THE TREATY OF HANOVER. 69 and Prussia in an alliance offensive and defensive. Both Chesterfield and Chatham denounced this Treaty, as concluded in the interests of Hanover rather than of England; but it was England and not Hanover that was menaced by the agreement between Russia and Germany. "The proofs of that agreement," as Stanhope remarks, "depending mainly on private and confidential information, could not at the time be divulged, but we, who have good reason to believe in its existence, who know that the two Courts were taking rapid steps to carry it into execution, and that Spain had just made a peremptory demand of Gibraltar from the British government, —must admit the necessity of providing against a dangerous combination, and that Walpole was right in averting the danger, and preserving the peace of England and of Europe, by a counter-alliance." This counter-alliance lasted two years, and then Prussia withdrew from it. Thereupon Spain laid siege to Gibraltar, but with no result. The army threw a vast quantity of bombs into the place, to the great injury of Spanish finances, but with little damage to the besieged. In four months the investment was raised.* The Imperial ambassador had been recalled from St. James's, and a general war seemed inevitable. But on the death of the Czarina, Russia abandoned the league; Prussia showed little ardour; and the Emperor soon became convinced that the Spanish alliance was worth nothing. In 1729, Spain concluded the Treaty of Walpole was severely criticised for not declaring war against Spain when she committed this act of hostility; but his overmastering desire was to keep the peace of Europe, and in this he succeeded. 70 THE NATIONAL PROSPERITY. Seville with England and France, to which Holland afterwards acceded. No reference was made in it to the much coveted fortress of Gibraltar. Six years later the peace of Europe was further secured by the Treaty of Vienna between England, Austria, Spain, Holland, and France, March, 1731. By this treaty the Emperor obtained the consent of the Maritime Powers to the Pragmatic Sanction, while Spain was gratified by the cession of the two Italian duchies. While the Walpole administration thus preserved the honour of England abroad, at home it promoted the growth of trade and commerce. In 1724 the King was able to congratulate the country, with justice, on its enjoyment of external tranquillity and domestic peace, along with all the rights and advantages of civil and religious freedom. This congratulation might have been repeated annually during Walpole's long and brilliant reign. Population increased rapidly; villages grew into towns; Manchester and Birmingham doubled their area, and more than doubled their wealth; Hull rose into importance; and the docks of Bristol were crowded with shipping. A remarkable development of manufacturing industry took place simultaneously with a great development of commerce; and for the first time. England began to derive advantage from her colonial enterprise. Liverpool, which owed its creation to the new trade with America, expanded from a quiet country town on the green banks of the Mersey, into the third port in the kingdom, and meditated the construction of a dock on the plan of the docks of Amsterdam. A land secure and at peace is a land well able to devote the WALPOLE AS A FINANCIER. זך energies of its people to the cultivation of all its resources; and it is not wonderful, therefore, that the value of every gentleman's estate increased threefold; while the entire system of English agriculture was changed by the introduction of rotation of crops, and the cultivation of winter roots and artificial grasses. Trade, commerce, and agriculture were alike encouraged by the rigid economy of Walpole's government. He did not make the large augmentation of the national revenues a pretext for the augmentation of the public expenditure; but every year saw a reduction of the debt and a diminution of taxation.* As a recent writer points out, Walpole had the sagacity to see that the wisest course a statesman can take in presence of a great increase in national industry and national wealth is "to look quietly on and let it alone.” Still, when interference was opportune and advantageous, he did not shrink from attempting it. As early as 1722 he declared, in a speech from the Throne, that nothing would more assuredly promote the extension of commerce than "to make the exportation of our new manufactures, and the importation of the commodities used in the manufacturing of them, as practicable and as easy as may be." In his fiscal policy he anticipated Peel and Gladstone; at the bottom of it lay the great princi Parsimony of the public money was one of his chief characteristics ... To this part of his conduct, the Duke of Newcastle bore testimony, at a time when he was censuring his measures in other respects with the greatest asperity. 'As this is a demand of money,' he says, in a letter to Lord Hardwicke, we shall find Sir Robert more difficult to comply than upon former occasions.'"-Coxe, i. 749. 72 UNPOPULARITY OF EXCISE TAXES. ple of free trade. One of his earliest ministerial acts was to abolish the duties on upwards of a hundred articles of export and on nearly forty articles of importation. Released from such oppressive fetters, no wonder that Commerce sprang erect like a giant, and "walked to and fro mightily." A pernicious system of monopoly compelled the Colonies to confine all their dealings to the mother-country; Walpole had the wisdom and the prudence, in 1731, to give Georgia and the Carolinas permission to trade with any part of Europe. And if, in 1733, he committed a financial error by appropriating half a million from the Sinking Fund, which he himself had established, to the service of the current year; *he vindicated the breadth and soundness of his financial policy in the same year by the introduction of his Excise Bill. A singular unpopularity has always befallen the Excise taxes in Great Britain; an unpopularity which, even down to our own time, has extended to the officials employed in collecting them.† The Excise officer in England was as much detested as the gauger in Ireland or Scotland. Originating in the days of the Long * His opponent Pulteney's sarcasm was well wielded:-" The right honourable gentleman," he said, “had once the yanity to call himself the Father of the Sinking Fund; but if Solomon's judgment was right, he who is thus for splitting and dividing the child can never be deemed to be the real father." The reader will compare the allusions in popular songs and ballads with Johnson's definition in his Dictionary:- "Excise: a hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged, not by common judges of property, but by wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid." The disfavour with which he was regarded is seen in the once celebrated "BRITANNIA EXCISA." 73 Parliament, when duties were imposed upon beer, cider, and perry, at the Restoration they yielded an annual revenue of upwards of £600,000. The wars with France necessitated their increase, and in the reign of Queen Anne their average yearly produce rose to nearly ballad of Britannia Excisa, or Britain Excis'd,' which was sung in the streets of London in 1735. The ballad-monger says: "Excisemen are oft the bye-blows of the great, And therefore 'tis meet that they live by the State; And taught for our good, This right to rule o'er us can ne'er be withstood; We should sell our own goods without their permit. Who would think it a hardship that men so polite To poke in each hole, and examine their stock, From the cask of right Nantz to their wives' Highland smock? Who censures as evil A visit so courteous, so kind, and so civil; Were, in a free country, a thing most unfit. When we're absent they'll visit and look to our houses, Condescend, at our cost, to eat and to drink, That our ale mayn't turn sour, or our victuals mayn't stink; To such a commerce None can be adverse, Since every one knows it is better than worse; |