Book I, Chap. VI. THE FOUNDERS OF THE SLOANE THE SER- ONSLOW IN Parliament, then-for the purpose of purchasing such manuscripts, books of antiquities, ancient coins, medals, and other curiosities, as might be worthy to increase the Cottonian Library aforesaid;' to which end the same public benefactor further bequeathed his own library. In order therefore to give due effect, at length, both to the primary donation of Sir John COTTON, and to the additional benefaction made thereto by Major Arthur EDWARDS, Parliament now enacted that a general repository should be provided for the several collections of COTTON, EDWARDS, and SLOANE, and that Major EDWARDS' legacy of money should be paid to the Trustees created by the new Act, in accordance with the provisions heretofore recited in Sir Hans SLOANE's codicil of 1749. It is to the exertions, at this time, of Arthur ONSLOW, MR.SPEAKER the then Speaker of the House of Commons, that historical students owe their debt of gratitude for the preservaTION OF THE tion of the Harleian Manuscripts from that dispersion,abroad as well as at home,--which befel the Harleian printed books. BRITISH MUSEUM. When the Memorial of SLOANE'S Trustees was first presented to GEORGE THE SECOND, he received it with the stolid indifference to all matters bearing upon science and mental culture, which was as saliently characteristic of that king as were his grosser vices. 'I don't think there are twenty thousand pounds in the Treasury,' was the remark with which he dismissed the proposal. Money could be found, indeed, for very foolish purposes, and for very base And the bareness of the Treasury was, very often, the natural result of the profligacy of the Court. But, in 1753, it was a fact. ones. Save for Speaker ONSLOW's exertions, the Memorial would have fared little better in Parliament than at Court. The Chap. VI. FOUNDERS OF THE MUSEUM. then Premier, Henry PELHAM, was not unfriendly to the BOOK I scheme, nor was he, like his royal master, a man of sordid THE nature; but a Minister who was every now and then obliged to write to his ambassadors abroad, even in the crisis of SLOANE important negotiations, 'I have ordered you a part of your last year's appointments, but we are so poor that I can do no more,' could hardly be eager to provide forty or fifty thousand pounds for the purchase of a new Museum and the safety of an old Library. Commons' March 19, seqq. ONSLOW proposed-eventually-as a means of over- 1753. coming these difficulties, that a sum of money should be Journals, raised by a public lottery, and that it should be large enough to effect not only the immediate objects contemplated by the Will of Sir Hans SLOANE, and by the prior public establishment of Sir Robert COTTON's Library, but to purchase for a like purpose the noble series of Manuscripts which had passed (just eleven years before SLOANE'S death) to the executors of the last Earl of OXFORD, in trust for his widow, the Dowager Countess, and for his daughter, the Duchess of PORTLAND. Edward, Earl of OXFORD, had stood at one period of his life, in the rank of the wealthiest of Englishmen. He was the owner of estates worth some four or five hundred thousand pounds. He was, too, a man of highly intellectual and studious tastes; but, in his case, a magnificent style of living, great generosity, and excessive trust in dependants, did what is more usually the work of huge folly or of gross sins; they brought him into circumstances which, for his position in life, might almost be called those of poverty. But for this comparative impoverishment, his own act—it is more than probable-would have secured to posterity the enjoyment, in its entirety, of the splendid library he had inherited and increased. BOOK I, THE OF THE SLOANE MUSEUM. THE LOT FOR THE PURCHASE OF THE HARLEIAN To the proposal of a lottery there was much solid objection. What were then called 'parliamentary lotteries' had been introduced expressly to put down those private lotteries, common in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which had been fraught with mischief. It was hoped, or pretended, that a 'regulated' evil would be reduced within. tolerable limits, whilst bringing grist to the national mill. But the forty years that had passed since the first parliamentary lottery of 1709 had shown that the system was essentially and incurably