has gone, with every other proclamation of intolerance. Ignorance is banished and no longer shouts "Give us our eleven days." The print of the Canvass, again, must be quite obsolete in its allusions. The yeoman no longer stands between two rival agents, with his palm open to each. This sturdy Englishman is not Garrick between Tragedy and Comedy. He is not Hercules between Virtue and Pleasure. He is an honest elector, who then did what he thought best for his family. He was tempted, and he yielded. All such temptations are at an end. No man takes guineas in the open street; and we may therefore presume that bribery has ceased to exist. Then, again, no such scenes can take place as in Hogarth's Election-booth, for a registration has been established, and all is fairness and tranquillity. No dying freeholder is brought from his bed to the poll; no idiotic cripple has the name of the Blue candidate shouted in his one ear, and of the Yellow in the other. No counsel are now vociferating for or against the legality of the voter who has lost his hands, taking hold of the Testament with his iron hook. No group of voters now chuckle over a squib which, in addition to its subtle wit, has the picture of one of the candidates on a gallows. Lastly, the solemnity of Chairing has gone out; and perhaps the accompanying generosity of setting free and enlightened non-electors to scramble for sixpences. Hogarth has painted a scene of riot, broken heads, blind fiddlers ard dancing bears, which have no exact parallel in our age; and the evils of an election may therefore be supposed, by some believers in social perfectibility, to have died out with many other political evils, in our more decent times. Hogarth lived at a period when some very signal changes in morals and manners were slowly developing themselves, under influences which were either ridiculed, or regarded as unworthy of notice. The chaotic state of society which he has so truthfully set forth in its most striking examples, must not be received as the whole truth. The essayists, the dramatists, the novelists, the painters, have furnished almost the only materials we possess for esti mating the peculiar characteristics of a modern age. But we must not attempt to believe that many of their representations and vice and folly were any other than exceptions to the average amount of decorum and good sense which regulated the intercourse of the higher and middle classes, and of respect for the laws and for public order which, taken as a whole, the labouring class manifested. When we look at the defective state of the municipal administration of the country-the total absence of means for the prevention of crime, except the terror of the barbarous code for its punishment we may almost be surprised that there were not more Gin Lanes, and more Blood-bowl houses. When we regard the comparatively small influence which the Church then exercised upon social evils, we may wonder how the upper classes passed from the corrupt atmosphere of Hogarth's saloons into the more healthful air of the court-life of eighty years ago. A great change had then come over all classes. Hogarth has two prints which he produced out of his keen observation of passing things,-manifestations which he could scarcely be expected to regard with a prophetic or philosophic spirit. "The Sleeping Congregation" of 1736 speaks of the time when the be-wigged preacher droned through his tedious hour, without the slightest attempt to touch the vicious or to rouse the indifferent. The "Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism," a Medley," of 1762, tells that a new power had arisen. The chief object is the ridicule of Methodism. Whitefield's Journal and Wesley's Sermons figure by name amongst the accessories of the piece, where the ranting preacher is holding forth to the howling congre. gation. Pope had described the "harmonic twang" of the donkey's bray "There, Webster, pealed thy voice, and Whitefield thine." Bishop Lavington had written "The Enthusiasm of Methodists and Papists compared." Hogarth followed the precedent, in all ages, of despising reformers. The followers of George Whitefield and of John Wesley might be ignorant, superstitious, fanatical. They themselves might have indirectly encouraged the delusions of a few of their disciples. But they eventually changed the face of English society. • Dunciad, book ii. CHAPTER XX. Proceedings on the death of queen Anne.-George I. proclaimed king.-His arrival in England.-Sophia. princess of Zell.-Ministerial arrangements.-Parliament.-Impeachments of queen Anne's late ministers.-Riots in England.-Insurrection in Scotland.-Insurrection in England. -The march to Preston.-Surrender of the rebels at Preston.- Battle of Sheriffmuir.-The Pretender in Scotland.-His flight to France. -Impeachments of the rebel lords. -Executions and escapes of leaders.-Fate of the humbler insurgents. At seven o'clock of the morning of the first of August, 1714, queen Anne died. The course of proceeding under this event had been determined by Statute in 1705. The Council was immediately to meet, and then to open three sealed packets, which contained the names of persons nominated by the Protestant successor to the throne, to act with seven great officers of state named in the statute, as Lord Justices. No contest, therefore, could arise about the temporary possession of authority. When the dying queen appointed Shrewsbury Lord High Treasurer, the hopes of the Jacobite party received a fatal blow. When the sealed packets were opened, and eighteen peers, the greater number of whom were Whigs, were nominated by the Elector of Hanover, the schemes for the restoration of the exiled family, which had been gradually maturing in the last four years of the reign of Anne, were more effectually crushed. The French agent wrote to Louis XIV. that Bolingbroke was grievously disappointed; for he had said, that in six weeks, if the queen's death had not occurred, matters would have been in such a state that there would have been