IT has been the fortune of England to have undergone more revolutions than any other kingdom of Europe. Later periods have made Revolution synonymous with popular violence; but the more effectual revolution is that which, being required by the necessities of a people, is directed by the national judgment. It is not the convulsion of a tempest, which, if it purifies the air, strips the soil; it is a change, not of temperature but of the seasons, gradual but irresistible; it is a great operation of moral Nature, in every change preparing for the more abundant provision of public prosperity.

It is an equally remarkable contrast to the condition of other kingdoms, that while their popular revolutions have almost always plunged the country into confusion, and been ultimately rectified only by the salutary despotism of some powerful master, the hazards of our revolutions have chiefly originated in personal ambition, and have been reduced to order by popular sentiment.

The Reformation was the first great revolution of England: it formed the national circle of light and darkness. All beyond it was civil war, arbitrary power, and popular wretchedness-all within it has been progress, growing vigour, increasing illumination, and more systematic liberty. Like the day, it had its clouds; but the sun was still above, ready to shine through their first opening. That sun has not yet stooped from its meridian, and will go down, only when we forget to honour the Beneficence and the power which commanded it to shine.

The accession of the Hanoverian line was one of those peaceful revolutions-it closed the era of Jacobitism. The reign of Anne had vibrated between the principles of the constitution and the principles of Charles II. Never was a balance more evenly poised, than the fate of freedom against the return to arbitrary power. Anne

herself was a Jacobite-she had all the superstition of "Divine right." By her nature she had the infirmities of the convent. She was evidently fitter to be an abbess than a queen; a character of frigidness and formality designated her for the cloister; and if the Hanoverian succession had not been palpably prepared before the national eye, to ascend the throne at the moment when the royal coffin sank into the vault, England might have seen the profligate son of James dealing out vengeance through a corrupted or terrified legislature; the Reformation extinguished by the Inquisitor; the jesuit at the royal ear, mass in Westminster Abbey, and the scaffold the instrument of conversion to the supremacy of Rome.

The expulsion of the Stuarts had left the throne to the disposal of the nation. By the Bill of Rights, it was determined that the succession should go to the heirs of William and Mary; and, in their default, to Anne, daughter of James. But the deaths of Mary, and of the Duke of Gloucester, awoke the hopes of Popery and the cabals of Jacobitism once more. The danger was imminent. William became deeply anxious for the Protestant succession, and a bill was brought into the House of Commons, declaring that the crown should devolve on the Electress Sophia, Duchess-dowager of Hanover, and her heirs,-the Electress of Hanover (or more correctly, of Brunswick and Luneburg) being the tenth child of Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, daughter of James I., the only Protestant princess among the foreign relations of the line. The next in succession to Anne in the Roman Catholic line would have been the houses of Savoy, France, and Spain, through Henrietta, daughter of Charles I. This order of succession was made law by the 12th of William III., and confirmed in the next session by the Abjuration Act (13th William), so named from the oath abjuring the Pretender.

It is striking to observe how many

high matters of legislation have seemed the work of casualty. The Habeas Corpus Act, confessedly the noblest achievement of British liberty since Magna Charta, was said to have been carried by a mistake in counting the votes of the House; the limitation to the Electress was proposed by a half-lunatic; the oath of abjuration was carried but by a majority of one; and the Reform Bill, which, though a measure as doubtful in its principles as disappointing in its promises, has yet exercised an extraordinary power over the constitution, was carried in its second reading by a majority of only one.

It is more important to observe how large a share of legislation, in the reign of Anne, was devoted to the security of the Protestant succession. The 4th, 6th, and 10th of Anne are occupied in devising clauses to give it force. It was guaranteed in all the great diplomatic transactions of the reign,-in the Dutch Treaty of 1706, in the Barrier Treaty of 1709, in the Guarantee Treaty of 1713, and in the Treaty of Utrecht of the same year, between England and France, and England and Spain.

