In the room of Stanhope, Townshend became secretary of state; while Aislabie, finding it impossible to stem the popular torrent, resigned his office, which was conferred upon Walpole. But this resignation was far from contenting the public or abating their eagerness for the report of the secret committee. That committee certainly displayed no want of activity; it sat every day from nine in the morning to eleven at night, being resolved, as the chairman expressed it, "to show how the horse was curried."* At length, on the 16th of February, their first report was presented to the house. It appeared that they had experienced obstacles from the escape of Knight, from the taking away of some books, and from the defacing of others; but that the cross-examination of the directors and accountants had supplied the deficiency. A scene of infamous corruption was then disclosed. It was found that last year above half a million of fictitious South Sea stock had been created, in order that the profit upon that sum might be disposed of by the directors to facilitate the passing of the bill. The duchess of Kendal had £10,000; another of the king's favourites, Madame de Platen, with laudable impartiality, had the same sum; nor were the two nieces of the latter forgotten. Against these ladies no steps were, nor perhaps could be taken. But those persons in the administration accused of similar peculation were secretary Craggs, his father, the postmaster general, Mr. Charles Stanhope, secretary of the treasury, Mr. Aislabie, and the earl of Sunderland; and the report added the various evidence in the case of each.

On the very day when this report was read in the commons died one of the statesmen accused in it, James Craggs, secretary of state. His illness was the smallpox, then very prevalent,† joined no doubt to anxiety of mind. Whatever may have been his condnet in the South Sea affairs (for his death arrested the enquiry), he undoubtedly combined great talents for business with a love of learning and literature; and his name, were it even to drop from the page of history, would live enshrined for ever in the verse of Pope. But the fate of his father was still more lamentable. A few weeks afterwards, when the accusation was pressing upon him, he swallowed poison and expired. If we may trust Horace Walpole, sir Robert subsequently declared that the unhappy man had hinted his intention to him.

The other cases were prosecuted by the house with proper vigour, and singly, as standing each on separate grounds. The first that came on was that of Mr. Charles Stanhope, secretary to the treasury; he was a kinsman of the late minister, and brother of colonel William Stanhope, afterwards lord Harrington. It was proved that a large sum of stock had been entered for him in the bank of sir George Caswall and Co., and that his name had been partly erased from their books, and altered to Stangape. On his behalf it was contended, that the transfer had been made without his knowledge or consent; but I am bound to acknowledge that I think the change of his name in the ledger a most suspicious circumstance. On a division he was declared innocent, but only by a majority of three. On this occasion, according to Mr. Brodrick, "lord Stanhope, son to lord Chesterfield, carried off a pretty many by mentioning in the strongest terms the memory of the late lord of that name."§ This respect to a living minister would not surprise us, but it was surely no small testimony to the memory of a dead one.

The next case was Aislabie's. It was so flagrant that scarce any member ventured to defend him, and none to divide the house; he was unanimously expelled, and sent to the Tower, and afterwards great part of his property seized.

Mr. Brodrick to Lord Middleton, February 4, 1721.

Many had

See a list of its victims in that month, in Boyer's Political State, vol. 21, p. 196, &c. Compare Walpole's Reminiscences, Works, vol. 4, p. 288, ed. 1798, and Brodrick's letter to Lord Middleton, March 16, 1721.

To Lord Middleton, March 7, 1721.

been the murmurs at Stanhope's acquittal; and so great was the rejoicing on Aislabie's conviction that there were bonfires that night in the city.

Lord Sunderland now remained. He was charged with having received, through Knight, £50,000 stock without payment, and the public outcry against him was fierce and loud, but, as I believe, unfounded. The charge rested entirely on hearsay testimony, on words which sir John Blunt said that Knight had said to him: there was collateral evidence to shake it; and the character of Blunt himself was that of a dishonest and now ruined and desperate man. It is also remarkable that Sunderland had in fact lost considerably by the South Sea scheme, and that one of his bitterest enemies then accused him, not of having confederated with the directors, but of being their dupe and victim.* So strong seemed these considerations, that a large majority (233 against 172) declared the minister innocent. But notwithstanding this acquittal, the popular ferment was too strong for Sunderland to continue at the head of the treasury; he resigned, and was succeeded by Walpole. His influence at court, however, still continued, and he obtained the appointment of lord Carteret in the room of secretary Craggs.

