the Straits of Messina, and after a running fight of long duration the Spanish flag was hauled down from every ship of the main division, and Captain Walton, who had been ordered with a squadron in pursuit of the others, sent the following eloquent despatch to the commander-in-chief:-"Sir, we have taken and destroyed all the Spanish vessels which were upon the coast; number as per margin." This raised the loss of the Spaniards to seventeen ships of war, and the Mediterranean henceforth was in the hands of Britain.

So great was the effect of this victory and Byng's activity and skill, that Philip, deprived of his fleets, driven out of Sicily, debarred from Sardinia, and altogether in a helpless condition, and exposed to the advancing forces of the four allies, was obliged at last, not only to sue for peace, but himself to become a member of the alliance for the destruction of his hopes of the crown of France and maintenance of the Protestant succession in England.

§ 9. From this time the reign was passed almost in entire peace with foreign powers, but was so afflicted with domestic quarrels, that George regretted more and more that he had ever exchanged his ducal and electoral chair for a royal throne. The system began at this period of sacrificing the most sacred ties to the exigencies of party. The Prince of Wales was looked on as the natural leader of opposition, and all the dearest schemes and aspirations of the father were denounced and contravened by the son. For a long succession of kings and princes this was the rule. Happy in this, as in all other characteristics of our present sovereign, we see the greatest public virtues combined with "the sweet domestic charities of life," and are taught a lesson useful to cottage and castle equally, that no social position can be deprived, except by the fault of those who hold it, of the family affections.

§ 10. No humility of station could have given happiness to George the First's fireside. Hatred sat beside it in the

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person of his eldest son, and the nation was offended with the spectacle of vulgar disagreements vulgarly carried on between. the two greatest personages in the land. Other circumstances of his conduct contributed to weaken the people's respect for the king. Age had not corrected his conduct in respect to female favourites, and old men who remembered the gorgeous beauty of the Duchess of Cleveland and the graceful fascinations of Nell Gwynn, might have forgiven the present monarch if he had shown as much taste as his mirthful and immoral predecessor; but the beauties of George's choice were hideous to behold; the only doubt among the connoisseurs of ugliness being whether the Duchess of Kendal was more frightful than Madame Platen, or Madame Platen than the Duchess of Kendal. A king sensual without refinement; a Prince of Wales without dignity or affection; a Parliament collected by open bribery, and guided in its decisions by personal interests alone; a generation now in full manhood which had been nursed on the corrupted viands of revolution and civil war-these and other peculiarities of the time had sunk us into the lowest state of moral degradation we have ever known.

§ 11. Already there was the dawn of a better day in the improved spirit of the literature of the time. Gentle pictures of female purity and manly sense were painted in the periodical publications which had the greatest sale. The stage began to cast off the leprous robes of Congreve and Farquhar, and clothe itself in the healthful, every-day garments of Rowe and Gay; but the gangrene was deep-seated, and the mingled baseness, ignorance, and avarice of the time were shown in what is called the South Sea Bubble, which spread ruin and misery through the realm in the year 1720.

§ 12. This was a scheme borrowed from the Mississippi scheme of Law, who had persuaded the French of the boundless wealth they might obtain by certain speculations in the great plains of America. A speculator of the name of Blunt

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produced a plan for buying up the annuities which had been granted on the national income to the amount of eight hundred thousand pounds. The South Sea Company, of which this man Blunt was a director, competed with the Bank of England for the purchase of these obligations, and was successful at the sum of seven millions and a half. It secured certain privileges in consideration of having furnished the country with capital enough to supply the interest of the debt, and on these privileges, wild and imaginary as an opium eater's dream, the great delusion was built. Shares in the South Sea Company ran up to a hundred times their cost price when it was understood that it had obtained monopolies of colonial trade and the countenance of the ministers. Visions flitted before the public of unlimited affluence to be secured on the deposit of sixpence a share. Rumours were raised of a gift by Spain of a large portion of Peru in exchange for Gibraltar; and dukes, earls, duchesses, and countesses waited in the ante-rooms of the projectors begging for the privilege of purchasing their debentures at a profit of a thousand per cent.

When the crash came, and no Peru was forthcoming, and no profitable investment for the money of the company, the nation tried to conceal its own blindness and worship of Mammon under an appearance of virtuous indignation against the inventors of the scheme. The projectors were traced out and fined; even the profits realized by the dead were seized and employed to diminish the public loss, and poor families who had sunk deeper into poverty, and nobles who were unable to live in their former style, were gratified with revenge on the authors of their sufferings. Members of Parliament who had aided the fraud were expelled, the Chancellor of the Exchequer was dismissed, the Lord Treasurer resigned, and the Postmaster-General committed suicide. The more fortunate or wiser speculators were rewarded. Sir Robert Walpole, who had cleared a thousand on every nominal hundred he

A.D. 1725.] PUBLIC VENALITY AND CORRUPTION. 691 had subscribed, was called on to heal the wounds by which he had benefited so much, and became chief Minister of Finance. The buoyancy of English commerce replaced the losses in a short time, and the hideous goddesses to whom George paid his devotions kept their ill-got gains without any inquiry into the jobbery by which they had been obtained. § 13. The disclosures of public immorality in the South Sea trials were followed by the discovery of the disgraceful venality and corruption of Lord Macclesfield, the Lord High Chancellor. It did not satisfy the public wrath that punishment overtook this malefactor, and that he was fined thirty thousand pounds. The appalling truth was revealed that the cancer of dishonesty had penetrated to the highest officebearers of the State and administrators of the law. It would be worth while, if we had space for the inquiry, to trace the steps by which a nation recovers its self-respect after such a forfeiture of all our noblest characteristics as this painful period presents. It will be sufficient to point to one great instrument of regeneration and improvement, in the daylight which now began to be poured on the actions of our public men. The standard of public opinion, maintained by a jealous and sensorious press, is always higher than the actual state of morals or information. Every deed was canvassed, every speech was criticised in a spirit of cavil and depreciation, as if a nation of Phocions had arisen on the earth. But the elevation of the standard raised the stature of our statesmen and clergy. Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester, was convicted of underhand negotiations with the Pretender, and was glad to escape beyond sea. He still, however, paid such deference to the awakening spirit of justice and moderation, that in the midst of his labours as the unprincipled secretary and partisan of James III., he wrote letters, evidently intended for publication, filled with the most philosophic expressions of content and declamations in favour of virtue.

§ 14. Clouds of approaching war began to darken the

narrowing horizon of George I. Conventions were entered into with Sweden, Denmark, and Hesse; large sums of British money being paid for strictly Hanoverian interests. France, also, was relied on as our ally against Spain and the Empire, and for a short time hostilities raged in the most formal manner between England and the former of those powers. The great fortress of Gibraltar was invested, and sustained a siege of four months without any considerable loss to the defenders. In the month of May a peace signed at Soissons put an end to those useless quarrels, and George departed for his continental States. In passing through Osnaburgh he was attacked by paralysis, and in a few hours expired, after a life of sixty-eight years, and a reign over England of thirteen. They were years not of glory or conquest, though the national power certainly increased; and witnessed a great advance in general wealth and industry, in spite of the dishonesty of trading politicians and the behaviour of our public men.