VII. 1716. CHAP. a thorough concert of measures with the Cabinet of Vienna. The States-General, it is true, had no such jealousy; but their administration, once so active and able, was daily lapsing more and more into weakness and imbecility; "it is now," says Horace Walpole, the British Minister at the Hague", "a many-headed, headless Government, "containing as many masters as minds." Their torpid obstinacy, which had so often defied even the master-mind of Marlborough, was far beyond the control of any other English minister. Besides, what sufficient inducements could be held out to them or to the Emperor for incurring the hazard of another war? Would the Catholics of Vienna be so very zealous for the service of the Protestant succession? Would the Austrian politicians-at all times eminently selfish-consider the banishment of the Pretender from France as more than a merely English object? Would they risk every thing to promote it? Why, even when their own dearest interests were at issue-when the monarchy of Spain was the stake, they had shown a remarkable slackness and indifference. "We look upon "the House of Austria," said Lord Bolingbroke, in 1711, "as a party who sues for a great estate IN "FORMA PAUPERIS." And he adds elsewhere: "I "never think of the conduct of that family without "recollecting the image of a man braiding a rope See his Life by Coxe, p. 12. + To Mr. Drummond, August 7. 1711. VII. 1716. "of hay, whilst his ass bites it off at the other CHAP. "end."* On the whole, therefore, it appeared in 1716, that the utmost to which the States-General and the Emperor could be brought, was a defensive alliance with England, in case of aggression from France or other powers; and such alliances were accordingly concluded with Holland on the 6th of February, and with the Emperor on the 25th of May, with a mutual guarantee of territory; but these still left the desired removal of the Pretender and his adherents unaccomplished. It became necessary, therefore, to consider the second plan for attaining this great object; namely, by treaty and friendly union with France herself. Nor were there wanting, since the death of Louis the Fourteenth, many circumstances highly favourable to such views. The Regent Duke of Orleans had, in nearly all respects, adopted a different political course. So long, indeed, as the Jacobites were in arms in Scotland, he clung to the hope of the restoration of the Stuarts; or, in other words, the establishment in England of an entirely French policy. But the suppression of the rebellion and the return of the Pretender having dissipated, or at least delayed all such hopes, and the Regent considering the new Government of England as * To Mr. Drummond, January 5. 1711. Marlborough himself was sometimes provoked into similar expressions." The Em"peror is in the wrong in almost every thing he does." To Lord Sunderland, June 27. 1707. + See Lamberty, Mem. vol. ix. p. 395. and p. 471. VII. CHAP. more firmly established, seriously turned his mind to the advantage which might arise to him from a 1716. friendly union with it. Besides the public interests of France, he had also personal objects at stake; and he looked to the chance of his own succession to the throne. Not that he had even for a single moment, or in the slightest degree, formed any design against the rights of Louis the Fifteenth ; with all his failings (and he had very many) in private life, he was certainly a man of honour in public, and nothing could be more pure and above reproach than his care of his infant sovereign. But he might fairly and justly contemplate the possibility that the life of a sickly boy might prematurely end; on which event the Regent would have become the legitimate heir, since the birthright of Philip the Fifth of Spain had been solemnly renounced. It was, however, generally understood, that in such a case Philip was not disposed to be bound by his renunciation; and, in fact, in his position, he might disclaim it with some show of plausibility, since his own rights upon the Spanish crown were only founded upon the invalidity of a renunciation precisely similar. His grandmother, the Infanta Maria Theresa, on her marriage with the King of France, had in the most solemn manner, for herself and her descendants, renounced all claim to the crown of Spain. Yet her grandson was now reigning at Madrid. How could, then, that grandson be expected cordially to concur in the principle that renunciations are VII. 1716. sacred and inviolable, and cheerfully forego the CHA P. sceptre of France if once placed within his grasp ? Foreseeing this opposition, and not without apprehensions that the King of Spain might, meanwhile, attempt to wrest the Regency from his hands, the Duke of Orleans was anxious to provide himself with foreign support, and knew that none could be stronger than a guarantee from England of the succession to the House of Orleans. For this object he was willing, on the part of France, to make corresponding concessions. Such a guarantee would also, not merely thus indirectly, but in itself, be highly advantageous to England, as tending to prevent that great subject of apprehension the union of the French and Spanish crowns upon the same head. head. Thus, then, the Cabinet of St. James and the Palais Royal had, at this period, each a strong interest to enter into friendly and confidential relations with each other. This was first perceived and acted upon by the Regent. Townshend * and Stanhope were for some * Coxe tells us in his Memoirs of Walpole, that "Townshend "was the original adviser and promoter of the French treaty, " and had gradually surmounted the indifference of the King, the opposition of Sunderland, and the disapprobation of Stan"hope." But this statement in his first volume (p. 98.) is disproved by the documents which he himself has published in the second. On Aug. 17, 1716, O. S., Mr. Poyntz writes to Stanhope," His Majesty knows that Lord Townshend has long been "of opinion that any farther engagements with the Regent, par"ticularly with respect to the succession, would only serve to "strengthen the Regent, and to put it in his power to do the CHAP. time reluctant to enter into a close alliance with VII. their ancient enemies; but gradually saw its expe1716. diency, and without much difficulty prevailed upon the King, who very soon, as we shall find in the sequel, became still more anxious for it than themselves. Another matter of negotiation between France and England, which had commenced even under the reign of Louis the Fourteenth, was the question of Mardyke. By the Treaty of Utrecht Louis had bound himself to demolish the port at Dunkirk. This he had accordingly performed; but, at the same time, he had begun a new canal at Mardyke, upon the same coast, which works produced a great ferment in England, and became the immediate subject of remonstrance with the Court of Versailles. On the one hand, it was urged that such a construction was an evident breach of the spirit, if not the letter, of the treaty; and that the plenipotentiaries at Utrecht, when they stipulated the demolition of Dunkirk, never could have intended that another and a better harbour should be opened in its neighbourhood. On the other side, it was answered that Mardyke "King greater mischief." And Lord Townshend himself, in his letter to the King, of November 11, 1716, O. S., expressly limits the period when he began to approve and forward this French treaty to the time when the Abbé Dubois was first sent by the Regent to the Hague. *See Lord Stair's Journal at Paris, in the Hardwicke State Papers, vol. ii. p. 528. |