This diligence and determination seem wholly due to the spirit of the people. The Queen was almost a Jacobite; her ministers carried on correspondences with the family of James; there was scarcely a man of influence in public life who had not an agent at St. Germains. Honest scruples, too, had been long entertained among individuals of high rank. Six of the seven bishops who had so boldly resisted the arrogance of James, shrank from repudiating the claims of his son. It is true, that nothing could be feebler than their reasons; for nothing could be more evident than the treason of James to the oath which he had sworn at his coronation. Its violation was his virtual dethronement-his abdication was his actual dethronement; and the principles of his family, all Papists like himself, rendered it impossible to possess freedom of conscience, while any one of a race of bigots and tyrants retained the power to oppress. Thus the nation only vindicated itself, and used only the common rights of self-de

fence; and used them only in the calm and deliberate forms of self-pre

servation.

This strong abhorrence of the exiled family arose alike from a sense of religion, and a sense of fear. The people had seen with disgust and disdain the persecution of Protestantism by the French King. They had seen the scandalous treachery which had broken all compacts, the ostentatious falsehood which had trafficked in promises, and the remorseless cruelty which had strewed the Protestant provinces with dead. The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes gave a sanguinary and perpetual caution "not to put their trust in princes;" and the generous spirit of the people, doubly excited by scorn for the persecutor, and pity for his victims, was thenceforth armed in panoply alike against the arts and the menaces of Jacobitism and Popery. So it has been, and so may it ever be. The Stuarts have passed away-they mouldered from the sight of men; they have no more place or name on earth; they have been sunk in the mire of their monkism; their "drowned, honour" is incapable of being plucked up even “by the locks;" but their principles survive, and against their corruption we must guard the very air we breathe.

The Electress, a woman of remarkable intelligence, died in 1714, in her 84th year. The Queen died in the August following. George I., Elector of Brunswick, son of Sophia, arrived in England in September, and was King of the fairest empire in the world. He was then fifty-four years old.

The habits of George I. were Continental-a phrase which implies all of laxity that is consistent with the etiquette of a court. His personal reign was anxious, troubled, and toilsome; but the nation prospered, and the era had evidently arrived when the character of the sitter on the throne had ceased to attract the interest, or influence the conduct of the nation. The King had no taste for the fine arts: he had no knowledge of literature. He had served in the army, like all the German princes, but had served without distinction. He loved Hanoverian life, and he was incapable of enjoying the life of England. He lived long enough to be

easily forgotten, and died of apoplexy on his way to Hanover!

George II,, the chief object of these Memoirs, only son of George I. and Sophia Dorothea, was forty-four at his accession. In 1705 he had married Caroline, daughter of the Margrave of Brandenburg Anspach.

The reign of George II. was the era of another revolution-the supremacy of ministers. A succession of ambitious and able men governed the country by parties. The King was intelligent and active, yet they controlled him, until he found his chief task to be limited to obedience. He was singularly fond of power, and openly jealous of authority, but his successive ministers were the virtual masters of the crown. His chief vexations arose from their struggles for office; and his only compensation to his injured feeling was, in dismissing one cabinet, to find himself shackled by another. He seems to have lived in a state of constant ebullition with the world-speaking sarcastically of every leading person of his own society, and on harsh terms with his family. His personal habits were incapable of being praised even by flattery, and the names of the Walmodens, the Deloraines, and the Howards, still startle the graver sensibilities of our time.

But his public conduct forms a striking contrast to those painful scenes. He was bold in conception and diligent in business. He felt the honour of being an English king; and though he wasted time and popularity in his childish habit of making his escape to Hanover whenever he could, he offered no wilful offence to the feelings of the people. His letters on public affairs exhibit strong sense, and he had the wisdom to leave his finance in the hands of Walpole, and the manliness to suffer himself to be afterwards eclipsed by the lustre of Chatham. His reign which had begun in difficulties, and was carried on in perils, closed in triumph.-The French navy was swept from the ocean; the battle of the Heights of Abraham gave him Canada; the battle of Plassy gave him India; and at his death, in 1760, at the age of seventy-seven, he left England in a blaze of glory.

