1716

PEACE AND WAR

707

had been wrested from the Crown should pass into the hands of an ignorant, ill-informed multitude. Yet they were unable--even if they had been willing—to make the House of Commons a permanent oligarchy. As the duration of Parliament could not be indefinitely prolonged without provoking violent opposition, the Whigs had only gained a respite during which they would have to do their best to make themselves more acceptable to the nation than they were when the Septennial Act was passed.

6. England and France. 1716. One of the chief causes of the fall of the Whigs in Anne's reign had been their advocacy of war: now, however, they stood forward as the advocates of peace. In effecting this change of front they were helped by the disappearance of those of their leaders who had been foremost in the struggle with France. Somers, Halifax, and Wharton died before the end of 1716, and, though Marlborough still lived, he was incapacitated by disease from acting in public. Still more helpful to the Whig party was a change which had taken place in France. The King of France was now a sickly child, Louis XV., the great-grandson of Louis XIV. If he died (as most people expected him to do), there would be two competitors for the throne of France -the one, his uncle, Philip V. of Spain, the nephew of Louis XIV. (who was, indeed, his nearest male relation, but who, upon becoming king of Spain, had renounced all claim to the French throne), and the other, the duke of Orleans, who was now Regent of France,' and was the nearest male relation of Louis XV. after Philip V. As it was believed that, in the event of the young king's death, Philip V. would assert his claim in spite of his renunciation, it was to the interest of the Duke of Orleans to be on friendly terms with

England; whilst it was equally to the interest of England to exclude Philip V. from the French throne, in order to prevent that union between France and Spain which the Whigs had striven to prevent in the late war. It therefore became possible for the Whigs to pursue their aim-the separation between France and Spain— by that peaceful understanding with the French Government which had gained popularity for the Tories in the time of Anne. On

An early form of Steam-pump for mines: from an engraving dated 1717.

November 28, 1716, an agreement was arrived at by which the Regent promised his support to the Hanoverian succession in England, whilst England promised to support the exclusion of Philip V. from the throne of France. A few weeks later the Dutch gave their assent to this arrangement, and a triple alliance was thus formed against Philip and the Pretender.

7. The Whig Schism.

1716-1717.-Though the Whig minis

1715-1719

SPLIT IN THE WHIG PARTY

709

ters had their own way in most matters, they found it necessary to comply with the king in some things. He had two ruling motives -anxiety to strengthen the electorate of Hanover, and hatred of his own eldest son George, Prince of Wales. In the interests of Hanover he had, in 1715, purchased the secularised bishoprics of Bremen and Verden from Frederick IV., king of Denmark. Though the Whig ministers had consented to the purchase of these territories, some of them --especially Townshend and his brotherin-law Walpole, who was the ablest of the rising Whigs—had said hard things of the grasping Hanoverian favourites and mistresses, upon whom George squandered English gold. In 1716 the Tzar Peter the Great sent troops into Mecklenburg-the first interference of Russia in Western affairs; and George, being anxious to keep the Russians at a distance, complained of Townshend for being unwilling to engage England in driving them out. Then, too, the king, who had quarrelled with the Prince of Wales, believed (probably without foundation) that Townshend had shown some favour to the object of his displeasure, on which he took the Secretaryship from him, sending him to Ireland as Lord Lieutenant. In 1717 Charles XII. of Sweden, angry about Bremen and Verden, which he claimed for himself, formed an alliance with Spain - which was once more growing in vigour, under the care of Philip's new Italian minister, Alberoni- and even projected an invasion of Scot land in the interests of the Pretender. The scheme was discovered in England and averted. When Parliament was asked to vote money for a war against Sweden, Walpole spoke but coldly on behalf of the proposal. The king dismissed Townshend, and Walpole resigned. The Whig party being thus split in two, the leaders of the ministry as reconstituted were Sunderland and Stanhope, the latter being the general who had fought in Spain, and who was soon afterwards raised to the peerage as Lord Stanhope.

