Download as pdf or txt
Download as pdf or txt
You are on page 1of 53

The Rent Curse: Natural Resources,

Policy Choice, and Economic


Development Auty
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://textbookfull.com/product/the-rent-curse-natural-resources-policy-choice-and-ec
onomic-development-auty/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

Biota Grow 2C gather 2C cook Loucas

https://textbookfull.com/product/biota-grow-2c-gather-2c-cook-
loucas/

Natural Resources and Economic Development 2nd Edition


Edward B. Barbier

https://textbookfull.com/product/natural-resources-and-economic-
development-2nd-edition-edward-b-barbier/

The Curse of Natural Resources: A Developmental


Analysis in a Comparative Context 1st Edition Sevil
Acar (Auth.)

https://textbookfull.com/product/the-curse-of-natural-resources-
a-developmental-analysis-in-a-comparative-context-1st-edition-
sevil-acar-auth/

Kazakhstan's Diversification from the Natural Resources


Sector: Strategic and Economic Opportunities 1st
Edition Irina Heim

https://textbookfull.com/product/kazakhstans-diversification-
from-the-natural-resources-sector-strategic-and-economic-
opportunities-1st-edition-irina-heim/
Africa’s Natural Resources and Underdevelopment: How
Ghana’s Petroleum Can Create Sustainable Economic
Prosperity 1st Edition Kwamina Panford (Auth.)

https://textbookfull.com/product/africas-natural-resources-and-
underdevelopment-how-ghanas-petroleum-can-create-sustainable-
economic-prosperity-1st-edition-kwamina-panford-auth/

Minerals and Allied Natural Resources and their


Sustainable Development Principles Perspectives with
Emphasis on the Indian Scenario 1st Edition Mihir Deb

https://textbookfull.com/product/minerals-and-allied-natural-
resources-and-their-sustainable-development-principles-
perspectives-with-emphasis-on-the-indian-scenario-1st-edition-
mihir-deb/

The Economics of Agriculture and Natural Resources The


Case of Iran Masoomeh Rashidghalam

https://textbookfull.com/product/the-economics-of-agriculture-
and-natural-resources-the-case-of-iran-masoomeh-rashidghalam/

Sustainable utilization of natural resources 1st


Edition Dalai

https://textbookfull.com/product/sustainable-utilization-of-
natural-resources-1st-edition-dalai/

Justice and natural resources an egalitarian theory


First Edition Armstrong

https://textbookfull.com/product/justice-and-natural-resources-
an-egalitarian-theory-first-edition-armstrong/
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 3/11/2018, SPi

The Rent Curse


OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 3/11/2018, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 3/11/2018, SPi

The Rent Curse


Natural Resources, Policy Choice,
and Economic Development

Richard M. Auty and Haydn I. Furlonge

1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 3/11/2018, SPi

3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Richard M. Auty and Haydn I. Furlonge 2019
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
First Edition published in 2019
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018945756
ISBN 978–0–19–882886–0
Printed and bound by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 3/11/2018, SPi

Preface

More than two decades of statistical analysis have failed to resolve the causes
of the resource curse or even determine whether the phenomenon exists or
not. We employ rent cycling theory to undertake a more subtle approach to
the resource curse than that achieved by statistical studies to date. We do so by
analysing the political economy of windfall gains from natural resource
exploitation in two case study countries and then applying the findings to
the principal global developing regions. We construct two stylized facts
models of rent-driven growth to show that: (i) the resource curse exists but
that it is caused by policy failure, so that it is not a deterministic phenomenon;
(ii) the global incidence of the resource curse varies over time and by com-
modity; and (iii) the resource curse is a variant of a wider rent curse that can
be caused by windfall revenues from foreign aid (geopolitical rent), worker
remittances (labour rent), or government manipulation of relative prices
(regulatory rent).
The basic premise of rent cycling theory is that low rent incentivizes the
elite to grow the economy in order to become wealthy, whereas high rent
encourages the elite to siphon away rent for immediate self-enrichment at the
expense of long-term economic growth. The contrasting incentives trigger
systematic divergence in policy that results in two distinctive trajectories for
structural change. More specifically, low rent encourages the elite to grow the
economy by allocating inputs efficiently, which aligns the economy with its
comparative advantage in labour-intensive exports and drives rapid and rela-
tively egalitarian economic growth along with incremental democratization.
In contrast, high rent elicits contests among the elite to capture the rent for
immediate personal enrichment and discourages the distribution of wealth in
a fair and sustainable manner. This causes the high-rent economy to absorb
rent too quickly and to experience Dutch disease effects, which lead to the
expansion of a subsidized urban sector whose burgeoning demand for rent
eventually outstrips supply and causes a protracted growth collapse, with
attendant political destabilization. The resulting high-rent staple trap trajec-
tory fails to achieve competitive diversification and consequently intensifies
rent dependence.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 3/11/2018, SPi

Preface

Our findings carry significant implications for development research. We


trace rent flows from their extraction, through their deployment, to their
impact on the political economy. We thereby respond to recent calls by
leading economists such as Stiglitz to study the distorting impacts of rent on
economic growth. Our low-rent model identifies the importance to sustain-
able (productivity-driven) long-term development of: rent scarcity in incen-
tivizing the elite to pursue growth-oriented policies; Lewis’s labour market
turning point, in triggering self-sustaining competitive diversification of the
economy; and early passage through the demographic cycle, for achieving
rapid and egalitarian per capita GDP growth. In contrast, the high-rent staple
trap trajectory risks incentivizing contests among the elite for rent that cause
over rapid domestic rent absorption and Dutch disease effects. This postpones
the labour market turning point and precludes the benefits that the low-rent
economy derives from its singular pattern of competitive structural change.
Instead, the high-rent economy diversifies into rent-subsidized activity, which
is not sustainable.
Our two basic stylized facts political economy models of low-rent and high-
rent growth usefully complement statistical studies of the resource curse. The
statistical studies pursue rigour at the cost of oversimplifying the factors at
work, whereas case studies allow for a more nuanced explanation of resource
curse effects. For example, we identify significant fluctuations in the global
intensity of resource curse effects, linked to historical changes in development
policy fashions since the 1950s. We also show that resource-poor economies
can exhibit ‘resource curse symptoms’ due to flows of geopolitical rent, labour
rent, and regulatory rent that can rival resource rents in their magnitude and
consequences. Moreover, commodities differ in their vulnerability to rent
curse effects.
Our research identifies the misallocation of inputs arising from the wide-
spread post-war policy bias in favour of manufacturing-driven growth, which
invariably occurred at the expense of the potential contributions to economic
development from the agriculture and service sectors. The policy was espe-
cially disadvantageous for small economies, which lacked sufficient domestic
demand to sustain factories of minimal viable size. Invariably, rent was
deployed to protect inefficient import substitution industry rather than the
dynamic and competitive manufacturing that low-rent economies achieved.
Instead, import substitution policies invariably degenerated into a source of
regulatory rent that consolidated rent-seeking constituencies that locked the
economy into a staple trap. Finally, scholars of development have frequently
underestimated the flexibility of the plantation as an institution, which in
countries as diverse as Malaysia, Mauritius, and Guyana has proved to be
adaptable to major changes in the political economy.