mischievous. PELHAM was averse to its continuance. As First Lord of the Treasury, it was 1 his poverty, not his will, that consented to the adoption of so questionable an expedient for the purchase of the SLOANE Collections. He had not, individually, any such love of learning as might have induced an appeal to Parliament to set, for once, an example of liberal and far-sighted legislation. He merely stipulated that some stringent provisos should be put into the Act, directed against the nefarious practices of the lottery-jobbers. Eventually, it was enacted that there should be a hundred TERY OF 1753 thousand shares, at three pounds a share; that two hundred thousand pounds should be allotted as prizes, and that the SLOANE AND remaining hundred thousand-less the expenses of the lottery itself should be applied to the threefold purposes of the Act, namely, the purchase of the SLOANE and HARLEIAN Collections; the providing of a Repository; and the creation of an annual income for future maintenance. COLLEC TIONS. By the precautionary clauses of the Bill, provision was made for the prolonged sale of shares; for the prevention of the purchase by any one adventurer of more than twenty shares, or tickets,' and for other impediments, as it was ་ thought, to a fraudulent traffic in the combined covetous- BOOK I, ness and ignorance of the unwary. Chap. VI. FOUNDERS OF THE MUSEUM. All these precautions proved to be vain. Mr. PELHAM'S opposition was abundantly justified by the result. Fraud SLOANE proved to be, in that age, just as inseparable an element in a Lottery scheme, however good its purpose, as fraud has proved to be, in this age, an inseparable element (at one stage or other of the business) in a Railway scheme,-however useful the line proposed to be made. It thus came to pass that the foundation of the BRITISH MUSEUM gave rise to a great public scandal. When evidence was produced that many families had been brought to misery, as the first incident in the annals of a beneficent and noble foundation, a somewhat dull Session of Parliament was suddenly enlivened by an animated and angry debate. The provident clauses in the Lottery Act of 1753 were made of no effect, mainly by entrusting the chief share in working the Act to an accomplished jobber. One Peter LEHEUP was made a Commissioner of the Lottery. This man had held some employment or other at Hanover, from which he had been recalled with circumstances of disgrace. It is to be inferred, from the way in which his name points an epigrammatic phrase in one of the letters of BOLINGBROKE,* and in more than one of those of Horace WALPOLE, that it had come, long before this appointment took place, to have a sort of proverbial currency, like the names of CURLL' or of 'CHARTRES.' But, be that as it may, Mr. Commissioner LEHEUP set on foot as thriving and as flagitious a traffic in SLOANE lottery tickets, as was ever 6 * Walpole is your tyrant to-day; and any man His Majesty pleases to name-Horace or Leheup-may be so to-morrow.'-Bolingbroke to Marchmont, 22 July, 1739. THE PROSE- CUTION OF HIS DEAL THE MUSEUM 1753. December. BOOK I, THE OF THE MUSEUM. 6 set on foot in railway shares by a clever promoter of our The subsequent explosion of parliamentary anger was rather increased than lessened by an attempt of Henry Fox (afterwards the first Lord Holland) to extenuate LEHEUP'S offence by some arguments of the Tu quoque' sort. By a great majority, the House of Commons sent up an address praying the King to direct his Attorney General to prosecute the chief offender, who was accordingly convicted and fined a thousand pounds. It is not uninstructive to note that Horace WALPOLE--himself one of the SLOANE Trustees -treats the matter in one of his letters exactly in the offhand man-of-the-world style in which Henry Fox had treated it in the House of Commons.* By this unfortunate episode, the name of one of the best of Englishmen was brought into a sort of momentary connection with the name of one of the worst. But the chief discredit of the story does not really rest upon LEHEUP. A private citizen, of moderate means, had been willing to expend seventy or eighty thousand pounds-besides an in * Our House of Commons-mere poachers-are piddling with the torture of Leheup, who extracted so much money out of the Lottery.'Horuce Walpole to Richard Bentley, 19 December, 1753. 1 ་ |