Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 61, No. 376, February, 1847

But this course of rivalry was interrupted. The king was suddenly seized with illness. Fitzjames, Bishop of Soissons, came to the royal bedside, and remonstrated. The mistress was dismissed, with a kind of public disgrace, and the queen went in a sort of public pomp, to thank the saints for the royal repentance.

"But," says Walpole, "as soon as the king's health was re-established, the queen was sent to her prayers, the bishop to his diocese, and the Duchess was recalled—but died suddenly." He ends the narrative with a reflection as pointed and as bitter as that of any French chamberlain in existence:—"Though a jealous sister may be disposed to despatch a rival, can we believe that bishops and confessors poison?"

Madame de Pompadour had reigned paramount for a longer period than any of those Medeas or Circes. Walpole describes her as all that was charming in person and manner. But nearer observers have denied her the praise of more than common good looks, and more than vulgar animation. She, however, evidently understood the art of managing her old fool, and of keeping influence by the aid of his ministers. Madame mingled eagerly in politics, purchased dependents, paid her instruments well, gave the gayest of all possible entertainments—a resistless source of superiority in France—had a purse for many, and a smile for more; by her liveliness kept up the spirits of the old king, who was now vibrating between vice and superstition; fed, fêted, and flattered the noblesse, by whom she was libelled, and worshipped; and with all the remaining decencies of France exclaiming against her, but with all its factions, its private licentiousness, and its political corruption, rejoicing in her reign; she flourished before the eyes of Europe, the acknowledged ruler of the throne.

Can we wonder that this throne fell—that this career of glaring guilt was followed by terrible retribution—that this bacchanalian revel was inflamed into national frenzy—that this riot of naked vice was to be punished and extinguished by the dungeon and the scaffold?

Walpole, though formed in courts, fashioned in politics, and a haunter of high life to the last, now and then exhibits a feeling worthy of a manlier vocation, and an honester time. "If I do not forbid myself censure," says he, "at least I shall shun that poison of histories, flattery. How has it predominated in writers. My Lord Bacon was almost as profuse of his incense to the memory of dead kings, as he was infamous for clouding the memory of the living with it. Commines, an honester writer, though I fear, by the masters whom he pleased, not a much less servile courtier, says that the virtues of Louis XI. preponderated over his vices. Even Voltaire has in a manner purified the dross of adulation which contemporary authors had squandered on Louis XIV. by adopting and refining it after the tyrant was dead."

He then becomes courageous, and writes in his castle of Strawberry Hill, what he never would have dared to breathe in the circle of St. James's. "If any thing can shock one of those mortal divinities, and they must be shocked before they can be corrected, it would be to find, that the truth would be related of them at last. Nay, is it not cruel to them to hallow their memories. One is sure that they will never hear truth; shall they not even have a chance of reading it?"

In all great political movements, where the authority of a nation has been shaken, we are strongly inclined to think that the shock has originated in mal-administration at home. Some of the most remarkable passages in these volumes relate to our early neglect of the American Colonies. In the perpetual struggles of public men for power, the remote world of the West seemed to be wholly forgotten, or to be remembered only when an old governor was recalled, or a new creature of office sent out. Those great provinces had been in the especial department of the Secretary of State, assisted by the Board of Trade. That secretary had been the Duke of Newcastle, a man whose optics seem never to have reached beyond Whitehall. It would scarcely be credited, what reams of papers, representations, memorials, and petitions from that quarter of the world lay mouldering and unopened in his office. He even knew as little of the geography of his province, as of the state of it. During the war, while the French were encroaching on the frontier; when General Ligonier hinted some defence for Annapolis, he replied in his evasive, lisping hurry, "Annapolis. Oh, yes, Annapolis must be defended—Where is Annapolis?"