vi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 3/11/2018, SPi

Preface

We draw upon Mauritius and Trinidad and Tobago to illustrate the


argument because they exhibited remarkably similar initial conditions at
independence in the 1960s, apart from their mineral endowments. We dem-
onstrate that Trinidad and Tobago has experienced resource curse effects: its
high-rent economy traced a staple trap development trajectory and experi-
enced a protracted growth collapse through 1981–93. Moreover, Trinidad and
Tobago has yet to diversify away from rent-driven growth into productivity-
driven growth, upon which sustainable long-term gains in welfare depend.
Trinidad and Tobago shares this unsatisfactory outcome with other rent-
addicted economies including the Gulf States, Russia, and Venezuela. We
use Mauritius as a counterfactual to illustrate the low-rent trajectory that is
also associated with the four Asian Dragons, as well as China, Bangladesh, and
Vietnam, and is likely to be pursued by sub-Saharan African economies as
more and more of them are rendered land-poor by population growth.
We trace the origins of Trinidad and Tobago’s strong addiction to rent to its
early reliance on sugar. We also demonstrate the risks to Trinidad and Tobago
of relying upon its current strategy of gas-based industrialization, which is a
minimal diversification from dependence on hydrocarbon rent. Rather, we
propose reform of the political economy to capitalize on recent global growth
in sophisticated service exports and value chains, which offer new opportun-
ities to achieve productivity-driven development that is sustainable. But a
precondition for success is that politicians must build a coalition of pro-
growth interest groups to promote a competitive non-hydrocarbon sector.
The final chapters apply the models to interpret structural change in five
global developing regions with reference to: agricultural involution in sub-
Saharan Africa; premature deindustrialization in Latin America compared
with East Asia; and the potential for absorbing surplus labour into export
services in South Asia and the Gulf states.
We gratefully acknowledge the hard work of Adam Swan, Katie Bishop, and
Catherine Owen at OUP in guiding this book to fruition, and the subsequent
tireless help of Julie Musk with copyediting and Alamelu Vengatesan in
shepherding the book through the publication process. We are also much
indebted to the constructive comments of five reviewers who offered
extremely helpful suggestions regarding the overall structure of the book as
well as some details. In particular, the reviewers provided the push that we
needed to shift the final sections of the book towards the implications of our
findings for the principal global developing regions.

vii
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 3/11/2018, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 3/11/2018, SPi

Contents

List of Tables xi
List of Abbreviations xiii

Section 1. Context
1. Aims, Approach, and Structure of the Study 3

2. Natural Resources, Country Size, and Development:


A Review of the Literature 16

Section 2. Emergence of Rent-Dependent Development


3. The Rent-Seeking Legacy of the Plantation Economy
in Trinidad and Tobago 47

4. The Staple Trap in High-Rent Trinidad and Tobago 70

5. Low-Rent Mauritius as a Developmental Counterfactual


for High-Rent Trinidad and Tobago 94

Section 3. Differential Rent-Driven Development


in Global Regions
6. Agricultural Neglect and Retarded Structural Change
in Sub-Saharan Africa 119

7. The Evolving Role of Manufacturing in Economic Development 146

8. Prospective Growth Impacts of Export Services 174

Section 4. Analysing the Role of Rent in Economic Development


9. The Principal Findings and some Policy Implications 205

References 225
Index 245
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 3/11/2018, SPi
Comp. by: Kalaimathy Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0004182355 Date:14/11/18 Time:12:06:42
Filepath:D:/BgPr/OUP_CAP/IN/Process1/0004182355.3d
Dictionary : OUP_UKdictionary 11
OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF, 14/11/2018, SPi

List of Tables

1.1 Per capita GDP growth by country resource endowment,


1960–2015 (%/year). Growth rates are simple averages 4
2.1 Stylized rent stream properties and predicted political and economic
impacts, by rent source 23
2.2 Principal features of two stylized facts rent-driven
development models 26
2.3 Per capita income, structural change, and domestic absorption,
post-1973 (share of GDP) 34
2.4 Per capita GDP and economic growth (Syrquin and
Chenery aggregates) 35
3.1 Institutional quality, 2015, comparative case study countries 63
3.2 Selected economic indicators, Trinidad and Tobago, 1960–2014 65
4.1 Impact of the LNG boom, Trinidad and Tobago, 1999–2008 75
4.2 Potential netbacks for the gas-based industry, Trinidad
and Tobago, 1980s 78
4.3 Government revenue and expenditure, Trinidad and Tobago,
2000–08 (% GDP) 83
4.4 Public/private investment, Trinidad and Tobago, 2000–08 (% GDP) 85
4.5 Global Competitiveness Index, 2015, comparator economies 91
5.1 Selected economic indicators, Mauritius, 1960–2014 100
5.2 Population growth and dependency ratio, Mauritius and
Trinidad and Tobago, 1960–2010 116
6.1 Selected economic indicators, Uganda, 1960–2014 124
6.2 Structural change in Africa, 1961–2007 126
6.3 Economic structure (% GDP) and productivity ratios,
sub-Saharan Africa, 1990 and 2010 127
6.4 Decomposition of productivity growth (%/year), by main global region,
1990–2005 127
6.5 Three stylized facts trajectories of structural change in
sub-Saharan Africa, 1990–2010 (% GDP, except where stated) 130
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 3/11/2018, SPi

List of Tables

6.6 Comparative labour costs (US$) in four African economies and Bangladesh 142
7.1 Selected economic indicators, Chile, 1960–2014 (% GDP,
except where stated) 150
7.2 Selected economic indicators, Brazil, 1960–2014 (% GDP, except
where stated) 156
7.3 Brazil heavy industry big pushes 157
7.4 Doing business: global ranking 2015 162
7.5 Selected economic indicators, South Korea, 1960–2014 (% GDP,
except where stated) 166
8.1 Selected economic indicators, India, 1960–2014 (% GDP, except
where stated) 183
8.2 Hydrocarbon rent, capital-surplus Gulf economies,
1970–2014 (% GDP) 195
8.3 Selected economic indicators, Saudi Arabia, 1960–2014
(% GDP, except where stated) 196
8.4 Hydrocarbon rent dependence, capital-surplus Gulf economies, 2012 197

xii
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 3/11/2018, SPi

List of Abbreviations

ANC African National Congress


bl barrel
CBD central business district
CEPEP Community-based Environmental Protection and Enhancement
Programme
CSA Commonwealth Sugar Agreement
DRI direct-reduced iron
EPZ export processing zone
EU European Union
FDI foreign direct investment
GATE Government Assistance for Tuition Expenses
GDP gross domestic product
GNI gross national income
GNP gross national product
IADB Inter-American Development Bank
ICOR incremental capital output ratio
ICT information and computer technology
IFI international financial institution
ILO International Labour Organization
IMF International Monetary Fund
IOC international oil company
ISCOTT Iron and Steel Company of Trinidad and Tobago
IT information technology
LNG liquefied natural gas
MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology
MMM Mauritian Militant Movement
MNC multinational corporation
MRSF mineral revenue stabilization fund
NAR National Alliance for Reconstruction
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 3/11/2018, SPi

List of Abbreviations

NASSCOM National Association of Software and Services Companies


ODA overseas development assistance
OECD Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development
PMSD Parti Mauricien Social Democrate
PNM People’s National Movement
PPP purchasing power parity
REER real effective exchange rate
TCS Tata Consultancy Services
UAE United Arab Emirates
UNC United National Congress
WTO World Trade Organization

xiv
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 2/11/2018, SPi

Section 1
Context
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 2/11/2018, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 2/11/2018, SPi

