Revolution, a History of England, Volume 4

by Peter Ackroyd

  It soon became apparent that certain ministers and directors of the company had sold out before the reckoning, and the anger of the public against them was boundless. There were calls for the principal among them to be broken on the wheel. The only stay against civil strife was the feeling that the ruin was so general that ‘something’ would be done; the whole financial order could not be undermined.

  At this juncture the rotund and rubicund figure of Robert Walpole may be introduced; for it was he, more than any other politician, who calmed the panic and restored the South Sea Company to something like solvency. He was a Norfolk man who never lost his accent and who seemed to represent the frank and candid image of the born countryman; he chewed his home-grown apples on the front bench and kept his temper. He was said to read the reports from his farm manager before he turned to the newspapers.

  He was thick-set, short and plump with a noticeable double chin; in the many portraits he looks genial enough, if a little blasé, and in life he was known to be good-humoured and convivial. He was always the first to welcome new members of parliament in what soon became his domain. He dressed well, in particular for the sessions of parliament when he was outfitted like a groom for a bride. He knew how the Commons worked; he knew how its members felt. He believed that the only safety for a minister lies, as he said, ‘in having the approbation of this House’.

  He understood people all too well. He was reported as saying that there were ‘few minds which would not be injured by the constant spectacle of meanness and depravity’ and he told a future first minister, Henry Pelham, that ‘when you have the same experience of mankind as myself you will go near to hate the human species’. Yet this black and misanthropic pessimism never affected his apparent affability. He made the most of all human weakness. He liked others to drink in his company so that he could take advantage of their indiscretions. He knew the price of every man, and he did not hesitate to rid himself of those who owed him only dubious loyalty. He was in charge of all appointments, both local and national; he superintended the offices of the Church no less than those of the army or the navy. He created what at a later date might be called an ‘establishment’. No office was too unimportant, no sinecure too small, to escape his attention.

  If he had a fault, in society, it was his excessive coarseness. Even for the eighteenth century his ribaldry was considered a little too much. Princess Caroline once had to chide him for lewd language in front of her ladies. The fourth earl of Chesterfield, albeit a doyen of excessive respectability, described him as ‘inelegant in his manners, loose in his morals, he had a coarse strong wit, which he was too free of for a man of his station’. Walpole could laugh off criticism of this kind, however, since for twenty years he held the state in his hands.

  He was one of those English politicians who survive on their reputation of bluff common sense. He would stand no nonsense. He professed to believe in common sense and, so he said, in fair play. He wanted moderation at all costs. He wanted balance. He wanted peace at home and abroad so that trade might flourish. Flatter the time-servers. Meet emergencies with expedients. Pay bribes when they were necessary. Give way in the face of public clamour, however misconceived. One of his favourite proverbs was ‘Quieta non movere’, ‘Don’t disturb things that are quiet’. It might be the motto of his legislative career, and that of many subsequent politicians.

  He was a pragmatist in the very literal sense that he really had no policy except that of survival. A man of business and an administrator, he was marked by energy and capacity for work. At a later date Chesterfield wrote that George II said of him that he was ‘by so great a superiority the most able man in the kingdom, that he understood the revenue, and knew how to manage that formidable and refractory body, the House of Commons, so much better than any other man, that it was impossible for the business of the crown to be well done without him’. This of course implies that he was nothing of a thinker and, as he said himself, that he was ‘no saint, no Spartan, no reformer’.

  He always was a thoroughbred Whig, however, who for a short time had even been imprisoned in the Tower by the Tories during their ascendancy. ‘I heartily despise’, he wrote to his sister, Dolly, ‘what I shall one day revenge.’ Incarceration in fact did him no harm at all. He had accepted various offices of state, and in 1717 became for a period first lord of the treasury and chancellor of the exchequer; he made a great deal of money in a mysterious and still unknown fashion before resigning ‘because I could not connive at some things that were carrying on’. It was not a matter of principle, however, but of internal politics. Nevertheless in June 1720, at the height of the Bubble, he became paymaster general of the forces and was thus in a position to help direct the affairs of the treasury.

  The Bubble was indeed his opportunity; he had been associated with financial matters for almost as long as he had been in parliament and, as a Whig, he was on the best of terms with the directors of the Bank of England. He had been suspicious of the South Sea Company, as a direct rival to the bank, but nonetheless had invested some of his funds with it. He was not one of those who made a quick or sensational profit, however, and it seems more than likely that he lost a large sum of money on his transactions. This also lent him further credibility in his scheme to salvage the situation. He had shown his acumen in the past, but it was now necessary to demonstrate his equanimity.

