STATE OF THE NATION. 401 extensive circulation, and consequent influence of the newspapers of the present day. When this state of things is calmly considered, it savours of injustice, to our apprehension, to charge the whig rulers of those days with the guilt of having organised a regular system of government by corruption. It was their lot to hold the reins of power at a time when political morality was in so low a state, that men would not do their duty for nothing, but must be bribed to support the interests and institutions of their country. Their rivals have never scrupled to tread in their foot-prints; and we fear that a popular government without corruption is a penomenon not to be expected while human nature remains unchanged. The Riot Act was passed in the first year of George I., and many other enactments, apparently restrictive of liberty, take their date from this period. They are chiefly connected with the revenue, and indicate an ignorance of the true principles of trade, rather than a love of despotism, in their authors. In the reign of queen Anne newspapers had begun to be employed as the organs of political parties. They were not however as yet allowed to publish the debates of the legislature, which were only to be found in the pages of the Gentleman's and other magazines, where they appeared under the form of debates in the Roman senate, or with the initial and final letters of the speaker's name prefixed to his speech. Perhaps there is no period in our history, during which a greater degree of general comfort and happiness prevailed among the people, than the one under consideration. No doubt there are at present numerous conveniences which were then unknown, but which were also unmissed. Travelling, for example, had neither the rapidity nor the security of the present day; the police was bad, highway and street robbery were common, at the same time swindling and other indirect modes of depriving persons of their pro2 D VOL. III. perty seem to have been less prevalent. But the great difference lay in the command which the daily wages of the labourer had over the means of subsistence, which was greater at this than at any antecedent or subsequent period of our history*. The consequence was, as above said, that a general degree of comfort and moderate affluence prevailed, ill, perhaps, exchanged for the glare and glitter of our modern style of living. Manners, among the upper ranks, were more stately than that at the present day, but those of all classes were much less refined. Gaming in private prevailed to a great extent, and female education was much neglected. As the intercourse with the capital was very limited, the country squires were rude and coarse in their habits, and unpolished, rough and boisterous in their manners; and there was a degree of petty tyranny exercised by them and by justices of the peace such as would not now be tolerated. It may be here observed, that as gaols continued in the state above described, the very act of confinement was an infliction of much positive suffering. With all drawbacks, however, the condition of England at that time was prosperous †. The rise of the religious sect of the Methodists may be placed among the events of this period. It is remarkable, that its first seat was the University of Oxford. John * From the year 1720 to 1750 the wages of a day's labour could purchase a peck of wheat. "This great increase of command over the first necessary of life did not, however, produce a proportionate increase of population. It found the people of this country living under a good government and enjoying all the advantages of civil and political liberty in an unusual degree. The lower classes of the people had been in the habit of being respected both by the laws and by the higher orders of their fellow-citizens, and had learned, in consequence, to respect themselves. The result was, that their increased cornwages, instead of occasioning an increase of population, exclusively, was so expended as to occasion a decided elevation in the standard of their comforts and conveniences."-Malthus's Principles of Political Economy, 2nd edit., p. 222. + Fielding's novels give the most faithful picture of the manners'of the reign of George II. Those of Smollet are less to be depended on, as, beside their exaggeration, the author was not an Englishman, and was only acquainted with London. STATE OF THE NATION. 403 Wesley, its founder, was the son of a clergyman; he and other young men of a pious turn used to meet together for the purpose of religious exercises, and the name of Methodists (in which they acquiesced) was first given them in derision. When Wesley was ordained, he devoted his efforts chiefly to the religious melioration of the poor, and when refused the use of the pulpit, he preached in the open air; and he gradually organised his followers into a wellarranged society. Whitfield, one of his principal fellowlabourers, differing from him on the point of predestination, the Methodists early divided into two parties. It was Wesley's wish that his people should adhere to the church; but the intolerance of the clergy on the one hand, and the pride of human nature in the Methodists and their preachers, on the other, have caused a separation. Unlike, however, the dissenters in general, they have no hostility to the church, and they form at present a numerous and highly respectable portion of the community, distinguished for their attachment to the constitution in its present form. The rise of the sect of the Methodists was eminently conducive to the interests of religion; for they awoke the established clergy from the slumber into which they had fallen, when relieved from the alarm of popery, and the church has, in consequence, become more efficient and useful*. * Sir George Saville used to say, that the Methodists were a blistering plaster on the backs of the established clergy. 404 CHAPTER III. GEORGE III.* 1760-1784. Accession of George III.-Resignation of Mr. Pitt.-Capture of the Havanna and Manilla.-Peace of Fontainebleau.-Change of ministry.-John Wilkes. -Public writers.-Dispute with the American colonies.-American war.— Change of ministry.-Rodney's victory,-Attack on Gibraltar.-Coalitionministry. MANY circumstances conspired to give happy presages for the reign of the new monarch. The fame of the nation never stood so high; all danger from intestine commotion was at an end, the spirit of jacobitism being totally extinct ; the king himself, now in his twenty-third year, was English by birth and education, had never been out of the country, and had therefore no German predilections. He was affable and polished in manners, and virtuous and sincerely pious in sentiments; but by his mother and by lord Bute, a Scottish nobleman who had been placed about him, rather high notions of prerogative had been instilled into his mind, which was narrow and little cultivated, and in temper he was sullen and obstinatet. The young king met his parliament on the 18th of November. In his speech from the throne he declared his resolution of continuing the war, and called on them to aid him in prosecuting it. The addresses were dutiful and warlike. A civil list of 800,000l. a year was granted, the king allowing parliament to regulate the hereditary revenues of * Authorities: Annual Register, Adolphus's, Aikin's, Belsham's and other histories, &c. † See his character in Waldegrave's Memoirs. 1761.] FAMILY COMPACT. 405 the crown. When the parliament was prorogued preparatory to its dissolution* (Mar. 19, 1761), a partial change took place in the ministry, the earl of Bute becoming secretary of state in place of lord Holderness, a selfish, worthless man, who received a pension and the reversion of a lucrative place for his resignation. Mr. Legge was dismissed, and sir Francis Dashwood, a tory, made chancellor of the exchequer in his place. It was the secret intention of the court gradually to form a tory administration with lord Bute at its head. For this, among other reasons, peace was desired, as Mr. Pitt, who was the great object of apprehension, could not well be removed while the war lasted. The war however was still prosecuted, and an expedition under commodore Keppel and general Hodgson succeeded in taking the isle of Belleisle on the coast of Brittany (June 7). The island of Dominica in the West-Indies was also reduced. France had hitherto been a great sufferer by the war; for she made no progress in Germany, she had lost her colonies, and her commerce had nearly been destroyed. She was therefore anxious for a peace with England, and a treaty for that purpose was entered on; but as she required that England should abandon the king of Prussia and make certain concessions to Spain, Mr. Pitt spurned at the proposals. A treaty, named the Family Compact, had been secretly arranged between the courts of Versailles and Madrid, where Charles III. (late king of Naples, and the ablest monarch that Spain has possessed since the days of Philip II.) now reigned. It was signed at this time; and Mr. Pitt, who, it is said, had procured secret information of its contents, which were hostile to England, proposed in the council to recall our ambassador from Madrid and to * During this session, at the royal recommendation, the clause of the Act of Settlement (above, p. 309) for continuing the judges during their good behaviour was extended, as by it they were liable to be removed on the demise of the crown. Henceforth they have held their office for life, dum bene se gesserint, unaffected by that event. |