such a bargain could be made-seeing that, according to Warburton, church and state consist of the same individuals, and it is, therefore, like a bargain made by a man with himself-his answer is easy. Because two societies, composed of the same persons, may have 'two distinct wills and two distinct personalities.' The majority in a 'factitious body' has 'the denomination of the person and the will of the society;' therefore it is the personality. Therefore, the two societies can make bargains with each other.' This sounds rather like a still deeper mystery. But where, you ask, is this bargain to be found? It may be found,' replies Warburton, in the same archive with the famous original compact between magistrate and people.' There let us leave it. Stripping Warburton's arguments of these obsolete assumptions, pushed by him, as usual, to the extreme of unreality, we may say that he really asserts that the existing compromise was very convenient. Most people agreed with him, and, therefore, did not trouble themselves about its theoretical basis. IV. THE WALPOLE ERA. 42. The accession of George I. marked the beginning of a period of political stagnation which lasted for near half-acentury. The country prospered and waxed rich. Harvests were abundant; towns began to grow; and the seeds of much that was good and much that was evil in our later history were sowed. Nor was it a period of intellectual stagnation. The deist controversy was raging; and in literature Pope, Swift, Richardson, Fielding, and Thomson were producing some of their best work. Politically, however, the times were quiet, and, it may be, a golden opportunity was being lost. The governing classes enjoyed the power which they had acquired by the revolution, and were content to keep what they had gained. They would oppress nobody actively; on the other hand, they would introduce no reforms. Their highest virtue was in leaving things alone. The Jacobites represented a vague danger in the background until their suppression in 1745. But the Jacobites were unable to put any real pressure upon the country; and a governing class 1. Works, vii. 210. 2 Ib. ii. 287. which has nothing to do except languidly to hold the reins of power and divide the spoils naturally becomes corrupt. Not one constitutional question of the least importance arose until the reign of George III. The Church retained obnoxious privileges on the condition of making very little use of them; and the nation indolently drifted towards the unknown future, carelessly contented for the most part, amused as much as scandalised by the intrigues of unprincipled politicians, and only once insisting upon having a war for the benefit of its commerce. 43. The fitting representative of such a period was Sir Robert Walpole; a statesman of admirably shrewd sense and great force of character, whose favourite motto and sole principle of government was quieta non movere. Walpole found no exponent of his political theories, whatever they might be, for the best exposition of such theories was silence. But opposed to Walpole was a man of no common reputation for philosophical and literary ability. Bolingbroke supplied the brains of the party by which Walpole was opposed, and to which Walpole's greediness of power gradually drove the ablest of his former allies. Bolingbroke was, therefore, the natural mouthpiece of that accumulated discontent which, after twenty years' preparation, at length gathered force enough to sweep Walpole from office. Exiled from Parliament, Bolingbroke was forcibly confined to literary modes of expression. A bitterly disappointed man, he was restrained by no scruples from aiming at the most vulnerable points of his hated opponent. Whatever could be said against Walpole was sure to be suggested to him, and his reputation seemed to insure that it should be said as forcibly as possible. In his writings, then, we might expect to find an expression of the political philosophy of the time, for Bolingbroke professed to have a philosophy, carefully digested in solitude, and brought to bear upon a conspicuous instance. We might expect to find anticipations of the coming outburst of revolutionary feeling, or attempts to restore the dying energy of the ancient political creeds, of which Bolingbroke was, for a time, the acknowledged representative. What do we find, in fact? 44. Two phrases are generally quoted in regard to Bolingbroke, and their conjunction is significant. The younger Pitt, it is said, declared that of all lost fragments of literature he would most gladly recover a speech of Bolingbroke. Burke asked, about the same time: Who now reads Bolingbroke? Who ever read him through? Pitt's remark, thoughtless enough, testifies to the impression made by Bolingbroke upon his contemporaries and preserved in parliamentary tradition. Burke's question indicates the general verdict upon that part of his utterances of which we are able to judge. Possibly the 'Patriot King'-his most finished performance-would have thrilled the House of Commons as a speech. Read in cold blood, the weakness of the substance weakens our appreciation of the elegance of the style. Bolingbroke was clearly a man of great talents. His brief career as a combatant in the open arena, and his long career as the prompter of visible actors in the struggle when the arena was closed to him, prove that he had the great gift of influencing men. His most brilliant contemporaries expressed for him the warmest admiration. Pope idolised him; and he was in some degree the channel of the inspiration which made Voltaire the prophet of English ideas in France. Voltaire, dedicating to him the tragedy of 'Brutus,' declares that Bolingbroke could give him lessons in French