The death of George I. had brought Walpole forward as the minister of his son. The story of Sir Spencer Compton has been often told, but never so well as in these Memoirs. The King died on the 11th of June, 1727, at Ösnaburg. The news reached Walpole on the 14th, at his villa in Chelsea. He immediately went to Richmond to acquaint the Prince of Wales with this momentous intelligence: The Prince was asleep after dinner, according to his custom; but he was awakened for the intelligence, which he appeared to receive with surprise. Yet, neither the sense of his being raised to a throne, nor the natural feelings of such an occasion, prevented the exhibition of his dislike to Walpole. On being asked, when it was his pleasure that the Council should be summoned, the King's abrupt answer was, "Go to Chiswick, and take your directions from Sir Spencer Compton.' Sir Robert bore this ill-usage with his habitual philosophy, and went to Compton at once. There he acted with his usual address; told him that he was minister, and requested his protection; declaring that he had no desire for power or business, but wished to have one of the "white sticks," as a mark that he was still under the shelter of the crown.

Lord Hervey delights in portraiture, and his portraits generally have a bitter reality, which at once proves the truth of the likeness and the severity of the artist. He daguerreotypes all his generation. He thus describes Sir Spencer: "He was a plodding, heavy fellow, with great application but no talents; with vast complaisance for a court; always more concerned for the manner of the thing than for the thing itself; fitter for a clerk to a minister than for a minister to a prince. His only pleasures were money and eating; his only knowledge forms and precedents; and his only insinuation bows and smiles." Walpole and he went together to the Duke of Devonshire, President of the Council, but laid up with the gout. Lord Hervey's sketch of him is certainly not flattering-but such is the price paid by personal feebleness for public station

"He was more able as a virtuoso than a statesman, and a much better jockey than a politician."

At the council Sir Spencer took Walpole aside, and begged of him, as a speech would be necessary for the King in Council, that, as Sir Robert was more accustomed to that sort of composition than himself, he should go into another room, and make a draft of the speech. Sir Robert retired to draw up his paper, and Sir Spencer went to Leicester Fields, where the King and Queen were already, followed by all who had any thing to ask, or anything to hope-a definition which seems to have included the whole of what, in later parlance, are called the fashionable world. Whether the present sincerity of court life is purer than of old may be doubtful, but the old manners were certainly the more barefaced. When the new premier was returning to his coach he walked through a lane of "bowers," all shouldering each other to pay adoration to the new idol.

During the four days of the King's remaining in town, Leicester House, which used to be a desert, was "thronged from morning till night, like the 'Change at noon." But Walpole walked through those rooms" as if they had been empty." The same people who were officiously, a week before, crowding the way to flatter his prosperity, were now getting out of it to avoid sharing his disgrace. Horace Walpole says, that his mother could not make her way to pay her respects to the King and Queen between the scornful backs and elbows of her late devotees, nor could approach nearer to the Queen than the third or fourth row, until the Queen cried out, "There, I am sure I see a friend." The torrent then divided, and shrank to either side. In short, Walpole, with his brother Horace, ambassador to France, the Duke of Newcastle and Lord Townshend, the two Secretaries of State, were all conceived to be as much undone, as a pasha on the arrival of the janizary with the bowstring.

The evidences, it must be owned, seemed remarkably strong. The King had openly, and more than once, called Walpole "rogue and rascal;" he had called the ambassador "a scoundrel and a fool;" he had declared his utter contempt for the Duke, and his determination never to forgive him. Townshend fared still worse. The King

looked on him to be no more an honest man than an able minister, and attributed all the confusion in foreign affairs to the heat of his temper and his scanty genius, to the strength of his passions and the weakness of his understanding. There can be no doubt that a minister of foreign affairs, with those qualities, might become a very mischievous animal.

On Compton's receiving the speech drawn up by Walpole, he carried it, in his own handwriting, to the King. The King objected to a paragragh, which Sir Spencer Compton was either unwilling or unable to amend; and not being satisfied of his own powers of persuasion, he actually solicited Walpole to go to the King, and persuade him to leave it as it was! The Queen, who was the friend of Walpole, instantly took advantage of this singular acknowledgment of inferiority, and advised the King to retain the man whom his intended successor so clearly acknowledged to be his superior.

