The Long Eighteenth Century

by Frank O'Gorman

  Between 1742 and 1744 the opposition lashed the ministry in debate, pressed for the retrospective prosecution of Walpole and moved motions for place and pensions bills and one for the repeal of the Septennial Act. They brought forward over thirty divisions on the conduct of the war. All these initiatives failed as Carteret fell back upon the majorities which had sustained Walpole for so long. Yet, his position was still extremely vulnerable. The old corps ministers were unhappy with Carteret’s secretiveness, his arrogance and his refusal to cultivate party loyalties. Their position in the ministry was already weighty when in 1743 Henry Pelham became First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. Pelham and his friends were horrified both at Carteret’s indulgence of the king’s Hanoverian schemes and at the costs of these continental adventures. In November 1744 they forced the king to dismiss Carteret. It was the second time in two years that George II had lost a minister who had his confidence but lacked that of a wider political circle. It was further confirmation of the strength and power of the Whig oligarchy and of the skill and resource of the old corps.

  Carteret and most of the ‘new Whigs’ were replaced in the spring of 1744 with the ‘Broad-bottom’ administration.20 The Pelhams wished to enlarge the base of the administration in order to ensure a trouble-free prosecution of the war. Consequently, the new ministry contained some dissident Whigs, including Pitt and his friends, Lyttleton and George Grenville (the ‘new allies’), and even a few moderate Tories. (Indeed, a trickle of Tories reinforced the commissions of the peace in the localities.) The experiment in ‘Broad-bottom’ was not particularly successful. Indeed, the ministry is now best remembered for dealing with the ‘45 rebellion, which it did with conspicuous success, but it lacked political strength. The old corps had embarked upon it mainly because they felt uncertain of their own positions. There was little enthusiasm for it within the ranks of the Whigs. Within a few months, moreover, all the Tories were back in the familiar routines of opposition. Furthermore, there was little confidence between the king and his ministers. The king insisted on consulting Carteret as ‘minister behind the curtain’ and treated his ministers with little respect. Some of the ‘new allies’ were in favour of resignation on this issue even during the ’45, but members of the old corps preferred a waiting game. This they played to perfection. Once the rising was over, they were ready to strike. Aware that the king was contemplating the formation of a ministry headed by Granville (as Carteret had become) and Bath, they took the initiative and in February 1746 collectively resigned. Forty junior office-holders resigned with them. George II was forced to recognize that he could not govern without them and he was forced to readmit the old corps at the price of an office (Paymaster General) for the rapidly rising scourge of Walpole and Hanover–William Pitt. This marked the end of Bath’s role ‘behind the curtain’, a victory for the old corps, the reestablishment of its supremacy and the effective reunification of the Whigs as the governing party. The administration formed in 1746 lasted until the death of its leader, Henry Pelham, in 1754. Until the middle of the next decade, ‘Broad-bottom’ was to remain under a cloud in Britain.

  Meanwhile, the Jacobite movement had launched its last serious challenge to the Hanoverian dynasty. Taking advantage of British involvement in the war in Europe and overseas and in view of the absence of the Highland companies in Germany, the Young Pretender, Charles Edward, raised the Jacobite standard on the island of Eriskay off the west coast of Scotland in July 1745. Landing with only a dozen supporters, the prince’s cause rapidly flourished. By September, he had over 2,000 troops and he occupied Edinburgh. After the great Jacobite victory at Prestonpans, Scotland was now in rebel hands. In November 1745, an army of over 5,000 men invaded England. They took Carlisle and then, without any resistance, Lancaster, Preston and Manchester. Their arrival at Derby marked the high point of the Jacobite cause in 1745. It is just possible that had they continued south, they might have created panic in London. In the event, the failure of the expected French invasion fleet to arrive and the absence of English support for the Scottish army weakened the latter’s confidence and drained its morale. Most significant of all, neither the Tories nor the Catholics gave more than token support. By this time, the government had rallied its military strength and at least 30,000 troops were now available to confront the Jacobites. Realizing that they had nothing to hope for in England, the Jacobite officers persuaded the Pretender to retreat to Scotland, where in April 1746 their army was destroyed at Culloden by the 9,000 troops led by ‘Butcher’ Cumberland, the king’s second son. The remnants of the Jacobite army repaired to Ruthven, still prepared to fight on, but the prince had fled. The ‘45 was over.

