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THREE:The discontents occasioned by the South Sea scheme and its issue had caused the Jacobites to conceive fresh hopes of success, and their spirits were still more elevated by the birth of a son to the Pretender. The business of this faction was conducted in England by a junto or council, amongst the chief members of which were the Earls of Arran and Orrery, Lords North and Gower, and the Bishop of Rochester. Lord Oxford had been invited to put himself at the head of this council of five, but everything of a decided nature was out of his character. He continued to correspond with the leaders of the faction, but he declined putting himself too forward. In fact, his habitual irresolution was now doubled by advancing[50] infirmities, and he died three years afterwards. Though several of the junto were men of parliamentary, and North of military experience, Atterbury was the undoubted head of it. The period of confusion created by the South Sea agitation was first pitched on for a new attempt, then that of the general election, which had taken place in March, and, finally, it was deferred till the king should have gone to Hanover, according to his custom, in the summer.Notwithstanding these addresses and the confident tone of the Queen's Speech, the Funds fell, and there was general dissatisfaction at the conditions of the proposed pacification. In order to stimulate the proceedings and excite a jealousy of the Dutch, St. John professed to discover that they were themselves secretly negotiating with France, and urged that, if we did not take care, they would have the management of the negotiations and not her Majesty. Lord Strafford hastened back to the Hague, and from thence to Utrecht, where he proposed a cessation of arms, which was rejected by the Allies. He then went on to the army, where the Duke of Ormonde was in a situation of the utmost difficulty. He had received orders from Government, in consequence of the clamour in Parliament, to support Prince Eugene at the siege of Quesnoy, which he had invested on the 8th of June, and accordingly he had appeared before the place with such forces as threatened speedily to reduce it. At the same time he had received from the Marquis de Torcy a copy of the articles of peace signed by him, and from the Marquis of Villars the most bitter remonstrances on his conduct, which he did not hesitate to declare most perfidious and disgraceful. On the other hand, Prince Eugene, who did not find the English forces, notwithstanding their presence, rendering any active service, was equally irritated by his proceedings. Ormonde could but reply to each party that such were his orders, and leave the Government to bear the ignominy of it. To extricate themselves from the just censures on this dishonourable policy, St. John instructed Ormonde to demand from Villars the surrender of Dunkirk, which, it was asserted, must be put into the hands of the queen's troops, as a pledge that France would perform all that she had promised, before there could be a cessation of hostilities.

THREE:THE JUMMA MUSJID, DELHI. (From a Photograph by Frith & Co.)Bolingbroke, now restored to his estates, though the attainder still deprived him of his seat in the House of Lords, endeavoured to create a new species of opposition in Parliament. He retained his influence with the Duchess of Kendal, and cultivated that of the ultra-Tories. Still more, he soon discovered that William Pulteney, the most eloquent man in the House, had grown disgusted with Walpole, who could never bear any man of pre-eminent ability near the throne except himself. Pulteney had been one of the steadiest friends of the late queen's Government, and of the Protestant succession. Under George he had been made Secretary at War. He had adhered to Walpole when he was sent to the Tower for corruption, and in the great schism of 1717. Yet Walpole had carefully excluded him from any high post in the Cabinet, and had endeavoured to veil his jealousy of him by offering to procure him a peerage, by which he would have removed him from the active sphere of the House of Commons. Pulteney saw the object, and rejected the specious favour. Instead of conferring on Pulteney some[53] office worthy of his talents, Walpole then put him into that of Cofferer of the Household. In the state of indignation which this paltry appointment raised in him Bolingbroke soon induced Pulteney to put himself at the head of a large body of Oppositionists, under the title of "Patriots." In this character he made some smart attacks on Walpole and his heavy drafts on the Civil List for his friends, for which he was dismissed, and joined Bolingbroke in a bold attempt to write down the Minister. Between them the celebrated paper The Craftsman was planned and established, and they became the bitterest and most persevering assailants of Walpole.

THREE:The charity schools throughout the country were discovered, by the operation of Henry Brougham's Commission, to be monopolised by the landlords of the different parishes and the clergy, and the ample revenues for education embezzled by them. In some such schools there was not a single scholar; in others, as at Pocklington, in Yorkshire, the free grammar school, with an endowment of one thousand pounds a year, had only one scholar. This state of physical and moral destitution was made the more dreary by the equally low state of religion. The Dissenters were on the increase, and, chiefly in towns, were exerting themselves to disperse the Egyptian darkness of this Georgian era, and Methodism was now making rapid progress amongst the working classes, both in town and country. But the preachers of Methodism met with a reception from the country squirearchy and clergy which has no parallel since the days of Popish persecution. They were dragged out of the houses where they preached, kicked and buffeted, hauled through horse-ponds, pelted with mud and stones; and the clergy and magistracy, so far from restraining, hounded on the mob in these outrages. The lives of these preachers, and the volumes of the Wesleyan Magazine, abound in recitals of such brutalities, which, if they had not been recorded there, would not now be credited. What John Wesley and his brother Charles, and George Whitefield suffered, especially in Devonshire and Cornwall, reads like a wild romance.The question of the regency was again brought forward, on the 6th of July, by Mr. Robert Grant, in pursuance of a notice he had previously given. The unbounded personal popularity of the king—who, unlike his predecessor shut up in seclusion and resembling Tiberius, went about sailor-like through the streets, frank, talkative, familiar, good-humoured, delighting the Londoners with all the force of pleasant contrast—rendered it increasingly difficult and delicate on the part of the Opposition to propose any measure disagreeable to a Sovereign who was the idol of the multitude, from whom no evil could be apprehended, and whose death, even in the ordinary course of Providence, it seemed something like treason to anticipate as likely to occur within a few months. They were, therefore, profuse in their declarations of respect, of admiration—nay, almost of veneration—for a monarch whom a beneficent Providence had so happily placed upon the Throne of Great Britain. The division on Mr. Grant's motion was still more decidedly favourable to the Government, the numbers being—Ayes, 93; noes, 247—majority, 154.

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