Nothing can be more evident than that Sir Spencer played the fool egregiously. To place a rival in immediate communication with the King was, at least, an unusual way of supplanting him; while, to give him the advantage of his authorship, by sending him to explain it to the King, would have been ridiculous under any circumstances. But there are no miracles in politics; and he was evidently so far convinced of his own security, that the idea of a rival was out of the question. Compton had been all his life a political personage. He had been Paymaster; he had been Speaker in three Parliaments; he was au fait in the routine of office; and he had evidently received the King's order to make a ministry. But we have had such sufficient proof in our own time that princes and kings are different persons according to circumstances, that we can perfectly comprehend the cessation of the royal favouritism on one side, and of the royal aversion on the other. The civil list was still to be voted-the subject dearest to the royal heart. Walpole was noted for financial management, and Compton's awkwardness in the preceding transaction might well have startled the monarch. The general result

was, that Walpole remained minister, Compton was quietly put out of the way with a peerage, as Lord Wilmington, and an enormous civil list was carried, with but a single vote, that of Mr. William Shippen, against it. The civil list was little less than £900,000 a year, an immense revenue, when we consider that the value of money at that time probably made it equal to double the sum now. The present civil list would be practically not much more than a fourth of the amount in 1777. The Queen's jointure was equally exorbitant; it was £100,000 a year, besides Somerset House and Richmond Lodge, a sum amounting to double what any Queen of England had before.

Walpole was now paramount; he had purchased his supremacy by his official prodigality. Lord Hervey thinks that he was still hurt by two mortifications-the displacement of his son-in-law, Lord Malpas, and of Sir William Yonge, a Lord of the Treasury, and his notorious tool. But, contrasting those trifling changes with the plenitude of Walpole's power, and recollecting the extraordinary wiliness of his nature, it seems not improbable that he either counselled or countenanced those dismissals, to escape the invidiousness of absolute power; for both Malpas and Yonge clung to the court, and, after a decent interval, were replaced in office. Walpole was, perhaps, one of the most singular instances of personal dexterity in the annals of statesmanship. Without eloquence in the House, or character out of it; without manners in the court, or virtue anywhere, he continued to hold supreme ministerial power for nearly a quarter of a century, under the most jealous of kings, with the weakest of cabinets, against the most powerful Opposition, and in the midst of the most contemptuous people. His power seems even to have grown out of those sinister elements. By constantly balancing them against each other, by at once awaking fears and exciting hopes, he deluded all the fools, and enlisted all the knaves of public life in his cause. The permanency of his office, however, wholly rested upon the Queen; and he had the dexterity to discover, from the moment of the Royal accession, that, insulted as she

was by the King's conduct, she was the true source of ministerial power. He accordingly adhered to her, in all the fluctuations of the court, appeared to consult her on all occasions, studied her opinions, and provided for her expenses. The want of money, or its possession, seems to have exerted an extraordinary influence on the higher ranks in those days; and one of the first acts of Walpole was to offer the Queen £60,000 a year. Sir Spencer Compton had been impolitic enough to propose but £40,000, on the ground that this sum had been sufficient for Charles II.'s queen. The sum was at last settled at £50,000, and the donor was not forgotten.

But it seems impossible to doubt, that Walpole's character was essentially corrupt; that he regarded corruption as a legitimate source of power; that he bribed every man whom he had the opportunity to bribe; that he laughed at political integrity, and did his best to extinguish the little that existed; that no minister ever went further to degrade the character of public life; and that the period of his supremacy is a general blot upon the reign, the time, and the people.

The celebrated Burke, in that magnanimous partiality which disposed him to overlook the vices of individuals in the effect of their measures, has given a high-flown panegyric on the administration of Walpole; but the whole is a brilliant paradox. He looked only to the strength of the Brunswick succession, and, taking his stand upon that height, from which he surveyed grand results alone, neglected or disdained to examine into the repulsive detail. Seeing before him a national harvest of peace and plenty, he never condescended to look to the gross and offensive material by which the furrow was fertilized. Nothing is more certain, than that the daily acts of Walpole would now stamp a ministry with shamethat no man would dare now to express the sentiments which form the maxims of the minister; and that any one of the acts which, though they passed with many a sneer, yet passed with practical impunity, in the days of George II., would have ruined the proudest individual, and extinguished