THE FATE OF THE SOUTH SEA DIRECTORS.

EDWARD GIBBON.

Under the tory administration of the four last years of queen Anne (1710-1714), Mr. Edward Gibbon was appointed one of the commissioners of the Customs; he sat at that board with Prior: but the merchant was better qualified for his station than the poet; since lord Bolingbroke has been heard to declare, that he had never conversed with a man who more clearly understood the commerce and finances of England. In the year 1716 he was elected one of the directors of the South Sea company; and his books exhibited the proof that, before his acceptance of this fatal office, he had acquired an independent fortune of sixty thousand pounds.

But his fortune was overwhelmed in the shipwreck of the year twenty, and the labours of thirty years were blasted in a single day. Of the use or abuse of the South Sea scheme, of the guilt or innocence of my grandfather and his brother directors, I am neither a competent nor a disinterested judge. Yet the equity of modern times must condemn the violent and arbitrary proceedings, which would have disgraced the cause of justice, and would render injustice still more odious. No sooner had the nation awakened from its golden dream, than a popular and even a parliamentary clamour demanded their victims: but it was acknowledged on all sides that the South Sea directors, however guilty, could not be touched by any known laws of the land. The speech of lord Molesworth, the author of "The State of Denmark," may show the temper, or rather the intemperance, of the house of commons. "Extraordinary crimes," exclaimed that ardent whig, "call aloud for extraordinary remedies. The Roman lawgivers had not foreseen the possible existence of a parricide: but as soon as the first monster appeared, he was sewn in a sack, and thrown headlong into the river; and I shall be content to inflict the same treatment on the authors of our present ruin." His motion was not literally adopted; but a bill of pains and penalties was introduced, a retroactive statute, to punish the offences, which did not exist at the time they were committed. Such a pernicious violation of liberty and law can be excused only by the most imperious necessity; nor could it be defended on this occasion by the plea of impending

* Mr. Brodrick to Lord Middleton, September 27, 1720.

danger or useful example. The legislature restrained the persons of the directors, imposed an exorbitant security for their appearance, and marked their characters with a previous note of ignominy: they were compelled to deliver, upon oath, the strict value of their estates; and were disabled from making any transfer or alienation of any part of their property. Against a bill of pains and penalties it is the common right of every subject to be heard by his counsel at the bar: they prayed to be heard; their prayer was refused; and their oppressors, who required no evidence, would listen to no defence. It had been at first proposed that one-eighth of their respective estates should be allowed for the future support of the directors; but it was speciously urged, that in the various shades of opulence and guilt such an unequal proportion would be too light for many, and for some might possibly be too heavy. The character and conduct of each man were separately weighed; but instead of the calm solemnity of a judicial inquiry, the fortune and honour of three and thirty Englishmen were made the topic of hasty conversation, the sport of a lawless majority; and the basest member of the committee, by a malicious word or a silent vote, might indulge his general spleen or personal animosity. Injury was aggravated by insult, and insult was embittered by pleasantry. Allowances of twenty pounds, or one shilling, were facetiously moved. A vague report that a director had formerly been concerned in another project, by which some unknown persons had lost their money, was admitted as a proof of his actual guilt. One man was ruined because he had dropped a foolish speech, that his horses should feed upon gold; another because he was grown so proud, that, one day at the treasury, he had refused a civil answer to persons much above him. All were condemned, absent and unheard, in arbitrary fines and forfeitures, which swept away the greatest part of their substance. Such bold oppression can scarcely be shielded by the omnipotence of parliament: and yet it may be seriously questioned, whether the judges of the South Sea directors were the true and legal representatives of their country. The first parliament of George the First had been chosen (1715) for three years the term had elapsed, their trust was expired; and the four additional years (1718-1722), during which they continued to sit, were derived not from the people, but from themselves; from the strong measure of the septennial bill, which can only be paralleled by il serar di consiglio of the Venetian history. Yet candour will own that to the same parliament every Englishman is deeply indebted: the septennial act, so vicious in its origin, has been sanctioned by time, experience, and the national consent. Its first operation secured the house of Hanover on the throne, and its permanent influence maintains the peace and stability of government. As often as a repeal has been moved in the house of commons, I have given in its defence a clear and conscientious vote.

