thrown out in the lords. This was the course which Walpole continued to pursue regarding this bill, for it was again and again brought forward during his whole administration. He sought to throw the odium of rejecting it from the commons to the lords. Townshend, to whom the odium of rejecting was thus carried in the lords, protested against this disingenuous conduct on the part of Walpole, and assured him that the ruse would soon be fully observed, and bring more unpopularity on him in the end than a manly, open opposition—which it did.
The temper of Townshend was warm, though his nature was upright; and in this mood, a discussion taking place on foreign affairs at the house of colonel Selwyn, the dispute became so warm, that Walpole declared that he did not believe what Townshend was saying. The indignant Townshend seized Walpole by the collar, and they both grasped their swords. Mrs. Selwyn shrieked for assistance, and the incensed relatives were parted; but they never could be reconciled, and, after making another effort to obtain the dismissal of Newcastle, and to maintain his own position against the overbearing Walpole, he resigned on the 16th of May. Townshend retired to Rainham, and passed the remainder of his life in rural pursuits. He might have done his rival infinite mischief by joining the ranks of the opposition, but he was too conscientious for that. Chesterfield, when he afterwards joined the opposition, went to Rainham to induce Townshend to come up and use his influence in an important debate in the peers, but he tried in vain. Townshend held much the same opinions as Walpole, and he would not, to mortify an ungenerous rival, sacrifice a single principle. One of the greatest benefits which he conferred on this country he conferred on his retirement—that of introducing the turnip from Germany.
On the retirement of Townshend, Walpole reigned supreme and without a rival in the cabinet. Henry Pelham was made secretary-at-war; Compton, earl of Wilmington, privy seal. He left foreign affairs chiefly to Stanhope, now lord Harrington, and to the duke of Newcastle, impressing on them by all means to avoid quarrels with foreign powers, and maintain the blessings of peace. With all the faults of Walpole, this was the praise of his political system, which system, on the meeting of parliament in the spring of 1731, was violently attacked by Wyndham and Pulteney, on the plea that we were making ruinous treaties, and sacrificing British interests, in order to benefit Hanover, the eternal millstone round the neck of England. Pulteney and Bolingbroke carried the same attack into the pages of the "Craftsman," but they failed to move Walpole, or to shake his power.
The cause of the pretender sunk in proportion to the peace throughout Europe and the prosperity at home. From 1728 to 1740 it was at a very low ebb, and lost the few marked men who had moved in it. Three of the chief leaders died about this time—Mar, Wharton, and Atterbury. Mar died at Aix-la-Chapelle in May, 1732, having outlived the respect of all parties, and perhaps most so of his own. Wharton continued his vicious life in Italy, France, and Spain, sometimes pretending that he had deserted the Jacobite cause, and entreating for restoration. When refused, he again joined the pretender's party openly, ran through the remains of his fortune, and died in most miserable circumstances at Poblet, in Catalonia, in the monastery there. He put on the monastic habit a short time before his death, according to the practice of penitents, and the monks said that he became a sincere convert to the doctrines of holy church. He finished his infamous career on the 31st of May, 1731, and was buried in the convent church, where a plain slab in a remote aisle marks the resting-place of the last, and, though much to say, possibly the worst of the Whartons.
Atterbury, as the pretender's prospects declined, retired to Montpellier, in the south of France, but was induced by James to return and take the management of his affairs in Paris, which he did, and continued in that unsatisfactory office till his death in February, 1732, in the seventieth year of his age. His body was brought over to England to be buried in Westminster Abbey, but was not allowed to pass without the coffin being opened and searched for secret papers. So low was the Jacobite interest now fallen, that Sir Robert Walpole said that, if ever the Stuarts came again, it must be through the lowest people, for the chiefs were all dead or discouraged.
Such was the peace abroad and the prosperity of the country at this time, that there occur few events worthy of record. Of those which took place in 1731, the most remarkable was an act abolishing the use of Latin in all proceedings of the courts of justice, and the next the renewal of the charter of the East India Company. If the country was peaceful and prosperous, however, it was neither free from corruption nor from the need of extensive reform. The very system of Walpole which produced such a show of prosperity, that an old Scotch secretary of state asked the minister what he had done to make the Almighty so much his friend, was built on the most wholesale bribery and corruption. It was, in fact, a purchased domestic peace. In social life the example of the government produced the like dishonesty. There was a fearful exposé of the proceedings of a charitable corporation for lending small sums of money to the industrious poor at legal interest; and Sir Robert Sutton, the late ambassador at Paris, was found so deeply implicated in the fraud and extortions practised on those they were employed to benefit, that he was expelled from the house.
There was also an inquiry into the state of the public prisons of London, which opened up a most amazing scene of horrors. It was found to be a common practice of the warders to connive at the escape of rich prisoners for a sufficient bribe, and inflicting the most oppressive cruelties on those who were too poor to pay heavy fees. One captain M'Phædris, the report of a committee of the house of commons states, having refused to pay some exorbitant fees, had irons put upon his legs which were too little, so that, in putting them on, his legs had like to have been broken. He was dragged away to the dungeon, where he lay without a bed, loaded with irons so close riveted that they kept him in continual torture, and mortified his legs. The wretched prisoner became lame and nearly blind from this atrocious usage, and having petitioned the judges to hear his case, they found it fully borne out, and reprimanded the gaoler, but declared that they could not give the prisoner any relief because it was not in term time!
Another report details more general horrors:—"The