  Henry Pelham took full advantage of the loyalist reaction that swept the country in the wake of the ‘45 by bringing forward the general election expected under the Septennial Act in 1748. By doing so, he hoped to consolidate his parliamentary majority in advance of the impending, and almost certainly controversial, peace treaty to end the war with France. In this, he was totally successful. After the election the Duke of Newcastle, Henry Pelham’s brother, estimated the ministerial majority at over 120, a figure that was sufficient to pass government measures through the Commons. The king, in spite of his humiliation at their hands, settled down to recognizing the advantages of cooperation with the Pelhams: military security and political tranquillity at home would allow him to concentrate on foreign affairs.

  The ministry of Henry Pelham might have been threatened – as Walpole’s had been – by continued war, but the dangers facing Britain in the War of the Austrian Succession had not materialized. Austria, her firmest ally in Central Europe, had not been partitioned, while the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748) signalled France’s inability to impose its authority on the rest of Europe. While the treaty lifted that threat and went some way towards resolving the issues at stake in the European war, it was little more than a temporary truce in the imperial rivalry between Britain and the Bourbon powers in India, the West Indies and North America. In the domestic arena, however, it enabled Henry Pelham to apply himself, as Walpole had done, to a policy of peace, low taxation and financial reform.

  Indeed, the years of Henry Pelham’s administration are reminiscent in certain respects of those of Sir Robert Walpole. Secure in the confidence of the king and dominant in the House of Commons, Pelham’s was an old corps administration which had nothing to fear from the parliamentary opposition. He was untroubled by the Tories who, as a party, were leaderless and now in terminal decline. Consequently, the Tories were willing to accept the patronage and support of Frederick, Prince of Wales. His support in the House of Commons was not negligible, building from around twenty after the general election of 1747 to around sixty at the time of Frederick’s death in 1751. This alliance between the prince and the Tories aroused considerable interest among contemporaries. The prince promised to end their political proscription and return them to the rewards of political service for which they had yearned for so long. His death destroyed these expectations and seriously weakened the opposition to Pelham. It was now to be led by the Duke of Bedford21 and a few friends who shifted their political allegiance to the king’s second son, the hero of Culloden, the Duke of Cumberland. The duke was a military man with a military reputation, and a faintly militaristic air clung to him. Consequently, for the rest of the administration, opposition acquired a threatening and vaguely illegitimate character.

  More dangerous to the administration than the antics of the opposition were its own internal divisions. The Duke of Newcastle was obsessively jealous of his fellow Secretaries of State who, one by one, resigned: Harrington in 1746,22 Chesterfield in 1748 and Bedford in 1751. Even the normally patient Henry Pelham was infuriated by Newcastle’s behaviour. William Pitt remained in the administration as Paymaster General, where he quietly devoted himself to reforms within that office. On occasion, however, he could rouse himself to oppose his own government, especially on the peacetime reduction of the navy.
These problems were annoying, yet little more than minor irritants to one of the most secure and stable administrations of the eighteenth century.

  Like Walpole, Henry Pelham and his brother had as their primary diplomatic objective the preservation of peace in Europe rather than the pursuit of a grand imperial strategy. Such an objective was to be founded upon friendship with Austria and the Dutch Republic. Its origins may be traced to Whig ideas about politics and Britain’s place in Europe. The men who governed Britain in the mid-eighteenth century had formed their mindset in the decades after the Glorious Revolution. George II even tried to emulate William III, living in his palaces and marrying his daughter to the Prince of Orange. Newcastle had married Marlborough’s grand-daughter and his strategy in fighting the War of the Austrian Succession was derived from Marlborough: an army in Flanders and a negotiated general European settlement. The implementation of such ideas was dependent upon adequate military forces with which to contest French ambitions, but Henry Pelham lacked his brother’s sense of urgency. Indeed, he has been roundly criticized for running down both the army – from over 50,000 to 19,000 men – and the navy – from over 50,000 to 10,000 – after the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748. Together with the Duke of Newcastle, he is accused of disregarding France’s active preparations for the next round in the worldwide struggle for empire between the two countries, and of underestimating the importance of her provocative actions, such as the fortification of Dunkirk and the erection of a string of forts between Canada and Louisiana. Such criticisms, mostly made with the benefit of hindsight, overlook two factors. First, British public opinion demanded a period of peace after nearly a decade of inconclusive warfare. How would the public have reacted to a belligerent policy? And how sensible would such a policy have been until Britain had completed the negotiation of a system of continental alliances against France? Second, the restoration of the nation’s finances could not be achieved overnight. Without it, the victories of the Seven Years’ War may not have been possible.

