In a commercial country like England, every half century developes somenew and vast source of public wealth, which brings into national noticea new and powerful class. A couple of centuries ago, a Turkey merchantwas the great creator of wealth; the West Indian Planter followed him.In the middle of the last century appeared the Nabob. These charactersin their zenith in turn merged in the land, and became Englisharistocrats; while the Levant decaying, the West Indies exhausted, andHindostan plundered, the breeds died away, and now exist only in ourEnglish comedies from Wycherly and Congreve to Cumberland and Morton.The expenditure of the revolutionary war produced the Loanmonger,who succeeded the Nabob; and the application of science to industrydeveloped the Manufacturer, who in turn aspires to be "large-acred,"and always will, as long as we have a territorial constitution a bettersecurity for the preponderance of the landed interest than any corn law,fixed or fluctuating.
Of all these characters, the one that on the whole made the largestfortunes in the most rapid manner,--and we do not forget the marvels ofthe Waterloo loan, or the miracles of Manchester during the continentalblockade--was the Anglo-East Indian about the time that Hastings wasfirst appointed to the great viceroyalty. It was not unusual for men inpositions so obscure that their names had never reached the public inthis country, and who yet had not been absent from their native land fora longer period than the siege of Troy, to return with their million.
One of the most fortunate of this class of obscure adventurers was acertain John Warren. A very few years before the breaking out of theAmerican war, he was a waiter at a celebrated club in St James's Street:a quick yet steady young fellow; assiduous, discreet, and very civil.In this capacity, he pleased a gentleman who was just appointed to thegovernment of Madras, and who wanted a valet. Warren, though prudent,was adventurous; and accepted the opening which he believed fortuneoffered him. He was prescient. The voyage in those days was an affairof six months. During this period, Warren still more ingratiated himselfwith his master. He wrote a good hand, and his master a very bad one.He had a natural talent for accounts; a kind of information which wasuseful to his employer. He arrived at Madras, no longer a valet, but aprivate secretary.
His master went out to make a fortune; but he was indolent, and hadindeed none of the qualities for success, except his great position.Warren had every quality but that. The basis of the confederacytherefore was intelligible; it was founded on mutual interests andcemented by reciprocal assistance. The governor granted monopolies tothe secretary, who apportioned a due share to his sleeping partner.There appeared one of those dearths not unusual in Hindostan; thepopulation of the famished province cried out for rice; the stores ofwhich, diminished by nature, had for months mysteriously disappeared. Aprovident administration it seems had invested the public revenue in itsbenevolent purchase; the misery was so excessive that even pestilencewas anticipated, when the great forestallers came to the rescue of thepeople over whose destinies they presided; and at the same time fed andpocketed millions.
This was the great stroke of the financial genius of Warren. He wassatisfied. He longed once more to see St James's Street, and to becomea member of the club, where he had once been a waiter. But he wasthe spoiled child of fortune, who would not so easily spare him. Thegovernor died, and had appointed his secretary his sole executor. Notthat his excellency particularly trusted his agent, but he dared notconfide the knowledge of his affairs to any other individual. The estatewas so complicated, that Warren offered the heirs a good round sumfor his quittance, and to take the settlement upon himself. India sodistant, and Chancery so near--the heirs accepted the proposition.Winding up this estate, Warren avenged the cause of plundered provinces;and the House of Commons itself, with Burke and Francis at its head,could scarcely have mulcted the late governor more severely.
A Mr Warren, of whom no one had ever heard except that he was a nabob,had recently returned from India and purchased a large estate in thenorth of England, was returned to Parliament one of the representativesof a close borough which he had purchased: a quiet, gentlemanlike,middle-aged man, with no decided political opinions; and, as partieswere then getting very equal, of course very much courted. The throes ofLord North's administration were commencing. The minister asked the newmember to dine with him, and found the new member singularly free fromall party prejudices. Mr Warren was one of those members who announcedtheir determination to listen to the debates and to be governed by thearguments. All complimented him, all spoke to him. Mr Fox declared thathe was a most superior man; Mr Burke said that these were the men whocould alone save the country. Mrs Crewe asked him to supper; he wascaressed by the most brilliant of duchesses.
At length there arrived one of those fierce trials of strength, whichprecede the fall of a minister, but which sometimes from peculiarcircumstances, as in the instances of Walpole and Lord North, arenot immediate in their results. How would Warren vote? was the greatquestion. He would listen to the arguments. Burke was full of confidencethat he should catch Warren. The day before the debate there was alevee, which Mr Warren attended. The sovereign stopped him, spoke tohim, smiled on him, asked him many questions: about himself, the Houseof Commons, how he liked it, how he liked England. There was a flutterin the circle; a new favourite at court.
The debate came off, the division took place. Mr Warren voted for theminister. Burke denounced him; the king made him a baronet.
