1713 The and the Spanish Netherlands were given to Charles VI. Dutch were to be allowed to place garrisons in certain towns of the so-called Barrier on the southern frontier of what had lately been the Spanish Netherlands. England obtained the largest share of the material advantages of the peace, while she lost credit by her ill-faith in concealing her abandonment of her allies, and especially in giving up the Catalans to the vengeance of Philip. In Europe she was to keep Gibraltar and Minorca, and obtained from France a promise to destroy the fortifications of Dunkirk. In America she acquired territory round Hudson's Bay, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and the French part of St. Christopher's. By an accompanying treaty with Spain, called the Assiento Treaty, she had the sole right of importing negro slaves into the Spanish colonies in America, a traffic which would now be scouted as infamous, but which was then coveted as lucrative, and she also obtained the right of sending yearly to Panama a ship of 600 tons laden with goods for the Spanish colonists. The general character of the Treaty of Utrecht is of greater historical importance than its details. It marks the end of a period of European history during which there was often some reality and always some pretense of combining together for common purposes of general interest, and not merely for the particular interests of the several states. Down to the Treaties of Westphalia, in 1648, Catholics had combined against Protestants and Protestants against Catholics. After that date states which feared the overbearing insolence of Louis XIV. had combined against France. The Treaty of Utrecht ushered in a period lasting almost to the end of the eighteenth century, when each state stood up for its own interests alone, when no steady combinations could be formed, and when greed for material accessions was most conspicuous because no purpose of seeking the general good existed. Swift threw the blame upon the allies, and the Whigs threw the blame upon the Tories. The truth is that states combine readily through fear, and very seldom through a desire for the common good, and when Louis XIV. ceased to be formidable each state thought exclusively of its own interests. The success of the Tory ministers seemed complete. In reality, the very terms of the Treaty of Utrecht revealed their weakness. In seeking to gain material advantages for England, Oxford and Bolingbroke had been forced to look for them in ad 1711-1713 vantages to trade, and in the increase of colonial dominion by which trade might be encouraged. Thereby they strengthened the trading class, which was the main support of the Whigs, while the landed gentry, on whom their own power mainly rested, received no benefit. Not that the Tories could well help doing what they had done. During the two wars which had been waged since the fall of James II. an immense change had been taking place in the relations between England and the other European states, irrespective of the victories of Marlborough in the field. Both France and the States General of the Dutch Netherlands had been forced to wage an exhausting war on their land frontier. The consequence was that the Dutch were no longer able to compete with the English at sea, and that Louis being, after the battle of La Hogue, compelled to limit his efforts either at sea or on land, decided to limit them at sea. The result was, that though there were no important English naval victories between the battle of La Hogue and the Peace of Utrecht, the English navy at the end of the war was vastly superior to the navies of its only possible rivals, France and the Dutch Republic. England was now the one great seapower in Europe, not so much through her own increasing strength as through the decay of the maritime vigor of other states. The increase of maritime power necessarily leading to an increase of the influence of the commercial class, the Tory leaders were filled with alarm about the future, and tried to secure their power by legislation which, as they hoped, might arrest the changes which seemed likely in the future, and to strengthen their party by artificial means against changes of public opinion, much as the men of the Long Parliament and the Protectorate had formerly tried to do. In 1711 the Occasional Conformity Act had gone far to prevent Dissenters from holding office or sitting in Parliament, and earlier in the same year had been passed a Property Qualification Act which enacted that no one who did not hold land worth at least 200l. a year should sit in the House of Commons, thus excluding mere traders, who were for the most part Whigs. In 1713 the Tories were confronted with a further difficulty. Anne's health was failing, and the legal heir, the Electress Sophia, and her son, the Elector of Hanover, were both favorable to the Whigs. The Tories began to talk of securing the succession to the Pretender, the son of James II., by force or fraud. If only he had changed his religion and had avowed himself a Protestant, it is almost 1713-1714 certain that an effort, possibly successful, would have been made to place him on the throne when Anne died. The Pretender was a man of little capacity, but he was too honest to change his religion for worldly ends, and he flatly refused to do so. The Tories were split into hostile parties by his refusal. Some, the pure Jacobites, clung to him in spite of it; some went over to the Whigs. The bulk of them were too bewildered to know what to do. They were aware that their supporters, the country gentry and the country clergy, would refuse to submit to a Roman Catholic king, and yet they could not voluntarily support the claims of the Electress Sophia and her son, whose succession they feared. To add to the distractions of the party its leaders, Oxford and Bolingbroke, quarreled with one another. In 1714 Swift suggested that the difficulty would be at an end if his friends would accept the Hanoverian succession, and at the same time so weaken the Whigs by repressive legislation that the new Hanoverian sovereign would be obliged to govern in accordance with the will of the Tories. In pursuance of this plan Bolingbroke carried through Parliament a Schism Act, by which no one was allowed to keep a school without license from the bishop. Oxford, who was always in favor of a middle course, and therefore disliked violent measures against the Dissenters, was driven from office, and Bolingbroke then hoped to control the Government for some time to come. Before a successor to Oxford was appointed, while the ministers were without any distinct policy or acknowledged head, and while even Bolingbroke himself had not definitely made up his mind as to his future plans, the queen was taken ill. Bolingbroke's enemies, the Dukes of Somerset and Argyle, made their appearance unexpectedly in the Council and obtained the consent of the queen to the appointment of the Duke of Shrewsbury as Treasurer. The queen died on August 1, and the Elector of Hanover, now heir to the Crown by the provisions of the Act of Settlement, in consequence of the recent death of his mother, the Electress Sophia, was at once proclaimed by the title of George I. In art as in politics the end of the reign of Anne completes a change long in progress from the ideal to the convenient. As in affairs of state the material interests of the country gentleman and of the trader took the place of the great causes which called out the enthusiasm of Cavalier and Roundhead in the Civil War, so in art painting became a mode of perpetuating the features of those 1714 who were rich enough to pay for having their portraits taken; and architecture, which had long forgotten the life and beauty of the medieval churches, was losing even the stateliness which Sir Christopher Wren gave to such buildings as the new St. Paul's and Greenwich Hospital. On the whole, it was the commonplace which was gaining ground, and which ultimately pervaded the domestic buildings raised during the greater part of the eighteenth century. B Chapter XLV ESTABLISHMENT OF PARLIAMENTARY SU- LEADING DATES REIGN OF GEORGE I. A.D. 1714-1727—REIGN OF GEORGE II., A.D. EFORE George I. arrived in England a thorough change was made by his orders in all the offices of Government. With scarcely an exception all Tories were dismissed and Whigs appointed in their place. As the new king intended to take a leading part in the Government, he placed the more important offices in the hands of men who had hitherto been less prominent than the great Whig leaders of Anne's reign. The most conspicuous of the new ministers was Lord Townshend, who became Secretary of State. When the king arrived he found that his own power was much less than he had expected. He could not speak English, and all communications between himself and his ministers were carried on in bad Latin. He therefore set the example, which all subsequent sovereigns have followed, of abstaining from attending Cabinet meetings, where the discussion took place in a language unintelligible to him. This abstention had important constitutional results. The Cabinet, which for some time had been growing independent of the sovereign, became still more independent, especially as George knew no more of English ways than he knew of the English language, and was obliged to take most of the advice of his ministers on trust. He could not think of replacing them by Tories, because he had been led to look upon all Tories as Jacobites. The Whigs, however, needed the support of Parliament more |