any one who obediently followed the Register's
estimates of public transactions and pubhc men would soon
find his political principles in a whirl. Cobbett does not
solve political problems ; far from it ; but Ms blunders are
more instructive than the wisest answers. If he does not
bring down his birds, he is, at any rate, an incomparable
pointer. Over all the long strife which issued in the Act of
1832 he interposes Ms own passionate personality. His faith

William Cobbett. 301

in his exclusive genius for putting the world right is like
quicksilver for its poAver of interfering with everything, and
separating into the several elements Avhatever it touches. A
first introduction to the hundred volumes of Peter Porcupine
and the Weekly Political Register may even inoculate the
student with the Avriter's own belief that in an age of blood
thirsty Jacobins, overreaching Americans, and jobbing or
stohd Englishmen, William Cobbett was the one incorruptibly
Avise and fearlessly benevolent politician. That sentiment
Avill be evanescent. When, howeA'er, the hero has ceased to
be one to his reader, the time spent in studying Mm will yet
not seem to have been lost. The curiosity aroused by the
idiosyncrasies- of an individual character will be not un
willingly transferred to the social and political enigmas avMcIi
a perfect self-confidence convinced Cobbett that he alone had
the wit and the integrity to guess.
Cobbett had, like Franklin, the self-made man's fondness
for describing the steps of his rise, and, like Franklin, a born
writer's art of narration. In every pamphlet he penned there
are touches of the most vivid autobiography. His origin and
early life he related to prove to American controversialists
that, if he attacked democracy, it Avas from no prejudices of
aristocratic blood or associations. It is delightful to think of
Cobbett finding it necessary to demonstrate that he Avas not
reared a gentleman. His grandfather had Avorked for one
employer from the day of his marriage to that of Ms death,
upwards of forty years. His father Avas a Farnham farmer,
who had raised himself from the grade of a clay labourer.
He had learned some mathematics and land-surveying.
What he knew he taught his children. Still more of their
schooling Avas in the fields. Cobbett declared he never
remembered the time Avhen he did not earn his living. His
father used to boast that his four boys, from fifteen years of
age downwards, did as much work as any three men in
Farnham parish.
When the supply of farm employment failed, William
Cobbett worked in the Bishop of Winchester's gardens at

302 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
Farnham Castle. That led to an experience which gave Ms
tastes a strong anticipatory bent towards controversial lite
rature. A gardener fresh from Kew Gardens, by his account
of their horticultural splendours, fired the imagination of the
lad of eleven. Next morning, without a word, he started for
KeAV with sixpence halfpenny for his fortune. Twopence
spent on bread and cheese, a penny on small beer, and a half
penny lost, brought him to Richmond with threepence in his
pocket for supper and lodging. His eyes suddenly fell on a
little volume in a bookseller's window, ' Tale of a Tub,' price
threepence. He spent his board and lodging on the book
with the odd title. So impatient was he that he sat down by
the side of a haystack and began to read. A boy could not
understand it all : but perhaps the mystery was not the less
suggestive. He said himself in after years : " It produced
Avhat I have always considered a birth of intellect." He read
on till it was dark, and then slept in the hay. In the
morning he resumed his walk to Kew, where the gardener, a
Scotchman, gave Mm work for some weeks or months. The
' Tale of a Tub,' became a sort of Bible to him. His little
copy perished with a box which fell overboard in the Bay of
Fundy. " The loss," he wrote, " gave me greater pain than I
have ever felt at losing thousands of pounds." This was-
Cobbett's introduction to something beyond a vdlage school
boy's idea of literature. His first political views came from
his father. His father was a vehement opponent of Lord
North's miscMevous policy. Cobbett remembered how,
when a hop factor offered to read an account in the Gazette
of a British victory, Ms father and a dozen other farmers
Avent and supped in a different room, where they toasted
Washington. All this, with much more Avhich is equally mteresting, is-
to be found in the autobiographical sketch, ' The Life and
Adventures of Peter Porcupine,' printed by Cobbett in
America. The public should be grateful to Mr. Edward
Smith for popularising by its insertion in Ms 'William
Cobbett : a Biography,' which was published in 1878, a nar-

William Cobbett. 303

rative as picturesque as was ever written. A debt is due to
Mr. Smith generally for much information carefully and zeal
ously collected. The obligation would have been greater had
the biographer been less conjectural in Ms inferences, had he-
quoted more, and moralised less. Thus tempestuously does
he pass to the incident Avhich drove Cobbett from the quiet
hop gardens of Farnham into his restless noisy career : " A
head and shoulders above the average of his mates, Ms mind
is likeAvise, on a higher hwel. Not so high, but as yet to be
infinitely dark as to any purpose: a healthy spirit in a
healthy body, there stood, working as hard and as cheerily as
ever ; but ready for the first impulse — which impulse came,,
in no uncommon Avay ; in no more romantic style than that
Avhich sets a ball rolhng, upon the impact of the foot." A
casual reader might suppose that Cobbett had become involved
in some vdlage brawl, and been "in unromantic style" kicked
by a rival. What happened was, that the young farmer,
now tAventy, while visiting a relative at Portsmouth, saw
the British fleet at anchor, and was forthwith inflamed with
an Enghsh lad's passion for maritime adventures. He was
fortunate m applying to a captain who, taken by something
in his manner, refused, out of sheer pity, to let him sacrifice
Mmself to such a lot as a common sailor's then was. He
returned to the plough perforce ; as he Mmself Avrote after
wards, he was " spodt for a farmer." The next year, on a
sudden impulse, he mounted a passing stage-coach, and was
set down at Ludgate Hill with half-a-croAvn in his pocket.
But he had that in Mm Avhich always made friends as well as
foes. A fellow-passenger, a hop merchant who kneAV his
father, interested himself in his fortunes, and procured Mm a
place as a lawyer's copying clerk in Gray's Inn. This was
not qmte the career he had aspired to when he sighed after a
voyage in a three-decker. His regular working hours were
from five in the morning till eight or nine at night at earliest.
An old laundress was his substitute for society; and his
single recreation a Sunday walk in St. James's Park. The
life was intolerable for one bred up in the pure air of the

304 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
South downs. He gasped after any opening for escape, and
to enlist was the outlet which offered itself. He thought
he had taken the King's sMlling for the Marines ; in fact, he
found himself a recruit of the 54th Regiment of the Line
then serving in NoAra Scotia.
The life of a private soldier might not at first sight appear
favourable to intellectual development. Cobbett it suited
admirably. There was almost starvation, but there was
abundant leisure. He had a devouring curiosity, which the
plough first, and then a copying clerkship, had quenched in
sheer fatigue. Now he became a student, and employed his
year at the Chatham depot in reading through, " more than
once," the miscellaneous collection of a neighbouring lending
library. His training at Gray's Inn recommended him as
copyist to Colonel Debbieg, the commandant of Chatham
garrison. His grammatical knowledge, however, was still im
perfect ; and, in his desire to escape the colonel's criticisms, he
bought Bishop Lowth's grammar. He learnt it by heart, and
avouM repeat the whole whenever he was on guard. There
he was, at all events, in quiet. His reading and writing had
to be done amidst the talking, laughing, singing, whistling,
and brawling of some ten idle soldiers. Downright hunger
Avas an additional hardship. Fourpence was as much as
could be saved for food out of the sixpence a day, after
washing, clothes, hair-powder, and pipeclay. "The whole
week's food was not a bit too much for one day." For pocket-
money there remained twopence a week. One Friday,
Cobbett had managed to economise a halfpenny. He deter
mined to buy a red herring on the Saturday morning : but as
he undressed, he found he had lost his halfpenny. " I buried
my head," he wrote nearly fifty years after, " under the miser
able sheet and rug, and cried like a clrild."
His ability to read and write soon raised him to the rank
of corporal, which brought him an additional twopence a
day. On Ms arrival with this rank in Nova Scotia, the post
of clerk of the regiment was also conferred on him. Accord
ing to his own subsequent account, the whole of the regi-

William Cobbett, 305

mental business, military as Avell as financial, fell within a
year into his hands. " Neither adjutant, paymaster, nor
quartermaster could move an inch without my assistance."
At this period the drill was revolutionised by ' Dundas's
system.' It was ordered from headquarters that the change
should be introduced before the next annual review. This
wonderful corporal effected it, explaining the Avhole matter
in lectures to the officers, including the colonel himself. He
made out for them on large cards little plans of the position
of the regiment, with lists of the Avoids of command they had
to give in the field. Probably a good many corporals would
similarly explain how they virtually commanded their regi
ments; but Cobbett had the literary gift, and could put
the boasts of the barracks in a form Avhich gave them credi
bility. It is sufficient to believe that Cobbett made a smart
soldier, without charging his officers AA'ith gross incapacity.
They saw, at any rate, his merits. After speedy promotion
to the rank of sergeant, he Avas, at the end of little more than
a year from Ms disembarcation at Halifax, appointed ser
geant-major. That brought him into yet closer relations Avith
his officers. They Avere jealous ; and he would, he declares,
have been more than once flogged for his freedom in speaking
of Ms superiors had they not depended upon him for " easing
them all of the trouble of even thinking about their duty."
In the autumn of 1791 the Regiment Avas sent home.
Its sergeant-major might have hoped for a commission;
he had seen enough of soldiering, and had fallen in love. He
had conceived also a scheme which required that he
should be out of the army. He applied for his discharge,
and it was granted with a laudatory testimonial from his
major, the unfortunate Lord Echvard Fitzgerald, to the ser
vices he had rendered to the regiment. His future bride,
Ann Reid, the young daughter of an artilleryman, had
already returned to England, entrusted with her lover's
savings of a hundred and forty or fifty guineas.
The o-rand project Cobbett had conceived as his new intro
duction0 to civil life was nothing less then the prosecution

Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.

of several officers of Ms old regiment for defrauding the men
of their bread, clothes, and fuel, and cheating the revenue
by false musters. His position had enabled him to collect
testimony ; and the War Office agreed to submit the case to
a court-martial. When, however, the trial was at hand, dis
putes arose between Cobbett and the Judge Advocate General
on the manner of conducting the enquiry. Cobbett refused
to proceed with it. On the day the court met no prosecutor
appeared. The charges were read out, and an acquittal re
corded. The Attorney and Solicitor General were consulted
whether Cobbett could be criminally prosecuted. As there
was no evidence of conspiracy with others, their opinion was
that he could not be, but that the officers he had slandered
might bring actions for damages. But by this time Cobbett
Avas in France, where he passed a few months before his final
departure to the United States of America. The affair of
the court-martial is a perplexed one. On such evidence as
has been produced, though the War Office archives might
clear up an obscure question, it seems likely that the sergeant-
major had discovered a mare's nest. Cobbett, at a later
period, ridicules his OAvn bookkeeping. His publishing ac
counts he defies " the devil to unravel." The Jud»e Advocate
probably came to the conclusion that the main offence of
Cobbett's former officers consisted in keeping accounts of much
the same character as those subsequently kept by their accuser.
If Cobbett discovered that the battery he had laboriously
charged against his regimental superiors would not go off, the
shame, and some apprehension of private retaliation, may have
driven him from England. That the War Office had resolved
to procure an acquittal of dishonest officials requires more proof
than the assertion of a man who launched an accusation and
ran away before it was brought home. This is not Mr. Edward
Smith's way of judging Cobbett's acts. The London Chronicle
of March 28, 1792, had explained what certainly looked like
a flight by the suggestion that " some misconduct " Avas the
motive. Mr. Smith thereupon apostrophises the circulators
of such rumours in a tone recalling equally Mr. Carlyle and

William Cobbett. 307

the prophet Jeremiah : ' No such thing at all, paragraph-
monger ! And no such thing at all, ye rapid writers ! You
don't know this man. You don't knoAv hoAV he retires from
the unequal conflict with money, prescription, aristocratic
influence. Let Mm flee from anticipated vengeance; and
see him return one day, himself always incorruptible, with
such a budget, such a quiverful ! '
Cobbett had gone to France to learn French. But the
Revolution was entering into its savage stage; and the
feeling between the Revolutionary Government and England
was growing so exasperated that he prudently took ship for
America. The money he had saved as a sergeant had nearly
evaporated during Ms attendance in London on the affair of
the court-martial. He had to look about for a means of sub
sistence at Philadelphia. Translating French authors for the
bookseller's Avas one resource. He could translate a dollar's
worth while his wife was preparing breakfast, and another
dollar's worth when she and their child were asleep. Another,
and at first Ms principal occupation, Avas giving English lessons
to Frenchmen. His own English education was only half
finished ; and there could be no better training for Ms future
literary career than having to elucidate the peculiarities of his
native language for foreigners. Talleyrand was among the
later arrived French refugees ; and the Prince, Cobbett used to
declare, asked to be received as his pupil. Cobbett, A\dio Avas
known to haAre stigmatised him as an apostate and a hypocrite,
saAV in the request proof that he was a spy in the service of the
French Republican Government. Talleyrand, says Cobbett,
knew English as Avell as himself. The obvious inference, in
Ms judgment, was that the ex-Bishop of Autun wanted to
take a survey of his desk. Certainly Talleyrand's habitual
shrewdness deserted him when he experimented so grossly
on Cobbett's hterary vanity as to enquire whether it were " at
Oxford or at Cambridge he had received his education."
But this Avas after he had become famous enough to
make it worth while for Talleyrand to flatter him. He had
been gradually educating himself in politics as well as in

Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.

composition. His court-martial experiences had turned him
into a Republican in London; a very short residence in
PhdadelpMa changed him into a violent Tory. Mr. Smith
says : " When he soon comes to see all sides of Republicanism,
he reverts to his intrinsic love for the Constitution under
Avhich he was born." Cobbett's peculiar advantage in con
tentious politics was that he never saw " all sides " of
any question. He might see one side at one time and
another at another time ; he could never believe that there
was any side but that at which he was pleased for the
moment to look. Whoever asserted there Avas another aspect
to a topic must be a blind bigot or a Mr. Facing-both-ways.
Dr. Priestley, tired of controversy and Tory mob law, came to
NeAv York in 1794. He was received with enthusiasm,
AAdiich Avas directed as much by jealousy of England as by
admiration for the Birmingham philosopher. Cobbett's spirit
burned within Mm at all this stir about a "philosophi-
theologi-politi-cal empiric." Forthwith he launched forth
' Observations on Priestley's Emigration.' The kind of
logic Cobbett wielded at this time may be inferred from his
indignation that a man who claimed " the right of thinking
for others" would not "permit the people of England to
think for themselves," and to decline his offers to enlighten
their stolidity.
Cobbett's first pamphleteering adventure in Philadelphia
was pecuniarily not very lucrative. Published on the half-
profits system, the ' Observations ' brought him in " the
enormous sum of one shilling and sevenpence halfpenny,
currency of the State of Philadelphia, or about elevenpence
three-farthings sterling, quite entirely clear of all deductions
whatsoever." But he had learned that he could use his pen,
and, profits or no profits, his vocation was manifest. The
Federal against the Democratic policy of the States, Wash
ington and Adams against Jefferson, and British influence
against French, were the chief subjects of his pamphlets.
' A Bone to gnaw for the Democrats ' and ' A Kick for
a Bite ' followed the attack on Priestley. Then Cobbett

William Cobbett. 309

became " Peter Porcupine." He had been for some time
suspicious of the fair dealing of his publisher, Bradford, in
the matter of profits. The Farnham ex-ploughboy was yet
more indignant that a bookseller had presumed to promise
his customers that Peter Porcupine should continue one of
his works, and make it " very interesting" " What ! a book
seller undertake to promise that I should Avrite, and that I
should write to please his customers too ! " He denounced
booksellers as a race of slave-drivers who "have adopted
the birdcatcher's maxim : ' A bird that can sing, and Avon't
sing, ought to be made to sing.' " So on July 11, 1796, he
turned bookseller himself.
The most important part of his stock in trade Avas the
goodwill and copyright of Peter Porcupine's brains. He
opened a shop to sell Ms own tracts. But he meant to carry
on besides the miscellaneous trade of a bookseller. He
determined to make his entrance into business an event in
PMladelphia. Philadelphia contained a large colony of
Irishmen and Frenchmen. All the Irishmen and very many
of the Frenchmen hated Great Britain, and they threw in
their lot with the Democrats who opposed the policy of
Washington as having monarchical and British tendencies.
When Cobbett's shutters Avere taken doAvn for the first time,
Iris Avindows were seen to be filled Avith portraits of kings,
queens, nobles, bishops, and judges. There Avas George III.,
whose portrait had not been exhibited in the States for
twenty years ; there was William Pitt ; above all there were
two tableaux four feet long, labelled " Lord Howe's decisive
Victory over the French Fleet." A paper Avar broke out, and
kept the excitement at fever point for months. He writes
home to his father, wondering what the old man Avill think
to hear that Ms boy's picture is " stuck in the Avindows."
The portraits were not flattering; the glory Avas in being
sufficiently notorious to be caricatured. Gilray 's pictures of
Cobbett, which were, though much more clever, probably not
less coarse than the Philadelphian, were prized in after years
at Botley. Quarter Avas neither given nor asked. He was
2 A

310 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
declared to be a gan-et-scribbler, who did a little occasional
" night business," Ave suppose, as a burglar, " to supply
unavoidable contingencies." He had qmtted England to
saAre his neck, according to one critic. According to an
other he had been publicly flogged while in the army. The
Aurora, a journal of Democratic views, inserted a counterfeit
invitation from Cobbett to Philadelphians to come and receive
ocular demonstration that Ms back showed no marks of
flagellation. Then followed a controversy in the same news
paper betAveen imaginary correspondents, one asserting that
he had seen the scars, another explaining that they were the
scars of a private whipping. Cobbett had studied Swift to
some purpose, and he struck back with equal scurrility and
more point. His opponents could never meet him in fair
pamphleteering combat. They threw mud, and he threw it
back ; but he argued while he reviled.
The ' Scarecrow,' the ' Bone to Gnaw,' and other publica
tions of the sort have no interest now except for persons-
curious in the literature of abuse. The ' Life and Adventures
of Peter Porcupine,' belonging to the same time, has a
permanent autobiographical interest. But Cobbett began to
go deeper into the political controversies of the United
States. When he first took up his abode in the country,
hostility to Great Britain and friendship for France were
axioms of popular American policy. France presumed upon
the benefits her alliance had conferred on the Republic at its
birth, and her dictation was resented. Cobbett was ever
prompt to further, according to his lights, British interests,
by embittering the American sense of the arrogance of
French diplomacy. His monthly Political Censor preached
intermittently on his text, and it was the daily burden of his
later Porcupine's Gazette. Its editor and proprietor always
boasted that its three years' life, 1797-99, Avas a main instru
ment in preventing an offensive alliance between France and
the United States against Great Britain. Cobbett was able to-
produce evidence in after years that the British Government
recognised the advantages it received from his pen. Through

o

William Cobbett. 311

the British Legation it made several offers, which he declined,
to advance his interests.
Americans deserve credit for the fact that, fiercely as
Cobbett assaulted their prejudices, they confined their retorts
to the same weapons of pen and ink. He had professed
apprehensions of the kind of mob violence which drove Dr.
Priestley from Birmingham, wMch, in Dr. Priestley's case,
Cobbett was inclined to justify. Neither he nor his shop
suffered. Not even a stone broke those Avindows full of royal
and noble portraits. Cobbett never admitted a good trait in
an opponent. Far from having the candour to remark on
tMs self-restramt and good police of Philadelphia, Cobbett
probably despised it as a sign of Democratic or French and
Irish cowardice. There was, however, something formidable
in having not the rabble merely, but the local authorities of
Pennsylvania arrayed against him. TMs prospect threatened
him in 1797. CMef Justice M'Kean, a zealous Democrat
and an enemy of everything English, had been elected
Governor. A recent attempt to indict Cobbett for libelling
the Spanish Envoy had failed, notwithstanding the partisan
bias alleged to have been shown by the Chief Justice, Avhose
daughter the Envoy had married. But Cobbett thought it
prudent to withdraw from M'Kean's jurisdiction, and he
moved his bookselling business to New York. Porcupine's
Gazette was at the same time discontinued. There is no
evidence that Cobbett contemplated departure from America
Avhen he migrated from Phdadelphia. One most obvious
cause of that step was the result of an action for libel brought
against him by a Avell-known physician of PMladelphia,
named Benjamin Rush. Cobbett had ridiculed him as a Dr.
Sangrado, a quack who had murdered his thousands by Ms
specific of bleeding during a destructive epidemic of yellow
fever. Rush, at the end of the year 1799, obtained a verdict
for damages of five thousand dollars, and Cobbett, in June,
1800, sailed for England.
Cobbett had scoffed at Republican institutions and senti
ments, and finally been mulcted in damages for a scurrilous
2 a 2

312 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
libel. Later on, when afflicted by the yet more flagrant
ingratitude of Englishmen in authority, he persuaded himself
to forgive and forget, " with some few exceptions," all the
injuries with which the worst of the people of the United
States had, in their " folly and madness," endeavoured to
load Mm. For the present so sublime a temper of charity
was beyond him. Full in view, eager to welcome its cham
pion, was the country, Ms own country, of ancient loyalty
and incorrupt good faith, wdiere there were no Sangrados in
medicine or politics, and consequently no actions for libel.
Government officials and the Government press, in effect,
received with joy so redoubtable an advocate as Peter
Porcupine. John Gifford, sub-editor, under Canning, of the
Anti-Jacobin, who had prefixed laudatory prefaces to the
English editions of some of Cobbett's Philadelphia pamphlets,
the Rev. William Beloe, joint editor with Archdeacon Nares
of the British Critic, a paper friendly to Government, wMch
had praised them, Dr. Ireland, afterwards Dean of West
minster, and many other gentlemen called upon Mm at his
lodgings in St. James's Street. Mr. Windham, the Secretary
at War, became a warm friend of the ex-sergeant who was
supposed to have quitted England to avoid the consequences
of having slandered his former officers. He actuaUy dined,
as Windham's guest, at a Ministerial dinner in August, 1800,
in company with Canning and Pitt himself. Cobbett then
and there resolved to set up a daily paper. He used to
relate how Mr. George Hammond, who was Under-Secretary
for Foreign Affairs, as was his son more than fifty years
later, acting on behalf of the Government, offered him as a
gift the proprietorship of a Ministerial paper, the evemng
Sun, or a half share in another, the morning True Briton.
He refused the bribe ; he had resolved to support the Govern
ment, but he would be his OAvn master.
On his arrival in England he possessed no more than
£500 ; but in September, 1800, he very courageously started
a sixpenny morning newspaper, Porcupine's Gazette. Porcu
pine's Gazette began by being a panegyrist of Pitt ; but it

William Cobbett. 313"

avoAved its dislike of the concessions he had desired to make
to the Catholics. Its proprietor, Avith that perversity which
he commonly displayed, abhorred the Peace of Amiens. He
had his windows broken on October 7, 1801, by the mob, for
refusing to illuminate in honour of the Preliminaries. For tAvo
clays the publication had to stop, " until," as Cobbett informed
his subscribers, " the delirium of joy shall have subsided."
In the following month the Porcupine shot its last quill,
bemg sold to Mr. John Gifford and merged in the True Briton.
Cobbett had carried on the publication, while it lasted, with
energy. Newspapers fought in those days against each
other like famished Avolves : and in this department Cobbett
had served an incomparable apprenticeship. He had the
more honourable advantage of contributions by such cor
respondents as Lord Grenville and Jeremy Bentham. In
general, he professed not to know his correspondents, request
ing that communications should not be accompanied by the
real names of the authors. The fault of the English Porcu
pine doubtless was that its editor regarded a newspaper as
an enlarged pamphlet, and neAvspaper readers wanted neAvs.
Cobbett himself affected to be relieved at his journal's un
timely fate. " He who has been," he exclaimed, " the
proprietor of a daily paper for only one month wants no
Romish priest to describe to him the torments of purgatory."
His time, with or without the charge of the Porcupine, was
fully occupied. In March, 1801, he had opened a book
seller's shop at the CroAvn and Mitre, Pall Mall, under the
especial patronage of the royal dukes and princes. At the
commencement of the next year he embarked on a neAv
hterary venture. He belonged to the so-called NeAv Opposi
tion. To Windham, Lawrence, and Lord Grenville, who
were its chiefs, Cobbett recommended the establishment of
a weekly organ, which should be "something between a
newspaper and a magazine." Six hundred pounds avouM be
required to launch it, and he had no money to risk. He
Avould edit it, on the terms of disclaiming " all desire to
derive pecuniary advantage from the proposed undertaking,

314 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
and all idea of personal obligation towards any one who may
think proper to contribute towards it." The requisite £600
was at once raised, and January, 1802, witnessed the issue of
the first number of Cobbett's Political Register, under the
title originally of Cobbett's Annual Register. January, 1802,
is an epoch in the history of journalism.
Cobbett, Avhen he returned to England in the year 1800,
was liquid metal Avhich a Bolingbroke might possibly have
cast into a rough copy of Cobbett's literary model, the great
Irish Dean. But Pitt had scarcely any more real capacity
for appreciating the value of literary auxiliaries than
Walpole. The Whig party itself was only gradually taught
it by the success of the Edinburgh Review. Statesmen
assumed that a place or a pension for a layman, a benefice
for a clergyman, satisfied any claims mere literary eminence
could assert. It was well for the country Avhich required the
rude audit to which Cobbett subjected the pohcy of its
authorised leaders that Pitt and his brother statesmen did
not understand the worth of such a pen as Cobbett's, and the
price at which alone it could be retained. Cobbett had a
habit of proclaiming his contempt for money. He hked
money as much as most people, and had a noble capacity for
spending it. He spoke the simple truth Avhen he boasted of
the impossibdity of purchasing him by pecuniary offers. An
invitation to help to pull the strings which directed the
pohcy of the kingdom might not have been rejected if skil
fully addressed. He would have found it very hard to resist
the flattery of continual appeals to his patriotism and his
intelligence for co-operation, or to break the delicate chains
of repeated Ministerial dinners. Criticisms by a writer who
had been a warm ally, and who might be one again, should
have been received with indulgence. On the contrary, the
colleagues of Pitt who formed the Addington Ministry let
loose their press on " a certain American scribbler," for
whom " the pillory or the gibbet " was declared to be " an
appropriate reward." The Government itself soon intervened
openly. Mr. Justice Johnson's letters in the Register, under

