Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/374

Rh 354 ENGLAND [HISTORY. Occasion al Con formity Act and the Schism Act. Acces sion of the House ot Hanover. Repeal of Occasion al Con formity Act and Schism Act. Lords had been seemed by the creation of twelve Tory peers. In home politics the new ministry was in danger of being carried away by its more violent supporters. St John, now Viscount Bolingbruke, with unscrupulous auda city placed himself at their head. The Occasional Con formity Bill was at last carried (1711). To it was added the Schism Act (1714), forbidding dissenters to keep schools or engage in tuition. Bolingbroke went still further. He engaged in an intrigue for bringing over the Pretender to succeed the queen upon her death. This wild conduct alienated the moderate Tories, who, much as they wished to see the throne occupied by the heir of the ancient line, could not bring themselves to consent to its occupation by a Catholic prince, even if his birth marked him out for sovereignty. Such men, therefore, when Anne died (1714) joined the Whigs in proclaiming the elector of Hanover king as George I. The accession of George I. brought with it the predomin ance of the Whigs. They had on their side the royal power, the greater part of the aristocracy, the dissenters, and the higher trading and commercial classes. The Tories appealed to the dislike of dissenters prevalent amongst the country gentlemen and the country clergy, and to the jealousy felt by the agricultural classes to wards those who enriched themselves by trade. Such a feeling, if it was aroused by irritating legislation, might yery probably turn to the advantage of the exiled house, especially as the majority of Englishmen were to be found on the Tory side. It was therefore advisable that Government should content itself with as little action as possible, in order to give time for old habits to wear themselves out. The landing of the Pretender in Scotland (1715), and the defeat of a portion of his army which had advanced to Preston, a defeat which was the consequence of the apathy of his English supporters, and which was followed by the complete suppression of the rebellion. gave increased strength to the Whig Government. But they were reluctant to face an immediate dissolution, and the Septennial Act was passed (171 6) to extend to seven years the duration of parliaments, which had been fixed at three years by the Triennial Act of William and Mary. Under General Stanhope an effort was made to draw legislation in a more liberal direction. The Occasional Conformity Act and the Schism Act were repealed (1719) ; but the majorities on the side of the Government were unusually small, and Stanhopa, who would willingly have repealed the Test Act so far as it related to dissenters, was compelled to abandon the pro ject as entirely impracticable. The Peerage Bill, intro duced at the same time to limit the royal power of creating peers, was happily thrown out in the Commons. It was proposed partly from a desire to guard the Lords against such a sudden increase of their numbers as had been forced on them when the treaty of Utrecht was under discussion, and partly to secure the Whigs in office against any change in the royal councils in a succeeding reign. It was in fact conceived by men who valued the immediate victory of their principles more than they trusted to the general good sense of the nation. The Lords were at this time, as a matter of fact, not merely wealthier but wiser than the Commons ; and it is no wonder that, in days when the Commons, by passing the Septennial Act, had shown their distrust of their own constituents, the peers should show, by the Peerage Bill, their distrust of that House which was elected by those constituencies. Nevertheless the remedy was worse than the disease. A close oligarchy would not only have held a dominant position for some twenty or thirty years, during which it would really be fit to exercise authority, but would have been impenetrable to the force of public opinion when the time came that a public opinion worthy of the name was formed. It is essential to the permanence of an Upper House that it should be unable to set at defiance the will of the nation expressed by its representatives ; and without the power of creation the House of Lords might easily have attempted to do this till there was no alternative to a violent alteration of the constitution. The excitement following on the bursting of the South Sea Bubble, and the death or ruin of the leading ministers, brought Walpole to the front (1721). As a man of business when men of business were few in the House of Commons, he was eminently fit to manage the affairs of the country. But he owed his long continuance in office especially to his sagacity. He clearly saw, what Stanhope had failed to see that the mass of the nation was not fitted as yet to interest itself wisely in affairs of government, and that therefore the rule must be kept in the hands of the upper classes. But he was too sensible to adopt the coarse expedient which had commended itself to Stanhope, and he preferred humouring the masses to contradicting them. The struggle of the preceding century had left its mark in every direction on the national development. Out of the reaction against Puritanism had come a widely -spread relaxation of morals, and also, as far as the educated class was concerned, an eagerness for the discussion of all social and religious problems. The fierce excitement of political life had stirred up the fountains of thought, and the most anciently received doctrines were held of little worth until they were brought to the test of reason. It was a time when the pen was more powerful than the sword, when a secretary of state would treat with condescension a witty pamphleteer, and when such a pamphleteer might hope, not in vain, to become a secretary of state. It was in this world of reason and literature that the Whigs of the Peerage Bill moved. Walpole perceived that there was another world which understood none of these things. With cynical insight be discovered that a great Government cannot rest on a clique, however distin guished. If the mass of the nation was not conscious of political wants, it was conscious of material wants. The merchant needed protection for his trade ; the voters gladly welcomed election day as bringing guineas to their pockets. Members of Parliament were ready to sell their votes for places, for pensions, for actual money. The system was not new, as Dauby is credited with the discovery that a vote in the House of Commons might be purchased. But with Walpole it reached its height. Such a system was possible because the House of Commons was not really accountable to its constituents, The votes of its members were not published, and still less were their speeches made known. Such a silence could only be maintained around the House when there was little interest in its proceedings. The great questions of religion and taxation which had agitated the country under the Stuarts were now fairly settled. To reawaken those ques tions in any shape would be dangerous. Walpole took good care never to repeat the mistake of the Sacheverel trial. When on one occasion he was led into the proposal of an unpopular excise he at once drew back. England in his days was growing rich. Englishmen were bluff and independent, in their ways often coarse and unmannerly. TJieir life was the life depicted on the canvas of Hogarth and the pages of Fielding. All high imagination, all devotion to the public weal, seemed laid asleep. But the political instinct was not dead, and it would one day express itself for better ends than an agitation against an excise bill or an outcry for a popular war. A Government could no longer employ its powers for direct oppression. In his own house and in his own conscience, every Englishman, as far as the Govern ment was concerned, was the master of his destiny. By pole s niin Free of tllou Parl men corru tion. polit a P at