Aims, Approach, and Structure


of the Study

1.1 Aims and Approach of the Study

Economists expect resource-rich economies to grow faster than resource-poor


economies if their governments take advantage of the natural resource rent1
to raise the rate of investment compared with low-rent economies and to
increase the level of imported goods that are required to build a modern
infrastructure. This appeared to be the case for the developing countries before
the 1970s: the mean per capita gross domestic product (GDP) of the resource-
rich developing economies was 50% higher than that of the resource-poor
economies (Auty 2001: 5). However, Table 1.1 shows that during the period of
heightened commodity price volatility of 1973–85 and on into the late-1990s
most resource-rich economies grew slowly, if at all, before recovery belatedly
commenced. By then, however, the mean per capita income of the resource-
poor developing economies exceeded that of the resource-rich ones.
Table 1.1 also shows that at the outset of the period analysed (the early-
1960s when the World Bank (2017a) began to compile comparative data) most
developing economies were resource-rich and also small. The increased inci-
dence of growth collapses in resource-rich economies through the 1970s
and 1980s stimulated case study research (Gelb and Associates 1988; Auty
1993; Karl 1997). Subsequently, Sachs and Warner (1995, 1999) triggered a
surge of statistical research into the resource curse, which after a promising
start gave way to contradictory claim and counter-claim that has failed to

1
Rent is defined here as the surplus revenue after deducting all production costs including a risk-
related return on investment. Philip Crowson (personal communication), former chief economist of
RTZ, argues that revenues from foreign aid (geopolitical rent) and the adjustment of relative prices
(regulatory rent) are more accurately conceptualized as supernumerary government revenues.
Basically, the phenomenon is a revenue stream within an economy that in aggregate can be 20–30%
of GDP or more, and which is detached from the activity that generates it and is up for grabs.
Comp. by: Kalaimathy Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0004182344 Date:14/11/18 Time:12:09:14
Filepath:D:/BgPr/OUP_CAP/IN/Process1/0004182344.3d
Dictionary : OUP_UKdictionary 4
OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF, 14/11/2018, SPi

The Rent Curse

Table 1.1 Per capita GDP growth by country resource endowment, 1960–2015 (%/year).
Growth rates are simple averages

Economic phases Preshock global Acute commodity IFI-backed Post-reform


growth 1960–73 price shocks reforms recovery
1973–85 1985–97 1997–2015

Resource-poor1
Large2 2.4 3.7 4.7 3.9
Small 3.5 1.8 2.4 2.4
Resource-rich
Large2 2.7 0.7 1.9 2.3
Small, nonmineral 1.6 0.7 0.9 2.1
Small, hard mineral 2.2 0.1 –0.4 2.1
Small, oil exporter 4.0 2.3 –0.7 1.6
All countries 2.7 1.6 1.5 2.3

1
Resource-poor = 1970 cropland per head < 0.3 hectares.
2
Large economy = 1970 GDP > US$7 billion (proxy for domestic market size).
Source: World Bank (2017a).

determine whether a resource curse exists or not (Lederman and Maloney 2007;
Cavalcanti et al. 2011). Part of the reason for this impasse is that, as Table 1.1
demonstrates, the intensity of the resource curse effects eased through the
commodity boom of the 2000s, which has limited further widening of the
income gap between resource-poor economies and resource-rich ones.
This book argues that the resource curse is more complex than initially
thought, so that the parsimonious silver bullet explanations that characterize
much statistical analysis neglect important features. There are four key aspects
to this extra complexity. First, symptoms of the resource curse may be associ-
ated with streams of rent other than that from natural resources, principally
foreign aid (geopolitical rent), government manipulation of prices (regulatory
rent), and worker remittances (labour rent). The resource curse is therefore part
of a wider rent curse, which the statistical studies largely ignore. Moreover, each
rent source can generate 10% or more of GDP, so that in aggregate the potential
rent that can be allocated outside competitive markets for political goals can be
on a scale that is sufficient to profoundly distort the economy.
Second, the global incidence of the resource curse fluctuates over time: it
intensified through the 1970s and 1980s before easing in the late-1990s and
2000s. This trend reflects in part major shifts in global development policy
whereby many developing countries that gained independence in the 1960s
initially favoured state intervention to force industrialization. Their govern-
ments subsequently relaxed this policy through the 1990s as a condition for
receiving loans from the international financial institutions (IFIs) with which
to stabilize their economies.
Third, the risk posed by rent streams varies with their size relative to GDP,
volatility, and distribution: the risk is higher the larger and more volatile the

4
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 2/11/2018, SPi

Aims, Approach, and Structure of the Study

revenue stream and the greater its concentration on a few economic agents.
For example, resource curse symptoms appear stronger in small economies
than large ones, and especially in mineral-driven economies, most notably oil
exporters (Table 1.1). During 1973–85 the mineral economies generated the
highest resource rent relative to GDP but the slowest GDP growth, with the oil
exporters having the highest rent and weakest growth of all.
Fourth, the rent curse has not only economic causes (the prime ones being
Dutch disease effects and volatile revenue) but also institutional and political
ones (Acemoglu et al. 2001). Subsequently, attention turned to policy failure
(Glaeser et al. 2004), notably the consequences of the trade policy closure of
the 1960s and 1970s (Lal and Myint 1996). Importantly, these causal factors
are not mutually exclusive, but interact systematically, as we demonstrate
through two rent-driven models. We contend that there is a rent curse, but
that it is not deterministic and results from political contests over rent, which
can cause policy failure that leads to a protracted growth collapse.
In order to achieve a more nuanced explanation of the rent curse than the
statistical analyses provide, we examine the political economy of rent deploy-
ment. We also adopt a case study approach with an historical perspective that
is nevertheless rooted in theory. In doing so, we trade some loss of rigour for
greater analytical flexibility, which is necessary because measurement of crop-
land rent and regulatory rent relies on either case study estimates or proxy
indices such as, respectively, export share and degree of trade policy closure.2
More specifically, we draw upon rent cycling theory (Auty 2010) to trace how
rent impacts: the economic incentives of the elite; the choice of development
strategy; and the resulting development trajectory with particular emphasis
on structural change. The book draws upon two stylized facts models of rent-
driven growth that between them explain the growth trajectories of most
developing countries since the 1960s. The models are the low-rent competi-
tive diversification model and the high-rent staple trap model. They start from
the basic assumption that low rent incentivizes the elite to improve its welfare
by efficiently growing the economy, while high rent deflects elite effort into
extracting and deploying rent for immediate enrichment at the expense of
long-term economic growth.
Efficient growth requires the pursuit of comparative advantage, which in
low-rent economies lies in the expansion of labour-intensive exports. This
triggers a singular pattern of structural change that is self-sustaining and drives
rapid GDP growth along with an incremental shift towards a self-reliant form
of social capital and towards political pluralism. In contrast, high-rent econ-
omies absorb windfall rent too quickly in response to political pressures,