William Cobbett. 315

the signature of " Juverna," against the Irish Administra
tion of Lord Hardwicke AArere made the subject of proceed
ings against the proprietor. The Irish judge, among other
sarcasms, compared the appointment of Lord Hardwicke to
setting the surgeon's apprentice to bleed the pauper patients.
Perceval, as Attorney General, conducted the prosecution,
and taunted Cobbett with not being a man of famdy. Lord
Ellenborough, Avho presided, had not in those days lost the
art of compelling a verdict of gudty. Cobbett was sentenced
to pay a fine of £500. The man avIio returned to England
in 1800 glowing Avith Tory admiration of Pitt, the House of
Lords, and the bench of bishops, comicted. in 1804 of libel,
became a Radical. The conviction opened Cobbett's eyes to
the fact that " the race that plunder the people, the Court
sycophants, parasites, pensioners, bribed senators, directors,
contractors, jobbers, hireling lords, and Ministers of State
were not the people of England."
Addington Avas the first object of Cobbett's attacks, but
his hostility Avas not so much to a particular Minister as to
authority. In August, 1805, the Register commenced the
practice of publishing pension lists, that the impoverished
country might see Avliere a million a year of its hard earnings
Avent. Sometimes a Tory Minister Avas pilloried. The
Register emphasised the moral of the startling statistics of
jobbery and corruption disclosed through Lord Melydle's
impeachment. Another week the butt was some leader of
the Whigs, whom Cobbett hated Avith a hate far exceeding
that he felt for their adversaries. Sheridan had once hinted
a charge against the Register of having incited sailors to
mutiny. Four years later, the slander, having been laid up
in Cobbett's memory, Avhich Avas extraordinarily retentive
of such things, bore fruit. In a series of letters Cobbett
expatiated on the descent of the Sheridans from a playactor,
that is, from a " A^agabond." He promised to furnish details
some day of tAventy-fiA-e public pledges wdiich Sheridan had
given and broken. When the scandal of Mrs. Clarke's abuse
of the Duke of York's patronage burst, he Avas careful not to

316 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
let the public forget it. The Register was eager to discovei
any pretext for assailing authority, so only the attack left no
visible loophole for authority to shoot back into.
Considering the burning ploughshares of legal censorship
amid avMcIi Cobbett had to tread, he picked his way with
marvellous dexterity. But at last the Register wras caught
tripping, and the Attorney General did not miss his oppor
tunity. Some militiamen at Ely had mutinied in June, 1809,
on account of a stoppage of pay to provide knapsacks. The
rising Avas suppressed by a body of Hanoverian cavalry
quartered at Bury, and five of the ringleaders received the
barbarous punishment of 500 lashes apiece. Cobbett, who
never forgot that he had served in the ranks, Avas sincerely
enraged that Germans should have been imported to flog
Englishmen. But with the oil of his pity for the soldiers
he rubbed in plenty of pepper for his official countrymen.
Out he burst in the Weekly Political Register of June 1,
1809: "Five hundred lashes each! Ay, that is right!
Flog them ! flog them ! flog them ! They deserve it, and a
great deal more. They deserve a flogging at every meal
time. Lash them daily ! lash them daily ! What ! shall the
rascals dare to mutiny, and that too when the German Legion
is so near at hand ? Lash them ! lash them ! lash them !
They deserve it. Oh yes ! they merit a doubled-taded cat !
Base dogs ! Mutiny for the price of a goat's skin ; and then
upon the appearance of the German soldiers they take a
flogging as quietly as so many trunks of trees. This occurrence
at home will, one would hope, teach the loyal a little caution
in speaking of the means Avhich Napoleon employs, or rather,
which they say he employs, in order to get together and to
discipline his conscripts."
As soon as the article was published, Cobbett felt that his
chance of escape was remote. He even anticipated the sen
tence : " They may probably confine me for tAvo years, but
that does not kill a man." As months passed by, and the
Attorney General stdl stayed his hand, Cobbett resumed a
tone which unsympathetic critics might call blustering. He

William Cobbett. 317

declared himself " no more afraid of the rascals than he could
be of so many mice." If there should be " an honest jury, it
avouM be a famous thing altogether." Probably he honestly
believed that Ministers Avere afraid of meddling Avith so
formidable a free lance. But it Avas only Sir Vicary Gibbs's
way of playing with his victims. More than a year after
the offence had been committed the trial Avas brought on.
Cobbett, who would never employ counsel, delivered a speech
in his own defence, in Avhich he apologised for the article
as " written in haste." He Avas immediately found guilty.
Sentence, hoAveArer, Avas not yet passed, and Cobbett Avas free
in the interval to return to his pleasant Hampshire house.
It was the kind of home to make a prospect of NeAvgate
especially gloomy. If Cobbett was obliged to live in Bolt
Court, his imagination made him hear the caged birds " sing
better and sing louder and more and stronger than they do
when at large." Naturally, he liked better, Avhen he had
the choice, to declaim among hop-gardens and young Avoods
against the corruption of Downing Street and St. Stephen's,
than to imagine hedgeroAvs and orchards in Fleet Street.
When the Register had seemed securely established, he had
left its management to Mr. John Wright, formerly a book
seller in Piccadilly, and his English correspondent AA'hen
he Avas trading at Phdadelphia and NeAv York. Quitting
Duke Street, St. James's, he bought " a most delightful house
and more delightful garden " at Botley, near Southampton.
Frequent allusions to the place are to be found in the
Register. They occur everywhere in the two hundred manu
script letters, now in the British Museum, Avhich contain
much of Cobbett's weekly correspondence with Wright, and
from AvMch Mr. Smith has extracted some of the most
interesting portions of his memoir. But the most vivid
sketch of the sort of life Cobbett now led is in Miss Mitford's
'Recollections of a Literary Life.' A common love of
coursing drew together Cobbett and her father, a man of no
worth whatever. Miss Mitford, in her father's company,
visited Cobbett's house, "large, high, massive, red, and

318 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
square," which stood opposite to the village, on the further
side of the river Hamble. The river was full of jack, and
trout, and salmon, and Cobbett could catch in a week enough
fish to defray the cost of a trammel net, for which he paid
several pounds. He never sold the fish, but the calculation
was a good excuse for buying the net. What with the savings
he was to make by dispensing with a town house, by having
milk three times as cheap, bread one-ninth, fuel a half, and
meat an eighth cheaper than in London, he reckoned he should
economise to the extent of at least £300 a year. The money
he spent on the purchase of the Botley house and in stockmg
the garden he never estimated at all. Yet he did not produce
for nothing his " green Indian corn, his Carohna beans, which
could hardly have been exceeded at New York, his wall fruit,
equally splendid," and his flowers, than which Miss Mitford
" never saw more glowing or more fragrant."
His expenditure must have been enormous on " the large
fluctuating series of guests for the hour, or guests for the
day," whom Miss Mitford met there, " of almost all ranks
and descriptions, from the earl and his countess to the
farmer and his dame." The maintenance of a house " always
open," according to Cobbett himself, to give Ms labourers
'" victuals and drink whenever they happened to come to it,"
Avith invalid comforts and full wages in illness, was probably.
still more costly. '¦ They called it," says Miss Mitford, " a
farmhouse, and everything was in accordance with the largest
idea of a great English yeoman of the old time." Two or
three small farms were, in a year or two after Cobbett's
establishment at Botley, bought and thrown together, and
there was " a vast nursery raised chiefly from seed of almost
all the different sorts of forest trees known on the Atlantic
side of the middle States of North America." All this
Cobbett treated as money invested at compound interest
payable in the future. In May, 1808, he purchased sixty-
seven acres of wood. " The neAv purchase has upon it
above 6,000 trees that would cost me from a shilling to
two-and-sixpence apiece, and that, in tAventy years' time, will

William Cobbett. 319

be worth £3 apiece at the very least. This, I think, is the
best way of insuring a fortune for children." He cannot
even attend a dinner in honour of Sir Francis Burdett's
election for Westminster, for " the health and groAvth, as
Avell as the future beauty, of a hundred acres of the finest
Avoods in England depend upon my personal attendance
betAveen Saturday and Wednesday." Fishing, and coursing,
and planting seemed to make up his Botley life. Of course
it Avas only seeming. The Register AAras really a weekly
essay by Cobbett ; and the weekly essay never failed. But
Cobbett at Botley Avas accustomed to reserve the business
of life for his study. " Of politics," writes Miss Mitford,
" Ave heard little, and should, I think, have heard nothing,
but for an occasional red-hot patriot, who would introduce
the subject, which our host would fain put aside, and got rid
¦of as speedily as possible."
Back to this prosperous home and these joyous labours, in
which politics seemed to Ms children only an interlude,
¦came Cobbett from Westminster Hall, a convicted, not yet a
sentenced, libeller. All the associations of Botley pleaded
for a compromise. Cobbett Avas induced to negotiate one.
Seven years later he asserted that " something very near to
the chopping of my right hand should be done before I
would cease to write." But he admits that he authorised his
attorney to offer in his name to discontinue the publication
¦of the Register. Though he asserts that he countermanded
the offer before it had been made to the Government,
cause exists for- doubt whether the proposition were effectu
ally withdrawn. The Government, hoAvever, Avould seem
to have had the folly to expect, like Queen Mary in her
dealings with Cranmer, the penalty as well as submission.
Cobbett, if he were to be immured in Newgate m any case,
preferred to spend his time there as proprietor of the
Register. Ten years to the very day from the time he had
landed in England, " having lost a fortune in America solely
for the sake of that same England," he stood up in West
minster Hall to hear himself sentenced to pay a fine of a

320 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
thousand pounds and undergo two years' imprisonment, and
at the end of that term to give security in a total amount of
£5,000 for his future good behaviour during seven years.
The punishment was not the Avorst disaster of this period of
Cobbett's career. Newgate was made tolerable to him by
the admiring kindness of Mr. Sheriff Wood, afterwards the
famous Sir MattheAv. He was not cast down. Not even his
sturdy constitution suffered. One or another of his family
Avas always Avith him. He had a levee of visitors. Major
CartAvright often came. So did Francis Maseres, Cursitor
Baron of the Exchequer, who appeared " always in his wig
and gown, in order, as he said, to show his abhorrence of
the sentence." The discipline of a soldier's life made the
mechanical routine of prison regulations endurable. Want
of liberty of locomotion Avas the worst hardship. He was
alloAved to purchase, at an expense in all of £1,200, the
privilege of a separate room. He was never without
abundance of " violets, and primroses, and cowslips, and
harebells," from Ms own Botley meadoAvs.
A calamity, Avhich the scent of Botley violets had no
power to cure, was the sudden discovery that all his fancied
affluence Avas founded on a quicksand. He must have
learned the truth soon in any case ; the comparative leisure
of Newgate precipitated the revelation. The Register was
started in January, 1802, with three hundred subscribers, as a
fortnightly journal, tenpence in price. Its immediate success
warranted its issue weekly after the first two numbers. By
1803 the circulation had risen to four thousand, which
implied, Cobbett reckoned, forty thousand readers. In 1809
it was nearly six thousand, and the price was raised to Is.
As late as 1816 the circulation of the Times was only eight
thousand, of the Courier five thousand, and of the Morning
Chronicle less still. Cobbett, reasonably enough, believed
himself possessed of a mine of Avealth. He added field to
field at Botley, paying Avith money borrowed from Ms paper-
maker, SAvann, of Wolvercot, to whom he gave bills. The
profits of the journal, which some years later he estimated at

William Cobbett. 321

£10,000 a year, were, though not equal to that sum, Aery
great. But the love of publishing, wdiich is as ruinous as a
love of building, had bitten him. He commenced the Par
liamentary Reports, now designated after Cobbett's printer,
Hansard, who bought the property of Cobbett. To Cobbett
belongs the praise of having instituted the first regular
reports of debates. He derived no pecuniary profit from
his patriotic enterprise. Another ambitious and bulky
work in which he engaged Avas his Parliamentary History.
A third was the great collection of State Trials. Of the
last he had appointed a very learned barrister, Mr. Howell,
editor. His expressions of indignation at Howell's vieAvs,
as at the views of " all your authors," of the proper
remuneration for brain-work, show that he had forgotten
very completely Ms own anger at the Philadelphia book
seller Bradford's mode of reckoning duties and profits as
between writer and publisher. " Authors," he says, " think
that every book that is printed is so much money coined."
Cobbett could not have described more exactly his own
mode of keeping publishing accounts. He reckoned income
and not outgoings. In fact, the sale neither of the State
Trials, nor of the Parliamentary History, nor of the
Debates, nor of a work soon dropped, called The Spirit of
the Public Journals, covered the expenses. The Register
staggered under a dead weight of paper and printer's ink ;
but Swann made advances, and Cobbett gaily bought farm
after farm, as if he were fast growing into a millionaire.
Cobbett's story was repeated later in a more ruinously
sumptuous edition by Walter Scott and the Ballantynes and
Constable, with the close parallel of the intolerable load of
unsaleable historical quartos, and the fields added to fields,
Avhich the Waverley Novels strove so gallantly to sustain.
Cobbett, unlike Scott, had, however, always half suspected
Ms own prudence. He warns Wright by letter in 1805
against " speaking or hinting, in the presence of Mrs. Cobbett,
anything relative to my pecuniary concerns, or concerns in
trade, of any sort or kind. She has her own ideas about such

322 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
matters, which cannot be altered. She knows that I have
lost so much by prmting that she is fearful of everything of
the kind." The good orderly honest-mmded wife, who, when
a young girl, had kept so faithfully Cobbett's savings from
his sergeant's salary, Cobbett's conscience told him could
not be made a confidante of a business about which Cobbett
writes on another occasion to Wright : " Only think of
having another person invested with a right to make us
account — us Avhose accounts the devil himself would never
unravel. No, no ; you and I were never made to have our
accounts examined by anybody but ourselves." Subse
quently it appeared that he had not looked at his balance for
six years. Yet nothing could be more beautifully prudent
than Ms advice to others. " You should economise," he tells
Wright, " as much as possible. A horse, a coav, a house, is
soon gone in even trifling things, which we give in to from
mere want of strength, and not from our love of the tilings
themselves." Wright was not likely to take advice his
counsellor never tried. The collapse came as soon as Cobbett
was in Newgate. On the accounts, such as they were, being
made up, it appeared that Wright owed £6,500 to Cobbett.
Not a penny of that debt was forthcoming to pay the
thousands which Cobbett owed on accommodation bills to
Swann. The debt to Swann was settled by an advance Burdett
made of £3,000, which was never repaid. Other friends
defrayed Cobbett's fine of £1,000, and Hansard took over
the Parliamentary History, the Debates, and the State Trials.
The man's nature must have been magnificently buoyant.
There is no sign that he suffered any real affliction at the
collapse of what had seemed to him boundless wealth. The
Register fell into a temporary eclipse, but its proprietor's
virtual insolvency had nothing to do with that. The cause
we believe to have been that Cobbett composing Registers
in NeAvgate lost temporarily his intuitive sympathy Avith the
emotions and passions of the market-place. For the time
Cobbett had ceased to write with the force and edge which
had made him a dangerous adversary. His denunciations

William Cobbett.

were comparatively neglected by friends and foes. He speaks
in Ms letter of January 1, 1817, to " old George Rose," as if
there Avere a conspiracy to suppress Mm by an absence of
criticism. " The press of corruption," he complains, " as if
it acted under one common command, abstained from even
alluding to me or my writings for more than six years." It
Avas all very well to Avrite his series of articles on Paper
against Gold, and to declare that he had crushed the Govern
ment. This, he writes, " at the end of thirteen years I hold
up to the noses of the msolent foes who then exulted over
me, and tell them ' TMs is what you got by my having been
sentenced to Newgate ; this Avas the produce of that deed
by Avhich it was hoped and believed that I Avas pressed
down never to be able to stir again.' " The Castlereaghs and
the Sidmouths Avere aggravatingly indifferent to that AvMch
Cobbett describes as " this neAv epoch in the progress of my
mind." Articles on the flogging of militiamen terrified
them ; they bore placidly a reproach, in which their enemy
coupled them Avith Malthus and Ricardo, of being bad political
economists. The currency was a momentous question, it must be
acknoAvledged, in the years which preceded and followed
Waterloo. Very properly its fascinations never released their
hold upon Cobbett's fancy. But he resumed, with his restora
tion to liberty, less recondite enquiries. Personally he may,
as he boasted, have preserved his equanimity during his two
years of gaol ; at their close his pen ran riot. The name of"
Cobbett became a word of terror and loathing to whole orders
of men. He had already attacked tithes. He now never
mentioned a clergyman without an insulting epithet. He
taunted the profession continually with not supplying more
spiritual arguments than the Attorney General's specific of
the pillory against Paine's 'Age of Reason.' Landholders
feared the man whom Lord Sidmouth and Mr. Perceval
feared. Farmers instinctively recoiled from the avowed
champion of the emancipation of their labourers. Farm
labourers could not, except here and there, read the Register,

324 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
and, if they had read, would not have understood it. But a
new class began to study it. The weavers and mill hands
and small tradesmen looked to the Register as their educator.
In November, 1816, Cobbett published a number at two
pence. Lord Cochrane, his constant political confederate, had
suggested the experiment. " General Lud " and " Captain
Swing " Avere both in the field. Mills, frames, and ricks Avere
alike being burned. Cobbett might, Cochrane thought, turn
a warning to work-people against futile crime to the purpose
of goading the country to a sense of the necessity of repre
sentative reform. No. 18 of the Register, addressed to
" The Journeymen and Labourers of England, Wales,
Scotland, and Ireland," is a model of political and argumen
tative inArective. The sarcasm hisses, but the surface remains
smooth and cool. The subsequent letter addressed to the
Luddites is an admirably plain demonstration of what
was not self-evident in those days as in these. Its object
Avas to demonstrate the benefit of machinery to the whole
community. The argument grows as regularly tier by tier
as the story of the house that Jack built. In Cobbett's
reasonings links are never left to be understood. He prided
himself on an invincible love of making things intelligible,
and he gives his readers all the premisses, from which they
may see for themselves that the conclusion folloAvs. Political
economy and logic are barbed with mockery and gibes at the
remedies sinecurists and borough-mongers propose for the
relief of the prevalent destitution. Charity subscriptions
have been set on foot, and eleemosynary soup is being given.
" What ! " he exclaims, " are you to come crawling, like sneak
ing curs, to lick up alms to the amount of forty or fifty
thousand pounds round the brim of a soup kettle, wlrile you
are taxed, with the rest of us, to the amount of £175,000 in
order to give relief to French and Dutch emigrants, and to
the poor clergy of the Church of England ? I trust that my
countrymen have yet English blood enough left in their veins
to make them reject such alms with scorn and indignation."
But he prays them not to let their scorn and indignation

William Cobbett. 325

exceed the bounds of laAv. He inculcates the Avarning in the
name of the vengeance he wishes them to enjoy upon the
""hirelings" avIio oppress them. These are not "the land
lord, the farmer, the tradesman, the merchant," classes equally
burdened Avith themselves. They are the men who "live
upon the taxes," for whose benefit the State takes £10 out
of every £18 of wages. He entreats the Avorkmen to bide
their time, though they be mocked at as "loAver orders,"
•'swinish multitude," "mob," "rabble," "population." He
tells them that, if they let themselves be goaded into
physical violence, they will be favouring "the cause of
corruption, Avhich is never so much delighted as at the sight
of troops acting against the people."
The circulation of the cheap edition of the Register,
* Twopenny Trash,' as Cobbett was content it should be
styled, leaped to 44,000. In Ms ' Last Hundred Days of
English Freedom ' he declares that of the number published
after the issue of Lord Sidmouth's circular of March, 1817,
against seditious pamphlets, 20,000 copies were sold in
London on one day. He gave a general license to any one
avIio Avished to republish No. 18, and " Avithin two months,"
he states, "more than 200,000 copies of this number were
printed and sold." Had the Newspaper Stamp Act applied
to such a reissue, the circulation broadcast of this Twopenny
Trash would have been impossible. But it did not come
Avithin the class of periodicals. Cobbett became a poAver
in the State. He had engaged in a single-handed combat with
the GoA'ernment, and he beat it. At first the word went
forth from the Home Office to " write him down." Anti-
Cobbett tracts were all of no avail. It was Cobbett's boast
that Lord Sidmouth's suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act
Avas, "though he did not actually name it," aimed directly
at the Pohtical Register. Though Cobbett had a habit of
appropriating attacks, here probably he was justified.
Yet, if the Government feared the Register as a propa
gator of open sedition, it was wrong. There is truth
in the interesting extract Mr. Smith cites from Samuel
2 B

326 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
Bamford's ' Passages in the Life of a Radical,' m which
Bamford declares that, with the groAvth of the authority of
Cobbett's Avritings, " riots soon became scarce." " Instead of
riots and destruction of property, Hampden clubs were now
established in many of our large towns and the villages and
districts around them. Cobbett's books were prmted in a
cheap form ; the labourers read them, and thenceforward
became deliberate and systematic in their proceedings."
Cobbett gave long-smothered wrath a vent. Men assembled
to read the new gospel instead of breaking frames. A
Government, however, like that led by Sidmouth and
Castlereagh and Eldon, might easily be more panic-struck
at the ground-swell of such an agitation as the twopenny
Register was exciting than even at the burning of ricks
and mills. Agrarian and anti-machinery riots might be.
dealt with by yeomanry and Hanoverians ; a demand by
weavers for Parliamentary reform had all the terrors of the
unknown. Whether the weavers themselves generally
understood Cobbett's arguments may be questioned ; it was
enough that they were starving, and Cobbett told them their
poverty came from pensions and paper- money. The wrath and
consternation of their rulers were proof to them that there
was reason in what he said. His prayers to his new disciples
to curse their oppressors, but not throw stones, indicated, in.
the judgment of Southey and of Downing Street, some deep
plot to which more material weapons would not be wanting.
Cobbett was to be suppressed, and some have suspected
that, had he been imprisoned under the powers given by the
Habeas Corpus Suspension Act, the advice of Southey would
have been followed. Southey's recommendation, in a mem
orandum he addressed at this time to Lord Liverpool, was
that Cobbett, Hone, and the editors of the Examiner should
be subjected to such good discipline, or even transportation,
as would " prevent them from carrying on their journals.".
While the Suspension Act was still in incubation, Cobbett did
Ms worst. The country was in a miserable condition, and he
probed every sore. If alleviations were proposed, he jeered

William Cobbett. 327

at them ; they Avere not the one thmg needed ; they were
not reform of Parliament. George Rose established savings-
banks, the greatest boon the working classes have ever had
conferred upon them. Cobbett poured the burning lava of
Ms ridicule upon the scheme of phdanthropy. Rose had
patronised friendly societies once ; but the members met to
hear the Register read. By Ms new plan the pennies of the
few poor who were not paupers might be put together to lend
to the Government " while their persons were kept asunder."
If the salaries of Rose himself and one of his sons, not counting
the payments to another son, an ambassador, Avere capitalised,
the amount would make a round £300,000 of principal. This
at compound interest, " if it had remamed among the people,
might have formed a very nice savings-bank." To recom
mend savings-banks to a nation in which " it is notorious that
hundreds of thousands of families do not know, when they
rise, Avliere they are to find a meal during the day," is, next
only to the old company for making deal boards out of
sawdust, " the most ridiculous project that ever entered into
the mind of man."
The moral of all Cobbett wrote at this time, the zenith of
Ms "career, was that the country was being stifled by placemen
in Parliament, and that radical representative reform alone
could save it. " Petition, peaceable petition," was Ms constant
cry. He desired to hear that a million of names at least had
been signed to such petitions. " That would be two-thirds of
the able male population of Great Britain, excluding those
who live on taxes." Petitioning could hardly be called riot
ing, and the' continual injunction he laid upon his friends was
to be " peaceable." If his reasoning were false, the remedy
was obvious: There were " 20,000 parsons, 4,000 or 5,000
lawyers, the two Universities, the two Houses of Parliament,
many thousands of magistrates, many hundreds of writers
for pay." Surely it must be easy for these myriads, " with all
their learning and all their weight, to counteract the effect of-
one poor twopenny pamphlet." Ministers had on their side
"the greater part of the London press," mercenaries who "threw
2 b 2

328 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
their poison from behind a curtain." With all their power
the whole legion of friends of authority could not stand up in
fair fight against the man who was not ashamed to sign what
he wrote. " It was a combat of argument, and they have taken
shelter under the shield of physical force." Lord Sidmouth,
Cobbett knew, would have preferred to lock him up once
more in Newgate as a libeller ; " but the pamphlets," by which
he meant the Register, "had," Lord Sidmouth avowed in
Parliament, " been submitted to the law officers ; they were
found to be written with so much dexterity that he was sorry
to say hitherto the law officers could find in them notMng to
prosecute." Consequently, according to Cobbett writing in
the Political Register, in March, 1817, a new statute must
be passed : " Whereas one Wdham Cobbett, an old offender
in the same way, has been, by the means of a certain weekly
trash publication, endeavouring to throw down the Corinthian
pillar of corruption, and at the same time to preserve the
peace and restore the happiness of the United Kingdom ; and
whereas these efforts tend directly to do great and lasting
injury to all those who directly or indirectly live and fatten
upon the profits of bribery, corruption, perjury, and public
robbery ; . . . and AAdiereas no one has been found to answer
the writings of the said William, notwithstanding corruption
pervades nineteen-twentieths of all the reviews, magazines,
and newspapers in the kingdom ; and whereas it is expedient
to prevent the said William Cobbett from proceeding in the
said dangerous courses : Be it therefore enacted that the said
William shall write and publish no more, and that he shall
neither talk, nor think, nor dream, without the express per
mission of the proprietors of the Courier and Thnes, or of
their supporters and abettors." In other words, according to
Cobbett's egotistical but not wholly unfair inference, Lord
Liverpool's Government suspended the Habeas Corpus Act
to catch a criminal who was so perverse as to refuse to
commit a crime.
But Cobbett would not be caught. His farewell of April 5,
1817, to his countrymen is a masterly apology for what even