nothing to fear for the future. "What a world is this, and how does fortune banter us," writes Bolingbroke to Swift. There was a bold accomplice in Bolingbroke's plots who was not inclined at first to grieve over, the caprices of fortune. It is related upon the authority of Dr. Lockier, dean of Peterborough, that, upon the death of the queen, Atterbury urged the immediate proclamation of the Pretender, to which Ormond demurring, the bishop replied with an oath, 66 we have not a moment to lose." Lockier, who was a personal friend of George I., says, "such a bold step would have made people believe that they [the Jacobites] were stronger than they really were; and might have taken strangely. The late GEORGE I. PROCLAIMED KING. 361 king, I am persuaded, would not have stirred a foot, if there had been a strong opposition; indeed the family did not expect this crown; at least nobody in it, but the old princess Sophia."* Opposition there was none. The Lords Justices issued a proclamation, declaring that the high and mighty prince George, elector of Brunswick Lüneburg, had, by the death of queen Anne, become our rightful and liege lord, king of Great Britain, France, and Ireland. Multitudes crowded round the heralds as they proclaimed the stranger king. Not a voice of dissent was raised. The same afternoon the Parliament met, according to the provision of the Act of Regency. The Lords Justices entered upon their administrative functions. The Peers and the Commons sent congratulations to the new sovereign upon his happy and peaceable accession to the throne, and besought his majesty to give the kingdom the advantage of his royal presence as soon as possible. The Civil List was settled upon the same scale as had been granted to queen Anne. Throughout England, Scotland, and Ireland, no popular discontent was manifested. The title of king George was recognized by France and the other European powers, whether Protestant or Catholic. There was partial dissatisfaction, no doubt, amongst some of that class of politicians whose loyalty was determined by the extent to which their personal interests were expect ed to be gratified. The name of Marlborough was not found in the list of those nominated to the Regency; and he retired to the country, after having made a sort of triumphal entry into London. Many a solicitation for place and preferment went over to Hanover. But the new king exhibited no eagerness to quit the quiet country where he was respected, and where he had no contests of Whig and Tory to disturb his peace. It was the 18th of September when George, accompanied by his eldest son, landed at Greenwich. That the new king should have been received with acclamations when he set his foot on English soil was a matter of course. But his personal appearance and demeanour were not calculated to excite any fervid enthusiasm. He was fifty-four years of age. He was below the middle stature. He was shy and awkward. He could not speak English. His public virtues were probably little known to his new subjects. Possessing despotic power, he had governed his Hanoverians wisely and beneficently; and the people shed tears of real grief when he left them. He had no showy qualities. He was unfortunate in his marriage, and did not win popular respect by the exercise of the domestic virtues. Every Spence's "Anecdotes," p. 55. one knew that twenty years before the Elector George Louis was called to the throne of England—that is, in 1694, when he was electoral heir apparent-some terrible tragedy had occurred in the palace of Hanover. Count Philip Königsmark suddenly disappeared. Princess Sophia Dorothea, the wife of the electoral prince, was divorced in a somewhat irregular way, by a court held at Hanover; and was now pining away her life in the castle of Aldhen, with no glimpse of the outer world but the dreary Heath of Lüneburg. "Old peasants, late in the next century, will remember that they used to see her sometimes driving on the Heath-beautiful lady, long black hair, and glitter of diamonds in it; sometimes the reins in her own hand, but always with a party of cavalry around her, and their swords drawn."* Sophia, born princess of Zell, was the mother of George II., who constantly asserted her innocence. Of her imprudence there could be no doubt. Her sad story had furnished abundant matter of controversy. After the death of George I., under the floor of the princess's dressing-room, a body was discovered, which was considered to be that of count Königsmark. Horace Walpole, who derived his information from his father sir Robert, assumes that the unfortunate victim of jealousy was there secretly strangled. Later accounts alleged that there was a scene of violence and loss of life, in which Königsmark had openly to encounter many persons. "It has at length," says the historian of Frederick the Great, become a certainty, a clear fact, to those who are curious about it. . . . Crime enough is in it, sin and folly on both sides; there is killing too, but not assassination (as it turns out); on the whole there is nothing of atrocity, and noth ing that was not accidental, unavoidable ;—and there is a certain greatness of decorum on the part of those Hanover princes and official gentlemen, a depth of silence, of polite stoicism, which deserves more praise than it will get in our times."† The unostentatious sovereign, "all dressed in brown, even his stockings," was not fitted by nature to form for himself a court-party, by which he might in some degree have neutralized the two great parliamentary parties. He had been accustomed to govern a small country through ministers to whom his will was law; and he did not understand the complications which made the king of England in many respects the possessor of a nominal power, whilst the real power was with those called his servants. The novelty of his position is well illustrated by his majesty's account of one of his earliest impressions. He said, "This is a strange "Friedrich II. of Prussia," vol. i. p. 34. • Carlyle, "Walpoliana." |