plundered, the German cooks and intendants plundered; even Mustapha and Mahomet, the German negroes, had a share of the booty. Take what you can get, was the old monarch's maxim."
There was considerable discontent expressed in the early years of George's reign. Hallam says: "Much of this disaffection was owing to the cold reserve of George I., ignorant of the language, alien to the prejudices of his people, and continually absent in his electoral dominions, to which he seemed to sacrifice the nation's interest. … The letters in Coxe's Memoirs of Walpole, abundantly show the German nationality, the impolicy and neglect of his duties, the rapacity and petty selfishness of George I. The Whigs were much dissatisfied, but the fear of losing their places made them his slaves." In order to add the duchies of Bremen and Verden to Hanover, in 1716, the King, as Elector, made a treaty with Denmark against Sweden, which treaty proved the source of those Continental wars, and the attendant system of subsidies to European powers, which have, in the main, created our enormous National Debt. Bremen and Verden being actually purchased for George I. as the Elector of Hanover, with English money, Great Britain in addition was pledged by George I. to guarantee Sleswick to Denmark. Sweden and Denmark quarrelling—and George I. as Elector of Hanover having, without the consent of the English Parliament, declared war against Sweden—an English fleet was sent into the Baltic to take up a quarrel with which we had no concern. In addition we were involved in a quarrel with Russia, because that power had interfered to prevent Mecklenburg being added to George's Hanoverian estates. The chief mover in this matter was the notorious Baron Bernstoff, who held some village property in Mecklenburg. In all these complications, Hanover gained, England lost. If Hanover found troops, England paid for them, while the Electorate solely reaped the benefit. Every thoughtful writer admits that English interests were always betrayed to satisfy Hanoverian greed.
The King's fondness for Germany provoked some hostility, and amongst the various squibs issued, one in 1716, from the pen of Samuel Wesley, brother of John Wesley, is not without interest. It represents a conversation between George and the Duchess of Kendal:—
"As soon as the wind it came fairly about, That kept the King in and his enemies out, He determined no longer confinement to bear, And thus to the Duchess his mind did declare:
"Quoth he, 'My dear Kenny, I've been tired along while, With living obscure in this poor little isle, And now Spain and Pretender have no more mines to spring, I'm resolved to go home and live like a King."
The Duchess approves of this, describes and laughs at all the persons nominated for the Council of Regency, and concludes:—
"On the whole, I'll be hanged if all over the realm There are thirteen such fools to be put to the helm; So for this time be easy, nor have jealous thought, They ha'n't sense to sell you, nor are worth being bought."
"'Tis for that (quoth the King, in very bad French), I chose them for my regents, and you for my wench, And neither, I'm sure, will my trust e'er betray, For the devil won't take you if I turn you away."
It was this same Duchess of Kendal who, as the King's mistress, was publicly accused of having received enormous sums of money from the South Sea Company for herself and the King, in order to shield from justice the principal persons connected with those terrible South Sea frauds, by which, in the year 1720, so many families were reduced to misery.
In 1717, Mr. Shippen, a member of the House of Commons, was committed to the Tower, for saying in his place in the House, that it was the "infelicity of his Majesty's reign that he is unacquainted with our language and constitution." Lord Macaulay tells us how Lord Carteret, afterwards Earl Granville, rose into favor. The King could speak no English; Carteret was the only one of the Ministry who could speak German. "All the communication that Walpole had with his master was in very bad Latin." The influence Carteret wielded over the King did not extend to every member of the Royal Family. The Princess of Wales afterwards described the Lords Carteret and Bolingbroke as two she had "long known to be two as worthless men of parts as any in the country, and who I have not only been often told are two of the greatest liars and knaves in any country, but whom my own observation and experience have found so."
Under George I. our standing army was nearly doubled by the Whig Ministry, and this when peace would rather have justified a reduction than an increase. The payments to Hanoverian troops commenced under this king, a payment which William Pitt afterwards earned the enmity of George II. by very sharply denouncing, and which payment was but a step in the system of continental subsidies which have helped to swell our national debt to its present enormous dimensions.
In this reign the enclosure of waste lands was practically commenced, sixteen enclosure Acts being passed, and 17,-660 acres of land enclosed. This example, once furnished, was followed in the next reign with increasing rapidity, 226 enclosure Acts being passed in the reign of George II., and 318,778 acres of land enclosed. As Mr. Fawcett states, up to 1845, more than 7,000,000 acres of land, over which the public possessed invaluable rights, have been gradually absorbed, and individuals wielding legislative influence have been enriched at the expense of the public and the poor.
Within six years from his accession, the King was about £600,000 in debt, and this sum was the first of a long list of debts discharged by the nation for these Brunswicks. When our ministers to-day talk of obligations on the part of the people to endow each additional member of the Royal Family, the memory of these shameful extravagances should have some effect. George I. had a civil list of £700,000 a year; he received £300,000 from the Royal Exchange Assurance Company, and £300,000 from the London Assurance Companies, and had one million voted to him in 1726 towards payment of his debts.
When the "South Sea Bill" was promoted in 1720, wholesale bribery was resorted to. Transfers of stock were proved to have been made to persons high in office. Two members of the Whig Ministry, Lord Sunderland and Mr. Aislabie, were so implicated that they had to resign their offices, and the last-named, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer, was ignominiously expelled the House of Commons. Royalty itself, or at least, the King's sultanas, and several of his German household, shared the spoil. £30,000 were traced to the King's mistresses, and a select committee of the House denounced the whole business as "a train of the deepest villany and fraud with which hell ever contrived to ruin a nation." Near the close of the reign, Lord Macclesfied, Lord Chancellor and favorite and tool of the King, was impeached for extortion and abuse of trust in his office, and, being convicted, was sentenced to pay a fine of £30,000. In 1716, Mademoiselle Schulenberg, then Duchess of Munster, received £5,000 as a bribe for procuring the title of Viscount for Sir Henry St. John. In 1724, the same mistress, bribed by Lord Bolingbroke, successfully used her influence to pass an act through Parliament restoring him his forfeited estates. Mr. Chetwynd, says my Lady Cowper, in order to secure his position in the Board of Trade, paid to another of George's mistresses £500 down, agreed to allow her £200 a year as long as he held the place, and gave her also the fine, brilliant ear-rings she wore.
In 1724 there appeared in Dublin, the first of the famous "Drapier Letters," written by Jonathan Swift against Wood's coinage patent. A patent had been granted to a man named Wood for coining half-pence in Ireland. This grant was made under the influence of the Duchess of Kendal, the mistress of the King, and on the stipulation that she should receive a large share of the profits. These "Drapier Letters" were prosecuted by the Government, but Swift followed them with others; the grand juries refused to find true bills, and ultimately the patent was cancelled. Wood, or the Duchess, got as compensation a grant of a pension of £3,000 a year for eight years.
George died at Osnabruck, on his journey Hanover-wards, in June, 1727, having made a will by which he disposed of his money in some fashion displeasing to his son George II.; and as the Edinburgh Review tells us, the latter "evaded the old king's directions, and got his money by burning his will." In this, George II. only followed his royal father's example. When Sophia Dorothea died, she left a will bequeathing her property in a fashion displeasing to Greorge I., who, without scruple, destroyed the testament and appropriated the estate.