William Cobbett. 329

some of his admirers, like Wooler, " the Black Dwarf," de
nounced as a desertion. He urged that, if he stayed in England,
he avouM have, as Brougham said, to write Avith " a halter about
Ms neck." He could not write except as his love for England
and English rights inspired him. Yet write he must. " Any
sort of trial " he would have stayed to face. " Against the
absolute power of imprisonment, without even a hearing, for
time unlimited, without the use of pen, ink, and paper, against
such a power it would have been worse than madness to
attempt to strive." So he departed to a land Avliere he might
Avrite for Englishmen, and write freely. He pledged himself
that he " would never become a subject or a citizen in any
other State, and would always be a foreigner in every country
but England." Very superfluously he added: "Any foible
that may belong to the English character I shall always
willingly allow to belong to my own." His brother Re
formers or Reformists, to adopt their OAvn hideous name for
themselves, were not all of them as convinced as he seemed
himself that' the flight to America was not a flight, but
a flank movement. The sceptics had reason for their
doubts. It is a cruel ordeal for any crusader of pohtics to
know that the Attorney General is leaning over Mm as he
writes, and meditating Avhether to give him more rope, or
to despatch him incontinently to the nearest gaol. Cobbett,
brave enough before an open enemy, Avas not particularly
well fitted to bear this supreme test of moral courage or in
sensibility. He had not endured with equanimity the sus
pense of the interval between the conviction and the sentence
of 1810. He had a right, moreover, to believe that the Hones,
and the Woolers, and the Hunts might risk being silenced
with less harm to the cause. Perhaps their danger was, as
he remarked to them, inconsiderable. A certain Mr. White,
of the Independent Whig, had reproached Cobbett for
abandoning his post in the army of Reform. Cobbett re
torted : " Brave man Mr. White to remain at his post ! It
is the mastiff and not the mouse that Secretaries of State
Avish to muzzle." Nevertheless, Cobbett's own apologies for

330 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
Ms emigration leave the impression that, after aU, it was to
be excused as prudent rather than to be panegyrised as
magnanimous. Reasonable doubt may be entertained whether the Govern
ment would have gone to the extremity of imprisoning
Cobbett without trial. It did not use the power against
his fellow-agitators, though that, he would have argued, only,
confirmed Ms vaunt that the Suspension Act had him and
only Mm for its object. In any case, Ms menaces despatched
by every mail from Long Island, where he had settled hmv
self, no longer disturbed very greatly either friend or foe in
England. Somehow the darts wlrich sped so lustdy from
New York seemed to fall short of the hearts of his old dis
ciples in cottages and workshops. Within a feAv months of
his departure England was once more enjoying a fair measure
of material prosperity. To Cobbett's forebodmg eyes the
prospect remained black and gloomy; but farm labourers
and mechanics were content to feel that they were no longer
starving, and petty farmers that they were not becoming
bankrupt. The interval of Cobbett's expatriation was not
propitious for agitation which had its chief seat at present in
the stomach. The mere mechanical fact of absence was more
influential still in relaxing Cobbett's hold upon the English
people. He was emphatically a journalist, who wrote on the
events of a day to be read in the day. Enghsh hearts could
tin-ill but feebly to the two-months-old echoes of indignation
at incidents they had half forgotten. Cobbett felt tMs, though-
he did not confess it. He waited only for a fitting juncture
to return. At length he believed that another crisis of
commercial depression and discontent at the material condi
tions of existence was at hand. Like a stormy petrel, he
reappeared. Parhament was contemplating the resumption of cash pay
ments by the Bank of England. Cobbett hated paper-money.
But men had for years been keeping their accounts in depre
ciated paper. He supposed that a sudden return to cash
payments would jar the whole of the commercial relations

William Cobbett. 331

of the country. The shock he looked forward to as Ms
opportunity for urging on Parliamentary Reform, just as at
different times he avouM express pleasure at the prospect
that the price of a quartern loaf was soon to be half a crown.
His gloomy anticipations or hopes of such an auxiliary as a
series of commercial crises in his Reform crusade were disap
pointed ; but he found what might seem a more direct occa
sion already made for him. The Peterloo massacre was in
August, 1819. The meeting of wMch it was the catastrophe
itself marked the resurrection of the Reform agitation. A
movement of the small Radical party was converted by
the savagery of the yeomanry into an awakening of ad the
elements of Liberalism in the land. A natural presumption
would be that, in this high tide of popular feeling, Cobbett,
if he had been powerful before his flight to New York, was
hkely to become supreme. On the contrary, Reform, in
groAving into a national movement, had glided beyond
Radical control.
He had been converted since Ms previous residence in
America from a specially scornful opponent into an enthusi
astic worslripper of the political and economical doctrines of
the author of the ' Rights of Man.' Thinking Paine's bones
insufficiently honoured by burial " in a httle hole under the
grass and weeds of an obscure farm " in Long Island, he had
them dug up and managed with some difficulty to pass them
through the Liverpool Custom House. They made a very
cumbersome part of Cobbett's political luggage. At once the
cry of Atheist was raised against him by the clergy. But
the incident, though it confirriied Cobbett's foes in their aver
sion, scarcely affected Ms influence with his faithful Radicals.
His return was the signal for an outburst of enthusiasm which
terrified authority. The Lancashire magistrates imprisoned
for ten weeks a bellman, John Hayes, for proclaiming at
Bolton that Cobbett was come back. The borough-reeves of
Manchester brought cannon into the town when Ms approach
ing arrival was announced. He was clearly still the accepted
mouthpiece of English Radicalism. As the battle of Reform

332 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
proceeded, it speedily was apparent that relatively his power
was no longer what it once had been, because the comparative
power of Radicalism had waned too. Reform had other cham
pions now than Cobbett, and Hone, and Wooler, and the
Hunts. Radicalism and he lost their sharpest weapon when
Representative Reform was adopted as the corner-stone of the
creed of the historical Whig party. His supplanting by the
Whigs was a crime which Cobbett never forgave. From the
opening of this the last chapter but one of Ms pohtical
career, and thence to the end, his attacks upon the fortresses
of corruption and misgovernment were liable to be blunted
by sudden turns about to charge into the ranks of his unac
ceptable fellow-combatants. The cause of Reform grew and
prospered ; Cobbett's dominion did not grow with its growthv/
When it triumphed he was carried on into the captured
citadel by the impetus of the assault; it was not Ms flag
which waved above the ramparts.
The year or two Avhich followed Cobbett's return from Long
Island were clouded by more material troubles than party
jealousies. He had never repaid Burdett the £3,000 lent to
settle Swann's claim. That trivial circumstance did not pre
vent him from accusing Sir Francis of lukewarmness m the
cause of Reform. Praiseworthy as it may be not to let private
ties stand in the way of a public duty, Burdett's many
friends and Cobbett's more enemies raised not unnaturally an
outcry of ingratitude. Then his old manager, Wright, had
made bad blood between Orator Hunt and Cobbett, who
were now close allies. Cobbett had warned him ten years
before agamst relations with Hunt, as " a sad fellow, who
goes riding about the country with the wife of another
man, having deserted his own." This confidence Wright
divulged. Cobbett, Avho already attributed to Wright's dis
honest indolence the Avreck of his fortunes, retaliated on
what he thought an act of treachery by styling him " a rogue
unparalleled in the annals of infamy." For this outburst
Cobbett, that is to say, a friend for him, had to pay £1,000
damages. He could not himself have raised the money. The

William Cobbett.

Register can scarcely have been as remunerative as in the
days before 1810. In a controversy he held with Perry, of
the Morning Chronicle, who had alleged that at one period,
before Cobbett left England, the sale of the Register had
faUen to 750, he seems himself not to put the number of
weekly copies higher than 1,600, and the yearly profits than
£1,500. He declares, indeed, in a previous letter from Long
Island, that be enjoyed, at the time he sailed for the States,
" a current income from his writings of more than £10,000,"
beside " copyrights which apparently were worth an immense
sum." In the same paragraph he appears to reckon his
Botley property as Avorth more than double the mortgages of
£17,000 upon it. If the £10,000 a year from the Register
Avere not more substantial than the value of the copyrights
and the farm, we must make great deductions from his esti
mate of the net profits of his newspaper. In any case, he
succumbed to his embarrassments soon after his return from
America. He gave up Botley, and passed through the Bank
ruptcy Court. When that ordeal had been surmounted, the
family, in its Brompton lodgings, found itself, according to
Cobbett, with " only three shillings in the Avhole world."
That mattered httle to Mm with his unfailing spirits and
courage. Looking back over seventy years of life, he once
said : " I have led the happiest life of any man that I have
ever known." He adds: "Never did I know a single
moment when I Avas cast doAvn, never one moment Avhen I
dreaded the future."
A garden at rural Kensington for the moment replaced
Botley. If he could not plant acacia woods, he could raise
seedlings for friends like Lord Folkestone to plant. He could
at Kensington, as at Botley, inculcate the virtues of maize and
the vices of potatoes. In course of time he took to seed-farm
ing at Barn-Elms, in the neighbourhood of Jacob Tonson's
old house, and later at Normandy Farm, on the borders of
Surrey and Hampshire. This was the period in which the
' Rural Rides ' were ridden and written. That narrow cir
cumstances could not subdue him is perceptible in every line

334 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
of that delightful volume. It is a reprint of articles from
the Register, describing expeditions, chiefly in the south of
England, between the years 1821 and 1832, undertaken for
the purpose of inquiring into the condition of the peasantry
and the farming interest. Cobbett, as he rides through
England, is genuinely happy. For him, as a politician, the
earlier of these years were years of fruitless, however noisy,
agitation. He boiled over with indignation; Ms indigna
tion provoked only an unreal popular echo. He worried
the topic of paper and cash payments. If anybody, from a
" loanmongering " Baring to an Attwood, " a Brummagem
banker," discoursed on the subject against the Government, he
accused the speaker or writer of stealing his ideas. If Peel's
Bill for resumption of cash payments should be carried " with
out a reduction of the interest of the debt," he offered to give
himself up to be " broiled alive." The repeated allusions
subsequently in the Register to the " Feast of the Gridiron "
reminded men of the falsification of his prediction, and his
determination to put a good face upon it. He wrote; in the
cause of Catholic emancipation, his ' History of the Reforma
tion.' The successive numbers, as they appeared, gained 'a
circulation of 40,000. But the book injured his clients as
much as all Eldon's bigotry and Wethereli's vituperations
benefited them. No advocate of toleration, with any self-
respect, Can read the work without shame for the assumption
by scurrility of the disguise of liberality.
Others of Ms failures were his canvassings of Coventry
and Preston. Among his successes he would himself have
reckoned Ms manifestos on behalf of Queen Caroline. ¦ Were
the mere number of readers a test of a writer's authority,
the circulation of Cobbett's publications in the Queen's
equivocal cause might be accepted as evidence of triumphant
popularity. No doubt, scores of thousands admired the sad
fustian of the Queen's letter to the King which was Cobbett's
composition. But that unsavoury discussion endangered' the
monarchical system, of which Cobbett professed himself the
most strenuous of champions against the republicamsm he

William Cobbett. 335

instinctively hated ; it added no momentum to the downfall
of jobbery and corruption at which he aimed his manliest
blows. The best tribute to the real durability of Ms might as
an agitator was a renewal by authority of the old homage
of fear in the shape of a fresh prosecution of the Register.
Portions of the Register were in 1830 republished monthly
for twopence, under the title, which Cobbett had' already
made familiar, of Twopenny Trash. It was a time of
agricultural desperation, and Cobbett adopted his ancient
tactics. His Twopenny Trash, and he himself orally in his
habitual peregrinations, warned the farm labourers against
violence. In the same breath he threatened Ministers
that the labourer must not be expected to " lie down and
die." The Wliig Government, new to power, was timorous
of the suspicion of abetting Cobbett's attacks on the pros
perous classes. Denman, as Attorney General, indicted
him for " a libel, with the intent to raise discontent in the
minds of the labourers in husbandry, and to incite them to
acts of violence, and to destroy corn-stacks, machmery, and
other property." Cobbett, as usual, defended himself, and
had subpoenaed half the Ministry to give evidence of the
former sympathy of its members with his teaching. He was
able, as Mr. Grevide mentions in his Memoirs, to produce a
letter from the Chancellor himself, requesting leave to use
some former publications of Cobbett's, which Lord Brougham
thought " would be of great use in quieting the labourers."
The request was actually made while this prosecution was
pending. The jury, wMch had for its foreman a strong
Cobbettite, could not agree upon a verdict, and was dis
charged amid a scene of tumultuous enthusiasm.
Cobbett, in Ms defence before the King's Bench, had
accused the Whig Cabinet of resolving to ruin him by fair
means or foul. The Ministerial motive was the knowledge,
he explained, that " if he were to get into the House
under a reformed Parliament, he would speedily obtain a
cheap Government for the country, and, by doing away with
places and pensions, prevent the people's pockets from being

336 Some 'Verdicts of History Reviewed.
picked." Had Ministers been moved by the reasons Cobbett
imputed to them, his presence in the House must have
qmckly undeceived them. He was elected for Oldham in
December, 1832, and signalised his introduction to the House
by taking possession of a seat on the Treasury bench. Mr.
Greville, while noting that " some very bad characters have
been returned," and instancing, among others, Cobbett, adds,
" though I am glad that Cobbett is in Parhament." Gre-
vdle had the sense to understand that power such as Cobbett
possessed, or had possessed, if a danger, as probably he
honestly believed, to the country, would be less of a danger
for the yoking of its owner to a seat in the Commons. The
demagogue yielded himself as a hostage to Parliament for
the acts of his following outside. Cobbett in the House was
tiresome rather than formidable. The Register itself was
necessarily a bar to sympathy between him and the House.
Members could not quite forget that their colleague, as hkely
as not, was meditating a statement of his vieAvs next week on
" the hideous belloAvings at the back of Althorp, and the half
female ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, of the sucking cubs at the back of
Peel." Peel himself betrayed the feeling when he promised
to attend to Cobbett's observations exactly as to those of " a
respectable Member." Even the weekly amenities of the
Register might have been forgiven; Cobbett's offences out
side the House might have been condoned, as are after-dinner
gibes of Long Vacation orators, had he added weight to the
dehberations within. He appeared to the House only to
twaddle ; and he thought the House of Commons indulged,
as he told it in his first speech, in " a great deal of vain and
unprofitable conversation." When each judged in this way
of the other, it is not strange that his brief Parhamentary
career was disappointing. But his programme was alto
gether too impracticably ambitious. He had taken with him
into the House of Commons a special mandate which he
charged himself to fulfil. Its articles he had recounted to
the electors of Manchester when he was canvassmg them
before the Reform Bill was passed. His work in the House

William Cobbett. 337

Avas to obtain the abolition of tithes, of sinecures, and of
the majority of pensions, the reduction of the standing
army, an equitable readjustment of the currency, and
a remission of taxation. The last result Avas to be com
passed by the sale of ecclesiastical and Crown estates, and
misapplied corporate property. With the proceeds the
national debt was to be wiped out. He accomplished no
single point in this comprehensive scheme. The solitary
impress his warmest admirer can prove to have been left by
his election for Oldham on Parliamentary history is the
dismissal of one William Popay from the pohce force for
acting the part of an amateur spy. William Popay was the
scapegoat for a bureaucracy still unexpurgated by William
Cobbett, a Church still endowed with un-apostolic wealth,
armaments still bloated, a currency still left to be adjusted
by a financial bungler like Peel, a national debt still a cancer
eating into the prosperity and happiness of " this industrious
nation." If it were necessary to characterise Cobbett by a single
quahty, he might best be described as a good hater. The
abundance and variety of his enmities and the copiousness of
his vocabulary of contempt surpass the gift in that direction
of his illustrious model and exemplar, the Dean of St.
Patrick's, " the first author after Moses I ever read." Some
times eyenfacit indignatio versum, though we prefer the angry
prose. His satire lost no antithetical point by not being in
heroic metre. He had a perdous faculty of embodying his
wrath in epithets which stuck. While only revelling in
the intoxication of political strife, and as yet unsoured by
Newgate and " gagging bills," he had compunctions, which
might sometimes seem almost excessive. He tells Wright :
" In the copy last sent you there is the phrase ' old G. Rose.'
Upon second thoughts it may as well be left out. It is
perhaps right to cease to use that and the like phrases. One
puts them down under the influence of indignant feehngs
but they probably do more harm than good." Even at this
period the second thoughts seldom obtruded themselves.

338 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
Later on the mocking devil in Cobbett had absolutely free
course. He was never at a loss for an object. A public
man for the forty years of Cobbett's active literary career must
have been harmless to the verge of nonentity to escape with
out an opprobrious epithet from that inexhaustible treasury.
Many vivid flowers of plain speaking might be culled
from the American pamphlets. But Cobbett does not find
out how infinitely villainous is public life till he is back m
England, and conducting the Pohtical Register. , Pitt, once
the heaven-born, descends in time, through various gradations
of cold and doubting respect, into " great, empty, staring,
botheration Pitt." " Mr. Pitt's young friends," including, of
course, Canning, "would have put the Tartuffe to the blush,
lads that would literally sing you a smutty song to a psalm
tune." Perceval, " the little, malignant Perceval," " the
favourite of the Church," is a minister who would destroy
a Plymouth tinman for offering to buy a petty place, and
connive at " the swapping of office for seats." Lord Chancellor
Eldon is exquisitely burlesqued as "that plain, frank, and
sincere old nobleman," who, on giving Ms assent to what
Cobbett terms the Dungeon Bill, " nearly shed tears." The
courtesies of , the Register are sometimes retrospective.
Edmund Burke is " the sycophant " who trafficked Ms prin
ciples away for a large pension for several lives. A remoter
personage yet, " that famous Judge Holt," is " a barrister who
had the baseness, after he had received his fee, to desert his
client, Mr. Prynne." Holt's stiU more famous contemporary
Locke is "the placeman Locke, who, compared with Paine,
was, as to subjects of finance, a mere babbler." Sir Francis
Burdett is figured as "an old, tall, bare-ribbed, , and, broken-
down chaise-horse "who will not drag the Reform cart a yard,
unless he feel the wheels at his heels. His oratory is held
up to ridieule ; he " labours till he • is out of breath in the
utterance of sentences two minutes long, each .contaming
in its belly two or three parentheses, , and each of these
two or three little ones one within another, as Swift calls
it, ' like a nest of pill-boxes.' " Malthus is " the nasty and

William Cobbett. 339

greedy parson," with " a parson's bawl " and " a muddled
parson's head." " I have," writes Cobbett to him, " during my
life detested many men, but never any one so much as you."
Mr. Jenkinson is accused in 1819 of stealing and spoiling
Cobbett's attacks on the fictitiousness of paper-money. His
conduct reminds Cobbett of the " scoundrels who, when they
have stolen a horse, cut off Ms tail and ears, and knock out
an eye." " Shallow and impudent, hole-digging Castlereagh,"
" dull and arrogant daddy Grenville," " profligate Sheridan,"
" stupid Lawyer Horner," are ad assailed either for not
perceiving or not acknowledging the perspicacity of Cobbett's
arguments against that " usurping muckworm," paper cur
rency, or for intercepting the credit which belongs by right
to Mm alone. But of all the mean detractors from Ms
merit, "the meanness of my Lord Folkestone," Cobbett's
constant patron, " surpasses that of all the rest." The crime
was that Cobbett had sent to Lord Folkestone, afterwards
Lord Radnor, a voluminous petition for presentation to the
House of Commons against paper-money. Its length pre
cluded its presentation, and Cobbett- charges his friend with
appropriating its wisdom in a speech of Ms own without
acknowledgment. " You were ashamed to own your obliga
tions to one of the ' lower orders,' but not at all ashamed
to pillage him ; like your broods of uncles, cousins, and
dependents, who, AvMle they are too proud to speak to the
common labourer, are not too proud to eat part of Ms dinner,
under the name of offices, sinecures, and pensions."
The only two deserving political economists, though Cobbett
would have scorned the name, are himself and Tom Paine.
Ricardo's volume is "a heap of senseless Change-Alley
jargon, put upon paper and bound up into a book." , Tooke's
'Theory of Prices' is "a conundrum," "absurdity upon
absurdity." Adam Smith; " if Paine had been a canter and a
crawler instead of a man of sincerity and spirit, Avould have
been laughed off the stage years ago." He hates Adam
Smith both as a political economist and as a Scotchman.
"I will be bound," he Avrites at another time, "to find a

340 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
eouple of Scotch economists who shall by their own m-
dividual exertions outlie the father of lies himself." Mac-
kmtosh, the reformer of the criminal law, is sneered at as
" Lawyer Mackintosh," who has, like every lawyer, his bill.
The Avhole London press is "corrupt" and mahgnant,
especially the Courier and the "bloody old Times." The
writers are politely designated "wicked old hacks." Perry
of the Chronicle, whom he had been forward in con
gratulating in 1810 upon his acquittal in a Government
prosecution, and declared to have " done more good than any
man of his time," is in 1817 "the basest of all the base tools
of corruption." To Cobbett Wdliam Wilberforce appears
a mere writer of "canting pamphlets." Wdberforce had
appealed to " the inhabitants of the British Empire " to help
to transmute the wretched Africans into "the condition of
free British labourers." Cobbett's comment is : " Empire in
your teeth, you retailer of bombast ! " Cobbett wants to
know if the appeal for the blacks is addressed to the free
British labourers to be seen at the Kensington gravel-pits
" with bits of sack round their shoulders and with hay-
bands round their legs," or to " the emaciated, half-dead
tilings who crack stones to make roads as leArel as a die for the
tax-eaters to ride on." Frederick Robinson, afterwards Lord
Goderich, whose sound common sense wMle he was Chancellor
of the Exchequer retrieved British finance, is scoffed at as
" Mr. Frederick Prosperity." He is more particularly de
nounced for claiming the credit for the sitting Parhament of
a reduction of taxation. Sir James Graham is "a proud,
insolent, unprincipled writer," on account of his pampMet
on Corn and Currency. The pamphlet Cobbett declares to
contain a proposition for robbing the whole nation, if the
landowners, " who have all the legal power in their hands,
have but the pluck to make use of it." But Cobbett " has
taken the Baronet of Netherby down a peg." Miss Martineau,
for her advocacy of the new Poor Law, is " Mother Martineau."
The most proverbially honest of statesmen is actuaUy " sly
Althorp," " cunning Althorp ! " With this supreme effort of

William Cobbett. 341

extravagantly perverted mdignation the forty years' flood of
mvective ceases to flow. Cobbett sat up in bed to dictate
the Register which contains the attack on the Whig leader
-on June 10, 1835. On June 18 he was dead.
No chivalrous sensibility ever checked his aggressiveness.
If person or cause could be struck at through a woman, he
would strike as ferociously at the Avoman as at a man. Death
gave no shelter from his satire. A long and wrathful
article is devoted to the misdeeds both of the second Mrs.
Coutts, afterwards Duchess of St. Albans, for succeedmg to
the wealth of " late Banker Coutts," and of her dead husband
for having endowed her wdth it. He is indignant at the
national sorrow for the murdered Perceval. If a man was
faUen, that, in Cobbett's eyes, was no reason for sparing him
if he had not spared Cobbett. A story he tells in the
'Farewell to England,' published on the eve of Ms de
parture for the United States in 1817, illustrates Ms view of
what for him was fair fighting. A butcher and a west-
country grazier quarrelled at Barnet fair, and the butcher
drew Ms knife. The grazier ran off, but returned Avith a
long ash stick. With tMs he gave the butcher a blow on the
wrist which brought the knife to the ground. " The grazier
then fell to work with his stick ; the butcher fell down and
rolled and kicked ; but he seemed only to change his
position in order to insure to every part of his carcase a due
share of the penalty of his baseness. After the grazier had
apparently tired himself, he was coming away, when, hap
pening to cast his eye upon the knife, he ran back and
renewed the basting, exclaiming every now and then as he
caught his breath, ' Dra thy knife, wo't ? ' He came away a
second time, and a second time returned, and set upon the
caitiff again ; and this he repeated several times, exclaiming
always when he recommenced the drubbing, ' Dra thy knife,
wo 't? ' " Cobbett was perpetually casting his eye upon the
knife he considered Ms adversaries had draAvn against him.
Prostrate though they might be, he was perpetually tempted
to " recommence their drubbmg." " We are told," he says at
2 c

342 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed. \
another time, " to love our enemies ; but there is a condition
attached to tMs ; they are to repent and make atonemeiit
first ; for otherwise this would be the most immoral maxim.
God says, ' An eye for an eye ' ; and this is the rule, the
plam unmystical rule, that I pursue."
Former favours were no bar to present enmity. No one
had stood by Mm so faithfully as Lord Folkestone. Burdett's
example made him a reformer. Burdett had saved Cobbett
from a load of pecuniary embarrassment. Yet he assarted
both Folkestone and Burdett with the utmost virulence. His
old patron Wmdham, to whom, it must be admitted, he was
generaUy faithful, is stamped, on occasion, as " the mis
guided." The single character which seems to have escaped
even a side buffet, was that of Cochrane. Cochrane's expulsion
from the House of Commons for fraud was his protection.
Ingratitude, or what bore the semblance of ingratitude to
old friends was taken by Cobbett's friends as evidence- of
Ms incorruptibility ; and incorruptible by money or place he
was. He might have agreed to be sdent in order to Jbuy
exemption from Newgate ; he would never have sold \ his
pen to authority. That in the course of Ms political career
he had veered round to opposite sides of the compass -'did)
not take the edge off Ms consciousness of rectitude. His:
opponents wasted their time in endeavouring to confute him
by dwelling on his printed and published inconsistencies.
He might hallow Paine dead whom living he would have
gibbeted. He might, in 1795, have eloquently execrated the
" murderous " French Revolution, and the " cannibal "
atrocities of the emissaries of the Convention at Lyons. That
was no reason why he should not, in 1816, justify, the-
vengeance, no greater, he alleged, after all than that of Moses,
taken by a "cruelly treated and starving people" for "a
tyranny under which it had groaned for ages," and compared
with which "the bondage of the Israelites was light -as a
feather." No doubt ever crept over him whether possibly he
might not be in error now, since he must otherwise have
certainly been in error before. He was himself apparently

