Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/462

448 and left the decision to Nicholas Hardinge, clerk of the house, and a friend of Walpole, who decided that Walpole was wrong. Thereupon Walpole flung the guinea to Pulteney, who held it up, and exclaimed that it was the only money he had received from the treasury for many years, and that it should be the last. On the following Friday Sandys made his threatened motion of condemnation. There was a rush to the house at an early hour; some members took possession of their seats by six o'clock in the morning, though the debate did not begin till one o'clock. The passages to the gallery were densely thronged, and a great crowd surrounded the house. Sandys began by lamenting the miserable condition to which the administration of Walpole had reduced us; that we were engaged in a war with one great power, and were menaced with it by another, without having one ally in the world left us; that we had accumulated an enormous debt, which was crushing us to the earth, independently of any extra war expenses; that we had reversed the wise old policy of the country, which treated France as she was—our determined enemy—and had vainly sought to make a friend of her, whereby we had forfeited the ancient friendship of Austria. He had the candour to admit the disastrous nature of the peace of Utrecht, but he contended that the Quadruple Alliance and the glorious victory of Byng over the Spanish fleet on the coast of Sicily ought to have counterbalanced all that. He contended, notwithstanding this, that we ought to have taken advantage of the indignation of Philip of Spain against the court of France, for having sent back the infanta after she had been affianced to Louis XV., and then have assisted him against France. Instead of that, we had, by the treaty of Hanover, united with France; and from that day England had been in a state of degradation, under the influences of French policy. He ran through all the succeeding negotiations, the act of the Pardo, the treaty of Seville, and all others, in the same strain. He charged Walpole with permitting Spain to wrest Naples and Sicily again from the emperor, and France to aggrandise itself by the acquisition of Lorraine. He accused him of having opposed the just merits and withheld the proper rank of admiral Vernon, because he had had the boldness to denounce the perfidy of France. He wound up his tirade on foreign affairs by expressing the utmost execration of the convention; and then, turning to domestic concerns, he laid the whole crime and ruin of the South Sea scheme at once on Walpole. That that minister had made a profit by that bubble was quite proof enough to Sandys that he had not only patronised it, but had blown it—though nothing was more notoriously untrue. He had a more just cause of blame against him in the treatment of the sinking fund, asserting that since 1727 it could not have produced less than fifteen millions, all which, he declared, had gone "in Spithead expeditions and Hyde Park reviews."

He next drew an awful picture of the general policy of the minister: his maintenance of a large standing army to exhaust and enslave the people; the enormous system of bribery and corruption which he had organised to secure his power; his passing laws of a very arbitrary tendency; his frequent votes of credit; his dismissal of officers of the army for voting against the excise scheme, which he characterised as one of the most mischievous projects ever conceived. He accused him generally of steady opposition to the abolition of all burthensome taxes, because such abolition would reduce the number of placemen and officers interested in maintaining his continuance in office. Finally, he fell upon the management of the present war, in which he asserted that exactly everything had been done which ought not to have been done, and everything left undone which ought to have been done; that it was at once one grand scene of mismanagement and party spite against those who rendered the highest services to the country, when those who performed them happened not to be his friends; and, as a striking proof of this, he pointed at the manner in which that great man, as he styled him, admiral Vernon, had been thwarted and ill-used by him. He described Walpole as a minister more hated than any wicked minister ever yet was, notwithstanding which, and his full knowledge of it, he had continued to hold office. This, the speaker declared, was evidence that this was no longer a free country, for a free people would never submit to be controlled by a minister whom they hated and despised. But, he added, he has been so much in league with the French, that he has imbibed their principles, and has introduced a practice familiar enough to them—that of a minister retaining place without regard to the feelings, wishes, or interests of the people. It was on this ground that he attributed all the evils of the country—not to the cabinet at large, but to this man in particular, because, he said, "this one person has grasped in his own hands every branch of government; this one person has attained the sole direction of affairs, monopolised all the favours of the crown, compassed the disposal of all places, pensions, titles, ribands, as well as all preferments, civil, military, and ecclesiastical; this one person has made a blind submission to his will, both in elections and parliament, the only terms of present favour and future expectation."

In conclusion, he moved "that an humble address be presented to his majesty, that he would be graciously pleased to remove the right honourable Sir Robert Walpole from his majesty's presence and councils for ever."

This long and damnatory charge being concluded, in which there was, as usual on such occasions, a great deal of truth mingled with considerable falsity and exaggeration, it was seconded by lord Limerick, and then a warm discussion arose on the mode in which the debate should be continued. Mr. Wortley Montague, the husband of the celebrated lady Mary Wortley Montague, a man of enormous wealth, but dull and heavy as his wife was witty and sparkling, proposed that, according to many precedents, Sir Robert should be ordered to retire whilst his conduct was passed under review. This motion was seconded by Gibbon, and as strenuously opposed by Bromley and Howe. It was justly argued that the precedents quoted were unjust, and contrary to the genius of British judicature, and the majority were of this opinion. Gibbon then proposed that Walpole should make his reply and then retire, it being understood that neither his life, liberty, nor estate were involved in the decision. But it was contended that this was equally contrary to English ideas of justice and to precedent; that it was not to be expected that a gentleman should be charged by speeches