THE BISHOP AND HIS DOG, 1722.

LORD MAHON.

Francis Atterbury was born in 1662, and educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford; he distinguished himself at a very early age by a powerful defence of Luther, and on taking orders commanded universal attention by his eloquence and active temper. It was by him that the lower house of convocation was mainly guided and governed; he was high in the confidence of queen Anne's last ministers, and in 1713 was promoted by them to the deanery of Westminster and bishopric of Rochester. Few men have attained a more complete mastery of the English language, and all his compositions are marked with peculiaree, elegance and dignity of style. A fine person and a graceful delivery ad to his eloquence both in the pulpit and in the house of lords. His

aspiring mind constantly impelled him into violent measures, which were well supported by his abilities, but which seemed in some degree alien from his sphere. It is well observed by Mirabeau, in speaking of the duke of Brunswick, that the great sign of a well regulated character is not merely to be equal to its daily task, but to be satisfied with it, and not to step beyond it in search of fresh employment. Atterbury, on the contrary, could never remain tranquil. He might be compared to the chivalrous Peterborough exclaiming to the minister, "You must find me work, in the old world or the new."

His devotion to the protestant faith was warm and pure; his labours for the established church no less praiseworthy; but his defence was of somewhat too fierce and turbulent a character; he thought less of personal worth than of party principles in others, and he was one of those, of whom it has been wittily said, that out of their zeal for religion they have never time to say their prayers! Yet in private life no trace of his vehemence or bitterness appeared; his "softer hour" is affectionately remembered by Pope, and his own devoted love to his daughter, Mrs. Morice, sheds a milder light around his character. On the whole he would have been an admirable bishop, had he been a less good partizan.

The political views of Atterbury were always steadily directed against the accession of the house of Hanover. When the rebellion broke forth in 1715 a declaration of abhorrence of it was published by the other prelates; but Atterbury refused to sign it, on the pretext of some reflections it contained against the high church party. At no distant period from that time we find him in frequent correspondence with James, writing for the most part in a borrowed hand, and under counterfeit names, such as Jones and Illington. Were we inclined to seek some excuse for his adherence to that cause, we might, perhaps, find it in his close study of lord Clarendon's history, which had been edited by himself, conjointly with Aldrich and Smalridge. I have always considered the publication of that noble work (it first appeared under queen Anne) as one of the main causes of the second growth of Jacobitism. How great seems the character of the author! How worthy the principles he supports and the actions he details! Who could read those volumes and not first be touched, and at last won by his unconquerable spirit of loyalty—by his firm attachment to the fallen-by his enduring and well founded trust in God when there seemed to be none left in man! Whose heart could fail to relent to that unhappy monarch more sinned against than sinning—to that "gray discrowned head," which lay upon a pillow of thorns at Carisbrooke and rolled upon a block at Whitehall? Or whose mind would not brighten at the thought of his exiled son-in difficulty and distress, with every successive attempt disappointed -every rising hope dashed down--and yet suddenly restored against all probable chances, and with one universal shout of joy! How spirit stirring must that history have been to all, but above all to those (and there were many at that time) whose own ancestors and kinsmen are honourably commemorated in its pages-the soldiers of Rupert-or the friends of Falkland! Can we wonder then or severely blame, if their thoughts descended one step lower, and turned to the grandson-also exiled for no fault of his own, and pining in a distant land under circumstances not far unlike to those of Charles Stuart in France.