2
The World Bank is developing time series for crop rent from 1995 (Lange et al. 2018).

5
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 2/11/2018, SPi

The Rent Curse

which triggers Dutch disease effects that impede competitive diversification


and encourage subsidized employment creation. This locks the economy into
a staple trap of increasing reliance on rent to subsidize protected urban activ-
ity. The burgeoning rent demands of the subsidized activity eventually exceed
the capacity of the rent to meet them, triggering a growth collapse that is
protracted because rent recipients resist reform. A dependent form of social
capital also emerges while the polity may veer towards an autocracy that
is brittle.
We illustrate the two trajectories with case studies of high-rent Trinidad and
Tobago and low-rent Mauritius, which provide an instructive comparison
because prior to independence in the 1960s, the two shared much in com-
mon, apart from their mineral endowments. They were both British colonies
with parliamentary governments elected by an ethnically diverse population
totalling nearly one million in each case, which relied heavily for employment
on sugar plantations that were running short of land. As small island
economies, their diversification options were somewhat constrained (Demas
1965), but the prime difference was that Trinidad and Tobago had access to
hydrocarbon reserves, which Mauritius lacked. In fact, Mauritius’s economic
prospects were viewed as Malthusian: its per capita income lagged that of
Trinidad and Tobago and contracted through the late-1950s, stoking social
tensions (Findlay and Weitz 1993). Yet Mauritius subsequently made a suc-
cessful transition from rent-driven growth to productivity-driven growth that
still eludes Trinidad and Tobago. Mauritius’s development trajectory therefore
provides a low-rent counterfactual to help explain why Trinidad and Tobago,
like many high-rent economies, struggled to diversify away from rent depend-
ence (Warner 2015).
Trinidad and Tobago presents an instructive case study of the rent curse.
Commencing in the 1970s, its economy has periodically generated large
hydrocarbon rents, driven first by the 1974–78 and 1979–81 oil booms and
subsequently by large inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI) in liquefied
natural gas (LNG) that exploit hydrocarbon reserves that are high for a coun-
try of its size. However, the origin of its reliance on rent can be traced back
much earlier, to the introduction of sugar plantations in the late-eighteenth
century. The rent from sugar cane can be classified as geopolitical rent because
it arose from changes in trade concessions by the colonial government in
London. The reliance of Trinidad and Tobago on rent was strengthened in the
mid-twentieth century, first by much-improved trade preferences for sugar
exports and then by the positive hydrocarbon price shocks of 1974–78 and
1979–81.
Although small country size somewhat constrains development options
compared with large economies, we show that the development trajectory of
small countries (as opposed to micro states) is not significantly different from

6
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 2/11/2018, SPi

Aims, Approach, and Structure of the Study

that of larger economies. The small size of the case study economies therefore
does not limit their capacity either to illuminate the two basic post-1960
development trajectories or to explain broader development themes in the
major global regions. We demonstrate that Mauritius’s development trajec-
tory is basically similar to those of the four Asian Dragon economies, Hong
Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. China’s development path has
also paralleled Mauritius’s low rent trajectory in key respects.3
Manufacturing played a key role in the rapid development of the low-rent
East Asian economies and Mauritius, but it proved a double-edged sword in
most high-rent economies. We argue that the prioritization of manufacturing
by high-rent developing economies through the early post-war decades rep-
resents a major policy error. This is because whether governments pursued
industrialization by import substitution or by resource-based industry, the
manufacturing sector invariably degenerated into a vehicle for rent-seeking
on a scale that distorted the economy and led to protracted growth collapses.
This was not the case in the low-rent East Asian economies and Mauritius,
and the competitive diversification model explains why. The singular pattern
of low rent structural change elicited by their initial comparative advantage in
labour-intensive manufactured exports was what drove their rapid economic
development. It was not the result of an interventionist industrial policy as
argued by Amsden (1992) and Wade (1990). Rather, Stern et al. (2005) and
Noland and Pack (2003) convincingly critique the efficacy of aspects of the
East Asian industrial policies, whose varied levels of intervention also suggest
that industrial policy played a secondary role to that of self-sustaining struc-
tural change. We identify numerous instances of the adverse impacts of
interventionist industrial policies on rent cycling throughout this book.
Most high-rent economies in Latin America, the Gulf states, and sub-
Saharan Africa experienced a staple trap development trajectory, like Trinidad
and Tobago. The widespread espousal of activist industrial policies steadily
distorted these economies through the 1960s and 1970s, after which intensi-
fied commodity price volatility triggered a series of growth collapses. The
growth collapses first hit the least credit-worthy states (mainly sub-Saharan
African oil importers) through the mid-1970s. They then impacted other
economies in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America in the early-1980s that
had earlier been judged sufficiently credit-worthy to borrow recycled petro-
dollars for economic adjustment. Finally, growth collapses hit the oil export-
ers in the mid-1980s as energy prices collapsed when cumulative energy
conservation curbed global oil demand.

3
Like Mauritius, China eliminated surplus labour via diversification into labour-intensive
exports, and relied on dual track reform to manage the political opposition to the reform (from
state enterprises in China’s case) that were the likely losers from reform (Lau et al. 2000).

7
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 2/11/2018, SPi

The Rent Curse

Although the assistance of the IFIs with stabilization eventually revived


economic growth, the high-rent economies remain vulnerable to revenue
volatility and rent-seeking activity. Policy lapses during the commodity
super-cycle of 2004–14 suggest that in some cases lessons were only partially
learned and that rent-dependent development persists (Cherif and Hasanov
2016). Hausmann et al. (2007) convincingly argue that rent-dependent econ-
omies need to produce goods and services that have ever weaker direct links to
rents and exhibit ever more sophistication. Fortunately, emerging trends in
global demand for goods and services are expanding scope for lagging econ-
omies to supply these products (Mckinsey 2012; Ghani et al. 2012; Loungani
et al. 2017), as India (and Mauritius) demonstrate. Loungani et al. (2017)
suggest that lagging developing countries might leapfrog industrialization.
The development literature warns that rent-driven growth can raise
incomes without establishing the social, human, and capital resources to
maintain them in the absence of rent (Cherif and Hasanov 2016). This is
especially true for high-income energy-rich economies, notably those of the
Gulf states. One variant of the rent curse is associated with economies that
become ever more dependent on the rent. In fact, some researchers identify
an even more acute condition (Gaddy and Ickes 2010). They argue that
countries like Saudi Arabia and Russia are not just dependent on oil rent but
‘addicted’ to oil, a much more difficult pathology to treat. Their economies
require constantly rising energy prices and/or expanding energy output just to
maintain fiscal balance and meet existing social entitlements like energy
subsidies, upon which government survival comes to depend.
We argue that diversification away from rent dependence should be the
priority, especially by hydrocarbon exporters because changes in technology
are weakening prospective LNG exports, while deepening concerns about
global pollution pose the risk that both oil and natural gas reserves may
become stranded. For example, Trinidad and Tobago faces the prospect of a
steady decline in hydrocarbon output that could terminate production within
two decades, unless significant new commercial discoveries are made in
deeper waters or from cross-border fields. Yet gas from fracking diminishes
the incentive to search for gas from traditional fields. This unexpected accel-
eration in the pace of maturation of the hydrocarbon sector calls for speedy
economic reforms so as to establish the productivity-driven economy that is
needed to sustain incomes, let alone to enhance them.
Rodrik (2015) argues that far from diversifying, many developing countries
are experiencing premature deindustrialization as their manufacturing sector
contracts relative to services. We argue, however, that this trend is more
accurately regarded as an adjustment to the earlier overexpansion of manu-
facturing that resulted from the prioritization of industrialization. The relative
decline in manufacturing is associated with IFI reforms aimed at removing the

8
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 2/11/2018, SPi

Aims, Approach, and Structure of the Study

cumulated economic distortions of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s and realign-
ing economies with their underlying comparative advantage.
Two other factors are at work in making Rodrik’s prognosis less ominous.
First, the long-running process of business specialization continues, as pro-
ductive businesses like farms and manufacturing firms contract out tasks
previously performed in-house, often services, to specialist firms (Haig
1926). This implies that part of the contraction of manufacturing is more a
book-keeping adjustment than a significant loss of manufacturing output
(McKinsey 2012): support services are transferred from the manufacturing
column into the services column. Second, and more recently, the diffusion
of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has expanded scope
for productive service exports that exhibit significant potential to boost labour
productivity and economic growth as manufacturing has done in the past
(Loungani et al. 2017).
These trends strengthen the case for pursuing sector neutral development
policies that focus on creating an enabling environment for investment that is
rooted in prudent macroeconomic policy and supportive institutions. Sector
neutral policies recognize the risk of policy capture by rent-seeking interests,
which this book argues has severely damaged economic growth within the
developing countries and remains a threat.