Sir John Warren made a great alliance, at least for him; he married thedaughter of an Irish earl; became one of the king's friends; supportedLord Shelburne, threw over Lord Shelburne, had the tact early todiscover that Mr Pitt was the man to stick to, stuck to him. Sir JohnWarren bought another estate, and picked up another borough. He wasfast becoming a personage. Throughout the Indian debates he kept himselfextremely quiet; once indeed in vindication of Mr Hastings, whom hegreatly admired, he ventured to correct Mr Francis on a point of factwith which he was personally acquainted. He thought that it was safe,but he never spoke again. He knew not the resources of vindictive geniusor the powers of a malignant imagination. Burke owed the Nabob a turnfor the vote which had gained him a baronetcy. The orator seized theopportunity and alarmed the secret conscience of the Indian adventurerby his dark allusions, and his fatal familiarity with the subject.
Another estate however and another borough were some consolation forthis little misadventure; and in time the French Revolution, to SirJohn's great relief, turned the public attention for ever from Indianaffairs. The Nabob from the faithful adherent of Mr Pitt had become evenhis personal friend. The wits indeed had discovered that he had been awaiter; and endless were the epigrams of Fitzpatrick and the jokes ofHare; but Mr Pitt cared nothing about the origin of his supporters. Onthe contrary, Sir John was exactly the individual from whom the ministermeant to carve out his plebeian aristocracy; and using his friend asa feeler before he ventured on his greater operations, the Nabob onemorning was transformed into an Irish baron.
The new Baron figured in his patent as Lord Fitz-Warene, his Normanorigin and descent from the old barons of this name having beendiscovered at Herald's college. This was a rich harvest for Fitzpatrickand Hare; but the public gets accustomed to everything, and has an easyhabit of faith. The new Baron cared nothing for ridicule, for he wasworking for posterity. He was compensated for every annoyance by theremembrance that the St James's Street waiter was ennobled, and by hisdetermination that his children should rank still higher in the proudpeerage of his country. So he obtained the royal permission to resumethe surname and arms of his ancestors, as well as their title.
There was an ill-natured story set afloat, that Sir John owed thispromotion to having lent money to the minister; but this was a calumny.Mr Pitt never borrowed money of his friends. Once indeed, to save hislibrary, he took a thousand pounds from an individual on whom he hadconferred high rank and immense promotion: and this individual, whohad the minister's bond when Mr Pitt died, insisted on his right,and actually extracted the 1,000 l. from the insolvent estate of hismag
nificent patron. But Mr Pitt always preferred an usurer to a friend;and to the last day of his life borrowed money at fifty per cent.
The Nabob departed this life before the Minister, but he lived longenough to realize his most aspiring dream. Two years before his deaththe Irish baron was quietly converted into an English peer; and withoutexciting any attention, all the squibs of Fitzpatrick, all the jokes ofHare, quite forgotten, the waiter of the St James's Street club took hisseat in the most natural manner possible in the House of Lords.
The great estate of the late Lord Fitz-Warene was situated at Mowbray, avillage which principally belonged to him, and near which he had raiseda gothic castle, worthy of his Norman name and ancestry. Mowbray was oneof those places which during the long war had expanded from an almostunknown village to a large and flourishing manufacturing town; acircumstance, which, as Lady Marney observed, might have somewhatdeteriorated the atmosphere of the splendid castle, but which hadnevertheless doubled the vast rental of its lord. He who had succeededto his father was Altamont Belvidere (named after his mother's family)Fitz-Warene, Lord Fitz-Warene. He was not deficient in abilities,though he had not his father's talents, but he was over-educated for hisintellect; a common misfortune. The new Lord Fitz-Warene was themost aristocratic of breathing beings. He most fully, entirely, andabsolutely believed in his pedigree; his coat of arms was emblazonedon every window, embroidered on every chair, carved in every corner.Shortly after his father's death he was united to the daughter of aducal house, by whom he had a son and two daughters, chrisened by nameswhich the ancient records of the Fitz-Warenes authorised. His son, whogave promise of abilities which might have rendered the family reallydistinguished, was Valence; his daughters, Joan and Maud. All thatseemed wanting to the glory of the house was a great distinction ofwhich a rich peer, with six seats in the House of Commons, could notultimately despair. Lord Fitz-Warene aspired to rank among the earlsof England. But the successors of Mr Pitt were strong; they thought theFitz-Warenes had already been too rapidly advanced; it was whisperedthat the king did not like the new man; that his majesty thought himpompous, full of pretence, in short, a fool. But though the successorsof Mr Pitt managed to govern the country for twenty years and weregenerally very strong, in such an interval of time however good theirmanagement or great their luck, there were inevitably occasionswhen they found themselves in difficulties, when it was necessary toconciliate the lukewarm or to reward the devoted. Lord Fitz-Warene wellunderstood how to avail himself of these occasions; it was astonishinghow conscientious and scrupulous he became during Walcheren expeditions,Manchester massacres, Queen's trials. Every scrape of the government wasa step in the ladder to the great borough-monger. The old king too haddisappeared from the stage; and the tawdry grandeur of the great Normanpeer rather suited George the Fourth. He was rather a favourite at theCottage; they wanted his six votes for Canning; he made his terms; andone of the means by which we got a man of genius for a minister, waselevating Lord Fitz-Warene in the peerage, by the style and title ofEarl de Mowbray of Mowbray Castle.
Book 2 Chapter 8
Sybil, Or, The Two Nations Page 13