But a more serious impolicy was exhibited in the neglect of American claims to distinctions and offices. No cabinet seems ever to have thought of attaching the rising men of the colonies, by a fair and natural distribution of honours. Excepting a few trifling offices, scarcely more than menial, under the staff of the British governors, or commissions in the provincial militia, the promotion of an American was scarcely ever heard of. The result was natural,—the English blood was soaked in the American veins; the original spirit of the colonist became first sullen, and then hostile. It was natural, as the population grew more numerous; while individual ability found itself thwarted in its progress, and insulted by the preference of strangers to all the offices of the country, that the feelings of the people should ponder upon change. Nothing could be more impolitic than this careless insult, and nothing more calamitous in its consequences. The intelligent lawyer, the enterprising merchant, the hardy soldier, and America had them all, grew bitter against the country of their ancestors. It would scarcely be believed, that the Episcopal Church was almost wholly abandoned to weakness, poverty, and unpopularity, and even that no bishop was sent to superintend the exertions, or sustain the efficacy, or cement the connexion of the Church in America with the Church in England. The whole of the united provinces were, by the absurd fiction of a sinecure law, "in the diocese of London!" Of course, in the first collision, the Church was swept away like chaff before the wind. An Episcopal Church has since risen in its room; but it has now no farther connexion with its predecessor than some occasional civilities offered to its tourist bishops on presenting their cards at Lambeth, or the rare appearance of a volume of sermons transmitted to our public libraries.

Another capital fault was committed in the administration of those great colonies: they had been peopled chiefly by emigrants of the humbler order. Leaving England chiefly in times of national disturbance, they had carried with them the seeds of republicanism; but all men love public honours, and Englishmen love them as much as any others. Hereditary honours, too, are the most valuable of all, from their giving a certain rank to those objects of our regard, which every honest and high-minded man values most, his children. To be the founder of a family is the most honourable, the most gratifying, and the most permanent reward of public talents. The Americans of our day affect to abhor a peerage; though no people on earth are more tenacious of the trifling and temporary titles of office. Nothing could have been easier at this period, than the creation of an aristocracy in America; and nothing could have been wiser. The landed proprietors, and there were some of vast possessions; the leading men of commerce, and there were some of great wealth; and the principal lawyers, and there were men of eloquence and ability among them—would have formed the nucleus of an aristocracy purely English, closely connected with the English throne as the fountain of honour, and not less strongly bound to English allegiance. An Episcopacy, of all ties the most powerful, required only a word for its creation. And in this manly, generous, and free-spirited connexion, the colonies would have grown with the growth of England; have shunned all the bitter collisions of rival interests; have escaped the actual wars which inflicted disaster on both; and, by the first of all benefits to America, she would have obtained the means of resisting that supremacy of faction, which is now hurrying her into all the excesses of democracy.

In Canada we are still pursuing the same system, inevitably to be followed by the same fruits. We are suffering it to be filled with men of the lowest order of society; with the peasant, the small dealer, the fugitive, and the pauper. Those men no sooner acquire personal independence, than they aim at political. But who ever hears of a title of honour among even the ablest, the most gallant, or the most attached of the Canadian colonists? The French acted more rationally. Their Canadians have a noblesse, and that noblesse to this moment keep their station, and keep up the interest of France in Canada. Our obvious policy would be, to conciliate the leading men by titles of honour, to conciliate the rising generation by giving them the offices of their own country, and make it a principle of colonial government, that while the command of the forces, or the governor-generalship should be supplied from home, every office below those ranks should be given to those brave and intelligent individuals of the colony who had best earned them. We should then hear of no factions, no revolts, and no republicanism in Canada.

It is a curious contrast to the present state of things, that during the long reign of George II. government was simply a game. Half a dozen powerful men were the players. The king was merely the looker on, the people knew no more of the matter than the passers by through Pall-Mall know of the performances going on within the walls of its club-houses. It must shock our present men of the mob to hear of national interests tossed about like so many billiard balls by those powdered and ruffled handlers of the cue. Yet every thing is to be judged of by the result. Public life was never exhibited on a more showy scale. Parliament never abounded with more accomplished ability. England never commanded higher influence with Europe. If her commerce has since become more extensive, it was then more secure, and if the victories of our own time have been on a scale of magnitude, which throws the past into the shade, our fleets and armies then gave proofs of a gallantry which no subsequent triumphs could transcend.