  By the summer of 1720 he was effectively the chief minister in his attempt to restore confidence in the finances of the country. In this undertaking he was supremely equipped by nature. Chesterfield noted in his Characters that Walpole ‘was so clear in stating the most intricate matters, especially in the finances, that while he was speaking, the most ignorant thought they understood what they really did not’. He had to give the impression that financial stability had been restored and that the national debt was under control. He persuaded the directors of the Bank of England to buy up some of the South Sea Company’s holding of government stock, thus reducing the company’s debt and placing it on a more stable foundation. He confiscated the ill-gained wealth of the company’s directors and distributed it as liberally as he might. He also maintained a ‘sinking fund’, which he had in fact devised three years earlier, revenue set apart for future projects and financed by special or specific taxes; this was also a measure to ensure future confidence in the financial system. For this relief he was given much thanks by king and government. It is difficult to overestimate the calming effect that the right politician can induce. Walpole stilled the storm to a whisper, and the waves of the sea were hushed.

  He had performed another service also, for which he earned the further nickname of ‘the Screen’ or ‘the Screen-Master General’. Certain ministers had colluded with the directors of the South Sea Company in the illicit making of profit; the king himself, together with his mistresses, had also been involved in what might be considered to be illegal profiteering. Walpole was concerned above all else to maintain the balance and the apparent integrity of the state. A parliamentary committee was established and the directors of the company were forbidden to leave the country. One or two still fled abroad to general execration and one noble peer, Lord Stanhope, died of apoplexy after being charged with corruption. A death or two might be convenient, since the dead cannot speak or confess, and Walpole was not particularly concerned with the directors of the company; they could be sacrificed to public anger.

  But he was concerned to shield his ministerial colleagues from attack, even though some of them had been his personal enemies; by dint of intimidation and the suborning of witnesses, therefore, the principal suspects were cleared of all charges. He had indeed been the screen behind which the great could conceal themselves, and his power was vastly increased. In the spring of 1721 Robert Walpole became once again first lord of the treasury, with immense powers of patronage. All strings led to him. The subsequent period has been variously known as ‘the age of Walpole’ and ‘the age of stability’. He was for twenty-one years the dominant m
inister in the country, who was able to combine political mastery with economic supremacy in a manner previously unparalleled. He had no party. He had only the support of the king, and was obliged to rely upon the independent members of parliament as well as the natural supporters of the court. That is why he always moved so carefully. He was required to balance the various forces within the nation to sustain his mastery; he had to satisfy the financiers as well as the aristocrats, the dissenting merchants as well as the Anglican gentry.

  To call his period one of ‘stability’ is perhaps the merest truism. That, after all, was what mattered to him. But he did not single-handedly create that stability. The durability of the house of Hanover, with the threat of the Stuarts removed, had something to do with it. The happy employment of making money, and the ingenious promotion of trade, also had a large part to play in the quiescence of financiers and merchants. Anglicanism was accepted and acceptable, if not entirely loved. The Septennial Act, which restricted general elections to every seven years, maintained a period of calm. Party fervour and religious enthusiasm were therefore contained; an improving standard of living, together with more employment, worked their own spell upon the body politic.

  Yet Walpole had his own fair share of luck, an indispensable requirement for a successful politician. The chaos of the Bubble had revealed a record of government weakness and financial incompetence of which its Stuart enemies could have taken advantage. The Speaker, Arthur Onslow, recalled that, at the time the Bubble was pricked, ‘could the Pretender then have landed at the Tower, he might have rode to St James with very few hands held up against him’. Others also considered the possibility of James Edward Stuart taking advantage of this opportunity and regaining the throne. One of the principal Jacobites, Francis Atterbury, bishop of Rochester, had concealed himself in lamb’s clothing as an unexceptionable Tory. In the spring of 1721, however, he wrote to James that ‘with a very little assistance from your friends abroad, your way to your friends at home is become easy and safe’. Yet Walpole’s quiet was not disturbed.

  The first minister was on the watch. It has been said that he saw Jacobites everywhere, even under his bed, but he knew well enough that any Jacobite plot would taint the Tories still further and attach the king more closely to his loyal government. It had been arranged by James’s supporters, for example, that the duke of Ormonde would invade England with a body of Irish troops. It was not perhaps the most sensible plan, and was in any case immediately bedevilled by divisions among the English rebels and by a plethora of spies who were ready to reveal anything and everything for money. All of course came to nothing. The bishop of Rochester was himself arrested and sent into exile.

  Walpole was aware that the conspiracy had never really amounted to much, but he would not let the opportunity pass. Onslow remarked that the discovery of the Jacobite plot, ‘was the most fortunate and greatest circumstance of Walpole’s life’. The king was with his first minister forever. The Tories were discomfited, because of their implicit association with the Jacobites, and many of them withdrew from public life; the recovery of their party was, for the foreseeable future, impossible. In the summer of 1723 the ministers of the king ordered that ‘all and every person whatsoever’ over the age of eighteen should submit to an oath of allegiance to the present sovereign.

  In the same period Robert Walpole gracefully and gratefully declined a peerage, knowing full well that his real power lay in his command of the Commons. His decision, which seemed surprising to some, was an indication of the fact that parliament had indeed become the sovereign body of the nation with responsibilities and duties far beyond those of the monarch. It was now the final arbiter of English liberties, which could be no longer left to the mercies of even the most benevolent Hanoverian sovereign. Parliament had become the arena in which conflicting political views, or political factions, could be heard with the minimum of controversy. It was the great forum for the address of grievances. That is why only thirty years later, in 1757, a Lincolnshire crowd protesting against the plan for a reserve of professional soldiers agreed that ‘if parliament was not to be trusted there would be an end of all things’.