William Cobbett. 343

insensible for the most part to the changes which had been
operating in him. He would appeal bravely to his part in
early controversies as evidence for his new theses. His
disciples never cared to confront the Cobbett of the present
with the Cobbett of the past. For them each Weekly
Register as it appeared was a new genesis ; it had fulfilled its
destiny if it slew a reputation.
Cobbett cared neither for consistency m his opinions old
and new, nor for the consistency of his position at any one
period of Ms career with itself. No Enghshman could be a
more genuine lover of honest industry. He was cut to the
heart by the horrible state of degradation into wMch the
British labourer had sunk during, and for twenty years after,
the great war. Yet he asserted that " the English system of
poor law," the system under which Coventry with 20,000
inhabitants had 8,000 paupers, was " the best in the world."
He mocked at WMtbread's and Romilly's schemes for " en
lightening the people." Modern " facilities of moving human
bodies from place to place," which were beginning to lift the
British labourer from the debasement of a thrall, he, as he
rides Ms way on a good horse, holds to be "amongst the
curses of the country, the destroyers of industry, of morals,
and, of course, of happiness." He would not have Ms son
taught " outlandish Greek or Latin ; " but he detested
utilitarianism. He invited the nation at large to yearly
exMbitions of rough old English sports at Botley, and
defended bull-baiting as an innocent mode of procuring cheap
beef for the poor. Week by week, and year by year, he
went on thundering against the governing classes ; but he
always inserted saving clauses in his indictment for old
descent and the trappings of royalty. " Loanmonger Baring,"
" baronets," like Peel's father, " of the spinmng jenny," and
the "paper aristocracy" generally, he could not tolerate.
He was careful to qualify the existing house of Percy as
" Smithsons (called Percys)." The Duke of Buckingham is
" the new " duke. He taunted Ministers with having
" sneakingly withdrawn the title of ' King of France ' from
2 c 2

344 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
the King and from his coins." He scoffed at " the lowness,
the dirtiness of the villainy, the vulgarity, the disregard of
all sense of morahty and of honour " among republicans. No
man was ever prouder of having lords among his ac
quaintances. For estates " which had descended from
ancestor to heir from the Norman Conquest " he professed an
admiring respect. He denounced " the Administration of
Mr. Pitt," the more bitterly that it had promoted the transfer
of immemorial patrimonies to " brokers and jobbers."
How much of all this was real and how much was acting it
is hard to say. Cobbett himself did not know. He had ac
quired a habit of attitudinising before the public ; if a senti
ment of the proper sharpness of emphasis did not spring up
naturaUy, it had to be forced. He made himself the central
subject of interest or curiosity for his readers. He always
uses the first person in Ms newspaper attacks upon Pitt and
Addington. He is to be met everywhere riding about the
country. He is a guest from time to time at every farmers'
ordinary. Speaking of the farmers of Herefordshire, a district
which was strange to him, he says in his ' Rural Rides ' : "If
I were to live in the county tAvo months, I should be ac
quainted with every man of them." On the county hustings
the petty farmer's son, the farm labourer's grandson, the ex-
sergeant, dared to oppose a more penetrating power than
Pitt's, that of " old Rose " himself. When an attorney of
the Rose party attempted to excite a clamour, " I fixed my
eye upon him," writes Cobbett, "and, pointing my hand
downright, and making a sort of chastising motion, said:
' Peace, babbling slave ! ' which produced such terror amongst
others, that I met with no more interruption." On the
Westmmster hustings he beards as an equal the great
WMg orator, Sheridan. He might be planting an acacia
copse at Botley. He might cudgel a rival journalist for
maligning him, or be threatened with the whip by a political
barrister for his most laudable refusal of a challenge. In
every case the whole English public was taken into his
confidence. He mixed up Mmself and his personality with

William Cobbett. 345

every social problem, with every affair of State. No author
has left in Ms works so complete an autobiography. We are
told by him in the Register and his earlier publications
so much about himself that it might be supposed no character
could have been drawn more distinctly. No character, on
the contrary, is more bewildering. The bluff plain English
yeoman is continually being transformed under our very eyes
into a shrewd, wily Yankee. Beneath the Radical peep forth
infinite possibilities of Tory prejudice.
Whatever may have been the real Cobbett, the actual
Cobbett impressed Mmself in ad his various \ phases very
deeply on the shifting scenes of the first five-and-thirty
years of the nineteenth century. His influence had its evil
side. A popular leader of whose character rancour, incon
sistency, forgetfulness of kindnesses, prejudice, and inca
pacity for recognising that there may be good motives for
miscMevous acts, are essential constituents, is not one to
bridge over social chasms and pacify class feuds. The faint
est spark of envy and jealousy which Cobbett detected in
the relations of Englishmen he fanned into a flame. Yet
any one who has studied the administration of England
during the great French war and the period which was
its sequel, will pause before condemning the influence of
Cobbett, or perhaps the man himself, too absolutely. It was
a period of pretences, subterfuges, and hypocrisies. The
rulers ruling under one title exercised powers that title was
never meant to cover. The Political Register had its
birth in. a period when they who were supposed to represent
the British people represented either Downing Street, or a
score of boroughmongering peers, or a heavy balance at their
bank. Wages were a species of poor rate, and the poor rate
a form of wages. The criminal law was a lottery in which
the least guilty might draw the penalty of the most atrocious
outrage. Finance was reduced to mere juggling ; and Lord
Castlereagh appeared to be plotting to acclimatise the prin
ciples of foreign despotism on English soil.
Cobbett, though he had blinding prejudices of Ms own,

346 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
could see through the prejudices and sophisms of others. He
chose both Ms weapons and their mark often wrongly ; but
even his perversity compelled pohticians to render account of
their constitutional faith. When Chancellors of the Exchequer
were stdl in darkness, he saw the grotesque absurdity of
borrowing to maintain the Sinking Fund. He saw the fallacy
of bounties on corn. He saw the superiority of leases to
yearly tenancies. He saw that a large currency does not make
a nation richer than a small currency ; that the one virtue
of a national currency is that it should continue to represent
equivalent values when a debt is contracted and when it has
to be paid. In his highest flights of extravagance — when
he raded at Protestantism, as though he were not a
rampant political Protestant Mmself, when he extolled the,
old poor law, when he raged against potatoes, "hog potatoes,",
" the smtable companions of misery and filth," a thing which
can be " raked half ripe out of the ground with the paws,"
"and without the help of any utensils, except, perhaps, a
stick to rake it from the fire, can be conveyed into the
stomach in the space of an hour," when he reviled all
Liberals who scrupled to unroof the house of politics before
they had got the inmates out — his impulse was often right.
The abuses he assaded were generally flagrant, though the
personal antipathies he founded on them usually were gro
tesque, and though the remedies he proposed might be as
bad as the disease. A more temperate politician might
not have stirred farmers and mechanics to educate them
selves in politics. Without the proportion of eartMness in
Ms mteUectual composition there would have been slender
sympathy between Mmself and the ill-used and uneducated
classes which he taught' to feel their wrongs, if not their
rights, as Enghshmen.
The power he had won he beheved was only a beginning.
The echoes his burning appeals had woke in deadened souls
he heard reverberating through the ages. " All the celebrity,"
he boasted, " which my writings have obtained, they will
preserve long and long after Lords Liverpool, and Sidmouth,

William Cobbett. 347

and Castlereagh are rotten and forgotten." Liverpool, and
-Sidmouth, and Castlereagh may be forgotten; but neither
are the writings of Cobbett remembered. The many volumes
•of the Pohtical Register, Sermons on the [rights of the
poor and the extortion of the clergy, parodies of the Pro
testant Reformation, and Legacies to labourers, to Peel,
and to parsons, did their work, and are at rest. The student
of politics must be a student of Cobbett if he would under
stand the rudiments out of which existing tendencies have
been developed. The statesman who , does not know the
Register forfeits a master key to the passions of his country
men. Yet thousands of Englishmen go through what
they suppose to be a complete course of English literature,
without a suspicion that Cobbett should be read as well as
Burke. We cannot wish for Cobbett a place among English
classics. Insolence and spite are the spirit he breathes.
He speaks in the accents of an age as much one of civil
war as if the weapons had not been bitter thoughts, but more
innocent swords and muskets. Of such literature the life is
necessarily brief ; and it is useless to deprecate a fate for Ms
Avritings wMch was inevitable. Not the less lamentable is it
that a style so piquant, such power of marrying argument
to declamation, such spontaneous transitions from wrath
against the oppressor to pity for the oppressed, with such
sudden gleams of dlustration by biting apologue of pots and
pans, or tender remmiscence of " my dear old grandmother "
and her rushlights, should be mixed up inextricably wdth
withering sarcasms upon the sins, which no longer arouse
indignation, of statesmen whose names no longer evoke
memories. Recollections of nature-printed bits of English scenery,
taken with the dew and the sunlight glistening upon them,
plead for a reprieve from oblivion of one book of Cobbett's,
if no other. English literature may be searched in vain for
such another miniature of southern England as the 'Rural
Rides.' It is an ambulatory history of Selborne, with the
parish of Selborne expanded into a dozen counties. But the

348 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
smoke from the monster "Wen" poisons the air even on
the breezy Surrey downs. In great leafy western woods the
diarist scents, as it were, the carcase of a " fundlord " beneath
the violets. The eye is lingering fondly on some sweep of
fruitful valleys and green hills, when the foot stumbles on
the brink of a forsaken mine of rustic happiness, exhausted
and desolated by commercial or official greediness. GMde-
book makers have always quarried in the 'Rural Rides.'
Those transcripts of scenery never grow obsolete. But the
volume itself gathers dust ; few and far between are its new
editions. Cobbett chose his lot, and it is too late to dream of
mending it. His Register stung vindictively a hundred
political reputations, and Ms own fame is dead of Ms revenge.

VI.

PUEITAN AND CAYALIEE ENGLAND
TRANSPLANTED.

NEW ENGLAND,
1620-1784.
VIRGINIA, 1607-1799.

( 351 )

NEW ENGLAND.

Franklin and Cobbett, in varying modes and degrees, both
serve as points of contact between English and American
pohtics. But the America to which they call attention is
America moulded and transformed by Republican institutions.
There is another aspect in which American history may be
viewed ; and it also has its English counterparts. American
provincial history, the period of American antiquity, to
Frankhn himself was grown obsolete before Ms career ended ;
it was always invisible to Cobbett as a sojourner ; yet it
deserves study not less for the light it sheds outside its
immediate circle than for its own merits. It tells much about
the direction of the American national character, and not a
little concerning English character as wed. For experimental
purposes notiring is more instructive than to transport outside
its habitual circumstances an element of which the force
needs to be measured. A retention of vigour by it in its new
quarters attests inherent vitality. Its choice of the same lme
to move along is evidence of a genuine tendency, and cannot
be attributed to accident. Explorers of particular veins and
strata of English history enjoy that kind of opportunity for
gauging some of their distinctive characteristics in pictures
of the social life of Virginia and New England as it existed
before their emancipation from British rule. Cavalier
England, the England of country squires, not feudal and
baronial, not unconscious of the advantages of commerce, but
despising the economy and assiduity wMch trade demands, is
plainly reflected in the former. Puritan England stereotyped
itself in the latter and preserved the impression long after it

352 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
had faded off the original type. Both offer an interesting
spectacle. In the younger of the two the traits were so deeply
graven that they have never been effaced. The Puritan bias,
though no longer more distinctly religious at Boston than at
Geneva, continues in its own modern fashion to stamp the
character of New England. By its influence over a national
constituent so important as Massachusetts it remains an
active leavening force in general American progress.
Populations, when all their life and energies have been
absorbed and dominated by a particular type of feeling,
seem sometimes to have a capacity of throwing off into space
an exact facsimile of it. The image does not revolve in the
same orbit, or undergo the same developments as the state of
society of which it is the product. It obeys simply the
special laws which it iUustrated at and by its birth. Its
tendencies, which may be various, continue ever after un
changeable. Thus, the result of a most radical revolution may
manifest subsequently equally extreme conservatism. Never
has the principle been more plainly exemplified than in the
course of the annals and thought of New England.
The story of the plantation of the New England colonies
belongs to a heroic chapter in English history. It re
produces the spirit which animated its leaders at home,
unadulterated by the suspicion of cunning and scheming
with which, whether true or false, the art of the English
Thucydides has overspread their policy. Every now and
then, one of the actors in the great coming drama of the
Commonwealth is seen directly associated with the Colonial
knight errantry. Of the more permanent settlers the Belling-
hams, Dudleys, and Winthrops were English all over, with
the prejudices generous, or narrow, as they might be, of English
gentlemen and yeomen. The land they chose was not one of
nature's treasure houses. Such as it was it suited their mood.
Captain Goswold found Martha's Vineyard "replenished
with the blossoms of strawberries and raspberries, with cranes
and hemes, and courteous salvages." But it was, " by reason
of some occult and secret accident, known by experience to

New England. 353

partake a little too much of the two extremes of heat and
cold ; " the latter, however, cleansing the air's lower chambers,
" and the earth as to its fruitfulness being beholding to
the summer's heat, and the influence of celestial planets."
Enghshmen are inclined to think this somewhat stormy land
of Puritan refuge sterner than it seemed then. Few English
tourists examine the country at all. So late as 1796, an
American travelling through it for curiosity was a marvel.
Judging from the meagreness of more recent tours and
American handbooks, we may conceive he would be so still.
New England scenery, in general, though not romantic, is of
a domestic picturesqueness. Everywhere rise up lichen-
covered rocks, partially covered Avith the native forest, or
boulders of bare gneiss bordering the level and fertile plain.
Now you come upon swamps fringed with red cedars ; now
on one of the multitudinous, glittering New England lochs,
each, writes President D wight, like " a delightful morning in
spring." Then again appear stretches of aboriginal forest, great
groves of wMspering white pines, birch, and oak, and sumach,
and glorious maples, contrasting with what the same author
terms the " cavern-like darkness of the massy green hemlock."
All are gdded and vermilioned by the first breath of the
summer of All-Saints. Interspersed now are bright white
vdlages, shadowed with luxuriant avenues. Down the broken
forest-lands the waters, always pure and sweet, flow with un
ceasing rapidity ; and, to their pleased surprise, emigrants,
natives of our eastern counties, found grassy hollows and
thickets ever dry and healthy. There were not smooth lawns,
or heaths, or ancient oaks ; but the yellow tulip-tree and blush
pink dogwood, and fragrant shad-blossom illuminated the land
scape. Every common had its glossy candleberry and sweet
fern, golden rods and asters, and everlastings. Generally
the hills were low downs rather than mountains ; but the clear
northern atmosphere made the crests of the White Moun
tains, pearl-like, or projected, as before a storm, a continual
presence within a circle of eighty or a hundred miles.
The Virginian tobacco-planter might taunt the colonists with

354 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
the sugar, indigo, ginger, and cotton, which the industry of
their twenty thousand would have produced had they come
thither, instead of selecting a region " so barren, that, except
a herring be put into the hole that you set the corn or maize
in, it wdl not come up." But rocky Massachusetts was
blown upon by the rough animating winds of England, and
its sand dunes, pools, and levels, reminded of old home
steads amid the fens of Lincolnshire and Essex. Even
Enghsh weeds loved the soil Avhich was friendly to Enghsh
grain. The colonists were fugitives in the cause of rehgious
liberty, and had no reason to meditate with gratitude on their
native rulers. They might have, in this remote region,
practically renounced Privy Councils and Stuarts. The
thought never entered their imaginations. They would be
Englishmen in all points still. At the moment of departure,
the leaders of the main body of emigrants put forth to the
Avorld a manifesto of ardent love and gratitude to the land and
Constitution which had indifferently cherished them.
A forlorn hope for making the experiment of a settlement,
was furnished by the congregation of Mr. Robinson, that
audacious controversialist who, a chronicler tells us, " at length
arrived to that confidence, that he began to play with Dr.
Ames Ms name, styling him in one of his pamphlets 'Dr.
Wdliam Amiss.' " After a brief trial of Holland they tired of
its fogs, and were the more disposed to be tempted by Captain
Goswold's report of the dry bracing air in the region he had
just visited. They had been encouraged also by a prediction
of " Mr. Brigges, that famous mathematician," as people then
politely termed their Murphys and Moores, that " the dis
appearing of the blazing star in the west, in the year 1619,
betokened the death of the natives in these parts through
some notable event." In a dreary December, after a tedious
passage over " the vast and wide ocean," the little company
reached the shore, " to be entertained with no other sight
than that of the withered grass on the surface of the cold
earth, and the grim looks of savage enemies." They were
comforted a little by " stumbling, through an accident,

New England. 355

upon some baskets of Indian corn, which did, in some sort,
resemble the grapes of Eshcol, more to the apprehension of
faith than of sense."
Mdes Standish was elected captain of Plymouth, " the Old
Colony." He had been " bred a soldier in the Low Countries,
and was very expert in things of that nature, though not at
that time of their church." Mr. Robinson, indeed, seems to
have been someAvhat alarmed at the tales of the prowess of this
mad-clad, fiery, little warrior, as shown in the slaying, with
his own hand, of the naked Indian brave, Pecksuct. The Pastor
wrote in 1623 to his people, " to consider the diposition of their
captain, who was of a severe temper. He doubted whether
there was not wanting that tenderness of the hfe of man,
made after God's image, which was meet." His congregation
was less scrupulous, and did not look censoriously into httle
incidents of murder and marauding wMch might diversify
the marches and countermarches through the forest of him
and his
" Twelve men all equipped, having each his rest and his matchlock,
Eighteen shillings a month, together with diet and pillage."
In memory, some assert, of his ancestral hall in Lancashire,
of which, they say, he had been unjustly deprived, he called
his own village Duxbury According to another tradition, it
gained its name from his office of Dux. Perhaps it was an
equivoque. There he hung up his sword and snaphance, the
terror of the Indian tribes from Massachusetts Bay to
Martha's Vineyard, from Cape Cod to Nairaganset, and
married. Faithless J0M1 Alden and fair Priscilla were his near
neighbours. Whatever his fadures in woomg, or carelessness
of Indian rights, he was a successful pubhc servant for the
young settlement, and he tolerated no lawlessness among Ms
people. Order was strictly maintained under his command
and the magistracy of Mr. John Carver. In September 1630,
one Bilhngton was executed for murder in the forest; and so the
colony took root among lawful nations. Soon beneath the
brow of the pine-clad plain, overlooking the ocean, avenues
of drooping elms Avere planted. Beside them arose houses

356 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
with panelled wads and huge protruding wooden beams. The
exteriors were constructed in Leyden style of brick imported
with the settlers from Holland, and fitted with house-martm
boxes to remind them of the stork-nests on friendly Dutch
roofs. There dwelt many a Jerusha, Eunice, Dorcas, and
Experience, making comfortable, if very serious, homes for
their Adonirams, Seths, and Considers, during the residue of
the eighty or mnety years which it was granted to many of
them to see out in the Old Colony ; all which the primitive
churchyard shows.
In the meantime Salem had been planted by some dissidents
from the principle of religious separatism upheld by Plymouth.
Soon, with the help of a rich and powerful company, wMchhad
obtained a charter to hold the land in common socage of the
manor of East Greenwich, it grew and prospered, untd it became
the most characteristic of New England settlements. There
was gathered, in 1629, the first " Church," that of Boston being
but seventh in order of date. In wealth, literature, contribu
tions to works of charity, and population, though year by year
with a wider interval, it still stands next, among the cities of
its State, to Boston. On it Nathaniel Hawthorne, the most
national of American writers, concentrates his cMef wealth
of description and historic fancy. In itself, notiring can be
more prosaic. That does not make it less of a type. The
novelist describes its flat, unvaried surface, covered chiefly
with wooden houses, few of which pretend to arcliitectural
beauty, with an irregularity which is neither picturesque nor
¦quaint. He expatiates on its long and lazy street, lounging
wearisomely through the whole extent of the penmsula, with
its Gallows-hill at one end, and a view of the almshouse
at the other. " Such," he continues, " being the features of
my native town, it would be quite as reasonable to form a
sentimental attachment to a disarranged checker-board. And
yet, though invariably happiest elsewhere, there is within me
a feeling for old Salem, which, m lack of a better pMase, I must
be content to call affection." Round about the sandy plain
on wMch it stands, washed by the salt water on each side at

Nev) England. 357

every tide, with stormy Cape Anne stretching mistily far out
to the north, rise rude hills. Great swamps are interspersed,
Pine Swamp, Blueberry Swamp, Cotton Swamp, Round
SAvamp, and hosts of other swamps, Avith rocks, downs, and
pasture lands, and wdd, melancholy pine groves. The
name of Wenham Lake, a few miles away, is better known
than all the rest in England now. It suggests cheerful
summer and strawberry ices, and is worthy of the pleasant
associations. According to the testimony of a traveller a
couple of centuries ago, it is " a delicious paradise, abounding
Avith all rural pleasures ; the lofty trees on each side being
a sufficient shelter from the winds, and the warm sun so
kindly ripening both the fruits and floAvers, as if the spring,
the summer, and the autumn had agreed together to thrust
winter out of doors. "
Formerly the name of Salem required no accidental aids
to remembrance. The whole early history of NeAv England
may be read in the names of its runs, and coves, points, and
" dungeons." Many Avealthy families still reside in it, or the
neighbourhood, in mansions disguised under the democratic
name of farm-houses. Such are Fitch's Farm, possessed, by a
descendant of King Derby, as one merchant prince Avas styled,
Castlehill Farm, with a vast decaying hall, and Pickman's
Farm. The munificent family which sprang direct from Sir
Richard Saltonstall, a founder and patron of the new colony,
lived splendidly at Saltonstall Place. In the town itself, with
its dull monotony of wooden houses and unpaved streets, oc
casional edifices of wood, rich in fanciful decorations, show the
" House of the Seven Gables " to be only one of a class. Its
quaint figures stamped on the glittering plaster ; its gables
presenting the aspect of a whole sisterhood of edifices breath
ing through the spiracles of one great chimney, Avith spaces in
between for fair flowers to colour, and humming-birds to flit
over ; its carved globes of Avood, and spiral rods of iron ; its
many lattices with diamond panes, and deep Avaves of shadow
thrown over hall and chamber by the full projecting eaves, are
native facts of Salem topography. The seat of these Pyncheons
2 b

358 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
stands, or stood not long since, in spacious Summer Street.
In the same .street is the almshouse, though neither to that,
nor to the new one on the common, had Uncle Venner to
retire. Essex or Main Street contains all the principal
houses, and the tAvo old-fashioned wooden churches. At the
corner of it and North Street, Curwen-house, gabled and
peaked, and dating back to 1642, is another witness to the
love the adventurers had of recalhng their quaint Essex or
Lincolnshire homesteads amid the lanes and high streets of an.
American vidage. The dress and portrait of Captain Curwen,
still or till lately there preserved, with flowing neckcloth, lace
sash, and coat with short cuffs showing the plaited shirt,
octagon ring, and cane, is, or was, a sort of material guarantee
of the deeds and characters of the whole stern resolute race.
The founders of Salem were no vagrants, leaving home for
the sake of subsistence. They were well-to-do landowners.
Many, if not most, had enjoyed the advantages of a complete
mnVersity training, and some, as Wilson and Governor
Dudley, had attained academical distinction. They came of
the same stock with the men who faced Rupert's horse
men at Marston Moor and Naseby, and they anticipated
them in disdaining the idea of subservience. Such were the
Curwens, and Hawthornes, or Hathornes, and Pyncheons.
The first of the New England branch of the Curwens left, at
his death, £5,964 in money ; 621 oz. of plate ; much mer
chandise ; three farms near Salem ; ships, houses, warehouses,
and wharfs, both there and at Boston. The Hawthornes
came from England at the same period. Major Hawthorne
very early founded Dorchester, and planted its rich orchards
and gardens, though retaining his Salem domicde. We
hear of them on special commissions, in the Council of the
province, and in the town magistracy. In 1652 the town
voted for the building of a fort on the south-east point of
Winter Island, to be under the care of Governor Endicott and
Wdliam Hawthorne. The same W. Hawthorne, " the bold
and worthy captain, a man of an undaunted courage, with
Ms lieutenant Lothrope, led the band of Salem." Perhaps he