1.2 Structure of the Study


1.2.1 Literature Context
The book is structured into four sections. Section 1 explains the objectives of
the research and sets them in the context of the literature on economic
development and, in particular, the rent curse. More specifically, Chapter 2
draws upon the literature on natural resources and economic development to
explain the circumstances under which high rent can either drive sustained
economic growth or become a curse. It notes that an initial surge in statistical
research through the 1990s focused mainly on economic factors as the explan-
ation for the resource curse, such as Dutch disease effects (Sachs and Warner
1995), commodity price volatility (Cashin and McDermott 2002), and over-
rapid domestic rent absorption (Gelb and Associates 1988). Subsequently
more prominence was given to political factors, notably the quality of insti-
tutions (Acemoglu and Robinson 2008) and policies (Glaeser et al. 2004). Most
recently, political contests for rent have attracted attention (Mehlum et al.
2006; Holcombe 2013). In fact, these explanations are not mutually exclusive
and the two rent-driven models from rent cycling theory explain how they
systematically interact in response to the initial conditions of either rent
abundance or rent paucity (Auty 2010).

9
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 2/11/2018, SPi

The Rent Curse

Chapter 2 then examines the two rent-driven models in more detail. We


briefly outline them here. The low-rent competitive diversification model is
associated with sustained rapid economic growth, whereas the high-rent
staple trap model leads to a growth collapse, recovery from which is pro-
tracted. More specifically, the low-rent model posits that low rent incentivizes
the elite to enrich itself by growing the economy, which requires the pursuit of
the low-rent economy’s comparative advantage in cheap labour to export
labour-intensive goods and services. The low-rent model explains how rapid
progress in absorbing surplus rural labour speeds both the demographic tran-
sition and the onset of Lewis’s (1954) labour market turning point, which
triggers a singular pattern of self-sustaining structural change that drives rapid
economic growth and political maturation.
The low-rent development trajectory produces self-reinforcing virtuous eco-
nomic and sociopolitical circuits. First, an early start on competitive industri-
alization accelerates urbanization, which advances the demographic cycle so
that a lower ratio of dependants per worker reduces the share of consumption
in GDP and increases that of saving and investment, which spurs per capita
GDP growth. Second, the rapid expansion of labour-intensive exports speedily
absorbs surplus labour so that the labour market rapidly reaches its turning
point, causing real wages to rise, which drives rapid structural change into
more skill-intensive and capital-intensive manufacturing in order to boost
productivity and maintain competitiveness. Third, the singular pattern of
structural change in low-rent economies also promotes the formation of a
self-reliant social capital and the proliferation of social groups ready and able
to challenge policy capture by any one group. Together these social forces
drive an incremental shift towards both higher mean incomes and political
pluralism.
The low-rent model forms a useful counterfactual with which to explain the
underperformance of the high-rent model. High rent incentivizes the elite to
compete to extract rent for immediate self-enrichment or political gain, which
results in overrapid domestic absorption of the rent that engenders Dutch
disease effects. The resulting strengthening of the real exchange rate causes
the high-rent development trajectory to omit labour-intensive industrializa-
tion and forgo the associated benefits that flow from eliminating surplus
labour and embarking on rapid structural change. Consequently, both com-
petitive diversification and the incremental shift towards political pluralism
are retarded. Rather, in the absence of policy reform, which rent-seeking
interests often oppose, governments in high-rent economies deploy rent to
alleviate unemployment by subsidizing urban activity in protected manufac-
turing and government bureaucracy. This is the antithesis of the competitive
economic diversification that is required. The subsidized urban sector’s bur-
geoning rent requirements eventually outstrip the capacity of the economy to

10
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 2/11/2018, SPi

Aims, Approach, and Structure of the Study

supply them. This triggers a growth collapse that is protracted because rent-
seekers resist reform. The essence of the staple trap trajectory is therefore the
diversification of the economy into a rent-dependent urban enclave whose
demands for subsidies from the rent outstrip the supply.

1.2.2 Rent-Driven Development in Trinidad and Tobago and Mauritius


Section 2 provides detailed case study evidence, which first evaluates the
legacy of the plantation economy with reference to Trinidad and Tobago in
Chapter 3. The legacy includes establishing an initial reliance on rent. In
contrast, the dependency theorist Best (1968) identifies the prime legacy of
the plantation system as a strong external dependence in his model of the
plantation economy. In fact, the plantation has proved more flexible than
either the dependency theorists or mainstream economists like Baldwin
(1956) have assumed. It has exhibited a capacity to promote domestic devel-
opment, encourage small farm expansion, and sustain a basic standard of
living for the workforce (Graham and Floering 1984). During the settlement
of the sparsely populated islands of Trinidad and Tobago from the late-
eighteenth century, the plantation dominated the economy. It established
an ethnically mixed society due to the importation of indentured labour from
South Asia after the abolition of slavery. The plantation was also associated
with a marked skew in income distribution, rooted in differences in access to
land and the wage-depressing effects of the Asian labour surplus (Lewis 1978).
We argue that the emphasis placed by dependency theorists on the plant-
ation’s external dependence obscures the more fundamental factor of rent
dependence, which initially arose out of British colonial trade preferences
for sugar. Paradoxically, as independence approached, the rent dependence
intensified as an unintended consequence of British reforms to raise living
standards. The reforms responded to the unacceptable levels of poverty caused
by depressed sugar prices in the 1930s, which led to a Royal Commission of
Inquiry that proposed a new trade deal. The resulting Commonwealth Sugar
Agreement (CSA) guaranteed higher sugar prices so as to attract investment by
efficient international companies in large modern factories. The investment
aimed to boost productivity and thereby furnish living standards, equivalent
to those of farm workers in the UK but for a smaller workforce.
Consistent with rent cycling theory, the higher rent elicited contests among
plantation owners, unionized workers, cane farmers, and the government to
capture the extra revenue. Consequently, although the CSA succeeded in
improving living standards through the 1950s, the unions subsequently
blocked labour-saving productivity advances in order to maintain employ-
ment, which eroded the return on capital and motivated the international
companies to withdraw. The government of Trinidad and Tobago then