  Pelham had seen with horror that Britain had become financially overstretched during the War of the Austrian Succession. Consequently, he brought down annual expenditure from £12 million per year to £7 million, with a reduction in the Land Tax from 4s. to 3s. in the pound in 1749 and to 2s. in 1752. Furthermore, he reduced the national debt. This had increased from £46 million in 1739 to £77 million in 1748, with an increase in the annual interest charge from £2 million to £3 million. During the war, he had started to open up government loans to general public subscription rather than limiting them to an inner group of Whig supporters. By 1748 no less than £25 million of stock was held by private investors at a rate of 4 per cent. At the expense of some unpopularity with the investing public, Pelham managed to coax the rate down to 3 per cent.

  Pelham’s administration was also notable for the passage of a number of varied measures which appeared, perhaps, of more importance to contemporaries than to posterity and about which it is difficult to reduce to a single theme. Chesterfield’s reform of the calendar (1752) adopted the Gregorian calendar, thus bringing Britain into line with the rest of Europe at the cost of ignoring the 11-day difference between the two calendars. The measure was carried in the face of much popular hostility. It was not only anxious mobs demanding ‘give us back our 11 days’ who had their doubts about the measure. Those involved with calculating wages, salaries, leases, rents and, not least, almanacs and calendars also had their own reasons for irritation. Hardwicke’s Marriage Act of 1753 ended the disgrace of ‘fleet’ or clandestine marriages. The act required the consent of guardians for the marriage of minors, imposed residence requirements and stipulated the calling of banns. Perhaps the most significant of these measures was Pelham’s Jewish Naturalization Act of 1753. This largely technical measure created a storm of racialist anger and had to be repealed a year later. It was not merely the vitriolic xenophobia aroused by the Tories but the orchestrated propaganda of city interests which caused an anxious Henry Pelham, with one eye on the general election of 1754, to relent. Finally, the government passed a number of minor measures which cumulatively represent something more than the moderate, enlightened reformism with which he is normally credited. A cluster of reforms stimulated the export trade of Ireland (wool) and Scotland (linens), facilitated trade with Africa and India, encouraged the colonization of Nova Scotia and promoted the British fishing industry against Dutch competition. Another series of measures sought to deal with the current crime wave, occasioned in part by the demobilization of soldiers after 1748 which swelled the numbers of the unemployed. Pelham proposed to deal with this not only by more severe punishments especially for murder, robbery and prostitution, but also by setting the poor to work and by regulating places of public entertainment. Moreover, the Gin Act of 1751 did much to reduce the consumption of cheap spirits. Finally, the founding of the British Museum in 1753 marks a long-term vision of the cultural place of Britain in the Europe of the Enlightenment. Few, if any, eighteenth-century administrations can boast a record of reform to match that of Henry Pelham. In such areas of national life, he achieved more than Sir Robert Walpole, although he was in power for much less than half the time. Some of these measures, moreover, suggest that Pelham was much more than a spokesman for the forces of oligarchy in Hanoverian society, and that his motives included the protection and enhancement of the interests of large numbers of his fellow-citizens and the long-term improvement of the economic and social life of the country.