New England. 359

had, hke Ms major, " the stout and active Robert Sedgwick,"
been nursed up in " London's Artillery Garden," whence, we
must remember, came Sir Arthur Hasdrigge's valiant cuiras
siers. 'The Pyncheons were a still more important house.
Beside bemg the squires of Springfield and Northfield, they
generally held the office of Assistant ; and their head, even
under the despotic sway of Sir Edmund Andros, kept his
seat in the Council of the province. Widiam Pyncheon was
Provincial Treasurer in 1636, the same year in which Sir
Henry Vane, soon to figure on a larger field, was Governor.
The Honourable Major and Colonel John Pyncheon was a
man of war, often charged by the Council with the drilling
and mustering of the trainbands against Marquas and Sine-
ques. He was a friend of the unpopular Mr. Secretary
Edward Randolph, and one for whom, writes the latter, " his
Excellency the Governor has a great kindness." The race
continued to flourish in Salem, and the Pyncheon Papers
constitute some of the most important documents of Massa
chusetts history.
The names of a few families meet us at every step, in tracing
the history of the old New England settlements. The migra
tion included capitahsts and merchants, such as Browne and
Humphries, younger sons seeking a fortune, and individuals
of ad ranks fleeing from persecution. The groundwork of any
one of its several sections was a body of Lincolnshire, Dorset,
or Essex vdlagers, dissatisfied with the whole home system
of government. But all: leaders and followers, were men of
prompt energy, ready to improve every opportunity. In 1629
Salem consisted of six houses ; in 1636, Endicott was explor
ing as far as Narraganset Bay, and marching, with his score
of warriors, deep into the heart of the hostde Pequod territory.
The sickly flocked over to a land where rheumatic and phleg
matic diseases were said to be unknown ; for, writes one of
the first ministers, '" a sup of New England's aire is better
than a whole draught of Old England's ale." Peasants hoped
for rich returns from a virgin soil. Hardy seamen found
"wealth in the fisheries of bass, cod, and mackerel, which
2 r> 2

Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.

yielded draughts often enough to break strong nets. No long
time, and the Desire sailed forth from a Salem dockyard, a
printing-press was set up, and the first American Almanac
issued. Opulent merchants began to budd themselves houses
in the Puritan villages, where 80 per cent, was no uncommon
rate of profit. The general tone of comfort was increased ;
and "green pease growing in the magistrates' gardens, as
good as ever he eat in England," seem to have startled
and tickled worthy Mr. Higginson's palate. As plentiful a
crop of English weeds, which, imported with seed-corn, made
holiday in New Essex, completely beating out the native
tribes, was a less pleasant proof of the indiscriminate con
geniality of air and soil.
WMle the Endicotts, Pyncheons, and Curwens were guard
ing the land from the Indian foe with the great ordnance wMch
Avas a matter of high pride to the settlement, Hugh Peters,
afterwards the regicide, stimulated commercial activity. His
influence is always spoken of under the term " sovereignty."
A refugee City of London preacher, he had come over from
Hodand in the capacity as much of a merchant as of a
minister. At one time he was excommunicating Roger
Williams's adherents ; at another, reforming the police of the
toAvn. He was an autocrat. Rich men, the Brownes and
William Hawthorne, flocked into Salem, and bowed to his
authority. He founded salt-works, water-mdls, and glass-
Avorks. By him the marsh Avas drained ; and a great ship,
for those times, of 300 tons burden, was equipped, and bore
the name of Salem to every mercantile port of Europe.
Governor Endicott he wrested from the dominion of Roger
Widiams. Williams was too kind and gentle for him, though
a religionist so zealous as to have compelled the impetuous
Puritan captain, to the indignation of the Conservative
Browne, to cut out from the royal standard the red cross as a
Popish emblem. He rebuked Harry Vane himself for abett
ing the heresies of Anne Hutchinson. He was a powerful
preacher ; Ms coarse, familiar images and strange analogies
" making whatever he said sure to be remembered." At the

New England. 361

same time, he would not suffer the Church to interfere with
secular business, and went so far as to suppress the crowd of
weekly and occasional lectures to which Cotton Mather at
Boston confidently ascribes the remarkable prosperity of that
town. He nobly rebuked the people for pretending a private
revelation from Heaven, to eke out msufficient evidence
against a woman accused of child-murder. He woke up the
energies of the Puritan farmers ; and Endicott, aided by his
counsels, triumphed over the Indian borderers. To missions
for propagating the Gospel among the tribes he never
showed favour in Old or in New England. To his solid,
prosaic understandmg, there appeared something ridiculously
visionary in all the arguments and theories on this topic
of Roger Williams, and even the " Apostle of the Indians,"
Eliot. He seems to have held, as completely as Cromwell in
regard to the wild Irish, that the savages were vermin made
to be exterminated. Magnificent educational schemes were
not favoured by him. A project, for instance, for the institu
tion of a college at Salem he denounced as the mere result of
jealousy of the metropolitan claims of Boston. But all sober
plans of the sort he furthered ; and to him was due the intro
duction to the settlement of Mr. John Fisk, a Cambridge
graduate of great wealth, and equal liberality, the father of
education in New England. Sir George DowMng, subse
quently celebrated as Cromwell's and Charles II.'s ambassador
in Holland, was a pupil of Fisk's, and the first New Cam
bridge graduate. Against the earnest remonstrances of Endi
cott, and the agricultural members of his congregation, who
valued his ministrations above his commercial genius, but at
Ms own request, and backed by the Avishes of the mercantile
party, Hugh Peters was elected delegate to England, to
represent the sense of the colony on the laAvs of excise
and trade. Local tradition continues to associate Wenham
Lake with the memory of Ms bold oratory and strong, rough
sense, ringing out amid the queerest of grammar, and some
times the most inconclusive of arguments, from Peters'
Hill over the waters. At home, only his last words, on

362 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
the scaffold, are remembered: "In a revolution, burn the
whole and begin anew."
Peters had indoctrinated with his own passion for ortho
doxy, as he understood it, that " sociable warrior, of a cheer
ful, loving, and austere spirit," Captain Endicott; and the
Captain, with all his gaiety, did not bear the sword in vain.
Mrs. Oliver and the Hutchinsonians were hardly dealt with;
and in 1658 Quakers were threatened with the penalty of
death, though not with the consent of the minister, Mr.
Norris. There seem to have been two parties in Salem, and
New England generally, the democratic and enthusiastic, and
the conservative. Men like Vane and Roger Widiams, and,
at one time, Cotton, were on the side of the former. So
originally had been Endicott ; but we find him in 1652 join
ing Dudley, Bellingham, Bradstreet, and Hibbins, husband
of a future victim of the witchcraft delusion, "bitter-tem
pered Mistress Hibbins," in excusing themselves to Vane, by
this time exalted in power at home, from showing forbearance
to William Pyncheon, who had, though a magistrate, written
a book in favour of the radical tenets. Wintiirop and Peters,
and most of the ministers, were consistent in discounten
ancing innovations. An extreme section of the same party,
comprising Hawthorne, Humphries, and Sir Richard Salton
stall, actuady proposed a high property qualification for
office, and would have converted the Council into a per
manent oligarchy.
Boston was founded after Salem. On the 7th of April,
1630, had Wintiirop, Fiennes, and the rest of the Council,
put forth from on board the Arbella their solemn declara
tion of loA^e for England, and entreaty for the prayers
of the Church. On June 12, the Admiral galley, followed
soon by the Mayflower and the rest, reached Massachusetts.
They met a hearty welcome. Venison pasty and strong
beer refreshed the great men. The rest, in addition, it may
be presumed, to more solid food, feasted on strawberries, with
which, says the old historian in a regretful tone, "the woods
were at that time everywhere well furnished." The whole

New England. 363

land was gay and bright, as in old Hubbard's description.
" Now, M May you shall see the woods and fields curiously
decked with roses, and an innumerable multitude of other
delightful flowers, not only pleasing to the eye but smell ; so
that you may behold nature contending Avith art, and striv
ing to equal, if not excel, many gardens in England." But
second impressions were gloomier than the first. Young
Henry Winthrop, the Governor's second son, " a sprightly
and hopeful young gentleman," was drowned on the second
day ; and, withm a month, was buried at Salem, only a few
weeks before her husband, Isaac Johnson, the Lady Arbella.
The poor lady died heart-broken at the " change from a
paradise of plenty and pleasure, in the famdy of a noble
earldom, into a Avilderness of wants ;" all which sorrows, says
the pious chronicler, "proved too strong a temptation."
Winter, too, came like a surprise upon the new-comers,
before they had become habituated to their neAv abode.
Happdy, writes one of themselves in a rapture, " we have
plenty of fire to Avarm us. Nay, all Europe is not able to
afford to make so great fires as New England." If the blaze
they kept up had a habit of setting the huts on fire, the
structures were easdy rebuilt.
In the fodowing spring Governor Winthrop, John Wilson,
late Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, the learned
Wdliams, and Cotton, established themselves on the penin
sula. The settlement was caded, from the native town of
Cotton and other chief men, Boston ; soon to become " the
metropohs of the wdderness, environed as it was with the
brinish flouds, furnished with a beacon and lowd babbling
guns, ... the wonder of this modern age, whose continuad
inlargement presages some sumptuous city." The fertile
black earth about the town grew grass for the cattle, all
manner of wheat, pumpkins, grapes, and strawberries, and
" divers physicall herbs " for both men and turkeys ; with
other free gifts of nature, rocks and rivulets, "damaske
roses verie sweete," lobelias, fire-flies and humming-birds,
green coast-islands and gleaming lakelets, with sweet-scented

364 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
Avater-lilies. Governor Winthrop's house stood a httle north
of the Old South Church, Avhere, on the 6th of March,
1770, the townsmen were to meet, animated by Winthrop's
spirit, to remonstrate with a Governor very unlike him for
introducing troops into the city. His descendants of the
fifth or sixth generation still flourish in Cambridge.
Before Boston Charlestown was founded, between " the
pleasant river of Mistick " and the Charles ; and speeddy
grew up "a fair market-place, near the water-side, built round
Avith houses comely and fair, forth of which there issues two
streetes orderly built, with some very fair houses, beautified
Avith pleasant gardens and orchards." The suddenness of
the creation seems to the old narrator wellnigh miraculous.
High up the Charles, Sir Richard Saltonstall and the Rev.
Mr. Philips dwelt, with store of cattle and servants, in
Watertown amid a labyrinth of waters. Gradually farmers
betook themselves to the richer lands in the interior of the
county of Middlesex. By the side of the slumberous Concord
sprang up, nineteen miles from Boston, a town of the same
name as the river, embosomed in apple-trees, corn lands,
meadows, and onion fields, on a site purchased from a female
chieftain, at the liberal price of a hat and greatcoat for
her husband. There, at the North Bridge, Gage's troops
were beaten by the county militia, on the memorable 19th of
April, 1775, and the first blood in the war was shed. The
opening up of the river Connecticut, with its succession of
rich valleys, rude bluffs, and shaggy mountains, and the
example of the Rev. Thomas Hooker, attracted various con
troversialists, who " could not bear two suns in one firma
ment." They were encouraged by the countenance, though
not much more, of the Marquis Hamilton, who owned a
territory, sixty miles in length, between this stream and the
Narraganset country, and of the Lords Say and Brooke,
republicans at home, avIio desired to establish in America an
hereditary magistracy and aristocracy. The Fort of Saybrook
Avas built ; and Widiam Pyncheon, become by his book un
popular in Salem, commenced a town beneath the shadow of

New England. 36i

Mount Tom. It took its name from Pyncheon's estate near
Chelmsford, Springfield, Thomas Hooker's native place. To a
modern New Englander, the mention of Springfield suggests
not the Puritan divine, but bright green jalousies, neat precise
porches to white Avooden houses, and many flower-pots. Negli
gent of claims to the land put forth by the Prince of Orange,
or, as the local historian prefers to render the title,
" Ourania," the new settlement flourished. It was strong in
the assistance of energetic men like Mr. Peter Prudden,
pastor of Milford, though not the Avearer of Hawthorne's
" Black Ved," who could " provide comfortably for a numerous
family, without indecent distractions from his study," and lay
men hke Mr. Theophdus Eaton, once well known in the Baltic
Company, and a thriving merchant. Eaton, finding husbandry
more sMtable for Ms new locality than trading, " applied
himself, though he had more than once, with good advantage,
stood before kings, dexterously to the mean and low things of
New England." He Avas perpetual Governor of Connecticut,
till " too excedent a supper carried off his excellent princely
face and port." Then Massachusetts, where the rulers
had not left behind in their Lincolnshire and Essex home
steads and halls the capacity for jealousy of a neighbouring
squire or county, managed to prove, perhaps by the aid of the
Pyncheons, still citizens of Salem, that Springfield, the chief
ornament of the new province, lay within its territory.
A master motive, the craving for a community re
presenting each man's especial aMavs, carried these stout
hearted farmers far into NeAv Hampshire. Very early, Ports
mouth Avas settled within distant Ariew of the mysterious
floating peaks of the White Mountains, and the echo of
strange stories of the Avonderful gem set on one of their cliffs.
The settlers ploughed almost in the shadow of the hills ; but
none but a few Irishmen cared to hunt after the treasure
there hidden. The chronicler's summary of the result of
their expedition is, simply, that they found " several rivers
strong enough to turn a mill."
In each and every division of the proA'ince the dispersed

366 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
homesteads betrayed a propensity to expand into affluent
villages, with paddocks and wall-fruit. The numerous hsts,
still on record, of " charges for magistrates and attendants at
dinner at Quarter Court," recall the joviality of Elizabethan
quarter-sessions. Though grave Winthrop somewhat damped
the festivity, by discountenancing the English practice of
drinking one to another, the essence of the good cheer was
preserved. " This poor wilderness," writes a contemporary,
" hath not only equalised England in food, but gone beyond
it in some places for the great plenty of wine and sugar,
apples, pippms, and russets, and jennetings, and quince tarts
instead of pumpkin pies. Of poultry they have plenty, and
great rarity; and, in their feasts, have not forgotten the
English fashion of stirring up their appetites with variety of
cooking their food."
Learning was not neglected. New England could even
boast a Latin poet, Morell, who had come out with young
Gorges as general Episcopal Commissioner, but, having
notiring to do in this office, suppressed Ms patent, made
verses, and translated them. He was more . fortunate in his
themes than the learned Stephen Parmenius of Buda, who
accompanied Sir Humphrey Gilbert's expedition to New
foundland, and found, as he writes, bemoaning himself, to
Hakluyt, nothing to sing but cod, "piscium inexhausta
copia ! " Morell was at no loss for topics. He glorifies the
land for the abundance of
" The turtle, eagle, partridge, and the quaile,
Knot, plover, pigeons, Avhich doe never faile.
With these sweete dainties man is sweetly fed ;
With these rich feathers ladies plume their head."
Soon the province could boast of a learned grammarian,
Ezekiel Cheever, afterwards master of Cambridge Grammar
School, of whom the erudite Cotton Mather has written the
epitaph in his ' Magnalia,' —
" He lived and wrought ; his labours were immense,
But ne'er declined to preterperfect sense."
By the advice of such men, and with the help of a legacy of

New England. 367

£700, bequeathed by John Harvard, of Southwark, increased
by grants from the Legislature, as of a right of ferry and a
couple of thousand acres of land, an university was estab
lished in Massachusetts. Newtown, a plantation of Deputy-
Governor Dudley, in a plain a little above the bay, half a mile
broad, formed by the Charles, with a common stretching to the
north-west, was chosen for the locality. To it from English
Cambridge, the university at which Dudley and others of
the magistrates had been educated, "the Muses were invited
to emigrate." It began under difficulties ; for " that' hidden
Jesuit, Mr. Nathaniel Eaton, proved a mere Orbilius, thrash
ing his ushers," and welcoming Ms fair guests themselves from
Parnassus, according to the assertion of Ms local censor, Avith
a plentiful stock of cudgels. When, however, he had been
ejected, its fame, under Dunster and Mitchell, soon rose high.
A fine edifice, one hundred feet long, was erected in a few
years, and the germ of a library collected, augmented by the
munificence of Baxter, Sir Kenelm Digby, and Sir John
Maynard. By the College statute, " none are to be admitted
before they can make and speak true Latin in verse and
prose, suo, ut aiunt, marte," though it was enough to be able
to decline in Greek " the paradigms." The ordinary acade
mical curriculum included Hebrew, Logic, Metaphysics,
Natural Philosophy, and Astronomy. So the state of educa
tion must have been advanced indeed. English poetry does
not seem to have been equally cultivated. In 1639, the first
printing-press was set up in the university town, according to
the precedent of Old England. The ambition of Mather of
Dorchester, and Eliot, the preacher of Roxbury, at once set
it to work on what was to have been an improved edition of
Sternhold and Hopkins. But their " regard for conscience
rather than rhythm " landed them in so dreary a rendering,
that the following reproof might have been to their ears a
model of melody : —
" Ye Koxbury poets, keep clear of the crime
Of missing to give us Arery good rhyme ;
And you of Dorchester, your verses lengthen,
But with the text's own words vou will them strengthen."

368 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
The pretty villas, bordering broad winding roads, Avith flower-
gardens and old mossy fruit-trees, indicating by their size a
former richness of soil which is said to have now evaporated,
shelter perhaps hardly as weighty scholars, but far more
tuneful ears. In a roomy house, overshadowed by a huge
elm a couple of centuries old, and ornamented with gay
terrace parterres and Georgian pilasters and verandahs, once
sojourned Washington. It became the happy and hospitable
home of Professor Longfellow.
The prosperity of Massachusetts was advancing surely and
steadily, unchecked by tyrannical Boards of Trade or in
triguing Governors, when a fearful calamity assaulted it from
Avithin. The extraordinary epidemic, the witchcraft scare,
burst upon it. By the year 1692 almost all the wortMes of
the first generation, men endowed with the authority of
patriarchs and of founders, had died. Such was Thomas
Hooker of Hartford, " of whom," says modestly an old New
England writer, "some may think too much said by his
friend," who declared, in reviewing the glories of the rest of
the earth, that America
" Yet thinks she may into this catalogue come
With Europe, Africk, Asia, for one tomb."
Such, too, were " that ancient gentleman, Governor Dudley,"
" Helluo librorum, lectorum bibliotheca,"
solicitor, soldier, statesman, and scholar, who yet was
content to indite for his epitaph, "I died no libertine;"
Nathaniel Rogers, " son of the famous preacher of Dedham,
the only Boanerges of his age ; " and Governor Bradford of
Plymouth, if a zealot, " for one of that persuasion very
gentle ; " Captain Standish, " allied to the noble house of
Standish, and inheriting some of the virtues of that honourable
family as well as the name ; " and Cotton of Boston, "a glory
to both Englands." Shortly after these the grave had received
" the very ancient gentleman, Governor Bellingham, bred a
laAvyer, though Ms will did not show his skill, a great justiciary
and noted hater of bribes, firm and fixed in any resolution,

New England. 369

who, had he not been a little too much overpoAvered with the
humour of melancholy, the infirmities of which tincture did
noAV and then appear in his dispensing of justice, had been
very well qualified for a governor."
A majority of these men, but not without resistance, had
carried severe enactments against the Quakers. The per
tinacity of that sect, as disorderly then as noAV order-loving,
in the parade of their extravagances, had provoked to the
utmost men who had left behind them prosperous homes
and schemes of honourable ambition, to seek in a savage
wilderness, as to them it seemed, not merely a refuge from
active persecution, but the right to worship m a community
fashioned and regulated entirely after their own hearts.
Endicott especially had sympathised with this feehng. By.
Ms efforts, mainly, harsh edicts had been promulgated
against the sect. He had countenanced the sale of the
seniors of a Quaker family in 1659, and the whipping
of others through all the towns of a district. But many
eminent ministers had protested against Endicott's cruelties
to the Quakers. It is at least to be hoped that they Avould
have been stdl less tolerant of the vulgar panic against Avitch-
craft, and that they Avould have had on their side on this
occasion in combating the delusion the stern common sense
of " strong valiant John," as his epitaph entitles Mm. The
Endicotts, Winthrops, and Wilsons could scarcely have had
sympathy with the metaphysics of the wise Salem justices,
who on the Cartesian doctrine of " effluvia," condemned
men and women on account of the cure, by their touch, it
was alleged, of their supposed victims. Their argument Avas
that "by the touch the venomous and mahgnant particles
ejected from the eye, do, by this means, return to the
body from whence they came." The madness was not con
fined to a town or class. The whole land was implicated.
Members of the Court which sat in Salem for the trials Avere
from Boston. In Boston were cherished traditions of " the
strange form like a man, over against Castle Island, that
would sometimes cast out flames and sparkles of fire, with a

370 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
dreadful voice, heard between it and Dorchester, crying over
the waters, ' Come away, come away ! ' Immediately after
wards " Captain Chaddock and his crew of necromancers were
bloAvn up by the kmdhng of some gunpowder." There too,
so long before as 1656, against the voice of Governor Brad-
street, Dunforth, Increase Mather, Saltonstad, and others,
but by a sentence of the General Court, had Dame Hibbins,
widow of a man who had served on commissions with the
Dudleys, and Belhnghams, and Pierpoints, been put to death
on a similar charge. " Vox populi, some people thought, was
the chief part of the evidence against her." Margaret Jones,
of the neighbouring Charlestown, was executed on a like
accusation, the possession of a malignant touch which
brought on deafness and vomiting. This murder had been
followed by the arrest of her husband for causing the
rolling of a Barbadoes sMp lying in the harbour, in which
he had been refused a passage. The conclusive proof was,
that on the production by the officer of his warrant the
agitation of the vessel had subsided.
Salem, however, had a miserable preeminence in this
shameful episode of New England Mstory. Yet, in 1685,
though there might be a sort of ground-swell of indignation
and fear, arising from the arbitrary policy of James II. and
his Governor Andros, Salem seemed to John Dunton, he tells
us in Ms amusing ' Life and Errors,' one of the most agreeable
and well-to-do towns in New England. Fine houses abounded.
They were tenanted by magistrates, such as Sewel, " than whom
neither Abraham nor Lot were ever more kind to strangers ;"
by generous merchants, rich enough to woo and wed Enghsh
beauties, who, reversing the later fashion, had, as Mrs.
Hickes, " come over with the valuable venture of a beautiful
person ; " by eminent scholars, " with much of the gentleman,"
but the eccentricities of German professors ; and by eloquent
preachers, as Higginson, " for whose sake all men," Dunton
says prettily, "looked on old age as a reverend tiring," and
Noyes, famous for his Election sermons, a man " of delight
ful conversation," soon to have the weight of nineteen death-

New England. 371

Avarrants on his heart. Suddenly, in 1692, from a predisposi
tion it is true of the whole community, but, directly, from the
murderous mischievousness, as in Scotland at an earlier period,
of a few children, Avho subsequently confessed the conspiracy,
the storm burst. The whole country seemed, we are told, "to
behold the sudden descent of Avicked spirits from their high
places." The weak-spirited Avho pleaded guilty were re
prieved. The brave ones, "who could not, who durst not belie
their own souls," were sent to the stake and the scaffold. " For
a time," writes another contemporary, " no life Avas safe ; the
scene was hke a torrent, sudden, irresistible, and momentary."
Few of the victims belonged to the town. They were gener-
ady from Salem village, now called Danvers, or dwellers in
cottages among the pine groves, or on the melancholy sea
shore, and by the solitary pools of the outskirts. It was the
neighbourhood in which good Mr. Norris had encouraged
spinning, to employ the evening leisure, and divert the fancy
from gloomy tales and alarms. The whole people became
a mob, in which individual sagacity counted for nothing.
The assessors of the Salem judge did not resist. Saltonstall
left the Board, but did not veto the proceedings ; and Ex-
Governor Simon Bradstreet, the son-m-law of Ex-Governor
Dudley, acted the same cautious part. Increase Mather and
Willard of Boston disbelieved the charges and succoured the
fugitives ; they had not the hardihood, or perhaps the entire
conviction of the falsity of the accusations, to stand up boldly
in Salem agamst the majority of justices, or, out of it, against
men of the authority of Increase Mather's son, Cotton Mather.
Of Mm it had prophetically been said a few years before, " He
has read much, but there are many that won't allow him
the prudence to make a seasonable use of it."
Thus the second generation of New England opened in
Sadness and gloom. But the land had already shown signs
of revival, before even 1697, when died the last Old Charter
Governor, and the last Governor who had made Salem his
residence. This was old Simon Bradstreet, "vir judicio
lynceario prseditus," who yet did not see Ms way openly to

372 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
resist a delusion originating Avith a couple of wretched chil
dren, and supported by the fright of Aveak women. The re
covery was complete by the time of the death, in 1709, of John
Massey, the first "town-born child;" or, as he styles Mmself.
in 1694, in a petition for the grant of a ferry, " the ancientest
planter, and the oldest man now living in Salem that was born
here." Trade increased every day. It had sufficient influence,
even in 1670, to have lands made liable to debts by leave of
the Court. In lazy, luxurious, agricultural Virginia, down
to the Revolution, real property was exempt, and entails were
stricter than in England. " Stately ships," too, " with great
ornament of carving and painting, and much strength of
ordnance," were budt by native shipwrights, and freighted
for Old Spain and the Isle of Sables. They might be cast
aAvay, and with them scores of sailors, " who went to provide
for old age, but now wanted nothing but a grave, being buried
in the rude waters." Others undaunted forthwith sailed out
from the docks of Cambridge and Boston. Many wealthy
freebooters spent their wealth there. A good example is that
magnanimous Captain Cromwell, Avhoni Ms fellow-townsmen
likened to Csesar for his refusal to desert " the thatched cottage
of the poor man who had entertained him in Ms mean estate''
for the mansions of the rich to which he was invited in his
prosperous days. EveryAvhere in New England a spirit of
mercantile adventure sprang up, especially at Boston. Boston
ships, first of any belonging to American merchants, sailed
round the Avorld. At Boston the proposal for the establish
ment anywhere of a depot, or a colony, found readiest accept
ance. Salem was not far behind, if at all, in commerce,
hospitality, and public spirit. The merchants of Salem were
known in every port of Europe. " Some of them," writes Sir
Charles Lyell, " sailed to India by the Cape without a single
chart or map, except that small one of the world on Mercator's
projection, contained in Guthrie's Geography. They used no
sextants, but working their dead reckoning with chalk on a
plank, guessed at the sun's position with their hand at noon.
They had usually no capital, but started with a few beads and