11
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 2/11/2018, SPi

The Rent Curse

deployed hydrocarbon rent to subsidize the uneconomic plantations as an


important source of rural employment. However, radical restructuring was
forced on the industry in the mid-2000s when the World Trade Organization
(WTO) removed trade preferences like the CSA. But significantly, whereas the
elimination of sugar rent caused the plantation to collapse in Trinidad and
Tobago, it thrived in Mauritius.
Chapter 4 analyses the impact of hydrocarbon rent on the economy of
Trinidad and Tobago. After independence in 1962, Trinidad and Tobago
initially pursued cautious economic policies for the deployment of its modest
oil rent. The long-serving first independent government modified this stance
in response to an extra-parliamentary challenge in 1970 by espousing an
ambitious state-led industrialization strategy to accelerate economic growth
and employment creation (Mottley 2008). The government established a
consensus in favour of gas-based industrialization and drew upon the
1974–78 and 1979–81 oil rent windfalls to accelerate the strategy.
Gas-based industry was expected to be the catalyst for private sector invest-
ment in downstream materials fabrication, but, as elsewhere, resource-based
industrialization produced few manufacturing jobs, whether direct or indirect
(Auty 1990). Rather, in line with the staple trap model, it was associated with
persistent unemployment that was masked by deploying rent to subsidize an
expansion of the bureaucracy and extensive make-work schemes. The rent
absorption also raised consumption by expanding subsidies to energy and
food as well as housing and employment. The resulting increased rate of
domestic rent absorption outstripped the absorptive capacity of the economy
and fed Dutch disease effects that, as the staple trap model predicts, triggered
a growth collapse when oil prices faltered, in this case through 1981–93.
The growth collapse cut per capita income by one-third and boosted open
unemployment to one-fifth of the workforce.
The economic recovery was lagged due to the opposition of rent-seeking
interests to reform. The reforms were eventually implemented with IFI assist-
ance and they reduced the role of the state in productive activity. However,
when economic growth finally revived, it was due to the expansion of LNG
rather than to investment in nonenergy activity, which has remained muted
for more than three decades. Moreover, completion of the LNG complex
coincided with the 2004–08 energy boom, which sharply boosted the rent
stream. Despite initial caution, the LNG rent was absorbed too rapidly into the
domestic economy, thereby further intensifying rent dependence at the
expense of competitive diversification.
Section 2 concludes in Chapter 5 by posing the question: How might Trini-
dad and Tobago have developed in the absence of large hydrocarbon rents? It
analyses Mauritius as a low-rent counterfactual for high-rent Trinidad and
Tobago. Prior to independence in the 1960s the two colonies had much in

12
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 2/11/2018, SPi

Aims, Approach, and Structure of the Study

common, apart from their mineral endowments. The development trajectory


of Mauritius follows the low-rent competitive diversification model. In 1961 a
Royal Commission on the economy of Mauritius recommended rapid imple-
mentation of birth control and industrialization by import substitution.
However, the country’s first independent government promoted birth control
but, impressed by progress in Taiwan, quickly demoted import substitution
policies in favour of encouraging private investment in an export zone.
Despite its potential disadvantages—a remote, small monocrop economy
running short of land, and with an ethnically diverse population—Mauritius
achieved sustained economic development and diversification. A key element
in its success, which is often neglected, is the incentive that low rent conferred
on the elite to build a political coalition to promote economic growth. But we
identify a second critical element in Mauritian success, namely the elite’s
politically sensitive approach to economic reform. More specifically, Mauri-
tius’s elite built a political coalition to promote economic growth through
a dual track strategy of reform (Lau et al. 2000). This strategy pursued the
emerging comparative advantage and developed a dynamic labour-intensive
market economy in an export processing zone (Track 1). It postponed reform
of the residual rent-dependent sector (Track 2) until Track 1 had grown to
dominate the economy, when it could absorb and neutralize rent-seeking
groups in Track 2. The dual track strategy initially nurtured competitive
industrialization via exports of textiles and then electronics, followed by
tourism and financial services. Although Mauritius’s mean per capita income
remains below that of Trinidad and Tobago, the gap has narrowed since
independence (World Bank 2017a). Moreover, the Mauritian economy relies
on productivity-driven growth rather than rent, and has significantly
improved social welfare. Most importantly, it has done so in a sustainable
manner.

1.2.3 Differential Rent-Driven Development in Global Developing Regions


Section 3 applies the two rent-driven models to explain the development
trajectories of five global developing country regions, namely sub-Saharan
Africa, Latin America, East Asia, South Asia, and the Gulf, and analyses a
systematic theme of importance to each region. For example, Chapter 6
focuses on sub-Saharan Africa and the consequences of agricultural neglect.
Sub-Saharan Africa appeared initially to face favourable development pros-
pects arising from the predominance of land-rich peasant farmer economies
with diffuse linkages beneficial to economic growth and competitive struc-
tural change (Baldwin 1956).
However, ethnic diversity sparked political contests for rent among the elite
that distorted most economies and deflected them from their comparative

13
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 2/11/2018, SPi

The Rent Curse

advantage. Crop marketing boards were abused to extract not only crop rents
from peasant farmers but also returns to capital and labour. This was osten-
sibly done to sustain a policy of industrialization by import substitution that
was ill-suited to the small domestic markets of most newly independent
countries and quickly degenerated into a rent-cycling mechanism. Even the
resource-poor economies of the Sahel espoused the policy, drawing upon
regulatory rent that was augmented by geopolitical rent following the drought
of the early-1970s. Whatever the rent source, the resulting misallocation of
capital and labour led to protracted growth collapses that required IFI assist-
ance, buttressed by geopolitical rent, which was not always directed at eco-
nomic recovery.
More homogenous societies might be expected to pursue a third develop-
ment model of staple diversification through diffuse linkages (Baldwin 1956;
North 1955; Mellor 1976), which starts from the premise that small farms
respond to modest increments of capital and labour by steadily intensifying
yields. This expands incomes. It also increases taxes, which farmers accept
because they benefit directly from public services such as improved transpor-
tation, education, and health care. Rising farmers’ incomes also expand the
domestic market for locally produced manufactures of household goods and
farm equipment as well as services, thereby diversifying the economy away
from staple dependence. Yet although the staple diversification model
appeared well adapted to propel peasant farm economies, the factional politics
in sub-Saharan Africa precluded its espousal. Instead, political contests and
associated rent-seeking led the strategy of industrialization by import substi-
tution to degenerate into a mechanism for rent cycling with long-lasting
detrimental effects for agriculture, upon which a majority of the population
continued to rely.
Chapter 7 focuses on the role of industrialization and draws upon the two
rent-driven models to explain how the East Asian economies overcame Latin
America’s head start on development. Most Latin American countries adopted
industrialization by import substitution in response to the disruption of global
trade through 1913–45 (Lewis 1978). Crucially, their governments persisted
with the strategy when global trade re-expanded from the 1950s, despite the
failure of the protected infant industry to mature and become internationally
competitive. The region’s economic growth was punctuated by shortages of
foreign exchange and public revenue because protected manufacturing failed
to generate sufficient exports to purchase imported inputs, while recurring
fiscal deficits fed debt accumulation, inflation, and protracted growth col-
lapses commencing in 1979–82.
In contrast, elites in East Asia faced an existential threat from the deterior-
ation of the US position in Vietnam and diminishing geopolitical rent. They
built on a comparative advantage in cheap labour to pursue competitive

