on the plea of their own dignity and power, the only limit to their encroachments will be that of the public endurance. Yet we may perhaps not unfairly conclude that these cases were in reality less flagrant and oppressive than at first sight they seem to be, since we find that far less apparent grievances have raised a far higher and more general resent ment. -- -- The lull of political tempests during this year in Parlia ment did not extend to Leicester House. The new titular did not well agree with the effective servants; the Earl and Bishop the Governor and the Preceptor had soon begun to bicker with the Sub-Governor and the Sub-Preceptor, Scott and Stone. Scott had been appointed before the Prince's death by the late Lord Bolingbroke's influence, and Stone was suspected or at least accused of Jacobite partialities. The Princess Dowager once in a confidential conversation gave her opinion of them all as follows: "Stone is a "sensible man, and capable of instructing in things as well แ as in books. Lord Harcourt and the Prince agree very "well, but I think that he cannot learn much from his Lord"ship. Scott, in my judgment, is a very proper Preceptor; "but as to the good Bishop he may be, and I suppose he is, "a mighty learned man, but he does not seem to me very "proper to convey knowledge to children; he has not that "clearness which I think necessary. I do not very well com→ "prehend him myself; his thoughts seem to be too many for (6 'his words." These views of Her Royal Highness in favour of Scott and Stone were confirmed by her Secretary, Cresset, a skilful courtier. At length the Earl and Bishop, finding themselves little heeded in the Household, resigned in disgust. As their successors, the King appointed Bishop Thomas of Peterborough, and Earl Waldegrave, the son of the late Ambassador at Paris. Neither much harm nor much good can be said of Thomas. Waldegrave had no oratorical or Parliamentary abilities, but his worth and probity were acknowledged by all his contemporaries, * Dodington's Diary, October 15. 1752. 1753. FAVOUR OF THE EARL OF BUTE. 23 and his Memoirs are still remaining to attest his sense and shrewdness. The hostility of Stone's enemies was only the more inflamed by the steady support of the Princess. Early next year the charge of Jacobite principles was publicly brought against him, including in the charge Murray, the Solicitor General. Both of them, it was alleged, used, as young men, some twenty years before, to meet at supper with one Fawcett, an attorney, and drink the Pretender's health upon their knees. The matter was mentioned in Parliament, and tried by the Privy Council. Fawcett himself, as the accuser, underwent several examinations; in each he gave a different version of his story, and in the last he refused to sign his depositions. On the other hand, Murray and Stone declared their innocence upon their oaths. Thus the Privy Council found no difficulty in deciding and reporting to the King, that the whole charge was malicious and unfounded.* It was no doubt proper to guard against any heretical tenets either of Church or State in the preceptor of the Prince of Wales. Yet there seems something irresistibly ludicrous in the apprehensions then so gravely urged, lest the heir of the House of Hanover should be trained in Jacobite principles. Imagine as in fact a great modern writer has imagined some newspaper of that period hinting its fears that "the "young King himself might be induced to become one "of the Stuarts' faction a catastrophe from which it "has hitherto pleased Heaven to preserve these king"doms!" Soon after this period, however, all other persons and all other topics at Leicester House were cast into the shade by the rising and gigantic influence of John Stuart, Earl of Bute. Hitherto this nobleman had not enjoyed nor apparently even aimed at political distinction. In private * Lord Dover very justly observes: "This insignificant and indeed "ridiculous accusation is magnified by Walpole, both in his Letters and "Memoirs, in consequence of the hatred he bore to the persons accused." Note to the Correspondence with Sir Horace Mann, vol. iii. p. 35. ** Sir Walter Scott. -Conclusion to Redgauntlet. life he had borne a blameless character, having married in 1736 the only daughter of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, an excellent wife and mother, with whom he had quietly resided at his seat of Caen Wood near London, and moderately and prudently, yet not parsimoniously, maintained a large family from a scanty income.* In 1750 he had received an appointment in the household of Prince Frederick, who used frequently to say: "Bute is a fine showy man, and "would make an excellent Ambassador in any Court where "there was no business."