target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_83beedff-0b47-5ed8-a943-c7aa1ae957d5">194 but promised the same troops, which under the late Czarina had almost crushed him. Nor was this a bare promise, but faithfully executed. Such admiration of a hero was not likely to content itself with merely becoming his ally. Few men idolize heroism but they who feel the passion in their own breasts. Having obliged Sweden to make peace too, the young Czar turned his eye towards military exploits in a new field, and determined to attempt the conquest of the duchy of Sleswick from Denmark. Yet if he was dazzled by the martial talents of the King of Prussia, Peter had a heart susceptible of the most extensive humanity. One of his first acts on his accession was to bestow liberty on the Russian nobility. For the poor he lessened the tax on salt, and for the relief of all, abolished the Inquisition of the State. All the exiles were recalled, or received great mitigation of their punishments. There was one man to whom the Czar, though not so bountiful as he ought to have been, was very kind. This was Count Schouvalow, the favourite and supposed husband of the late Czarina. A man, who in twelve years of absolute power had never made an enemy; and who, had he ambitioned a crown as much as he deserved one, might have reigned. This upright man told the Czar that he had in his possession a very large sum of money, which he believed the Empress, his late mistress, had intended he should take for his own use, but not having been a specific gift, he thought it his duty to surrender it to his Majesty. The Emperor said he was in great want of money, took it, but ordered him to choose two thousand pounds a year in land wherever he pleased. I knew this amiable person afterwards, wandering about Europe,195 possessed of nothing beyond that revenue, and sighing after a country to which it had been imprudent to return.
The Czar and the King of Prussia wished to engage us in the war with Denmark; but though the Council was divided on the measure, Denmark was too intimately connected with us, and as a maritime power, was too near a neighbour to Scotland. In this exigence the King of Denmark marched with a considerable force to Hamburgh, and obliged that opulent city to furnish him with a million of rix-dollars.
In Ireland seemed approaching a scene of a new kind. The jealousy of commerce had ever swayed England to keep that kingdom in a state of humiliation and restraint; consequently of poverty. The lowest class of people in no country less enjoyed the sweets of being; and in no country sought less to emerge from their state of barbarism. Proud and slothful, they created a kind of dignity to themselves from inactivity. To labour no more than noblemen, was a sort of nobility; and ignorance of a happier fate was happiness. They preserved their ancient poetry and traditional genealogies; hated the English settled amongst them as invaders, and necessarily were bigoted to their old superstitions in opposition to the religion of their masters. In short, they wanted but luxury, to have all the passions and prejudices of great lords. A considerable part of the island was plunged in this dismal darkness and misery. As a spirit of opposition and independence had spread amongst the Protestant inhabitants, a spirit of improvement had gone forth too. Manufactures were established, roads and bridges made, and rivers rendered navigable. Inclosures for cultivation of lands had followed. Occupation of commons seemed usurpation to a race of lazy savages; and the first murmurs were carefully blown up to rage by their priests. A massacre had been the last instance in which the Catholics of Ireland had had any superiority; and Popish priests are historians enough to be ignorant of no such era. It was the cause of property to throw down inclosures; of heaven, to cut the throats of inclosers—and of France and Spain, to promote the good work. The tumults, however, began upon the single foot of their grievances. Great insurrections appeared in Waterford, the chief improvements having been made upon the Burlington estate. The rabble soon distinguished itself by the name of White Boys; and their instructors, to veil one nonsense under a greater, taught them to give out that they were subject to the Queen of the Fairies, whom they called Sieve Oltugh, in whose name their manifestoes were signed. It appeared afterwards on the trials of some of their chiefs, that this fairy sovereign resided at Versailles. French officers were discovered among them; and during the Duke of Bedford’s regency, a rising had actually been made in the same quarter just as Thurot landed. After many outrages, they proceeded to cruelty, and buried three persons up to their chins, who had declared they knew the ringleaders. As their numbers and impunity increased, so did their insolence. They obliged the town of Lismore to hang out lights, and forced a justice of peace to fix up a proclamation by which they regulated the price of provisions, and forbad any cheese to be made till after Lent, that the poor might have the milk—a proof that the devotees of the Queen of the Fairies, and of the Virgin Mary, were equally attached to the observation of the Fast.
For six weeks this insurrection was neglected; and two regiments of dragoons, that were sent against them, proved unequal to the work. At last the House of Commons took up the affair, and foot being ordered out against the seditious, the matter was quashed, though not entirely suppressed, till the Earl of Hertford196 was Lord Lieutenant, who refusing to pardon some of the chiefs, notwithstanding very considerable intercession, an end was put to the affair—but unless that country is more civilized and reclaimed from barbarism, or better guarded before another war breaks out, it will probably be selected by France and Spain for the first scene of their operations. At the time of which I have been speaking, France was more earnest to make a general peace, than to incense us by opening a war within our very gates,197 and which might have made it dangerous for the Favourite to second their views.
He was hotly pushing his schemes to projection; and resolved not only to make the peace, but to be indisputably first minister when it should be made. Mr. Pitt was removed, who could have obstructed the first object; but while the Duke of Newcastle held the Treasury, there was a division of power, which all the lustre of favour could not entirely surmount. They who looked forward, bowed to the idol; but they who held by gratifications to the Treasury, could not but kiss the hand that dealt the bribe. At first it was designed by disgusts to drive the Duke to resign. Elliot and Oswald198 were instructed to treat him rudely at his own board: but an old minister or an old mistress endure many shocks before they can be shaken off:199 nor could all his own treacheries persuade the Duke of Newcastle that Lord Bute could so soon forget how instrumental his Grace had been in undermining Mr. Pitt. He still had a mind to be of the plot, though himself was become the object of it.
Newcastle’s friends were quicker sighted; and foreseeing that they must again range under Mr. Pitt, if cast off by the Court, they began to have doubts and difficulties—and did but hasten their fall, by daring to resume a right of opinion. The expense of the Portuguese war administered their first pretence of complaint, and the protection given to the King of Prussia by the Czar, changed the posture of his affairs so advantageously, that it had no gross appearance, when the Dukes of Cumberland, Newcastle, Devonshire, and their faction grew earnest for the continuance of the war in Germany. The Duke of Bedford, who was more than half-gained to the Court, but who always added some contradiction of his own, was averse to both wars, Portuguese and German; and Fox, who was willing to preserve an interest in the Duke of Cumberland, had a difficult part to act. He said to me, “The Duke of Devonshire says it is a Tory measure to abandon the Continent; for my part I do not know who are Whigs; they bore the partiality of the Pelhams200 to the Tories, and Mr. Pitt’s declaration in their favour, who had complained that they enjoyed none of the favours of Government.” Lord Mansfield would have preserved Newcastle to the Court, but Lord Hardwicke pulled the other way. Lord Lincoln201 was devoted to Pitt, and wished to unite him and his uncle Newcastle. The Duke of Devonshire advised the latter to resign; but so great was his inclination to keep even the dregs of power with the dregs of life, and so great his fear of being called to account for the waste of money on the German war, that though the King, as a fresh affront, declared seven new peers, without acquainting him, he not only overlooked it, but begged his cousin, Mr. Pelham,202 might be added to the number, and got the barony of Pelham bestowed on himself, with reversion