It cannot be doubted, that the habits of that rank to which the statesmen of that day were born, naturally influenced their views of political transactions. Though party unquestionably existed in all its force among them, there was no faction. If there was a strong competition for power, there was little of the meanness of modern intrigue; and a minister of the days of George II. would no more have stooped to the rabble popularity, than he would have availed himself of its assistance or dreaded its alienation.

We now come to one of those negociations which, like a gust of wind against a tree, while they seemed to shake, only strengthened the cabinet. A violent attack had been made in the house upon Sir Thomas Robinson, a great favourite with the king. Walpole strikes off his character with his usual spirit. Sir Thomas had been bred in German courts, and was rather restored, than naturalised to the genius of Germany. He had German honour, loved German politics, and "could explain himself as little" as if he spoke "only German." Walpole attributes Sir Thomas's political distinctions simply to Newcastle's necessity for finding out men of talents inferior to his own, "notwithstanding the difficulty of the discovery." Yet if the duke had intended to please his master, he could not have done it more happily than by presenting him with so congenial a servant. The king, "with such a secretary in his closet, felt himself in the very Elysium of Heren-hausen."

Then follows a singular conversation between the king and Fox. The Duke of Newcastle saw his power tottering, and had begun to look out for new allies. His first thought was to dismiss Pitt, the next and more natural, was to "try to sweeten Fox." Accordingly, on the morning of the 29th, the king sent for Fox, reproached him for concurring to wrong Sir Thomas Robinson, and asked him if he had united with Pitt to oppose his measures. Fox assured him he had not, and that he had given his honour that he would resign first. Then, said the king, will you stand up and carry on my measures in the House of Commons, as you can do with spirit. Fox replied, I must know, sir, what means I shall have. "It would be better for you," said the king, "you shall have favour, advantage, and confidence," but would not explain particulars, only asking if he would go to the Duke of Newcastle.

"I must, if you command me," said Fox, "go and say I have forgot every thing."

"No," replied the king, "I have a good opinion of you. You have abilities and honesty, but you are too warm. I will send a common friend, Lord Waldegrave. I have obligations to you that I never mentioned. The prince tried you, and you would not join him, and yet you made no merit of it to me."

Mingled with these memoirs are appendices of anecdote, and those anecdotes generally of remarkable characters. Among the rest is a sketch of the famous Count Bruhl, one of those men who figured in Europe as the grand burlesque of ministerial life, or rather of that life, which in the East raises a slave into the highest appointments of the state, and after showing him as a slipper-bearer, places him beside the throne. The extravagances of the court of Saxony at that period were proverbial, the elector being King of Poland, and lavishing the revenues of his electorate alike on his kingdom and person. While the court was borrowing at an interest of ten per cent. the elector was lavishing money as if it rained from the skies. He had just wasted £200,000 sterling on two royal marriages, given £100,000 sterling for the Duke of Modena's gallery of pictures, given pensions in Poland amounting to £50,000 sterling above what he received, and enabled Count Bruhl personally to spend £60,000 a-year.

This favourite of fortune, originally of a good family, was only a page to the late king, and had the education of a page. By his assiduity, and being never absent from the king's side, he became necessary to this marvellously idle monarch; he himself, next to the monarch, being, probably, the idlest man in his dominions. The day of a German prime minister seems to have been a succession of formal idlenesses. Bruhl rose at six in the morning, the only instance of activity in his career. But he was obliged to attend the king before nine, after having read the letters of the morning. With the king he staid until the hour of mass, which was at eleven. From mass he went to the Countess Moyensha, where he remained till twelve. From her house he adjourned to dinner with the king, or to his own house, where he was surrounded by a circle of profligates, of his own choosing. After dinner he undressed, and went to sleep till five. He then dressed, for the second time in the day, each time occupying him an hour. At six he went to the king, with whom he staid till seven. At seven he always went to some assembly, where he played deep, the Countess Moyensha being always of the party. At ten he supped, and at twelve he went to bed. Thus did the German contrive to mingle statesmanship with folly, and the rigid regularities of a life not to be envied by a horse in a mill, with the feeble frivolities of a child in the nursery. His expenses were immense; he kept three hundred servants, and as many horses. Yet he lived without elegance, and even without comfort. His house was a model of extravagance and bad taste. He had contracted a mania for building, and had at least a dozen country seats, which he scarcely ever visited. This enormous expenditure naturally implied extraordinary resources, and he was said to sell all the great appointments in Poland without mercy.