** But he was little noticed by the public until it was perceived that the widowed Princess honoured him with her highest trust and confidence. So sudden an elevation, in a scandal-loving age, produced, as might have been foreseen, rumours by no means favourable to the fame of the Princess. Such rumours in such a case are always easy to circulate, and hard to disprove. Without attaching the slightest weight to them, it must, however, be owned that the abilities of Bute were by no means such as to justify his rapid rise. He had indeed several elegant accomplishments, some taste for literature, and some knowledge of science. But he could gain no reputation either in council or debate. Proud and sensitive in his temper, he was easily elated, and as easily depressed, and ill qualified for the fierce encounters of the political Arena. Like most men flushed by power unexpected and unearned, the people thought him prone to arbitrary measures as apparently the shortest road to his objects. Besides the resentment which such tendencies, real or supposed, commonly create, he had but little skill in conciliating adherents, being at least to his inferiors, cold, reserved, and haughty in his manners. Whatever the subject, whether grave or trifling, he was equally slow and solemn in his tone. Once as he was speaking in the House of Lords, and as the words fell from him one by one, his kinsman, Charles Townshend, who was present, could not forbear exclaiming "Minute Guns!" *See Lady Mary Wortley's letters of July 17. 1748, and July 17. 1758, ** Lord Waldegrave's Memoirs, p. 36. 1753. JEWS NATURALIZATION BILL. 25 The Session of 1753 was distinguished by two important Acts; the first, to permit persons professing the Jewish religion to be naturalized by Parliament; the second, for the better preventing Clandestine Marriages. The first did not pass without some sharp debates, nor without a general ferment in the country. It was urged that such facilities to the Jews would tend to dishonour the Christian faith -to promote the purchase of advowsons by unbelievers, thus leading at length to the downfall of the Church to deluge the kingdom with usurers, brokers, and beggars to rob the lower classes of their birth-right by foreign and undue competition with their labour. Nay, more; several persons did not scruple to argue that such an Act was directly to fly in the face of the prophecy which declares that the Jews shall be a scattered people, without country or fixed abode. These expounders of Scripture did not consider, that if such a prediction has really, in the sense in which they understood it, been made in Holy Writ, it is not in the power of any man or any body of men by any act of theirs to falsify it. Still less were they imbued with the sentiment which was nobly expressed by Lyttleton in one of these debates: "He who hates "another man for not being a Christian is himself not a "Christian."* The ferment, however, once raised amongst the people, was headlong and unreasoning. "No Jews! No Jews! No "Wooden Shoes!" became a favourite cry or, as many thought, a weighty argument. Thus, for example, a vote in behalf of this Bill lost Mr. Sydenham all support from his constituents at Exeter. It was in vain that he published a hand-bill denying that he had any predilection for the Jewish doctrines, and pleading, in proof, that he had often travelled on Saturdays.** In the diocese of Norwich the Bishop, having supported the measure, was insulted throughout all his ensuing circuit for confirmation. At Ipswich, especially, *Parl. Hist. vol. xv. p. 130. ** Rev. Dr. Birch to the Hon. Philip Yorke. September 29. 1753. Hardwicke Papers. the boys followed his Lordship in the streets, calling on him to come and make them Jews, according to the usual Jewish rite; and a paper was affixed to one of the church doors, to state that the next day, being Saturday, his Lordship would confirm the Jews, and on the day following the Christians.* Bishops, in fact, were the especial aim of the popular outcry; a pamphlet of some note in that day goes so far as to assert that "the present set of prelates is the only one since "the time of Christ that would have countenanced so anti"Christian a measure."** In short, so loud and general were the murmurs against this enactment that the Ministers determined to recede from it. On the very first day of the next Session the Duke of Newcastle brought in a Bill for its repeal, and this Bill was rapidly carried through both Houses. The Marriage Act was rendered necessary by the uncertainty of the law. Several instances of great hardship and oppression resulting from that uncertainty had lately been disclosed instances of persons living together as husband and wife for many years, and becoming the parents of a numerous family, until it suddenly appeared, to the father's astonishment, that he had formerly entangled himself with certain forms which amounted to a pre-contract, and which dissolved his subsequent marriage. Such cases could scarcely take place without some imprudence at the least on the part of one or sometimes both the parents; but in the result their innocent offspring became branded with bastardy, and shut out from inheritance. On the other hand, from the facilities of solemnizing a marriage at the spur of the moment, young heirs and heiresses, scarcely grown out of infancy, were often inveigled to unwary and disgraceful matches, which they had to repent, but unavailingly, during the remainder of their lives. To profit by their indiscretion there was ever ready a band of degraded and outcast clergymen, prisoners * Rev. Dr. Birch to the Hon. Philip. Yorke. June 23. 1753. **"An Answer to the Considerations on the Jews' Bill," October 1753, Ascribed to Mr. Romaine. |