are passages in Arbuthnot's satirical works which we, at least, cannot distinguish from Swift's best writing.' Swift himself spoke of Arbuthnot in yet higher terms. He has more wit than we all have,' was Swift's declaration, and his humanity is equal to his wit.' There are not many satirists known to men during all literary history of whom quite so much could be said with any faintest colour of a regard for truth. Swift was too warm in his friendly panegyric on Arbuthnot's humour, but he did not too highly estimate Arbuthnot's humanity. Humour is among man's highest gifts, and has done the world splendid service, but humour and humanity together make the mercy winged with brave actions, which, according to Massinger, befit a soul moulded for heaven' and destined to be made a star there.'

CHAPTER XXII.

THE FAMILY COMPACT.'

THE new Parliament met on January 14, 1735. The Royal intimation was given to the House of Commons by the Lord Chancellor, that it was his Majesty's pleasure that they should return to their own House and choose a Speaker. Arthur Onslow was unanimously elected, or rather re-elected, to the chair he had filled with so much distinction in the former Parliament. The speech from the Throne was not delivered until January 23. The speech was almost all taken up with foreign affairs, with the war on the Continent, and the efforts of the King and his ministers, in combination with the States General of the United Provinces, to extinguish it. 'I have the satisfaction to acquaint you,' the King said, that things are now brought to so great a forwardness that I hope in a short time a plan will be offered to the consideration of all the parties engaged in the present war, as a basis for a general negotiation of peace, in which the honour and the interest of all parties have been consulted as far as the circumstances of time and the present posture of affairs would admit.' The Royal speech did not

contain one single word which had to do with the internal condition of England, with the daily lives of the English people. No legislation was promised, or even hinted at, which concerned the domestic interests of these islands. The House of Lords set to work at once in the preparation of an Address in reply to the speech from the Throne; and they, too, debated only of foreign affairs, and took no more account of their own fellow-countrymen than of the dwellers in Jupiter or Saturn

The war, to which the Royal speech referred, had been dragging along for some time. No quarrel could have less direct interest for the English people than that about which the Emperor Charles the Sixth and the King of France, Louis the Fifteenth, were fighting. On the death of Augustus the Second, of Poland, in February, 1733, Louis thought it a good opportunity for putting his own fatherin-law, Stanislaus Leszczynski, back on the throne of Poland, from which he had twice been driven. Poland was a republic with an elective King, and a very peculiar form of constitution, by virtue of which any one of the estates or electoral colleges of the realm was in a position to stop the action of all the others at any crisis when decision was especially needed. The result of this was that the elected King was always a nominee of one or another of the great Continental Powers who took it on themselves to intervene in the affairs of Poland. The election of a King of Poland was always a mere struggle between these Powers: the strongest at the

1735.

POOR POLAND.

31

moment carried its man. Stanislaus, the father of Louis the Fifteenth's wife, had been a protégé of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden. He was a man of illustrious family and of great and varied abilities, a scholar and a writer. Charles drove Augustus the Second, Augustus, Elector of Saxony, from the throne of Poland, and set up Stanislaus in his place. Stanislaus, however, was driven out of the country by Augustus and his friends, who rallied and became strong in the temporary difficulties of Charles. When Charles found time to turn his attention to Poland he soon overthrew Augustus and set up Stanislaus once again. But, 'hide, blushing glory, hide, Pultowa's day,' the fall of the great Charles came, and brought with it the fall of Stanislaus. Augustus re-entered Poland at the head of a Saxon army, and Stanislaus was compelled to abdicate. Now that Augustus was dead, Louis the Fifteenth determined to bring Stanislaus out from his retirement of many years and set him for the third time on the Polish throne. On the other hand, the Emperor and Russia alike favoured the son of the late King, another Augustus, Elector of Saxony. The French party carried Stanislaus, although at the time of his abdication, three or four-and-twenty years before, he had been declared incapable of ever again being elected King of Poland. The Saxon party, secretly backed up by Russia, resisted Stanislaus, attacked his partisans, drove him once more from Warsaw, and proclaimed Augustus the Third. Louis of France declared war, not on Russia, but on the Emperor, alleging

that the Emperor had been the inspiration and support of the Saxon movement. A French army

under Marshal Berwick, son of James the Second of England, crossed the Rhine and took the fort of Kehl-the scene of a memorable crossing of the Rhine, to be re-crossed very rapidly after, in days nearer to our own. Spain and Sardinia were in alliance with Louis, and the Emperor's army, although led by the great Eugene, 'Der edle Ritter,' was not able to make head against the French. The Emperor sent frequent urgent and impassioned appeals to England for assistance. George was anxious to lend him a helping hand, clamoured to be allowed to take the field himself, and win glory in battle; camps and battlefields were what he loved most, he kept dinning into Walpole's unappreciative ear. Even the Queen was not disinclined to draw the sword in defence of an imperilled and harassed ally.

Walpole stuck to his policy of masterly inactivity. He would have wished to exclude Stanislaus from the Polish throne, but he was not willing to go to war with France. He could not bring himself to believe that the interests of England were concerned in the struggle to such a degree as to warrant the waste of English money and the pouring out of English blood. But he did not take his stand on such a broad and clear position; indeed at that time it would not have been a firm or a tenable position. Walpole did not venture to say that the question whether this man or that was to sit on the