New England. 373

trinkets, and, in exchange for these trifles, often obtained the
skins of sea otters in the Oregon territory, each worth no less
than one hundred dollars. They also collected sandal wood
in the Sandwich Islands, and bartered these and other articles
in China for tea. On such slender means many merchants
of Salem laid the foundations of the princely fortunes they
now enjoy." Such was Peter Hooper of rocky Marblehead,
who bought all the fish caught on the coast, after its hardy
race had left off working the mines and betaken themselves
to the cod-fisheries, and sent it to Bilbao and other ports of
Spain. Thence he brought back store of golden ingots, with
wMch he purchased for the American market Enghsh cloth
and hardware. " He rode," says a Salem author, " in a chariot
hke a prince," and was known as King Hooper. Of the same
character was Ms contemporary, King Derby, whose wharf
was 600 feet long. He, in 1799, budt the most sumptuous
house in the whole county of Essex.
In wealth and mercantde enterprise Salem was nearly
Boston's equal; m the tone of society and politics it was
much more Conservative. With aU its riches, it did not
possess, to the end of the eighteenth century, a single four-
wheeled private carriage. Royalist principles, all but obsolete
elsewhere, were sheltered in the bosom of many of its old
families. They were professed by Colonel Saltonstall, one of
the historical grandees of the place, who kept up old Enghsh
hospitality in Ms seat at HaverMll; rich John Vassal!, an
exile with Mm at the time of the Revolution, who would not
after that event, continue to bear his famdy arms, " same pro
rege, semper pro republica ; " Judge Curwen or Curwin ; and
William Pyncheon, the last of whom left, for years un-
mended, as a reproach to mobocracy, the wmdows in his old
house in Summer Street, after they had been broken for
his refusal to recant the unpopular address to Governor
Hutchinson. The extreme measure taken by the General
Court of the Province, held, at Salem, by General Gao-e in
1774, of electing delegates to the Continental Congress, fixed
their Royalism. Before tMs, they had been by no means the
2-E

374 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
most docile of subjects. When compromised, and pensioners
of the British Government, they used, as freely as Sam Shck,
to express their disgust at having the Provmce spoken of in
England as, " our colonies, or our plantations, Avith such an
air as though," writes Judge Curwin from London, "our
property and persons were absolutely theirs, like the vdlams."
Most of them had left the country soon after the successful
stand of Colonel Pickering, Mmself of an honoured Salem
name, on the bridge wMch provided Hawthorne with the
scene of a pretty prose idyl. But the town could not bear
to part with them for ever. Curwin relates how, on Ms
return from exde in England, " not a man, woman, or child,
but expressed a satisfaction at seeing me, and welcomed me
back." In fact, Royalism and Republicamsm were, in Salem,
always tending to overlap. They were but the two sides of
the shield, and Essex federalists and monarcMsts would have
been, in the mouth of a Virginian democrat, interchangeable
terms. The stately Curwins and Pyncheons clung to their
aUegiance to George III., on" the same principle as that to
wMch Clarendon imputes the attachment of Lord Newcastle
to Charles I. ; they felt their own social precedence to be
connected with a shadow of royal suzerainty.
In these long tedious streets, with their neat, dull, two-
storied wooden houses, agreeable variety is created for the
eye by green and golden lichens. Withm, there was and is
abundance of hospitality: The great merchants, even after
they had their wharfs at Boston, went on living at Salem.
There they kept, and probably keep old-fashioned good cheer
without the splendour of the society of the capital. They
are commended for exhibiting universal sympathy with
their fedow-townsmen, "the few who are poor bemg too
strongly alhed to the rich by kindred to be separated from
them." Before the war of North and South it could boast
that, almost alone of anti-slavery cities, it taught in the same
schools black and wMte chddren. There is no better town
type of New England than it, with its succession of villages,
each with its church, and a school library, containmg often

New England. 375

even formerly Plutarch's Lives, with the addition now of
volumes by Prescott, Irving, and Herschel. Each is " not a
mere cluster of brick, or rude stone cottages," writes President
Dwight enthusiastically, " but is composed of neat houses in
their several house-lot meadows, adorned with gardens,
meadows, and orchards, and exMbiting the umversally easy
circumstances of the inhabitants." The whole makes
" one of the most delightful prospects wMch the world can
afford." But though Salem has most closely adhered to the ideal of
its founders, and has maintained a sort of religious metro-
politamsm m New England, political preeminence quickly
passed away, both from it and the " Old Colony," to Boston.
Boston was the acknowledged representative of the whole
land, on all occasions when its independence was menaced
by Enghsh statesmen and prelates, or insolent admirals.
Its resistance was generady successful. The attempt of
Commodore Knowles to press some ship carpenters in the
port excited] a terrible riot. Archbishop Seeker's scheme,
suggested by the phdosopMcal and hberal Bishop Butler, for
givmg a legal establishment to Episcopacy, was triumphantly
opposed. The motives of the leaders of an opposition were,
it is true, not always as pure as their apparent objects.
The richer Bostomans " had the reputation," we are told by
Dunton, " of being lavish in promises, but not m payment,"
whdst "the most uncommon practice with them was the
custom of telhng the truth." Such is alleged to have been
the character of Governor Hutchmson, Avho was a native.
Such, too, was in part that of John Hancock. The latter
was the son and grandson of reputable but by no means
rich country clergymen. His uncle, a Royalist, had gained
great wealth by smuggling tea from St. Eustatia in molasses
casks, the popular rumour bemg that he had bought for
a trifle an immense diamond. He left his radical nephew
£50,000 in hand, with the interest of £20,000 more, beside
houses and ships, with troops of workmen attached to them,
" from whose aid his heir acquired great influence." John
2 E 2

376 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
Hancock was suave, and supplied the want of genius by a
popular demeanour. He loved place and applause so inordi
nately as to lavish Ms wealth upon those objects, till, we learn
from President Qmncy, who had suffered through him, he
ended by becommg, as Treasurer of Harvard CoUege, a great
defaulter. The seizure, the first made by the new Com
missioners of Customs, of a vessel laden with wine belongmg
to Mm, covered a multitude of faults. It saved from
ridicule the prodigious vanity itself, which made Mm grasp,.
not contented with the Presidency of Congress and Governor-
sMp of Massachussets, at the command of the federal armies
agamst England.
With Hancock's name we find often joined that of Samuel
Adams, a considerable lawyer, and a skdful political intriguer-
Boston had men of a far Mgher order, men hke Wdliam
Peppered, merchant and landowner, who, an amateur soldier,.
in the scarlet cloth and gold lace of a courtier, captured
Louisburg to the astomshment of Europe. But generady the
more prominent pioneers of the Revolution in Boston were
unscrupulous partisans. They could plead they had to do
with officials yet more unscrupulous, men whom ad honest
men at home reprobated, as ex-Governor Bernard. General,
Oglethorpe, famed alike, for benevolence, for Dr. Johnson's
friendship, and for having shot snipes in what is now
Regent Street, ejected Mm ignominiously from the Smyrna.
coffee-house, declaring, say the contemporary journals, that
"he smelt strongly of the hangman." Though it is not a
satisfactory apology for dishonesty that the offender's ad
versaries are worse, it is a very common excuse, and, in some
measure, a reason. The system of corruption, fraud, and
violence employed by British Secretaries of State, by the
Hdlsboroughs, Sandwiches, and Sackvdles, and by Boards of
Trade, and their delegates, the Bernards, Hutchinsons, Olivers,
and Randolphs, with the whole plentiful crop of Surveyors,.
Collectors, and Attorneys General, had corrupted Colonial
morality almost as completely as the policy of Clifford and
Danby marred the delicacy of that of Sidney in Charles II.'s

New England. 377

reign. The new England patriots kept agents in the mother-
country, to bribe, promise, or threaten on occasion, and them
selves were not averse from any sharp practice on the side
of freedom.
The Revolution blew aside the vapours, and brought mto
sight a nobler set of men, whose ambition, if as engrossmg
as that of their political predecessors, was of a land to
identify them with their country, not to narrow their country
to themselves. They remamed to the full as Conservative ;
for so, in the essence, was New England. The elder race of
statesmen had not conceived themselves bound to follow
republican ways wMle giving republican pledges, any more
than Charles James Fox felt an obligation to pay his trades
men, because he was canvassmg the shopkeepers of West
minster. John Hancock and the others had the gout, and
arrayed themselves in lace and embroidery, like their proto
types at home. Their successors were contented with simpler
fasMons. Ex-President Adams dmed at one, went to church
twice on Sunday, and prided himself on being, like Cincin-
natus, a practical farmer. But the difference, after all, was
not very material. Gold lace was by that time gone out of
fashion, and Ms practical farming was on an old ancestral
estate in the midst of a population which venerated Mm.
" In Massachusetts," writes Jefferson to Mm, " there exists a
traditionary reverence for certain families, rendering pubhc
offices nearly hereditary. TMs is from the merit of those
families, and from the strict adiance of Church and State."
Younger representatives of the governing houses reqmred as
implicit obedience from their followers as the elder, and
were not slow to " gnash their teeth and curse the people,"
as we are told was a habit of the statesman of Quincy, when
the least resistance was offered to their policy. Honorary
titles they claimed with punctiliousness, and the country
readdy rendered them. The Governor of New England has
always been most rigidly His Excedency, and every repre
sentative "the Honourable." There was a time when many
repented of having lost King George, and would have readdy

378 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
made a Kmg George of their own out of the most unselfish
of soldiers. Perhaps Hancock fancied a Kmg John might
more smtably have opened a new dynasty. Boston society,
as reflected in local literature, continues to beheve m definite
class distinctions. The town has its recognised division mto
first, second, and third families, with reference to wealth;
and, above all, " the old families." Sir Charles Lyed tells us
in Ms Transatlantic journal, half a century ago, that he
considered Mmself a Liberal in England, but he found Mm
self regarded as a Radical in Boston, and our Reform Bill
of 1832 denounced as a perdous innovation.
The Conservatism of New England was, and is, of a
peculiar kind. It was powerful, even tyramrical, when local
prejudices or national institutions were attacked. It was
powerless as an active principle, when the relations between
its country and another were caded in question. Two
tilings impress the mind after an investigation of pro-
vmcial New England Mstory. One is that the Cabmets of
George III. were abundantly short-sighted, that they either
could not understand the Colonial character, or were inso
lently defiant of the warnings of knowledge. The other is
that our own generation could not, however anxiously con
ciliatory, have long maintained the Imperial unity. We
see the men of Boston, and Salem, and Plymouth, from first
to last, chafing and fretting at the notion that a land
they had bought and won for themselves, could be in
any degree directed by strangers. A Navigation Act was
as much an abomination to them as a Stamp Act; but
they were not powerful enough to secede in the seventeenth
century. Enghshmen of the age of George III. knew httle
of New England and its people, and paid as the price of
their ignorance the costs of a tremendous war. In another
way modern Enghshmen are as ignorant. We wid not
remember that, until the war of the American Revolution,
New England's Mstory is a page of our own. We insist
on regarding New England as a manufactured article of
the reign of Charles I. Allusions by native authors to the

New England. 379

presence of old families, old houses, and old prejudices m
settlements planted two centuries and a half ago, are treated
as efforts of fancy. We do not consider that the oldest
tree, if transplanted with its roots and sod about it, wdl
bear to its new home its pride of branches, and much of the
digMty, as wed as some of the defects, of age.

380 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.

VIRGINIA.

New England and Virginia both show characteristics of
age. But age in New England is displayed in the tone
of thought, and has to be searched for. It is spread over
the whole surface of Virgmian Mstory, and, until the War
of Secession, was deeply imprinted on every institution.
Countries differ like wines, some become ripe and medow, or
vapid, as it may be, with years, wMle others, their contempor
aries, are still effervescing with youth. In the midst of the
prevaihng newness of the United States little ever was new
about Virginia, the original Virginia. In its three centuries
of existence the Old Dominion has lived through as varied a
series of national fortunes, and as many social and political
experiences, as any ancient realm in our hemisphere. Long
and doubtful was its struggle into life. Storms seemed to
blow which have never raged since, and new forms of disease
were discovered, as though to balance, in proper tragic anti
thesis, the Eden-like beauties which revealed themselves to
the admiring eyes of North Devon mariners. The contrast is
a strange one between the luxuriant beauty of these southern
regions of the New World, as they presented themselves to
the eyes of the first discoverers, and the' aspect they showed
to the same men become regular residents, and no longer
amiable and casual guests. The sunny air was then a parchmg
Arabian atmosphere ; the zephyrs, sharp withering breezes ;
cool, shadowy woods, gloomy jungles; and bright flowers,
the poor apologies for west country grain and orchards.

Virginia. 381

Only after several calamitous expeditions, connected with
the name of the knight-errant who hovers strangely between
the Sir Lancelots and the Marlboroughs, between romance
and prose, the gaUant who spoded a cloak, and the somewhat
Jesuitical plotter with atheists and seminary priests, at length
a httle vidage slowly emerged on the banks of the broad
James. Fresh bands of eager adventurers flocked m. In
vam they met their predecessors in full retreat, despairing
and disgusted, their harvests grubbed up, and their huts in
rums. As they floated up the glorious Virginian estuaries,
they forgot ad evil omens. " Their senses were ravished,"
writes one of themselves, " with the beauty of the prospect,
the fragrancy of fields and gardens, the brightness of the sky,
and serenity of the air," till they exclaimed that no two
European kingdoms could approach the rich abundance and
luxuriance of this. The flaunting crown imperial, the cardinal
flower, the mocassin flower, and the tulip tree, were on every
side ; not in gardens, but in the woods, running wdd. Malo-
chotons, cherries, and peaches were there, too many for any
but the hogs to eat; and, in short, "scarce a flower or a
frmt exists which does not flourish better in Virginia than
even its own native sod." Gradually, even wealth poured
in. The scent of tobacco began to captivate European
senses. The Grand Turk and the Tartars of Samarcand
appreciated the discovery. The Virginian Company con
descended, though reluctantly, to "tMs degradation of the
Virginian glebe," relinquishing grand visions of rivalry Avith
Potosi, Italian sdkworms, and French vineyards. James I.
gave up devoting Ms leisure to "Blasts, and Counter
blasts," abandoned his paternal fears lest "one hundred
thousand Enghsh rustics should smoke at the plough,"
and betook himself to the more serious task of devising
how to turn the new taste into the most profitable vehicle
of taxation.
Before the Revolution, the social condition of the tide
water region of Virginia was well known to the merchants of
Liverpool and Bristol, who were often the guests of the planters

382 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
on the shores of those great highways, the James and the
Potomac. They knew it better than the present genera
tion. Modern highways and railways pass far on one side
of this once famous territory. Guide-books neglect it ; and
Americans themselves seem scarcely to understand the nature
of this division of Virginia, or its inhabitants. Whde the whole
land has lost its primacy in the Union, this district has in
its own State lost its relative rank. Formerly it was every
thing ; and its history was the history of Virginia. It in
cluded the shores of the great rivers, with a depth of many
miles into the interior. It was fringed with spacious
mansions, up to the very doors of which frigates could sad, and
laden merchantmen, with the fashions of London to exchange
for the renowned sweet Virginian tobacco. The sea-breezes
showed favouritism to it ; they were then never felt above
Williamsburg ; now they are welcomed, at close of midday,
in the hot woods on the slopes of the mountains. Out
of the whole number of members returned to the first
Congress by the State, a large majority came thence ; now it
sends an inconsiderable minority. Thence sprang all the
leading men, foremost in the Union as in Virginia, of the
epoch of the Revolution, and there they lived. Patrick
Henry, the Radical and democrat, dwelt just on its verge.
Now all that is changed. The hfe and vigour of the land,
as seen in politics, have oozed away from the tidal territory.
Tobacco, the staple of Virginian trade and wealth, requhes
across the Atlantic a virgin soil, though the peasant proprietor
of the Bergstrasse cannot apparently afford to hold any such
doctrine. So the Virginian capitalist was ever removing
farther and farther mto the interior. His exhausted planta
tion he left to become a wilderness of cedars, oaks, wild vines,
tulip and judas trees, strawberries, azaleas, and roses, pastur
age for hosts of butterflies and humming-birds. The West
received the owner, or the region beyond the barrier of the
Blue Mountains. New counties were, even in settled times,.
ever in process of formation m the West. Thus, Albemarle
had originally been a portion of Gooch County, and Gooch

Virginia. 383

County, the native district of Jefferson, was itself a fragment
of another.
Though the land is generally poor, the course of the great
rivers and their tributaries is marked by a fertile strip of
country, sown usually with maize, cotton, and palma Christi.
This is bounded, at a mde's distance, by the interminable
forests of black pitch-pine. Such is more peculiarly the char
acter of the James. Forty-three miles from its source it is
fourteen mdes broad, a sort of inland sea. The edging of
dark fir and cedar of various sombre tints on its shores
appears to grow straight out of the water; so low is the
surrounding level. After a time the banks begin to display
sod of a good quality, covered thickly with the mulberry,
walnut, and sycamore. Every now and then a great house
comes into view, heralded, as in France, or in Italy,
by solemn columns of Lombardy poplars. The Potomac
flows through more picturesque scenery. Its magnificent
falls are bordered by huge black cliffs, a combination
of Alpme grandeur with tropical vegetation. The great
bluffs and long wooded ridges throw massive shadows over
the broad silent river on towards the rich shores of Mary
land. It does not, however, water a larger breadth of fertde
land on the whole. All through those flat aduvial regions
stretches the broad belt of Pine Barrens, running paradel
to the coast through the Atlantic Plain, overspread with
gigantic long-tufted firs. They give way to swamps clothed
with evergreen oak and cypress, with wild vines clingmg
round the trunks, and their branches hung with the wMte
berries of the mistletoe. The largest, wMch has the name
of the Great Dismal, is forty mdes long and fifteen broad.
It is described as Molting like an inundated river plam, the
water vibrating with a sort of mysterious current, and the
whole fen being higher than the dry land round. Trunks of
fallen trees he beneath a dense deposit of peat in thef nterior,
and a carpet of moss spreads over the surface. Washington
set on foot the construction of a series of canals through
the midst. Now and then a boat emerges from under the

•384 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.

overarclring aisles into the central lake, caded Drummond's
Pool. The occasional snarl of a wolf, and the crash of boughs
dragged down by a bear in quest of acorns interrupt the
sigMng of the cedars.
The barrenness of the cMef part of the district, and the
¦narrow limits witirin which all industry was confined, cher
ished, as in a hothouse, the prosperity of the tide-water
plantations. They were kept to the bounds withm which
trade could most readily find them. So early as the days of
Governor Berkeley, and partly in consequence of the sym
pathy between the settlers and that fiery old cavalier, tMs
region had become important. In 1649 we learn from a
description of the settlement given by a gentleman in a
letter to a friend in England, that it had so increased as then
to contain 15,000 English, includmg the King's occasional
presents to the Company of a hundred or two of " dissolute
persons," and 300 negroes. There were 2,000 head of cattle,
and innumerable swine ranged the woods. Tlrirty sMps,
with a complement in ad of a thousand sailors, saded up the
¦estuaries in autumn, returmng with their freight of tobacco
in March. The land was full of valuable timber, often sixty
feet Mgh and tMee square, with no underwood, so that the
cumbrous coaches-and-six of the period could make their way
through the forest. Already the orchards, in parte, had begun
to bear as richly as in Herefordshire, and cider was added to
the exceUent metheglin, the final result of the wdd flowers
wMch the bees, we are assured, found, notwithstanding then-
flaunting pretentiousness, "most excedent food." So late
as the close of the seventeenth century, when the popula
tion had now grown to 70,000, pork " the best m the world,"
and capons might be had almost for the asking, and deer
sold at eight sMlhngs the head. It was reckoned that the
tobacco trade was at tMs period carried on in fifty sMps
in the year from Liverpool alone, and in the same, or a yet
larger number from Bristol, which paid on their cargoes
£60,000 to the revenue annuady. At least a hundred saded
from the Thames.

Virginia. 385

In such a land capital soon made its weight felt. The
richest portions of the country on the banks of each of the
four great rivers were parceded out among a score or two of
planters dwelling in ample homesteads, not much farther
apart than in a rural district of the mother-country. There
they kept open house, "every one's contempt fading upon
the sordid wretch who should offend against that laudable
custom of the country," says Oldmixon, in his ' New State of
Virginia.' " In England," he continues, " a hospitable man
is reckoned a sot or a bubble, and hearty feasts are thought
disreputable. Not so among the prudent, careful, generous,
hospitable people of Virginia." Of tMs class, so early as
1649, was "that worthy Captain Matthews, one of the
Councd, and a most deservmg Commonwealth's man, who
hath a fine house, and keeps weavers and a tan-house, with
eight shoemakers and forty negro servants, whom he brings
up to trade. His wheat he sedeth at four shillings the
bushel, kills store of beeves, and sells them to victual the
sMps, hath abundance of kine, and a brave dairy." " With
Ms wife, the daughter of Sir Thomas Hamdton, he keeps a
good house, lives bravely, is a true lover of Virgmia, and is
worthy of much honour." Such were the hearty merchant-
farmers of Virgima of the first generation, in whom some-
of the refinement of courtiers was conjoined with the adven
turous temper of West of England mariners. In Ms own
sMps and from his own wharves the rich landowner loaded
for Bristol the tobacco crop grown on his own lands. In the
meantime he entertained nobly at his house the merchant or
supercargo the whole winter tMough, gathering up tales of
popular resistance to prerogative at home.
He was as keen a champion of popular rights as any feudal
baron struggling for Magna Charta, or a Puritan Eastern
counties squire fretting under the sway of a cavaher peer.
It is impossible to take in at a glance both sides of Ms
character. The planters, more particularly those of the
second generation, spent on pleasure and luxury the profits,
and often something more, of a hundred commercial voyages.

386 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
To one set of men they held the relation of hberal democratic
traders, to another that of despots and task-masters. The
spectacle of a Leicestershire fox-hunter, driving a troop not
only of negroes, but of whites, now convicts from the hulks,
now cavaliers, Commonwealth men, or Jacobites, wMchever
cause was undermost m England, would not be pleasing.
Its Virginian counterpart was inharmonious. But these
careless Transatlantic squires, who loved no sport in wMch
the dangers of a fox-chase were not exaggerated, hunting
wdd horses in the mterval of a drinking-bout, and dashing
about over roads at least as bad as Enghsh Mghways in
the reigns of the Stuarts, managed to keep the two characters
apart. With the very easiest of consciences, they transferred
all of the slave-owner's attributes, except Ms profits, to
their bailiffs, clerks, and stewards. Themselves, far from
brandisMng the wMp, were busy m their parlours with
thriced-voyaged madeira, or strong Cheshire ale, or m the
Parliament-house arid many coffee-houses of Williamsburg
they were declaiming on the equality of man, and the limits
of prerogative.
Centralisation was their great bugbear, both before the
Revolution and after. The establishment of fixed depots of
trade was a pet object of jealousy. In vam did Charles II.
command Governor Berkeley to have a law passed in the
Colonial Legislature to oblige all ships to unlade at James
town, and for the erection of forts, as wed for that purpose
as to guard against breaches of the Act of Navigation. Both
merchants and planters were obstinately opposed to any
policy of the sort. The former held that it was not for
their interest that great marts should arise. At them the
growers might learn the urgency of the demand for the
tobacco crop. They would no longer be, as under the actual
system, entirely dependent on the offer of a single ship
owner, who had obtained a monopoly, in many cases by
lending large sums on the security of the harvest for years
to come. They were reluctant also to resign their agreeable
sojourn of tMee or four months amid the luxuries of a

Virginia. 387

planter's mansion. The planters, for their part, Avere, on
their land, as absolutely independent as an old Norman
lord of a manor. Each estate had its appropriate name,
not being caded, as in the north, such and such a lot in
such a townsMp. They went up to the seat of govern
ment to spend the season together, to dme merrily at taverns,
and to feast or be feasted by a popular nobleman and Ms
wife. But they were as unwiding to resign their rank of
sqmres for that of regular residents in a smad country town,
as would be Highland lairds or Enghsh county families.
They hated the appearance of centralisation: and nothing
in appearance less hke centrahsation could have existed
than the VirgiMan system. The Governor or Ms deputy
lived in a palace, had his guards, titles, and a salary liberal
enough to tempt Enghsh peers. He could veto acts of the
Assembly, and appoint colonels of militia, and lords-heutenant
of counties. He was lord-general, and high admiral, chan-
cedor, chief justice, and his own prime miMster. Yet no
government could be less of an absolutism in its practical
working. The whole body of planters felt a national pride
in the name of Virgmians, and their grief was moderate
whenever the tobacco trade of rival Maryland, or the com
merce of New York or New England was supposed to be
m perd. So far, however, as they cared practicady for
aught beyond the verge of their estates, their cares were
bounded by their several counties.
County government was modeded in a way to gratify
their dislike of the appearance of dependence. The county
courts of Virgmia retained down to the War of Secession
a constitution wMch appears exceedingly anomalous, tdl we
have gamed a clear insight mto the character of VirgiMan
democracy. " The number of magistrates composmg them,"
we learn from Professor Tucker, a VirgiMan writer on
pohtical economy and government, " is kept up from persons
nominated by the courts themselves. It is true that the
executive of the State has the power of rejecting the nomi
nations of the county courts ; but, as the pubhc necessity for