14
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
too exemplary career. How could an unbaptised bishop validly
baptise a prince, heir to the crown of England? If the king was an
unbaptised, or as good as unbaptised king, he was neither lawful
King of England nor temporal head of England’s Church! This was
the only form in which the Champion’s gage was picked up. It did not
amount to much. Nevertheless, an old inheritor of Nonjuring
principles occasionally may be found questioning the right of George
III. to succeed, on the score of his being unbaptised, or of being (still
worse) baptised by an ex-dissenter, who himself had never been
sanctified by the rite according to the Church of England! As to the
story of the alleged Protestantism of Charles Edward,
THE
it never had more foundation than his own ignoble PROTESTANTI
assurances to members of the Church of England SM OF
whom he happened to encounter. In this sense he CHARLES EDWARD.
often ‘declared’ himself; but, never in a church, at
Liége or in Switzerland, or in London, at St. Martin’s, St. James’s, or
St. Mary’s le Strand. There is no record of any such solemn
circumstance connected with any such exalted personage in any of
those places or edifices. Such a fact as his conversion would have
been utter ruin to him. The very report that the fact existed caused
many of his Irish friends to tighten their purse-strings. Rome, with full
knowledge that he really had no ‘religion’ at all, was perfectly
satisfied that his Catholicism was uncontaminated. When, after his
father’s death in 1766, Charles Edward returned to Rome, no
recantation, nor anything like it, was demanded of him.
The stories of the change of religion not only differ from one
another, but the same spreader of the story gives different versions.
Walpole, in his Letters (April 21, 1772) says: ‘I have heard from one
who should know, General Redmond, an Irish officer in the French
service, that the Pretender himself abjured the Roman Catholic
religion at Liége a few years ago.’ Walpole, in his ‘Last Journals,’ i.
81 (April, 1772), says, ‘General Redmond, a brave old Irish officer in
the French service, and a Roman Catholic, told Lord Holland that the
Pretender had abjured the Roman religion at Liége, and that the Irish
Catholics had withdrawn their contributions on that account.’ The
time is also set down as ‘a few years ago.’
The entire flimsy fabric of these stories of
FOUNDATION
conversion was probably raised on a simple but OF THE
interesting incident. An English baronet of an ancient STORY.
family, Sir Nathaniel Thorold, died at Naples. His heir,
a Roman Catholic, could not succeed. Inheritance was barred by his
being of the Romish Church. The law was as cruel as anything
devised by the ‘Papists,’ on whose overthrow this legislation was
made against them. To evade it, and secure his rights, the heir of Sir
Nathaniel Thorold, probably, permissu superiorum, stripped himself
of his Romanism, and became a member of the Protestant
community, at St. Martin’s. This step entitled him to his uncle’s
estates, and, doubtless, little disturbed his earlier convictions; but is
not this the seed out of which grew the legend of the Pretender’s
cutting himself loose from Popery? Charles Edward, in some things,
was not unlike the craft commanded by poor Nanty Ewart, which ran
in to Annan, with her smuggled kegs of Cognac, as the ‘Jumping
Jenny,’ but which began her voyage from Dunkirk with seminary
priests on board, as well as brandy, and was there known as ‘La
Sainte Geneviève.’
CHAPTER XV.