  Yet no sooner had Walpole mastered all the tricks and balances of administration than a major player in the game of power was suddenly taken away from him. At the beginning of June 1727 George I began a journey to Germany in order to be greeted by all his favourite relatives. Seven days into his travels, he complained of stomach pains arising from too many strawberries and oranges. Many sovereigns suffered from surfeits of food. He grew pale and faint, revived only by a liberal dose of smelling salts. Then he fell into an uneasy and noisy sleep that deteriorated into lethargy and unconsciousness. He had the strength to raise his hand in greeting to his old childhood palace at Osnabrück, but died the following night.

  This was a grave and possibly fatal blow to Robert Walpole. He had been close to and influential with the old king. His relations with the son and heir were hardly marked by the same sympathy and understanding; indeed the heir treated the politician with a great deal of suspicion. But the new king had the inconceivable good fortune of a wife, Caroline of Ansbach, who understood the leading players of the nation much more acutely than her husband. When Walpole managed to provide a civil list granting George II far more funds than his father, his happy and influential position was retained.

  It is hard to estimate the legacy of George I, on the presumption that you cannot prove a negative. He had maintained the stability of the Hanoverian dynasty, and his own familial ties and alliances had managed to reconcile Britain to the varying leaders and factions of Europe. In this endeavour he was assisted by Wapole who above all else hated war. It was bad for business and wrecked the economy.

  A Dutch diplomat at George I’s court reported that ‘he is much concerned with his reputation but is not excessively ambitious; he has a special aptitude for affairs of state, a well-ordered economy, very sound brain and judgement . . . he bears justice in mind at all times and, withal, he is goodhearted’. These are the familiar marmoreal words used to embalm mediocrity, or at least those sovereigns who avoided catastrophe.

  It should be added that the life and energy and progress of the nation were taking place without the first George knowing or caring anything about it.

  10

  The invisible hand

  Between 1724 and 1726, in the last decade of his life, Daniel Defoe published an encomium to his native country in three volumes entitled A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain. It is not at all clear whether he made this tour contemporaneously in person or nostalgically in spirit; it is also uncertain whether he used observers on the spot or relied upon a capacious inventory of recollected details. He was blessed with a powerful memory and a gift of almost perfect observation, and so we can forgive the touches of imagination that give the book its life and energy. It has survived because it captures the very spirit of the time.

  The spirit was one of energy and of progress, in a constant rehearsal of ‘the improvement in manufactures, in merchandises, in navigation’. The ‘present time’ was his ideal. When the polite world and the not so polite world were in a fever of gambling, the industrious and trading classes were taking advantage of unprecedented conditions for growth in what Defoe describes as ‘the most flourishing and opulent country in the world’, with its improvements in ‘culture’ as well as in ‘commerce’, with its increase in ‘people’ as well as in ‘buildings’. He notes of Devonshire, for example, that ‘the people are all busy, and in full employ upon their manufactures’.

  At a time when ‘manufactures’ were not associated with the coming revolution in industry, their improvement and ubiquity were already a matter of astonishment. In the solid houses of the more prosperous citizens were displayed the cloth from Malmesbury, the knives from Sheffield and the glass-ware from Nottingham. What drove all was trade, the great engine of growth. For Defoe trade is ‘an inexhausted current which not only fills the pond, and keeps it fu
ll, but is continually running over and fills all the lower ponds and places about it’.

  The temples of trade were the towns. The indigenous trade of a town or city ‘is a kind of nostrum to them, inseparable to the place’ such as the clothing trade of Leeds, the coal trade of Newcastle upon Tyne, the herring trade of Yarmouth and the butter trade of Hull. Defoe rejoices in Norwich, ‘the inhabitants being all busy at their manufactures, dwell in their garrets at their looms, and in their combing shops, so they call them’. Work was available for everyone. Defoe was pleased that in Taunton ‘there was not a child in the town, or in the villages round it, of above five years old, but, if it was not neglected by its parents, and untaught, could earn its own bread’.

  The antiquarians of the previous century, such as Elias Ashmole and William Camden, snuffled out the traces of antiquity as if they comprised the perfume of England; but for Defoe the medieval town of Worcester ‘is close and old, the houses standing too thick’. Instead he praises the village of Stratford outside London for the fact that ‘every vacancy [is] filled with new houses’ with ‘the increase of the value and rent of the houses formerly standing’.

  This was the century in which trade came to be regarded as the most important activity of the nation, quite opposed to religious and political considerations. New kinds of book multiplied, published in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, among them Charles Davenant’s Two Discourses on the Public Revenues and Trade of England, Adam Anderson’s An Historical and Chronological Deduction of the Origin of Commerce, David Macpherson’s Annals of Commerce, Charles King’s The British Merchant and William Wood’s Survey of Trade. And of course it would be remiss to ignore Daniel Defoe’s own The Complete English Tradesman.