388 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
the magistrates may be very pressing, and as the motives to
reject can seldom be so strong as to induce the executive
power to put itself into collision with the court, the recom
mendation is virtuady an appointment. There has not been
a rejection perhaps in one case in a thousand. The con
sequence is, that the power is substantially possessed by the
courts, and is concentrated in a few families, who naturally
endeavour to strengthen and perpetuate their influence and
authority. They have criminal jurisdiction in all cases of
misdemeanour, the power of acquittal in all cases of felony,
the power of nominating, which is equivalent to that of
appointing, all militia officers below the rank of brigadiers,,
and of making all the lucrative county appointments, as wed
as of filling up the vacancies in their OAvn body ; the Mgh
sheriff is taken from the body every two years, and then
returns to it ; they have the power of levying pod taxes
for county purposes; they establish or put down ad the
roads and bridges. There is no individual in the county
who may not be made to feel their power or dl will." Never
theless, "the great mass of State politicians regard these
oligarchical courts as the anchor of safety to the State, wMch
has hitherto kept her to her moorings, in spite of the sMfting
currents of opinion, and would keep her against the driving
tempest of popular fury."
Not by standing forward boldly as the people's repre
sentatives did the great Virginian houses attam their in
fluence. It was their own by right of property. In many
cases they were most unpopular with the yeomanry, " phflip-
pizing," says Jefferson, somewhat in a partisan spirit, " m
every collision between king and people, with a view to a
seat in the Council," so that after the Revolution made the
old social precedence a reproach, " a Randolph, a Carter, or a
Burwell must have great personal superiority over a common
competitor to be elected even at this day." Few Virginian
planters had made their own fortunes. Fortune-making
was not a quahty which flourished on Virginian sod. It
was enough if they kept that wMch family mterest at home

Virginia. 389
had procured for them by lavish royal grants. Oldmixon, a
notorious perverter of facts, Avrites that there was " no need of
a Heralds' Office at JamestoAvn, the honest merchant and
industrious planter being the men of honour in Virginia."
He confesses, that when the condition of the settlement began
to improve, " many men of small fortunes but good families
came out." There was country gentlemen's blood in their
veins, and the instinct in their hearts that the serious
business of life for their class was sport. They defied royal
governors and orders of Boards of Trade with the zeal of
Radicals when their pockets were attacked ; they were steady
Conservatives Avhen social relations were the subject of con-
tiwersy. Both Oldmixon and De Foe confound Maryland
and Virginia. The latter even declares, in ' Colonel Jack,'
that " Maryland is Virginia, speaking of them from a dis
tance." In Maryland classes mingled ; in Virginia, those
avIio began life as jreomen left to their descendants a similar
status ; and the same Avas the rule with the great planters.
In right of their apparent possessions and landed interest,
on the faith of the legend of their ancestral Avealth, they
maintained their predominance. The great families of the
country received but few accessions to compete with and
outshine them. Their estates groaned under all the ex
crescences of an old landed system, which they had imported
with them from England to a neAv Avorld. They were
burdened with many mortgages, liens, settlements on younger
children, and elegits. Usually the soil Avas so fast tied
up that its transfer to other hands did not emancipate it.
The possessors might be treated with the greatest insolence
by the merchants, their guests and creditors. As between
themselves and their countrymen, they maintained their
superiority as fully as an insolvent Irish landoAvner besieged
in his dilapidated castle, before the establishment of the
Encumbered Estates Court, with its compulsory liquidations.
They bore their dignity by no means meekly. In later days,
northerners were, according to Sir Charles Lyell, forced to
confess that, though the majority, " they were held in political
2 F

390 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
thraldom by the southern planters." The causes were the
greater leisure planters could devote to questions of pohtics
than the small farmers and merchants of New York and New
England, their superior power of " banding together as one
man in defence of what they called their property and
institutions, their general eloquence and political tact, and
the high bearing, which often imposed on northern men,
much superior to them in real talent, knowledge, and
strength of character."
They could not be expected to be less domineering to
wards the lower orders of their fellow Virginians. At home
they saw none but courteous or complaisant neighbours of
their own rank, obsequious overseers, or silent bondsmen of
whom a planter occasionally held a levee, seated on high, as
De Foe describes it, in a large had, " hke a lord judge on the
bench, or a petty king on Ms throne." The mterests of the
first were the same with their own, and they met only to
indulge in an outcry against the Government, or to dance
aAvay the long summer eveMngs. The last they suffered to
be ruled with a rod of iron ; for these jovial olive-hued
squires Avould, without scruple, commit the extreme power
of torture into the hands of men proverbially cruel. They
did not concern themselves with the fate of the last purchase
from the convict-ship. It might sometimes be an abandoned
fellow, sent to contaminate the tobacco-fields ; sometimes a
chivalrous gentleman from Preston, transported for defence
of the cause which planters loved to toast on their knees.
Sometimes it might be a kidnapped child, or honest peasant.
They recked not. To neighbours not of the same degree with
their own they behaved with extreme haughtiness. The
" half-breeds," as, we are assured by Mr. Wirt, the biographer
of Patrick Henry, the younger scions of great families were
nicknamed, were just admitted within the circle, not as
members, but appendages. The integral constituents of the
order formed a true oligarchy, defined, that is, by wealth as
well as birth. The few who had raised themselves from
a dependent condition, could not hope to be admitted till,

Virginia, 391
by the third generation, they had purged away the stain of
mechanical industry. The substantial independent yeomanry,
"looking askance at, but not jostling their betters," were
treated by their chiefs as only made to pay taxes.
Pubhc expenditure in general was defrayed by a capita
tion tax. The heavy expense of makmg the roads was
borne equady by all males over sixteen. The landowners
absorbed a considerable portion of the income when collected.
By hmiting the suffrage to freeholders, they insured, for the
most part, the return of their nominees. There was as fine a
show of the recognition of popular privileges at an election
of a burgess as in an old Enghsh rotten borough. Much
band-playmg and drinkmg went on at the expense of the
candidates ; but the poorer freeholders were commonly as
deeply in debt to the richer, who Avere in the habit of
supplymg them with imported goods, as were these to the
merchants. Hence the free choice was a farce. The
leadmg landowners selected representatives. They paid
them out of the contributions of the masses an exorbitant
remuneration for defendmg their own monopoly agamst the
prerogative of the Crown as represented by the Governor.
During the reign of Charles I., when the aristocracy was
entirely absolute, the salary was, for each day of attendance,
150 lbs. of tobacco, the common currency of the tide-water
region, and 100 lbs. more for the maintenance of a horse and
servant. Altogether it averaged about twenty-five dodars
daily. One of the chief complaints of young Colonel Bacon,
in an insurrectionary manifesto he published, concerned these
extravagantly high salaries. His opponents retorted, no
doubt Avith much truth, he being one of themselves by birth
and fortune, that Ms sole object was to obtain a monopoly of
the Indian trade. Governor Berkeley, who, we are told,
ruled as " a Governor with a landed interest," made common
cause Avith the aristocrats ; but the Royal Commissioners sent
out to examine into the origm of the rebedion reported so
strongly against the amount of the payment to members
that it Avas reduced. It still, hoAvever, continued so Mgh as
2 F 2

Some Verdicts of History Reviewed,

to be a perpetual source of murmurs among the farmers, and
a good electioneering cry for the Crown. Thus, James II.,
on the rejection of a recommendation from the Privy Council
by the Assembly, took care to insinuate that the contumacy
of that body arose partly from a wish to prolong the session
for the sake of the pay. He commanded that his popular
charge should be read in ad the churches. In the same way
they monopolised the honours of the Council. They accepted
them, not as a pledge of submission to Government, but as
an acknoAvledgment of their rank and power. Very few of
them were, their adversaries allow, Tories, that is, supporters
of prerogative. But the Council was the avenue to various
lucrative posts, such as the AuditorsMp, endowed with an
income of 7£ per cent, of public money ; the Treasurershipy
with 6 per cent, of all passing through that office; the
Presidency of the Council, and place of Attorney-General.
We find, accordingly, Dudley Digges, Randolph, Byrd, and
other aristocratic names perpetually on the Council roll.
Not content to pay for their thousands of acres no larger a
share of the charges for the support of admmistration than
fell on the farm of fifty, while they had themselves the lion's
share in the expenditure, they were not ashamed to pillage
the public secretly. The Speaker of the Assembly, who was
also, by virtue of his office, Colonial Treasurer for the twenty-
five years preceding 1765, was Robmson, the acknowledged
head of the landed aristocracy, with a keen love of pomp and
titles, but popular and courteous to his equals. It was he who
addressed the celebrated compliment to Washington, when
utterly confounded, and incapable of uttering a single word
in reply to the vote of thanks by the House of Burgesses for
his military services, after Braddock's defeat. Party manage
ment was his pride, and to catch a vote he did not scruple to
lend, on personal security, large sums of public money to
embarrassed trading squires. In the year 1765 he felt a
crisis Avas approaching. All his own private means were
exhausted, and, backed by the tide-water oligarchs, he pro
posed the establishment of a State Loan Office, with the

Virginia. 393
intention of entering the old -transactions as new ones. By
the eloquence of Patrick Henry, who, without impeaching the
honesty of the poAverful Speaker, excited the jealousy of the
members from the upper counties, and laid up for himself a
future tempest of hatred on the part of the aristocracy, the
iniquitous scheme Avas defeated. The next year Robinson
died, irretrievably insolvent, and, it was discovered, 100,000
dollars in debt to the Treasury. These men lived in splen
dour, wMle they consoled their neighbours, who in every
creek starved on shell-fish, with the fact that they were
not slaves of the Crown. Amidst professions of rigid ortho
doxy they plundered the revenue of the Church. Till late in
the seventeenth century, only one Nonconformist chapel
existed in Virginia. But their ecclesiastical orthodoxy was
of a negative character ; they had early prevailed to have the
right to induct transferred from the Crown to the vestries,
Avhich were formed by cooptation of the tAvelve leading men of
the parish. They used their power to keep the rectory legaUy
vacant. Church and parsonage they let fall into decay, wMle
they allowed the officiating clergyman so humble a stipend
out of the very liberal provision made at the estabhshment of
the Colony, that he was forced, in most cases, to eke it out
by keeping a school. The Assembly itself sympathised with
this policy. It had the effect of curbing any disagreeable
disposition on the part of a minister to reprove the morals of
his wealthy parishioners.
Altogether no favourable impression is produced by the
social and political aspects of the tide-water districts. The
planters were selfish, indolent, and rapacious. They did not
even possess the ideas of taste and comfort. Their domestic
architecture so offended Jefferson's ultra-classical proclivities,
though he did not scorn PhiladelpMan neatness, that he
exclaims, " The genius of architecture seems to have shed its
malediction over this land." Its eccentricities Avould not have
roused English instincts against it. But they betrayed only
ostentation. In vain we look in old Virginia for traces of
rural ease and amenity. There we find no orchards or brigfrt

394 Some Verdicts of History Revieioed,
flower-gardens, no dairies or lawns ; no well kept farm-houses,
as in New England. Every acre they had sufficient slave-
labour to cultivate was used for the growth of tobacco, to
supply the demands of rapacious English creditors. Solely
by the law of entail, and the assistance they managed to
obtain from the State Treasury, were they maintained in their
hereditary position. Strict settlements had been, very soon
after the planting of the colony, imported from England, along
with many other legal traditions, by the cadets of county
famdies. There were many Colonel Esmonds in those old
times. At first, entaris could, as at home, be barred, and the
property alienated ; but by the end of the seventeenth cen
tury, the old cavaher spirit was become so triumphant as
to have completely driven beyond the Chesapeake, into
Maryland, and the North, the habits of thrift proper to a
new country. Mortgages were in headlong process of eating
up the vast domains with wMch noble families had been
endowed by the Crown. In a short tiirie the whole land
seemed doomed to pass into the hands of a small guild of
merchants. These were accustomed, writes Jefferson to
Lister Asquith, to accommodate their reckless host with
loan upon loan, and then, "having got him immersed in
debt, they reduced the price given for his tobacco. Let his
shipments be ever so great, and his demand of necessaries
ever so economical, they never permitted him to clear it off.
The debt became hereditary from father to son for many
generations, so that the planters were a species of property
annexed to certain mercantile houses." After the Revolution
the same state of things existed, and Virginians by no
means themselves gmltless in this respect have lamented it
freely. Jefferson, for instance, wlrilst indulging, to the rum
of Ms private means and family position, in a love of the fine
arts and of hospitality, writes regretfully from Paris, where
he was Minister, that " he looked back to the war as a time
of happmess, when we could not run in debt because nobody
would trust us ; when Ave practised, of necessity, the maxim of
buying nothing but what we had money in our pockets to

Virginia. 395

pay for; a maxim Avhich, of all others, lays the broadest
foundation for happiness." For a generation before the war
statutory Mav had stereotyped landownership. In the year
1705, the docking of entails, to restore to the limited owners
control over the estate, was expressly prohibited. Thus the
land was bound up indissolubly with the family, uMess the
Legislature chose as a favour to an individual possessor to
set it free.
The contest begun by Jefferson and Patrick Henry for the
abohtion of the doctrine of entail with all its incidents,
and of the rights of primogeniture, opened the eyes of the
Virginian aristocracy to the nature of the struggle then
opeMng. In New England, the mam object of the Revolution
Avas to break the bond of dependence on the mother-country.
In Virginia this was only one motive ; it was inseparably con
nected with another, which was, as its own supporters phrased
it, " the substitution of an aristocracy of virtue and talent for
the aristocracy of birth and wealth." Few of the old aris
tocracy could be called Tories. Adversaries who hated the
system, speak of " only half-a-dozen aristocratic gentlemen,
angry at the loss of their preeminence, venting their indigna
tion at the change from a monarchy to a republic, and more
worthy of pity than punishment." The main perplexity of
the old families arose from the fact that they found the natural
stay of their own dignity to be the throne they had ever op
posed, and could not now bring themselves to aid in re-estab
lishing. TMs inconsistency was the weak point in their fortress.
Men like the Randolphs had always been Whigs, or more
advanced stid. They had resisted the Court, the Governor's
party, with a self-approbation the most sincere. They had
traveded to London, and intrigued in the purlieus of Whitehall
for a century. All tins had been in the mterests of their own
order. They were bitterly mdignant at agitators who now
demanded for themselves a share in the glory of patriotism,
and stid more fiercely suspicious when they found them
impertinently mterfering in matters which concerned private
property. A monopoly of popularity had long been arrogated

396 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
by the Randolphs, Flemings, Says, Eldridges, and Murrays,
all of renown in the State, if not actually, in right of their
descent from Princess Pocahontas, princes of the blood
royal of Virginia, as James I. had intimated they should be
accounted. They could point to portions of their estates as
having once formed part of the demesne of that Indian
emperor and pmssant English baron, Powhatan. Another
member of the coterie was the family of Digges. Its repre
sentative made it a point of pride always to receive George
Washington, himself not averse, with all his modesty, from
gay apparel and splendid equipages, on the broad bosom of the
Potomac, in a barge of English make, rowed by six negroes
in fine attire.
A redeeming trait in the history of the order, is that, when
its members found they must either abandon their old prin
ciples of political, and as they thought it, patriotic opposition,
and go over to the side of the English Government, or else
acquiesce in the destruction of many of their cherished privi
leges, they did not choose the course of apparent expediency
for a single moment. Further, though the whole system
Avhich they had instituted in Virginia had been cumbrous and
effete, under it the land reached, and for some time main
tained, a priority, relatively to the rest of the New World,
which it was unable for long to understand it had lost. It
contributed a revenue to the mother-country ; it consumed a
large quantity of elaborate and expensive English products ;
it furnished the world at large with luxuries, wMch general
use has almost converted into necessaries. On the spot there
was a vast display of expenditure, if not of elegance. The
shores of broad tide-ways penetrating far inland between
majestic forests, were studded with a succession of sumptuous
villas, and Avharves crowded with sMpping. The aspect of
the country Avas that of a Liverpool broken up, and spread
up and down a hundred miles or so of estuary. To see
that the country Avas crippled with debt, and the prey
of gross extravagance, it was necessary to wander into
the interior, and examine more closely. We are- told by

Virginia, 397
Professor Tucker, writing before the War of Secession, that
Jefferson's laws promoted the distribution of Avealth, that
" a much larger number of those AA'ho are wealthy have ac
quired their wealth by their own talents or enterprise ; and
most of these last are commonly content with reaching the
average of that more moderate standard of expense which
public opinion reqmres, rather than the higher scale which it
tolerates." He adds : " There were formerly many in Virginia
who drove a coach-and-six ; noAv such an equipage is never
seen ; there were probably twice or three times as many four-
horse carriages before the Revolution as there are at present ;
but the number of two-horse carriages may be now ten or
even twenty times as great as at the former period ; " "a feAv
families could boast of more plate than can now be met with ;
but the whole quantity in the country has increased tAventy
if not fifty fold." That may well be true, and the condition
of the middle and working classes in Virginia may have
sensibly improved after the War of Independence, yet the
fact be that Virginia, in the period between that war and the
War of Secession, was relatively one of the least flourishing
members of the Union, though it had inherited the most
extraordinary natural advantages for trade. For the first
two-thirds, or more, of last century it was clearly foremost
both in the show of material prosperity, and, still more, in
political distinction.
The State furnished the Union Avith four out of the first
•five Presidents. From it came a large proportion of the
most eminent diplomatists and Ministers, men who have
stamped their character and theories of government on the
pohcy and constitution of America. According to contem
porary testimony, the Virginian State-Assembly, before the
Hevolution, was a fitting nursery of orators and statesmen.
Its panegyrists, though their diction may sometimes be in
flated and confused, produce an impression of its possession of
real ability and Parliamentary dexterity. Among its leaders,
when Patrick Henry first appeared in it, an uncouth country
lawyer, with a stolid abstracted air, and in his coarse hunting

398 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
dress, starthng the propriety of the glittering lobbies and
committee-rooms, were Speaker Robinson, a very Sir John
Trevor m powers of management and want of integrity, and
Peyton Randolph, a noted intriguer, though Attorney-General,
solid rather than eloquent. They were two of those business
men, heirs to an historic, name, who can direct discreetly all
men's affairs but their own. Another non-rhetorical debater
Avas Richard Bland, the Virginian Antiquary, as he was
called, learned and logical, but apt to retreat startled from
the conclusions to Avhich his OAvn arguments had led his
hearers. Edward Pendleton, the Conservative lawyer, with
silvery voice, and almost equal in management to his friend
Robinson, and George Wythe, afterwards Chief Justice, the
law tutor of Jefferson, a ripe scholar, charged with an exces
sive love, from AvMch at all events modern members of Con
gress are free, of the Elizabethan writers, and an amount of
eccentricity which could scarcely be believed to be the possible
possession of one man, sat together, originady on the Liberal-
Conservative side. With them was Richard Henry Lee, one
of the few members who, though no lawyers, were perfect
masters of practice and forms ; a Cicero in debate, " and,"
we are informed by an admirer of his, " with a Csesarean nose,"
a man, in short, who, though " no Niagara, Homer, or Patrick
Henry, flowed through banks covered with the bloom of
spring." These American Old WMgs of the generation
anterior to the Revolution manifested a peculiarly Enghsh
faculty for Parhamentary tactics. They did not talk for
talk's sake. They were sure of their position. They had no
particular reverence for public opinion, and there was nothmg
they hoped to gain from promiscuous popularity. Their object
was to maintain a reputation for business powers among their
fellow-magistrates. Political perturbations threw up tyrants
of debate like Patrick Henry, men who, when entrusted by
acclamation with the task of draAving up a simple resolution,
faltered, and at length produced a paper at once, with as
universal a consent, consigned to oblivion. They were the
Addisons of oratory, superseded by an under-clerk. The old

Virginia. 399
Virginian statesmen seldom spoke on matters of grave public
interest for longer than ten minutes at a time. They did not
argue for victory, but to expound the motion which they
knew the rest would accept.
Virginian pohticians of the period of the Revolution divide
themselves under three heads. There were the Conserva
tives, that is to say, Conservative Republicans ; monarchical
Conservatives were feAV at a period when the words British
Tory, we are told, " threw any company into a rage, and
suggested tar and feathers." Next came the theoretical
Democrats, men not from the people, and as sensitive about
their personal rank as the aristocracy, but desiring to lead
the people. Lastly, there were the real popular champions,
such as Patrick Henry. These were actuady of and from
the masses, though from masses which themselves, in relation
to a yet inferior body, constituted a highly privileged class.
In the tide-water region, especially on the banks of the
James, thorough aristocrats might be found, of families Avhich
had never broken off their connection with the English
stock. They might have been educated at Oxford or
Cambridge, or have served for a campaign in Flanders. They
never, from first to last, pretended to popularity. In many
cases the heir had been sent to Europe on the first signs of
the rising, and had there remained till the conclusion of peace.
But the more influential of the Conservative party had
always been Liberals as to the relations between the colony
and mother-country. Their Conservatism was restricted to
social questions and home politics. Of these, Washington,
hving towards the verge of the Conservative district, and with
the more energetic and innovating Maryland stretching out
in the distance, is a favourable, perhaps too favourable an
example. He is their ideal, their apology, and in some
measure the reflection of Avhat this class imagined itself to
be. He is acknowledged by political adversaries to have
possessed a judgment unsurpassed in soundness, though better
adapted to decide on the plans of others than to originate ;
to have been of an exact integrity and justice, and though

400 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
naturally of an irritable temper, and a slave-OAvner, self-
restrained and forbearing. He Avas liberal but exact in his
expenditure. He was far from fluent in speech. With little
learning but reading, writing, arithmetic, and surveying,
he advocated all schemes for the promotion of education ; he
confessed to a great respect for Latin, and sometMng of a
mysterious reverence for Greek. He could dance, whde
Republican commander-in-chief, three hours at a time, and,
when President, envy those whose rank did not scare
partners. He enjoyed the more serious reputation of being
the best horseman of Ms time. His good famdy and estate
did not hinder him from being the most practical as wed as
most honest of farmers. His brand, " George Washington,
of Mt. Vernon," passed a flour-barrel through the most
suspicious West Indian custom-house.
Mount Vernon is in the district of the Potomac, before the
river becomes the rocky romantic stream it appears at its
picturesque junction with the Shenandoah, at Harper's Ferry.
This region, not yet crowned by the City of Washington, was
in Washington's youth, with its bold cliffs and wooded ridges,
the Avaters beneath sparkling with shoals of countless herrings,
carp, sturgeon, and bass, in their seasons, and covered with
canvas-back ducks, the favourite Virginian resort. Now and
then, a frigate would sail up from the broad Chesapeake,
and, anchoring opposite the verandah of a wealthy planter's
mansion, pour forth a troop of officers and letters of intro
duction, to greet the squire who might, as George Washington's
elder half-brother, Lawrence, have himself seiwed M the
English navy. The riArer acted as a highway for gay barges
to carry the planters and their wives to each other's houses,
or to the court of the Governor of Maryland, at Annapolis,
Avith its balls, and dinners, and private theatricals. The shore
line Avas marked by primitive but well-to-do farmhouses,
such as the General's birthplace, on Bridge's Creek, with
its steep roof sloping into Ioav projecting eaves, its single
story, Avith the attic over, and great cMmney at either end.
Many stately edifices adorned the slopes above the water.