I know the difference of the cases, and most of all in what Atterbury ought least to have forgotten, in religion: I am not pleading for Jacobitism, but I do plead for the honest delusion and pardonable frailty of many who espoused that cause; I am anxious to show that the large section of our countrymen which sighed

Une marque d'un très bon esprit ce me semble, et d'un caractère superieur c'est moins encore qu'il suffit au travail de chaque jour, que le travail de chaque jour lui suffit. Histoirs secrète de Berlin, vol. i., p. 30, edit. 1789.

for the restoration of James, were not all the base and besotted wretches we have been accustomed to consider them.

The great object of Atterbury and of the other Jacobite leaders, was to obtain a foreign force of 5,000 troops to land under Ormond. Failing in this, from the engagements of the English government with almost every continental court, they determined, nevertheless, to proceed with only such assistance in arms, money, and disbanded officers or soldiers as could be privately procured abroad. For this purpose their manager in Spain was Ormond; in France general Dillon, an Irish Roman catholic, who had left Ireland after the capitulation of Limerick, and had since risen in the French service. The project was to have made themselves masters of the Tower; to have seized the Bank, the Exchequer and other places where the public money was lodged, and to have proclaimed the pretender at the same time in different parts of the kingdom. The best time for this explosion was thought to be during the tumults and confusion of the general elections; but the chiefs not being able to agree among themselves, it was deferred till the king's journey to Hanover, which was expected to take place in the summer. himself was to embark at port Longone, where three vessels were ready for him, and to sail secretly to Spain, and from thence to England as soon as he should hear of the king's departure. Already had he left Rome for a villa, the better to cover his absence when it should take place; and with a similar view had Ormond also gone from Madrid to a country seat half way to Bilbao.

James

But the eye of the government was already upon them. One of their applications for 5,000 troops had been made to the regent of France, who, as they might have foreseen, so far from granting their request, immediately revealed it to sir Luke Schaub, the English minister, on the condition, it is said, that no one should die for it. Other intelligence and discoveries completed the information of the government, and they became apprised, not merely of the intended schemes and of the contriving heads, but, also, of the subaltern agents, especially Thomas Carte and Kelly, two non-juring clergymen, Plunkett, the same Jesuit whose active intrigues in 1713 have been mentioned, Neynoe, another Irish priest, and Layer, a young barrister of the Temple. So many of their letters were intercepted abroad, that at length some conspirators, perceiving it, wrote letters on purpose to be opened, and with false news, to mislead and distract the government; but this artifice could not impose on the sagacity of Walpole. Prudent measures were now adopted with prudent speed. The king was persuaded to relinquish his journey to Hanover for this year; troops were immediately drawn to London and a camp was formed in Hyde Park. An order was also obtained from the court of Madrid to restrain Ormond from embarking. This would, no doubt, have been sufficient to make the conspirators postpone their scheme; but the object was to crush it altogether, and, with this view, warrants were issued for the apprehension of all the subaltern agents above named, and of several others.

On the 21st of May accordingly Mr. Kelly was seized at his lodgings in Bury Street by two messengers. They came upon him by surprise, and took his sword and papers, which they placed in a window while they proceeded with their search. But their negligence gave Kelly an opportunity of recovering his weapon and of threatening to run through the first man that came near him, and so saying he burnt his papers with his left hand while he held his drawn sword in the other. When the papers were burnt, and not till then, he surrendered. Neynoe on his arrest showed equal spirit, but he did not meet with the same success. He escaped from a window two stories high by tying the blankets and sheets together, and came down upon a garden wall near the Thames, from which he leaped into the water, but as he could not swim was drowned. An attempt to escape was also made by Layer; but being