8. The Quadruple Alliance. 1718-1720.—In foreign affairs Sunderland and Stanhope maintained the alliance with France which had been the corner-stone of the policy of their predecessors. In 1717 Alberoni seized Sardinia, and sent an army into Sicily to make a beginning of the re-conquest of those Italian possessions which had been lost to Spain by the Treaty of Utrecht. In 1718 was formed a Quadruple Alliance, in which the Emperor joined Great Britain, France, and the Dutch Republic. A Spanish fleet and army overran the greater part of Sicily, but the Spanish fleet was destroyed by Admiral Sir George Byng off Cape Passaro. In 1719 Alberoni sent two frigates to land Jacobites in

Scotland. The expedition failed, and France and England forced Philip to dismiss his minister. In 1720 Philip agreed to abandon both Sicily and Sardinia. Sicily was given to Austria, and Sardinia went to the Duke of Savoy, who now bore the title of King of Sardinia, instead of that of King of Sicily; and soon afterwards the King of Spain removed the obstructions which he had hitherto thrown in the way of the execution of the clause in the Treaty of Utrecht by which the landing of goods at Panama from a single English ship had been permitted (see p. 697). After this Europe had peace for twelve years.

9. The Relief of the Dissenters, and the Peerage Bill. 1719. — The two sections of the Whigs were opposed to one another, rather upon personal than on political grounds. Walpole was, however, more cautious than Sunderland or Stanhope. Sunderland and Stanhope, in 1719, obtained the repeal of the Occasional Conformity Act and of the Schism Act, which had been the work of the triumphant Tories in the reign of Anne (see p. 699) ; but when they showed signs of wishing to repeal the Test Act of the reign of Charles II. (see p. 607), thereby not merely offering religious liberty to Dissenters, but also proposing to qualify them for office, Walpole was startled, thinking that the unpopularity of such a measure might prove the ruin of the Whigs. The main subject of quarrel between the rival statesmen was, however, a Peerage Bill which Sunderland and Stanhope laid before Parliament. According to this proposal the king was to be allowed to create only six additional peerages (except in the case of a member of the Royal Family), after which he could only make a new peer upon the extinction of an old peerage. This measure, which passed the House of Lords, was rejected in the Commons, mainly in consequence of Walpole's opposition. It is hardly to be doubted that its framers looked forward to the possible election of a Tory House of Commons, and wished to hinder a Tory minister from making himself master of the House of Lords by creating a large number of peers, as Harley and St. John had done in 1711 (see p. 695). According to them, the House of Lords was to be the bulwark of the Whigs against a Tory House of Commons. It was Walpole's merit that he saw distinctly that this could not be, as the Bill, if it had passed, would have made the House of Lords a narrow oligarchy capable of setting at defiance both the Crown and the House of Commons. It was, moreover, clear to him that the Commons must from henceforth be the chief member of the constitutional organisation. If the Whigs were to win the battle, they must win it by possessing

1720

JOINT STOCK COMPANIES

711

a majority in the House of Commons, and not by setting up the artificial barrier of a restricted House of Lords. It is unlikely that Sunderland acknowledged the inferiority of his own statesmanship to that of Walpole, but he had felt his power, and in 1720 admitted both him and Townshend to subordinate offices in the government.

10. The South Sea Bubble. 1720. Few things served the Whigs so well as their adoption of a policy of peace, to which their short war with Spain hardly furnished an exception. With the cessation of the risks due to war trade increased rapidly, and with the increase of trade came a violent increase of speculation. Joint-stock companies, which had hitherto been limited to a few

great undertakings, were formed in large numbers. Some, being managed by men of experience, met with success; whilst others, started by swindlers or by persons ignorant of trade, speedily collapsed, and ruined those who had embarked their capital in them. Amongst these latter the most prominent was the South Sea Company, which had been formed by Harley, in 1711, to carry on such trade with Spanish America as might be rendered possible by the expected treaty with Spain. Trade with the Spanish colonies was allowed by the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht to a single English ship in each year, and the Assiento treaty had also granted to the English the right of importing negroes into them (see p. 696). All classes in England were under the delusion that the