Virginia. 401
Arlington, the house of Mr. Custis, Washington's step-
grandson, with marble columns and porticoes, long recalled
the old days along Avith the new. Of a style of architecture
not so classical, Avere Mount Vernon and hospitable Belvoir,
built on the same ridge. Belvoir was the residence of William
Fairfax, Lawrence Washington's father-in-law, and was just
enough mdes distant to make a pleasant ride on a bright
autumn morning.
Many, especially after the arrival of Lord Fairfax, were the
meets on the lawn of one or the other house, to beat the
Avild woods, indented with rocks and rivulets, and natural
deep dells, loved by fox and deer. The sportsmen Avould
return to a jovial hunt dinner, at which Washington seems
to have had a capacity for being as merry as the most
pleasure-loving of Diggeses or Randolphs. How proud he
Avas of his stud Ms diary shows. There we read, set forth
Avith some gentle boastfulness, the genealogies of Ajax, and
Magnolia, and of keen fox-hounds, Music and Sweet-lips
and Ringwood, and a host of others. Mrs. Washington, the
blooming widow of John Parke Custis, whom readers of
Mr. Thackeray will remember, was a lady of birth and con
nections not to be despised even by a Madam Esmond.
She had brought her second husband 100,000 dollars, and
she had, for her part, her carriage-and-four, with black
postilions in scarlet and white liveries, as gorgeous as a high
sheriff's equipage. In it he and she were wont to proceed in
solemn state to one or other of the two parish churches of
Avhich the General was a vestryman. Both were conspicuous-
figures at festivities of all kinds, some splendid, others
resembling the simple Alexandria subscription balls, which
he, in his bachelor days, describes as " bread-and-butter balls,"
where " the tea and coffee had a deep resemblance to hot
Avater, and pocket-handkerchiefs Avere made, without apology,
to serve the purpose of table-cloths." He himself was
not ashamed on occasion to deck himself in fine clothes.
When he rode forth, to the admiration of the simple north
eastern cities, on a splendid horse, Avith mounted negroes-

402 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
behind him, to meet Governor Shirley, his more personal
accoutrements we may be sure, Avere in conformity. We
know something of the resources of his wardrobe, the
" fashionable gold-laced hat," the " drab-coloured riding
frock with plain double-gdt buttons," the " superfine scarlet
cloth waistcoat," " hvery suits to be chosen by his London
tailor by the Washington arms and housings, with the
WasMngton crest," and " the very neat and fashionable
Newmarket saddle-cloth." Of all these Ms account-books
make particular mention.
His kitchen was thronged with servants, and his cellar
Avell stocked with old wine. Beautiful gardens surrounded
the house. That was an improArement peculiarly his own on
the comfortless carelessness of tide-water proprietors about
anything in the way of plants but tobacco, or ornamental
copses but poplar-trees. He was ever trying to naturalise
foreign trees; and profound were his meditations on the
superiority of one in shade to another. In his diary we
find noted, under January 16th, that the whitethorn was in
berry ; on the 20th, he is busy clearing the pme-groves of
the underwood, and, in February and March, transplanting
ivy to adorn Ms garden-Avails, and evergreens to make a
cheerful winter prospect ; or he is opening vistas through Ms
Avoods, and twining scarlet honeysuckle round the columns
of Ms verandah. We discover even sentiment in Ms embel
lishments. He is careful to plant horse-chestnuts from his
native county of Westmoreland, Virginia, sent him by his
favourite, Harry Lee, the son of the "Lowland beauty," a
" chaste and troublesome passion " for whom he had been, he
tell us, forced, before the mature age of sixteen, " to bury in
the grave of oblivion."
He had more industry as well as taste than the majority
of tide-water proprietors. He was a busy country gentleman,
pruning his own plantations, beside being, like the rest of Ms
landholder class, Ms own game-keeper and water-bailiff, ready
to chastise corporally, without fear of bludgeons and guns,
trespassers on his rights over water-fowl and oyster-beds. He

Virginia. 403

kept his own books. Week by Aveek, Avith the cares, never
neglected, of a struggling nation upon him, he coiweyed to Ms
agent, by maps, his views on the culture of each special field.
With precepts of economy he mixed benevolent orders, after
the Sir Roger de Coverley school of country squires, to Ms
steward to maintam hospitality m his place, and to "let
no one go hungry away." He says of Mmself that he was
not a very skdful farmer ; at any rate, he was an enthusiast,
not only procuring balsam-trees from New York, and vines
from Languedoc, but ploughs from no less an agriculturist
than Arthur Young. He showed his zeal by inventing one
Mmself, and nearly ruming two of his best carriage-horses
by forcing them to drag it over the heaAw SAvard. He rose
before dawn, lighted Ms own fire, though a slave-owner, and
one Avhose every look was studied, out of love, not fear, by
Ms troops of servants, and took a morning ride of four or
five hours over his estate. The whole had been most
systematically divided by Mm into four different farms, each
havmg its own adotment of labourers, and particular crops.
With its woodland, pastures, cornland, eleven mdes of
fisheries, and villages stocked Avith tadors, shoe-makers,
smiths, and warehousemen, it constituted a fertile self-con
tained principality of tMee to four thousand acres. The
result was, that he made agriculture pay, unlike most of his
neighbours. Their estates were first gnawed by encumbrances,
and, at length, after the new Constitution set them free from
entads, sold to the overseers at the rate of about four dodars
an acre, the master emigrating, with a portion of Ms slaves,
beyond the Blue Mountains. Washmgton's estate, when
he was gone, exMbited the same tendency. Tourists many
years before the War of Secession described it as falhng mto
the normal Virginian condition, the shrubberies overgrown,
the laAvn obliterated, and the whole in process of relapse into
a haunt for bears and wolves.
The Blue Ridge was then, as later, the land of hope, or, it
mio-ht be, the forlorn hope, of the broken-down landowners of
the James or Potomac. A hundred mdes away, amid the

404 Some Verdicts of History Revicivcd.
noxious exhalations of the marshy tide-Avater region, and
over its black foliage, those azure peaks can be seen floating
in air. In early Virginian history we hear of powerful Indian
chieftains, whom the English colonist loved to awe himself
by styling kings, Powhatans and Oppecancanoughs, whose
sway was supreme throughout the hill-country. Round the
base was a belt of land more fertde than the lowlands ; but
the strength of the natives long intimidated poorer settlers.
The richer would in any case have preferred for their
residence an inlet of the sea, by which they could com
municate directly with the mother-country. Water too, in
the general absence of good roads, was a necessity for the
carriage of crops to their markets. By Charles II. a great
grant of land in this direction was made to the Earl of St.
Albans, Lord Berkeley, Sir Widiam Martin and others, as
Proprietaries. Under grants from them, or in defiance of
them, the district gradually began to be settled, though the
boundary of Virginia, till 1744, was stdl considered to be
virtually the mountain range. By a new grant subsequently
made, overriding the old, the royal rights over the land
betAveen the Potomac and Rappahanock, called the Northern
Neck, were ceded to Lord Culpepper, who had, says Oldmixon,
" trumped up a title to it." Very indefinite powers were
conferred. In vain the adventurers who had already occupied
portions appealed. Culpepper had shrewdly managed to
have appeals in such cases transferred to the Crown from
the Assembly, which had formerly cognizance. The answer
Avas that, if they had encroached without a licence, they had
acted at their own risk. They Avere forced eventually to
compound Avith Culpepper for the payment of a quit-rent.
Colonel Richard Lee, and Colonel Robert Carter, two leading
Virginians, members of the Council, and large freeholders
on the Neck, consented to officiate as his agents.
Thus the lands at the foot of the Blue Ridge became by
degrees peopled ; but, down to 1748, no white men except a
few Irish had made their way into the valley between it
and North Mountain. The objection of Virginian planters

Virginia. 405
bo companionship with Irishmen interposed a fresh barrier, Ave
are told, over and above the bugbear of Indian forays, to emi
gration tMther from the alluvial country. Early in the reign
of George II., hoAvever, Lord Fairfax was cast off for a duke
by the reigning London bede. Culpepper, AAdiose favourite
employment during his governorship seems to have been buy
ing up light pieces of eight at five shrilings, and then, by
proclamation, raising their value to six, left no son to inherit
his ill-gotten Avealth. Fairfax, his daughter's son, was his
heir. In his rage at the coquette, tMs cornet in the Blues,
Avho had studied at Oxford, and written a paper in the
Spectator, made his succession to a Virginian domain a
pretext for quitting England. His cousin, Widiam Fairfax,
a brave soldier, formerly Governor of New Providence, which
he had helped to reduce, and Chief Justice of the Bahamas,
Avas already residing on the Northern Neck as his agent. The
peer was delighted with the taste for country sports he found
existing on the Chesapeake. He went to England only to
procure an explanation of the grant to his ancestor, which
extended it to a great tract beyond the Adeghanies. Then
he returned for good to plant, and to teach his neighbours
scientific fox-hunting.
This immense area of rich waste land had never been
surveyed. Lord Fairfax found that squatters were makmg
their Avay up the stream, and securing an occupancy in the
best plots. They neither sought licences from him, nor
thought of paying quit-rents, such tMngs having been ever
most abhorrent to American instincts. Washington, who
Avas perpetually about Belvoir, was become an especial
favourite. He showed a remarkable capacity for compre
hending lessons on sporting matters, though he himself dis
claims the fame of an accomphshed fox-hunter. Fairfax
commissioned him to survey the region, at a rate of salary
which enabled him to earn a doubloon, or as much as six
pistoles, a day. The district, between the Blue Ridge and
the Adeghanies, is the third of the four zones into wMch
geographers and politicians agree in dividing Virginia. It
2 G

406 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
enjoys the most temperate climate, and the most fertde
soil. The Mils, rarely rising to more than 2,000 feet, and
presentmg "one continuous waving line, with intervening
glens like gigantic wrinkles and furrows," are covered so
tMckly with beech, cedars, and oak, red, Avhite, and black,
hung with roses and wild vines green in the midst of March,
that surveyors long afterwards were obliged to climb to
the top of a tree to examine the country. The turf beneath
is a garden. Rhododendrons, azaleas, the shumac, and kalmia
fringe the cliffs of many colours which crop up beside the
pathway. Over all, are the blue summits melting away in the
distance. The defect of the ridge as a landscape is that it is
not sufficiently broken ; and there is a want of individuahty
about the several mountains. But it compensates for tMs
deficiency in picturesqueness by its universal fertdity.
Even the higher slopes are now tilled.
Beyond the wooded hill country Washington entered,
in company with young George Fairfax, surveying as he
went along, a grand valley twenty-five miles broad. He
found it bounded by the Blue Mountains, with " their soft
liqmd tints of mingled blue and green," on the one side, and
North Mountain, a division of the Adeghanies, on the other.
Throughout it is irrigated by the Shenandoah, " daughter of
the stars," as the Indian tribes named it for its beauty. This
great central valley of Virginia became later the cMef pride
of the State. Often it was denominated " Virginia " simply.
It is a country of wheat and Indian corn ; and the slopes of
every hill glow with peach and apple orchards. Its social
aspects before the War of Secession were described as Mter-
mediate between those of the birthplace of sweet-scented
tobacco, and the maize and cotton plantations of the lower tide
water country, on the one hand, and those of the Northern
States on the other. The number of slaves was smaller than
in the tide-water country. Labour, which is also much more
agreeable there to the physical constitution of the white man,
did not involve a loss of caste. The estates were generally for
the same reasori more moderate in extent. The tone of comfort

Virginia. 407

was greater. Farmers did not, as further south, live from year
to year on pork, salt fish or corn bread ; they made the soil
yield fruit and garden vegetables. It was the home of
the class described by Jefferson : " I know no ' condition
happier than that of a Virginian farmer might be. His
estate supplies a good table, clothes himself and his family
with their ordinary apparel, furnishes a small surplus to buy
salt, sugar, coffee, and a little finery for his wife and daughters,
enables him to receive and visit his friends, and furnishes
Mm with a pleasing and healthy occupation," Along with
these moderate holdings were also many estates on a far
ampler scale, large enough to afford their owners leisure for
studying politics and for refinement, and to provide a surplus
for the exercise of the profuse hospitahty which dehghted a
southern planter anywhere. Some domains were princely
in their dimensions.
The country a hundred years later became fasMonable
for its medicinal springs of sulphur, red and wMte, first made
known by WasMngton himself, who purchased the site of one
of the principal. Its modern aspect would have amazed
Solomon Hedge, Esqmre, his Majesty's Justice of the Peace,
to whose supper party the young explorer, and the rest of
the company, brought their own knives, doing without forks.
Washington was in ecstasies with the valley, its beauty and
its richness, its oaks, and sugar-maples. Lord Fairfax was so
fired by Ms report, that within a short time he moved from
his cousin's house at Belvoir across the Blue Ridge, with
horses and dogs, books, retainers, and coat of arms. He
laid out a manor of ten thousand acres, with pastures, wood
land, and cornland, to be entitled, with the manor-house he was
designing, Greenway Court. For the present, he took up his
residence in his steward's " quarter," a long stone house on a
green knod overlooMng the Shenandoah, one story high, with
dormer windows, and two wooden belfries, a roof with low
eaves, and a long verandah the whole length of the house for
summer evening sauntering. At the foot of the knoll were
outhouses for servants, stables, and kennels, and a hut twelve
2 g 2

408 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
feet square, in which it pleased the master, from some
eccentricity, to sleep, away from the main building. In the
library, Washmgton, a constant guest, loved to read English
history, and the Spectator. He was not likely to neglect the
old lord's particular contribution.
The gaunt old man, with his near sight, light grey eyes,
and sharp features, and generally strange appearance and
manifold oddities, won the hearts of his neighbours. He
acted with ardour the part of road-surveyor. In the character
of lord-heutenant of the county he was in the habit of
feastMg, during the assizes at Cumberland, all the notables
of the vicinity. At one time he Avould be drilling a mihtia
cavalry troop on Ms lawn ; at another, when game happened
to be scarce at Greenway Court and Belvoir, he migrated
with his whole household to some rustic inn in the heart
of the wild forest, and there entertained aU who could join
his hunting party for weeks at a time. When the Indian
tribes were m arms ad about Mm, at the date of Braddock's
fatal expedition, he disdained to remove to the lower country,
and, with his negroes and half-breed huntsmen and friends,
beat the woods as before. The Revolution was a heavy grief
to him. No one ever dreamt of molesting the old man,
though he did not disguise Ms royalism; but the surrender
of Cornwallis at Yorktown to his friend and surveyor is
said to have killed him, if it be necessary to look for any
special reason for death at ninety-two. Thus pathetically
does a local poet, Weem, in a ' History of Mount Vernon,'
sing that catastrophe, after a prose prelude to the valet, " Come,
Joe, carry me to bed ; for it is high time for me to die."
" Then up rose Joe, all at the Avord,
And took his master's arm.
And thus to bed he slowly led
The lord of Greenway Farm.
Then oft he called on Britain's name,
And oft he wept full sore,
Then sighed, 'Thy will, 0 Lord, be done,'
And word spake never more."
To this new country, opened up by Washington, and

Virginia. 409

purged by so magnificent a resident as an English baron from
equivocal associations, thronged adventurers. Thither came,
in 1772, Horatio Gates. Once he was well knoAvn in
fasMonable London circles, and he had served in Braddock's
luckless expedition. He was now, at the age of forty-six, a
disappointed half-pay officer, somewhat corpulent, and " with
a disagreeable proneness to wheedle," caught by haunting
ante-chambers and Pall Mall. He bought an estate beyond
the Blue Ridge, in Berkeley County, called the " Traveder's
Rest," a name suggesting preexistence in the shape of a road
side inn. Thence he looked out to see how he could best turn
the circumstances of his troubled period to account. About
the same time, his friend Lee, major-general in the service
of the Kmg of Poland, and aide-de-camp to his Majesty of
Portugal, was, among other birds of prey, who seem to have
scented the war from afar, wandering about America. His
journey ostensibly was undertaken to establish some claim
upon Government to a grant in the South; but he had
already been strongly suspected of tampering with the New
England patriots. Gates wrote eagerly to him, expatiating
on the advantages of a neighbouring farm, then for sale, with
a flour-mill, and 2,400 acres, sure in ten years, he affirmed,
to have doubled their A^alue. In the meantime, he offers him
" a good bed, and two or three slaves, at the ' Traveller's
Rest,' to wait on his whimsies." One of these whimsies,
which was peculiarly disagreeable to neat Mrs. Washington,
was a habit of taking troops of dogs to the houses of friends,
and insisting on having them accommodated with scats at
the dinner-table. Rough quarters were fitted for rough
ways ; and General Lee's farmhouse on the Shenandoah Avas
a mere shell. The different apartments were indicated by
lines chalked on the ground. At least, he would argue, it
was economical ; he could, from any part, Avithout the least
inconvenience, overlook the entire establishment, and re
gulate library, bedroom, harness-room, and kitchen, Avith-
out stirrino- a foot. To this primitive abode the tattered
soldier, of fortune, suspected, neglected, and virulent, retired

410 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
about the middle of the war, to abuse Ms " Small Friends,"
and, with a sneer at Washington, declare his behef that
"hoeing tobacco must be the best school to form a con
summate general."
Washington, although he had done much, in youth and
age, to render the region known, and had sagaciously bought
some very fertile portions of it, cannot be considered a repre
sentative of its planters. He was the old tide- water planter,
with the fine equipages, manners, and prerogatives of a
feudal lord of a manor joined to the spirit and industry of
a merchant of Amsterdam. Other proprietors in the " great
vadey," of the grand seigneur type- as Lord Fairfax,
and sojourners as Lee and Gates, were never American in
thought and feeling. President Jefferson, though not locally
belonging actually to the Shenandoah, is a fair represen
tative of the intermediate state of society which flourished
on its banks. He owned large possessions, both at Poplar
Forest, in Bedford County, and at Monticello, close to the
town of Charlottesville. Some of the wonders of the district
were close to his own lands ; the Natural Bridge was his
property. He always considered himself a born enemy of
the tide- water aristocracy. Washington, in common with
the latter class, doubted the future of a republic ; Jefferson
believed in it most implicitly, and was in doctrine a liberal as
to social, as well as a republican as to national relations. By
fortune he belonged to the higher ranks. He had in the rich
hollows of the Blue Ridge Highlands an estate of from five
to six thousand acres, and at Poplar Forest a tobacco plan
tation which ought to have been lucrative, with flour-mills,
canals, and locks, leading from the Rivanna, constructed at
a cost of thirty thousand dollars. He was also a considerable
slave-owner, possessing about a couple of hundred slaves.
In his ' Notes on Virginia ' he denounces the system, and
solemnly exclaims, " The only firm basis of national liberty
is the conviction that liberty is the gift of God."
In his theories Jefferson was consistent enough. In
practice his assertion of the right of all human beings to

Virginia. 411
equal privileges, and outcry against presidential titles and
levees, and tables of precedence, were combmed Avith the pre
judices and habits of a Virgmian gentleman. He was espe-
ciady jealous of any assumption of a right to intrude upon
his privacy, upon the ground of Ms public character, or to
criticise Ms personal conduct. The visitor who introduced
Mmself Avith the remark that " he had availed himself of a
common privdege of callmg upon him," was met with a far
more chilhng rebuff than Scott's American persecutors at
Abbotsford. In the same tone he complains to Ms brother-
ex-president Adams of the multitude of letters with which
his leisure was fretted and worried. " Is this life ? It is the
life of a mill-stone. To such a hfe that of a cabbage would
be paradise." Neither was Ms general mode of hfe m the least
democratic, m the European sense of the term. The care of
his Poplar Forest estate he left whody to an overseer, a course
fatal, he acknowledges, to the profits of a southern plantation.
He declares that " from breakfast to dinner, he was always in
the shops, Ms garden, or on horseback among his farms ; " and
that " he talked with Ms neighbours of ploughs and harrows,
seeding and harvesting." He affected a lively interest, wMle
abroad, in the probable returns from Ms " httle essay m red
clover." But Ms agricultural experiments seldom were re
munerative ; and a semmary of young pohticians he kept
in the neighbouring vidage of Charlottesvdle, directing
their studies, and conversmg frequently with them on states-
mansMp, was the object of many of his farm rides. Or
perhaps he was composmg Greek epitaphs, or criticising Plato,
Avhom, it is shockmg to find, he had the want of taste to decry
as " full of puerihties and unmtedigible jargon." He had a
fondness, too, for fine horses, spending, for mstance, at one
time, a couple of thousand dodars on the purchase of four.
With tMs extravagance he united a polite taste for French
cookery, to the mdignation of Patrick Henry, who caded it
" treason agamst one's native victuals." Every stranger who
brought to MonticeUo letters of mtroduction, was invited to
stay. He was never without occasional guests. His neigh-

412 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
bours would come over from Marrowbone, Horse Pasture, and
Poison Field, and other localities wMch his letters have made
classical. All, of whatever phase of politics, might reckon on
being received with courtesy. The federal Tories of Bedford
County, who, he knew, detested his principles, as he did theirs,
Avere of the company. So were musical prisoners of war from
Burgoyne's staff, for whose stay in Albemarle he pleaded
successfully with the Legislature, on the ground that they had
planted gardens, and collected for themselves poultry. They
were no less heartily welcomed than their predecessor at
Code, the Italian Mazzei, whose vineyards they treated as
ruthlessly as did Czar Peter Evelyn's holly hedge at Saye's
Court. An incessant flood of visitors poured in from the
neighbouring University of Virginia, built among the Avoods
on the same skirts of the Blue Ridge as MonticeUo, under
Ms immediate superintendence, after a quasi classical model.
It is satisfactory to learn that he had not excluded from its
programme of studies those Latin and Greek classics, which,
in his first burst of zeal for experimental philosophy, he
abuses, in the description of William and Mary's College in
his ' Notes,' as " disgusting and degrading " to " young gentle
men already prepared for entering on the sciences."
He not merely planned educational reforms ; he believed
he had a vocation also for improving the architecture of his
native State. The four parallel ranges of his university, with
the glittering dome of its rotunda, are monuments of his views
on the subject. His own residence was a favourable specimen
of gentlemen's houses on the outskirts of the Blue Ridge.
It commanded a wide view to the east, over an undulating
forest plain. The mountains were visible, stretching away
to the distance of a hundred miles. Aboriginal forest-trees
surrounded it on three sides, the fourth being occupied by
a spacious hanging garden. Necessarily, the mansion had a
Grecian portico, and cupola, and raised terraces. Saloons,
and hall, and drawing-rooms were crowded with curiosities,
moose and elk horns, Indian weapons and Italian statuary.
The library was well stored with books, and mathematical and

Virginia, 413
philosophical instruments; indeed, on journeys, he Avas in
the habit of taking with him, somewhat after the fashion of
Dr. Johnson, a set of logarithm tables. Wads and floors
Avere adorned with paintings, and with mosaic work executed
by his slaves.
Unhappily, his various elegant tastes aggravated a southern
planter's habitual and ruinous instinct of living beyond his
income. His presidential salary of 25,000 dollars a year did
not prevent him from quitting office, at the end of eight years,
ten thousand dollars out of pocket. His estate gradually
dwindled away. Bad crops were looked upon as mere acci
dents which would not recur, and plots of land were sold to
defray the loss ; a good harvest was treated as a windfall, and
not as compensation for any defect of the previous autumn.
His labourers, who should have been at the plough, were
engaged on Avorks of art. A consequence of all this was, that
the statesman who had, in and out of office, vehemently dis
couraged lotteries, was, like Lamartine, persuaded finally, in
his necessity, to ask as a charity from the State Assembly
the right to institute one, for the more profitable sale of his
plantation. This being the ex-President's own financial con
dition, he laboured to induce Short, Monroe, and Madison to
fix their residence near, for the sake not more of the oppor
tunity of social intercourse than of the example of economy
he and they together might show the Avhole country side.
Albemarle County was not to have the happiness of
watcMng these economists in direct collocation. Only
Monroe went so far as to budd a house in the mountains.
He was soon called away to pursuits in which he earned,
from first to last, 400,000 dollars, yet died insolvent.
Jefferson and he forgot, in their own cases, though they were
always reminding others and each other of the truth, that a
Virginian planter must, to remain solvent, ever think of
himself as a merchant and farmer.
Virginia, beside its great proprietors, whether tide-water
oligarchs, Shenandoah farmers, or theorists and statesmen in
the villas of the Blue Ridge, had its class of yeomen, com-

414 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed,.
posed indiscriminately of the old colonists, more recent
emigrants, and emancipated bondsmen. By the constitution
of the settlement, it was intended that the chief part of the
land should belong to this order of men The original scheme,
as that of New England, contemplated that only a few of
distinguished rank or wealth, fitted to give a tone to the
province, or if necessary to defend its rights at home, were to
be allured into residing by grants of domains. TMs plan had
been perverted, partly by fraud, and partly by avarice.
Governors and surveyors-general gave to any single individual,.
who had sufficient wealth or mfluence, many lots of fifty acres.
With official connivance, ship captains obtained in different
counties independent allotments, m virtue of the same voyage.
Such yeomen as there were, if often of inferior energy, on
account of the relaxing climate, do not seem at first to have
been in kind unlike the farmers of the north-east. They had
set up no pretence to grandeur. They did not ride the mag
nificent horses found by Cornwalhs in Virginian stables, wMch
La Fayette styles " racers." Their steeds were ill-groomed,
and they dwelt in log huts. The oppression of capitalists, who
lent them goods and money at enormous interest, gradually
spoilt their attractive qualities. As they appear in late prse-
Revolutionary descriptions, they do not form a very pre
possessing feature of Virginian society, with their arrogance,
their slovenly lazy ways, and their addiction to hunting,
racing, and mortgaging.
However, to this class belonged Patrick Henry, and he
Avas not ashamed of it. With its members he eat, drank, and
talked, dressing in their rough costume, and even, at the
height of his fame, using much of their accent. At one
time he managed a store. When this failed, with more of
the spirit supposed to mark a Yankee than a Virginian,
he betook himself to practising in the county courts, in
one of which his father presided. Occasionally he would
officiate in place of his father-in-law, Skelton, at a bar of a
different kind, kept at Hanover Court-house. Hunting and
dancing still occupied much of his attention ; and Ms first

Virginia. 415

meeting with Jefferson, was at a ball given by Colonel
Dandridge. Often he would rush in to conduct a ease, fresh
from the chase, in a slouched hat and tattered clothes. A
New Englander of the middle class is consistent in his ways ;
he dresses for his common business in good broadcloth, he
does not change it for extraordinary occasions. Patrick
Henry was a Virginian ; for appearances at the bar of the
general court he arrayed Mmself in a full suit of black velvet,
and an elaborately powdered tie wig. On his election into
the House of Burgesses, he had advanced to a peach-coloured
coat, which Goldsmith would have admired. When he took'
Ms place as Governor of Ms native State, and migrated with
Ms household into a palace, as Government-house had been
styled, he blazed forth in a trailing scarlet robe, and other
Roman-senator-like magnificences. All this furnished copious
matter for sarcasms to the young gentlemen fresh from
European Courts, who used to profess that they did not tirink
it of importance, " whether a country were ruled by a despot
with a tiara on his head, or by a demagogue with a red cloak
and caulbare wig."
His merit and that of his class was exuberant life
and energy. The Randolphs and Robinsons, when they
laid down an office, withdrew to the superior dignity and
influence of country gentlemen, surrounded by troops of
admiring friends and dependents. Henry and his class had,
on retirement, to resume their practice or other business.
He, for instance, betook himself to the drudgery of the petty
district courts of Prince Edward County and New London.
But Henry and his fellows succeeded in effecting what
was beyond the reach of the old families. They reahsed
fortunes. Not till after a double career of labour did he
retire to live out the evenings of many summers under the
shade of a huge waMut-tree in which he most delighted. He
ever acknowledged himself, and was acknowledged by Ms
old equals, as from and of them, and their representative
throughout. It can hardly be but that the stock retains a
capacity for the qualities which he developed so fully. Now,

416 Some Verdicts of History Reviewed.
the Virginian Capes are no longer a name of power in Bristol
and Liverpool, and on the London Exchange. Trade, wealth,
and political power have drifted round the AUeghanies,
eastwards and westwards. The Old Dominion, which once
esteemed the Presidency its all but vested right, has gradually
sunk below many juniors in the amount of representation in
Congress. Its progress,- where any is discernible, is due to
strangers, not to its own people. Farmers from Maine locate
themselves on the rich shores of the Potomac, and gather in
abundant harvests from land Avhich overseers had reported to
be thoroughly exhausted. Companies from England, Old and
New, have worked mines, the very existence of which was
unknown to the native Virginians. They hire local labour
to do what it would never have consented to undertake
on its own account. Virginians have deserved to fall behmd.
Few populations have enjoyed greater advantages, and had
a fairer start towards prosperity, or have more misused the
Avhole. Friends of Virginia who have looked forward to its
resurrection since the blight of slavery was removed, budd
their hopes, not on the old lineage still vegetating on the river
estuaries, or on the memory of a party of dexterous statesmen,
Avho happened to choose for their retreat the Shenandoah, or
the belt at the foot of the Blue Ridge, but on the race of yeomen
who survive, in whatever part of the State, and of whatever
origin, whether descended from courtiers of King Charles, or
from convicts sold for a few pounds of tobacco.

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