king and a certain portion of his cabinet, at the head of which was lord Harrington, were willing to help him, if Walpole would consent to it. He therefore sent over to London the abbé Strickland to work out this notable project. This abbe was a man without character or principle, who had been engaged in various matters, but none very creditable. He had been sent as a spy by the pretender against the English government, and by the English government against the pretender. He had managed to secure for himself the bishopric of Namur, and was aspiring to a cardinal's hat. In England, however, his mission was not likely to succeed. None but foreigners profoundly ignorant of English politics would have dreamed of such an attempt. He managed to have a conference with Harrington, and was introduced to the king and queen; but Walpole was speedily aware of his real objects, and had him sent without delay out of the country. The queen wrote to the empress, assuring her that they had been deceived by false reports, and that the king would on no account engage in war.
The emperor was now compelled to come to terms. A treaty was to be entered into under the mediation of the maritime powers. As Fleury and Walpole, too, were bent on peace, they submitted to all the delays and punctilios of the diplomatists, and finally were rewarded by a peace being concluded betwixt the different parties on these terms:—Don Carlos was to retain Naples and Sicily, but he was to resign the possession of Parma and the reversion of Tuscany; Augustus was to remain king of Poland, and Stanislaus was to receive as an equivalent the duchy of Lorraine, which, after his decease, was to devolve to the crown of France. This was an aim which France had had in view for ages, but which neither the genius of Richelieu nor of Mazarin could accomplish. It was rendered comparatively easy now, as the young duke of Lorraine was about to marry the empress's only child, the princess Maria Theresa, and thus to succeed through her to the empire. Yet the duke ceded his patrimonial territory with extreme regret, and not till he had received in return the grand duchy of Tuscany, and a pension from France. The regnant grand duke of Tuscany, the last of the Medicis, was on the verge of death, and his decease took place in less than two years, when the duke of Lorraine was put in possession. France and Sardinia gave their guarantee to the Pragmatic Sanction, and Sardinia obtained, in consequence, Novara, Tortona, and some adjoining districts. England appears to have looked on with strange apathy at this aggrandisement of France by the acquisition of Lorraine, but it was impossible to prevent it, except by a great war, and Walpole was not disposed for even a little one.
Escaped from this entanglement, Europe found herself involved in another. The government at Madrid threw the servants of the Portuguese minister there into prison, on the charge of having rescued a criminal from justice. The Portuguese ambassador appealed to the ambassadors of the other powers, and they all took up the quarrel on the ground that their common privileges were violated by the incarceration of the Portuguese attachés. The contention grew very hot. The ambassadors memorialised the Spanish government in decided terms, but the government would not give way. There appeared every prospect of the quarrel growing into one betwixt the different nations. The court of Lisbon, therefore, sent over to London Don Antonio D'Alzevedo to claim the assistance of its ally, king George. The king of Portugal had a clear right to demand the protection of England, and there could be no refusing it. Consequently, five ships of the line were dispatched to Lisbon: but Walpole gave to the admiral, Sir John Norris, strict injunctions to avoid hostilities if possible, and to endeavour to restrain the Portuguese; whilst he sent a plain declaration to the court of Madrid, that England must and would defend its ally in case of attack. The sailing of this fleet produced a great effect both at Paris and Madrid. Cardinal Fleury strongly urged the Spanish court to avoid a collision, and harmony was soon restored betwixt the two peninsula courts without coming at all to blows.
In all these transactions England still found Fleury the same upright and conciliatory manager of affairs for France; but not so Chauvelin, the French secretary of state. This man was as captious and hostile to England as Fleury was friendly and fair. He was not only strongly anti-Anglican, but he endeavoured to do this country the most essential injury by promoting the objects of the pretender. He was in secret correspondence with him, and on one occasion made a singular mistake, that showed that he was as incautious as rancorous. Delivering some papers to the English ambassador, there was found amongst them one of James's letters to himself, which lord Waldegrave at once dispatched to Walpole, and thus discovered the true animus of the man. Walpole, in his usual way, instead of making a stir about this, thought it best to buy up the services of the knave. He entrusted lord Waldegrave to offer him a bribe—a good tempting one for a Frenchman—not less than five thousand pounds or ten thousand pounds, so as to secure his interest, if not his friendship. Even five thousand pounds would, as Walpole observed, make a great show in French crowns. Chauvelin, probably, feared that there might be some snare in this, for, though he showed an inclination to take the bait, he finally declined it, and commenced a more bitter course of hostility to England than ever. Walpole, therefore, took another mode of silencing him. He availed himself of a secret correspondence with Fleury to demonstrate to him the mischievous effect which the hostility of Chauvelin might have on the relations of the two countries; and it is probable that the dismissal of this antagonist from his office, which took place in a few months, was, more or less, in consequence of these representations.
As harmony was restored on the continent, so harmony characterised, to a wonderful degree, the opening of the British parliament in January, 1736. The king congratulated the country on the happy turn which affairs had taken on the continent, and said that he trusted the same peace and good-will would manifest themselves in the domestic affairs of the realm. All appeared likely to realise this wish. A congratulatory address was carried without a division and without a syllable of dissent. But the peace was hollow—the calm only preceded a storm.
The first debate arose on the subject of drunkenness and gin. Drunkenness, a very ancient and esteemed vice in this country, had of late years appeared to grow rapidly, and to