Frederick of Prussia described him exactly, when he said, that "of all men of his age he had the most watches, dresses, lace, boots, shoes, and slippers. Cæsar would have put him among those well dressed and perfumed heads of which he was not afraid." But this mixture of prodigality and profligacy was not to go unpunished, even on its own soil. Bruhl involved Saxony in a war with Frederick. Nothing could be more foolish than the beginning of the war, except its conduct. The Prussian king, the first soldier in Europe, instantly out-manœuvred the Saxons, shut up their whole army at Pirna; made them lay down their arms, and took possession of Dresden. The king and his minister took to flight. This was the extinction of Bruhl's power. On his return to Dresden, after peace had been procured, he lost his protector, the king. The new elector dismissed him from his offices. He died in 1764.

Some scattered anecdotes of Doddington are characteristic of the man and of the time. Soon after the arrival of Frederick Prince of Wales in England, Doddington set up for a favourite, and carried the distinction to the pitifulness of submitting to all the caprices of his royal highness; among other instances, submitting to the practical joke of being rolled up in a blanket, and trundled down stairs.

Doddington has been already spoken of as a wit; and even Walpole, fastidious as he was, gives some instances of that readiness which delights the loungers of high life. Lord Sunderland, a fellow commissioner of the treasury, was a very dull man. One day as they left the board, Sunderland laughed heartily about something which Doddington had said, and, when gone, Winnington observed, "Doddington, you are very ungrateful. You call Sunderland stupid and slow, and yet you see how quickly he took what you said." "Oh no," was the reply, "he was only now laughing at what I said last treasury day."

Trenchard, a neighbour, telling him, that though his pinery was extensive, he contrived, by applying the fire and the tan to other purposes, to make it so advantageous that he believed he got a shilling by every pine-apple he ate. "Sir," said Doddington, "I would eat them for half the money." Those are but the easy pleasantries of a man of conversation. The following is better: Doddington had a habit of falling asleep after dinner. One day, dining with Sir Richard Temple, Lord Cobham, &c., he was reproached with his drowsiness. He denied having been asleep, and to prove his assertion, offered to repeat all that Cobham had been saying. He was challenged to do so. In reply, he repeated a story; and Cobham acknowledged that he had been telling it. "Well," said Doddington, "and yet I did not hear a word of it. But I went to sleep because I knew that, about this time of day, you would tell that story."

There are few things more singular than the want of taste, amounting to the ludicrous, which is sometimes visible in the mansions of public men, who have great opulence at their disposal. Walpole himself, when he became rich, was an instance of this bad taste in the laborious frivolity of his decorations at Strawberry hill. But in Doddington we have a man of fashion, living, during his whole career, in the highest circles, familiar with every thing that was graceful and classical in the arts, and yet exhibiting at home the most ponderous and tawdry pomp. At his mansion at Eastbury, in the great bed-chamber, hung with the richest red velvet, was pasted on "every panel of the velvet his crest, a hunting horn, supported by an eagle, cut out in gilt leather, while the footcloth round his bed was a mosaic of the pocket flaps and cuffs of all his embroidered clothes."