  Henry Pelham died in March 1754. Not for the first, or the last, time a long and stable administration was succeeded by a period of ministerial confusion. The Duke of Newcastle assumed the leadership of the government which from the start lacked both cohesion and direction. In some respects this was surprising because the general election, which shortly followed Pelham’s death, resulted in a majority of around 200 for the government. Indeed, Newcastle wrote in May 1754, ‘This Parliament is good beyond my expectations, and I believe there are more Whigs in it, and generally well-disposed Whigs, than in any Parliament since the revolution.’ There were by now only just over 100 Tories and fewer than 50 opposition Whigs, mostly Bedford’s group, to confront over 350 supporters of the administration. But who was to lead them in the Commons? The precedents of the Walpole and Pelham ministries suggested very strongly that the First Lord of the Treasury should sit in the Commons, but Newcastle could not bear to cede the leadership either to Henry Fox23 or to Pitt, who had to be content with relatively inferior offices. Pitt did not allow his post as Paymaster of the Forces to prevent him from attacking the ministry for its excessive concern for Hanover, its policy of subsidizing European allies (Russia and Hesse-Cassel) and its reluctance to confront France outside the continent of Europe. Together with two other senior members, Legge24 and George Grenville, he was dismissed from the government in November 1755.

  By this time, the diplomatic situation was rapidly deteriorating. Both in India and in North America, hostilities between France and Britain were breaking out. The government seemed incapable of defending British interests with the force and energy which the situation demanded, while Newcastle spent precious time trying to construct European alliances with which to defend Hanover. Uncertainty in diplomacy was matched by hesitation and disagreement within the government. Gradually, the government’s massive majorities began to melt away. When it became clear that Austria had neither the will nor the resources with which intention to defend Hanover, Newcastle was forced to reverse the traditional Austrian alliance in favour of an alliance with Frederick the Great of Prussia. This drove Austria into the arms of France. After this ‘Diplomatic Revolution’, Britain and France declared war at the end of June 1756. The French had already occupied Minorca, but Admiral Byng’s failure to defeat the French fleet led at the end of June to its humiliating surrender to the French and to Byng’s celebrated court martial and subsequent death sentence. A protracted, full-scale war against France could not now be avoided.

  By
this time there was little confidence in the government. It was widely believed that Britain was sacrificing her commercial and colonial interests in favour of foreign entanglements designed to protect Hanover. In October 1756 Fox resigned. A month later Newcastle followed him, declaring that he had no need of numbers in the House of Commons, only ‘hands and tongues’. Two days later, Pitt became Secretary of State in an administration headed by the Duke of Devonshire, declaring, ‘I am sure I can save this country and nobody else can.’ For four months the Devonshire–Pitt administration struggled to establish itself not only in the face of the king’s dislike of Pitt but also of the suspicion with which the old corps viewed him. Pitt’s attempts to save Byng, who was executed in March 1757, did nothing to dispel either. In April 1757 the king dismissed him. The outburst of public sympathy for Pitt which followed was never as widespread nor as spontaneous as his followers, and some historians, have believed.25 Within weeks of taking office, in fact, Pitt was to be found defending the electorate of Hanover and advocating the virtues of the Prussian alliance, both of which had earlier been the objects of his withering invective. Nevertheless, the ‘rain’ of golden boxes conferring the freedom of 18 cities, not least that of the City of London, on Pitt was enough to raise him to the status of a patriotic hero in whose person was encapsulated the old Country values of honesty and virtue. It mattered little that most of these boxes came from reliable centres of Toryism and from places in which the opposition Whigs had influence. Pitt’s advocacy of naval and colonial warfare against the Bourbon powers caught the imagination of the country in general, of the City and of the Tories, in particular. In June 1757 Pitt was back in office as Secretary of State but this time in alliance with Newcastle, who took the Treasury. The Pitt-Newcastle coalition, one of the most successful administrations in British history, was born. The arrangement of offices worked out surprisingly well. Newcastle and his friends enjoined the loyalty of the old corps Whigs while Pitt rallied the Tories, the independent Country gentlemen and the Country Whigs. Room was found for Fox, who came in as Paymaster General, and for Bedford, who became Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. The new administration was broad-based and included most political groups. In this way the pressure of external events had, since 1754, broken the political domination of the old corps and created a much broader political structure. How William Pitt would use the political power and the mounting patriotism which underpinned his administration the waiting country would soon discover. What was certain was that the history of Great Britain was about to take a markedly different and distinct turn.