Hanover had been changed without any visible cause, since the accession of its princes to the throne of England; affluence had begun to wanton in their towns, and gold to glitter in their cottages, without the discovery of mines, or the increase of their commerce; and new dominions had been purchased, of which the value had never been paid from the revenues of Hanover.
The ministry, the patriot lord Bathurst, and the new earl of Bath, were obliged to defend the measures they had for so many years unsparingly condemned; and the earl of Bath, adopting the very language of Walpole against himself as Mr. Pulteney, declared that it was an act of cowardice and meanness to fall passively down the stream of popularity, and to suffer reason and integrity to be overborne by the noise of vulgar clamour! So pitiable are the exhibitions which men are compelled to make who sacrifice their honour and patriotism for the bare ambition of rank and place! Lord Chesterfield replied in a trenchant exposure of these flimsy sophisms. He condemned the assembling of troops in Flanders without the consent of parliament, and the payment of Hanoverian soldiers to fight their own battles. Hanover, he said, did not appear to contribute anything to the cause of Austria, but was to be paid by Great Britain at an exorbitant rate for every man it sent into the field; and this we were to pay whilst we had a great army lying idle at home, adding to our burdens. These arguments would have made a still deeper impression on the nation than they did had they not proceeded from the mouths of known Jacobites, who were anxious for succour from France and Spain, which these subsidised troops rendered vain. The nation now felt that there was only too much truth in them, and the sight of the men who had held this same language, now forcing this expense on the nation, for the sake of the king's Hanoverian predilections, did the ministers much damage. They carried the motion by ninety to thirty-five, but they lost weight by their very victory, and it was observed that two members of the cabinet, lords Cobham and Gower, voted against these measures, at the risk of dismissal, which, however, did not take place.
The year 1743 opened with a mighty struggle on the subject of gin. In 1736 the awful increase of drunkenness, which was attributed to the cheapness of gin, induced a majority of the house of commons to pass an act levying twenty shillings a gallon duty upon the liquor, and charging every vendor of it fifty pounds per annum for a licence. Walpole at the time declared that such an attempt to place gin beyond the reach of the poor consumers would fail; that it would fail equally as a source of revenue, for it would lead to wholesale smuggling and every possible evasion of the law. The event had proved Walpole only too correct in his prognostications. So far from checking the use of gin, the act had stimulated it enormously. The licences, so preposterously high, were wholly neglected; no duty was paid, yet the destructive liquid was sold at every street corner. Neither informers nor magistrates dared to attempt to put the law into force, for the vice was the darling vice of the whole populace, and their lives would have certainly been sacrificed had they opposed themselves to the practice. "To such an extent," says Smollett, who was living at the time, "had this shameful profligacy prevailed, that the retailers of this poisonous compound set up painted boards inviting people to be drunk for the small expense of one penny; assuring them that they might be dead drunk for twopence, and have straw for nothing! They accordingly provided cellars and places strewed with straw, to which they conveyed those wretches who were overwhelmed with intoxication. In these dismal caverns they lay until they had recovered some use of their faculties, and then they had recourse to the same mischievous potion; thus consuming their health and ruining their families in hideous receptacles of the most filthy vice, resounding with riot, execration, and blasphemy."
Ministers now saw that, by attempting too much, everything in this case had been lost. They were sacrificing the revenues only to sacrifice the morals and well-being of the people. They determined, therefore, to reduce the licenses from fifty pounds to one pound per annum, and at the same time to retain a moderate duty on the liquor. By this means the fatal compound would remain much at the same price, but the vendors would be induced to take out licenses, and the revenues would be greatly improved, whilst the whole sale of the article would be more under the restraints of law and police. A bill was framed on these principles, and passed rapidly through the commons, but in the lords it encountered a determined opposition. The whole bench of bishops, untaught by what had been so frightfully open to the public notice, contended that ministers, for the sake of revenue, were about to let loose on the poor the most terrible of vices, as if it could possibly reach a greater height than it had raged at for a long time past. Lords Hervey, Gower, and Chesterfield painted the consequences of the measure in the most frightful colours, yet, when the last nobleman saw the whole bench of bishops voting with the opposition on this occasion, he could not help sarcastically exclaiming, "I am in doubt whether I have not got on the other side of the question, for I have not had the honour to divide with so many lawn sleeves for several years." The bill was carried entire, and Smollett adds, "We cannot help averring that it has not been attended with those dismal consequences which the lords in the opposition foretold."
There was another attempt to prosecute the inquiry into the administration of Walpole, but it resulted in showing that the time for this had entirely gone by. Mr. Waller moved for this inquiry, and Sir Watkin Wynn seconded it; but it was rejected by an overwhelming majority. It was next sought to condemn the conduct of Walpole, by bringing in a bill to secure the independence of corporations, on the ground that Walpole had, according to the secret committee, prosecuted and done all that he could to injure mayors of such as had resisted his measures; but this also was rejected.
The business of the session now hastened to its close. Votes were given for forty thousand seamen and eleven thousand marines; for, sixteen thousand British troops in Flanders, and twenty-three thousand for guards and garrisons at home. For the year's supplies six millions of pounds were voted, and then parliament was prorogued on the 21st of April. In doing this, George told the house, that he had ordered his army to pass the Rhine to support