He was evidently very fond of this crest, for in his villa at Hammersmith, (afterwards the well known Brandenburg House,) his crest in pebbles was stuck in the centre of the turf before his door. The chimney-piece was hung with spars representing icicles round the fire, and a bed of purple lined with orange, was crowned by a dome of peacock's feathers. The great gallery, to which was a beautiful door of white marble, supported by two columns of lapis lazuli, was not only filled with busts and statues, but had an inlaid floor of marble, and all this weight was above stairs. One day showing it to Edward, Duke of York, (brother of George III.) Doddington said, Sir, some persons tell me, that this room ought to be on the ground. "Be easy, Mr. Doddington," said the prince, "it will soon be there."

At length this reign, which began in doubt of the succession, and was carried on in difficulties both political and commercial, came to a close in the most memorable prosperity. The British arms were triumphant in every quarter, and the king had arrived at the height of popularity and fortune, when the sudden bursting of a ventricle of the heart, put an end to his life in October, 1760, in his seventy-seventh year, and the thirty-third of his possession of the throne.

A general glance at the reigns of the first three Georges, might form a general view of the operations of party. In other kingdoms, the will of the monarch or the talents of the minister, alone stand before the eye of the historian. In England, a third power exists, more efficient than either, and moulding the character of both, and this is party, the combination of able members of the legislature, united by similarity of views, and continuing a systematic struggle for the supremacy. This influence makes the minister, and directs even the sitter on the throne. And this influence, belonging solely to a free government, is essential to its existence. It is the legitimate medium between the people and the crown. It is the peaceful organ of that public voice which, without it, would speak only in thunder. It is that great preservative principle, which, like the tides of the ocean, purifies, invigorates, and animates the whole mass, without rousing it into storm.

The reign of George the First, was a continual effort of the constitutional spirit against the remnants of papistry and tyranny, which still adhered to the government of England. The reign of the second George was a more decided advance of constitutional rights, powers, and feelings. The pacific administration of Walpole made the nation commercial; and when the young Pretender landed in Scotland, in 1745, he found adherents only in the wild gallantry, and feudal faith of the clans. In England Jacobitism had already perished. It had undergone that death from which there is no restoration. It had been swept away from the recollections of the country, by the influx of active and opulent prosperity. The brave mountaineer might exult at the sight of the Jacobite banner, and follow it boldly over hill and dale. But the Englishman was no longer the man of feudalism. The wars of the Roses could be renewed no more. He was no longer the fierce retainer of the baron, or the armed vassal of the king. He had rights and possessions of his own, and he valued both too much to cast them away in civil conflict, for claims which had become emaciated by the lapse of years, and sacrifice freedom for the superstitious romance of a vanished royalty.

Thus the last enterprise of Jacobitism was closed in the field, and the bravery of the Highlander was thenceforth, with better fortune, to be distinguished in the service of the empire.

The reign of the third George began with the rise of a new influence. Jacobitism had been trampled. Hanover and St. Germains were no longer rallying cries. Even Whig and Tory were scarcely more than imaginary names. The influence now was that of family. The two great divisions of the aristocracy, the old and the new, were in the field. The people were simply spectators. The fight was in the Homeric style. Great champions challenged each other. Achilles Chatham brandished his spear, and flashed his divine armour, against the defenders of the throne, until he became himself the defender. The Ajax, the Diomede, and the whole tribe of the classic leaders, might have found their counterparts in the eminent men who successively appeared in the front of the struggle; and the nation looked on with justified pride, and Europe with natural wonder, at the intellectual resources which could supply so noble and so prolonged a display of ability. The oratorical and legislative names of the first thirty years of the reign of George the Third have not been surpassed in any legislature of the world.

But a still more important period, a still more strenuous struggle, and a still more illustrious triumph, was to come. The British parliament was to be the scene of labours exerted not for Britain alone, but for the globe. The names of Pitt, Fox, Burke, and a crowd of men of genius, trained by their example, and following their career, are cosmopolite. They belong to all countries and to all generations. Their successes not only swept the most dangerous of all despotisms from the field, but opened that field for an advance of human kind to intellectual victories, which may yet throw all the trophies of the past into the shade.