as well as in English, or could at least teach him to impart to his own tongue the force and energy due to a noble liberty of thought. And yet, every reader of Bolingbroke must ask whether this brilliant statesman and philosopher was anything but a showy actor declaiming popular platitudes without himself understanding them? 45. The answer may be given briefly. Bolingbroke had in his youth the vulgar ambition which would combine the inconsistent characters of a devotee of pleasure and a man cf business. He was to be the English Alcibiades, dazzling at all hazards and replacing labour by genius. Such affectation generally drops off a man of real power with his early youth. The lesson is quickly and painfully learnt that genius involves, though it cannot be resolved into, an infinite capacity for taking trouble. That simple truth never forced itself upon a mind corrupted to the core by vanity. To the end of his days Bolingbroke fancied that he could take political and philosophical eminence by storm, and surmount all difficulties at a bound. 46. The traditional estimate of his style is not without foundation. So far as it is possible to separate words from thought, we may call it excellent. The mould of his sentences is generally good; and one perceives that they must once have contained glowing thoughts which have somehow evaporated in the course of time. Here and there a happy expression testifies to a genuine vivacity of intellect. Such, for example, is the familiar description of the House of Commons. The members of that assembly, he says, 'grow, like hounds, fond of the man who shows them game, and by whose halloo they are to be encouraged.'1 Nor, perhaps, is it a bad illustration of the fact that enthusiasm is sometimes more blinding than dullness, when he remarks that 'Don Quixote believed, but even Sancho doubted.'2 More frequently he descends to the mere coxcombry of learning. If, he says, a voluntary exile were a complete proof of guilt, we should often pass false judgments. Metellus and Rutilius must be condemned; Apuleius and Apicius must be justified.'3 Walpole probably smiled grimly at this undergraduate affectation. Bolingbroke himself, one would think, must have laughed at his own reflections on solitude, with their pompous plagiarisms from Seneca, before the ink was dry. An imaginary dialogue between Swift and Bolingbroke might suggest the question whether bitterness of soul is more palpably evident in direct cynicism or in hollow affectation. In any case, we pity Swift, dying 'like a poisoned rat in a hole;' we can but despise Bolingbroke, the rake and intriguer, professing to console himself with the thought that the same azure vault, bespangled over with stars, will be everywhere spread over our heads.' It was not precisely under the roof of heaven that Bolingbroke consoled himself for the sorrows of exile. The fact that he might be everywhere under the roof of a gambling-house supplied him with more tangible consolations. 47. To seek in such a writer for a coherent scheme of political philosophy would be like criticising Gothic architecture from the sham cloisters of Strawberry Hill. His fine phrases are a transparent covering for personal hostilities, and his affected regard for his country a periphrasis for a cynical disbelief Bolingbroke's Works, i. 13. 2 Ib. ii. 320. • Ib. i. 543. • Ib. i. 108. in the honesty of his countrymen. Catching at any taunt which serves his purpose for the moment, he falls into flat contradiction, and proposes remedies whose natural consequences he would be the last to welcome seriously. Bolingbroke is interesting as a representative of the current insincerity of the time. The letter to Sir W. Windham, written in 1717, but published after his death, draws aside the veil. He avows with cynical candour the principles which guided him and his party on their accession to power. The enjoyment of great employments and of great patronage supplied, he says, the animating motives of his own party, as, he adds, that it has supplied the animating motives of all parties. He afterwards joined the Pretender under stress of circumstances rather than from design; and the most respectable of his excuses for his conduct is a vague point of party honour. 2 Not even as secretary to the Pretender did he believe in Jacobite theories, and he always speaks of them in terms of the bitterest contempt. A sceptic in religion, he naturally regards the dogma of the divine right as too childish for refutation. The doctrines connected with it were, in his eyes, the cause of all the seventeenth-century troubles, and he thinks them absurd enough to 'shock the common sense of a Samoyede or a Hottentot.'3 A king is nothing but a man with a crown on his head and a sceptre in his hand, as a bishop is a man who holds a crozier and wears a mitre.1 The symbols are arbitrary marks intended to designate a responsible official; not the outward signs of an inherent grace. All virtue is gone out of secular and spiritual rulers, and the philosopher sees that they owe their distinction to the tailor and the jeweller. What, then, is to be put in their place? Liberty, according to his most grandiloquent declamations, is the true end of government. Liberty, unfortunately, is a 'tender plant,'5 only to be preserved by incessant care. The notion of a perpetual danger to liberty is inseparable from the very notion of government,' and the danger is especially great in a mixed government. To keep alive the spirit of liberty should, therefore, be the great: aim of a patriot, and, so long as it is kept alive, it may save the State 'Bolingbroke's Works, i. 9, 'Letter to Sir W. Windham.' Ib. ii. 43, 'Dissertation on Parties.' Ib. i. 39. ♦ Ib. ii. 188. |