(1761-1775.)
ondon, at the beginning of the reign of
STATE OF
George III., was, as it had been for LONDON.
many years, in a condition resembling
the capital of Dahomey at the present time. It could not
be entered by any suburb, including the Thames,
without the nose and eyes being afflicted by the numerous rottening
bodies of criminals gibbeted in chains. The heads of two rebels still
looked ghastly from Temple Bar. The bodies on gibbets often created
a pestilence. The inhabitants of the infected districts earnestly
petitioned to be relieved from the horrible oppression. If their petition
was unheeded they took means to relieve themselves. A most
significant paragraph in the papers states that ‘All the gibbets in the
Edgware Road were sawn down in one night.’ Not only the suburban
roads, but the streets and squares were infested by highwaymen
and footpads. Robberies (with violence) were not only committed by
night, but by day. Murders were perpetrated out of mere
wantonness, and a monthly score of delinquents, of extremely wide
apart offences, were strangled at Tyburn, without improvement to
society. It was still a delight to the mob to kill some very filthy
offender in the pillory, who generally was not more unclean than his
assassins. Ladies going to or from Court in their chairs were often
robbed of their diamonds, the chairmen feigning a defence which
helped the robbers. A prince or princess returning to London from
Hampton Court would now and then pick up a half-murdered wretch
in a ditch, and drop him at the first apothecary’s in town. The brutal
school boys of St. Bride’s, imitating their fathers, took to violence as
a pastime. They could sweep into Fleet Street with clubs, knock
down all whom they could reach, and retreat all the prouder if they
left a dead victim on the field. There was anarchy in the streets and
highways, but it is a comfort to find that at the Chapel Royal, there
were none but ‘extreme polite audiences.’ Indeed, the sons of
violence themselves were not without politeness. A batch of one
hundred of those of whom the gallows had been disappointed, were
marched from Newgate to the river side, to embark for the
Plantations. A fife band preceded them, playing ‘Through the wood,
laddie!’ The convicts roared out the song. ‘You are very joyous?’ said
a spectator. ‘Joyous!’ cried one of the rascals, ‘you only come with
us and you’ll find yourself transported!’
There were no Jacobites at Oxford now, but there GOOD
was a new sect of Methodists there. Six of its FEELING.
members, students of Edmund Hall, were expelled for
praying and expounding the Scripture in their own rooms! In another
direction there was something like reconciliation. The Government at
St. James’s allowed a Popish prelate to establish himself in Canada,
on condition that France should entirely abandon the Jacobites; and
now, for the first time, the king and royal family of the House of
Hanover were prayed for in all the Roman Catholic chapels in
Ireland, and in the Ambassadors’ chapels in London.
The king showed his respect for the principle of fidelity, on the part
of the Jacobite leaders, by restoring some of the forfeited estates to
the chiefs. He showed it also in another way. Having been told of a
gentleman of family and fortune in Perthshire, who had not only
refused to take the oath of allegiance to him, but had never permitted
him to be named as king in his presence, ‘Carry my compliments to
him,’ said the king, ‘but what?—stop!—no!—he may perhaps not
receive my compliment as King of England; give him the Elector of
Hanover’s compliments, and tell him that he respects the steadiness
of his principles.’ Hogg, who tells this story in the introduction to the
‘Jacobite Relics,’ does not see that in this message there was an
excess of condescension that hardly became the king, though the
spirit of the message did. The story is told with some difference in
the introduction to ‘Redgauntlet.’
In October of the year 1761, there died a Jacobite
A JACOBITE
of some distinction, who had the honour to be FUNERAL.
permitted to lie in Westminster Abbey; but, the
spectators who had been at the lying in state, observed, with some
surprise, that his coffin-plate bore only the initials K. M. L. F. The
‘Funeral Book’ of the Abbey is not more communicative, save that
the age of the defunct was forty-three. As the coffin sank to its
resting place in the South Aisle, curious strangers were told that it
contained the body of Kenneth Mackenzie, Lord Fortrose—a dignity
not sanctioned by the law; for, Kenneth was the only son of the fifth
Earl of Seaforth, who suffered attainder and forfeiture for the part he
played in the insurrection of 1715. But Kenneth left an only son,
Kenneth (by Lady Mary Stewart, daughter of the Earl of Galloway).
This son was not restored to his grandfather’s titles in the Scotch
peerage, but he was created Viscount Fortrose and Earl of Seaforth
in the peerage of Ireland. This transplantation was not fortunate.
Lord Seaforth died, leaving no male heir, in 1781, when the old
Jacobite title became extinct. The son of the attainted earl, restored
as to his fortune, was in the army, and in Parliament in 1746, when
he accompanied the Duke of Cumberland to Scotland, but his wife
and clan, as Walpole remarks, went with the Rebels. The Irish peer
but Scotch Earl of Seaforth well deserved his distinction, when in
1779, with seven hundred Mackenzies at his back, he repelled the
invasion of Jersey by a French force.
Other Jacobites were taken into favour, for which
DR.
loyal service was rendered. One of the first gracious JOHNSON’S
acts of George III. was to confer a pension on Dr. PENSION.
Johnson, of 300l. a year, equal now to twice that sum.
Johnson had well earned it, and he was expressly told that it was
conferred on him for what he had done, not for anything he was
expected to do. He felt that he was not expected to be an apologist
of the Stuarts, and the first act of the ex-Jacobite, after becoming a
pensioner, was to write for the Rev. Dr. Kennedy’s ‘Complete System
of Astronomical Chronology, unfolding the Scriptures,’ a dedication
to the king who had pensioned him (and whom he had looked upon
as the successor of two usurpers), which dedication is truly
described as being in a strain of very courtly elegance. As to the
granting of the pension by the king, Dr. Johnson, the once adherent
to the Stuart, remarked, ‘The English language does not afford me
terms adequate to my feelings on this occasion. I must have
recourse to the French. I am pénétré with his Majesty’s goodness.’
Johnson was quite sensible that it would be right to do something
more for his reward. The something was done in another dedication
to the Queen, of Hoole’s translation of Tasso, ‘which is so happily
conceived,’ says Boswell, ‘and elegantly expressed, that I cannot but
point it out to the peculiar notice of my readers.’ Johnson soon
became a partisan of the Hanoverian family. Speaking of some one
who with more than ordinary boldness attacked public measures and
the royal family, he said, ‘I think he is safe from the law, but he is an
abusive scoundrel; and instead of applying to my Lord Chief Justice
to punish him, I would send half-a-dozen footmen and have him well
ducked.’ A semi-noyade was now thought fitting recompense for a
Stuart apologist.
At a later period, when Johnson reviewed, in ‘The
JOHNSON’S
Gentleman’s Magazine,’ Tyler’s Vindication of Mary VIEW OF IT.
Queen of Scots, the Jacobitism quite as much as the
generosity of his principles led him to say, ‘It has now been
fashionable for near half a century to defame and vilify the House of
Stuart.... The Stuarts have found few apologists, for the dead cannot
pay for praise, and who will without reward oppose the tide of
popularity?’
Johnson being accused of tergiversation, has a right to be heard
in his own case. Much censured for accepting a pension which many
a censurer would have taken with the utmost alacrity, ‘Why, Sir,’ said
he with a hearty laugh, ‘it is a mighty foolish noise that they make. I
have accepted a pension as a reward which has been thought due to
my literary merit; and now that I have the pension, I am the same
man in every respect that I have ever been. I retain the same
principles. It is true that I cannot now curse (smiling) the House of
Hanover, nor would it be decent of me to drink King James’s health
in the wine that King George gives me money to pay for. But, Sir, I
think that the pleasure of cursing the House of Hanover and drinking
King James’s health, are amply overbalanced by 300l. a year.’ To
this may be added Boswell’s assurance that Johnson had little
confidence in the rights claimed by the Stuarts, and that he felt, in
course of time, much abatement of his own Toryism. It
HIS DEFINITION
was in his early days that he talked fierce Jacobitism, OF A
at Mr. Langton’s, to that gentleman’s niece, Miss JACOBITE.
Roberts. The Bishop of Salisbury (Douglas) and other eminent men
were present. Johnson, taking the young lady by the hand, said, ‘My
dear, I hope you are a Jacobite.’ Her uncle was a Tory without being
a Jacobite, and he angrily asked why Johnson thus addressed his
niece? ‘Why, Sir,’ said Johnson, ‘I meant no offence to your niece, I
mean her a great compliment. A Jacobite, Sir, believes in the Divine
Right of kings. He who believes in the Divine Right of kings believes
in a Divinity. A Jacobite believes in the Divine Right of bishops. He
that believes in the Divine Right of bishops believes in the Divine
Authority of the Christian Religion. Therefore, Sir, a Jacobite is
neither an Atheist nor a Deist. That cannot be said of a Whig, for
Whiggism is a negation of all principle.’
Be this as it may, Jacobitism was as surely dying
DEATH OF
out as he was who had crushed the hopes of THE DUKE OF
Jacobites at Culloden. The victor on that field, and CUMBERLAND
even now in the prime of life, died in 1765, of what .
Walpole called a ‘rot among princes.’ He was a ton of man, unwieldy,
asthmatic, blind of one eye, nearly so of the other, lame through his
old Dettingen wound, half breathless from asthma, half paralysed by
an old attack, able to write a letter, yet not able to collect his senses
sufficiently to play a game of piquet. On the 30th of October, he went
to Court, and received Lord Albemarle to dine with him, at his house
in Grosvenor Street. Unable to attend a Cabinet Council in the
evening, the Duke of Newcastle and Lord Northington called on him.
As they entered the room, one of his valets was about to bleed him,
at his own request. Before the operation could be performed, the
duke murmured, ‘It is all over!’ and fell dead in Lord Albemarle’s
arms.
Lord Albemarle remembered that when the duke’s brother,
Frederick, Prince of Wales, died, his cautious widow immediately
burned all his papers and letters. Lord Albemarle could not take
upon himself to destroy the duke’s papers, but he sent the whole of
them to the duke’s favourite sister, the Princess Amelia. She replied,
from Gunnersbury, ‘You are always attentive and obliging, my good
Lord Albemarle. I thank you for the letters, and I have burnt them.’
Many a secret perished with them. George III. conferred on Lord
Albemarle the duke’s garter.
The bitterness and pertinacity of the Jacobites against the duke
cannot be better illustrated than by an incident recorded by Boswell.
Johnson, Wedderburne, Murphy, and Foote, visited ‘Bedlam’ (in
Moorfields) together. At that time idle people went to look at the ‘mad
people in dens,’ as they now go to a menagerie, or ‘the Zoo.’ Boswell
says that Foote gave a very entertaining account of Johnson having
his attention arrested by a man who was very furious, and who, while
beating his straw, supposed it was William Duke of Cumberland,
whom he was punishing for his cruelties in Scotland, in 1746. The
entertainment was in the fact that Jacobite Johnson was amused by
this sad spectacle.
The duke was soon followed on ‘the way to dusty death,’ by him
whose life he had certainly helped to embitter.
The death of the Chevalier de St. George, at
DEATH OF
Rome, on New Year’s Night, 1766, was not known in THE OLD
London for nearly a fortnight. The only stir caused by CHEVALIER.
it was at the Council Board at St. James’s, whence
couriers rode away with despatches for foreign courts, which
couriers speedily returned with satisfactory answers. The Chevalier
might, like Charles II., have apologised to those who attended his
death-bed, on his being so long adying. What had come to be
thought of him in London may be partly seen in Walpole’s ‘Memoirs
of the reign of George III.’ There the Chevalier is spoken of as one
who had outlived his own hopes and the people who had ever given
him any. ‘His party was dwindled to scarce any but Catholics.’ Of the
church of the latter, Walpole calls him the most meritorious martyr,
and yet Rome would not recognise the royalty of the heirs. ‘To such
complete humiliation was reduced that ever unfortunate House of
Stuart, now at last denied the empty sound of royalty by the Church
and Court, for which they had sacrificed three kingdoms.’
The newspapers and other periodicals of the time FUNERAL
took less interest in the event than in a prize-fight. RITES.
The feeling with trifling exception was one of
indifference, but there was nowhere any expression of disrespect.
The various accounts of the imperial ceremony with which the body
of the unlucky prince lay in state, and was ultimately entombed, were
no doubt read with avidity. The imagination of successive reporters
grew with details of their subject. A figure of Death which appears
among the ‘properties’ of the lying in state, in the earliest account,
expands into ‘thirteen skeletons holding wax tapers’ in the later
communications. To this state ceremony, the London papers assert,
none were admitted but Italian princes and English—Jacobites of
course,—several of whom left London for the purpose. At the
transfer of the body to St. Peter’s, the royal corpse was surrounded
by ‘the English college,’ and was followed by ‘four Cardinals on
mules covered with purple velvet hangings.’ The Jacobites must
have put down the London papers with a feeling that their king was
dead, and a hope that his soul was at rest.
The death seems to have had a curious effect on at least one
London Jacobite. In January, 1766, two heads remained on Temple
Bar. The individual just referred to thought they had remained there
long enough. For some nights he secretly discharged bullets at them
from a cross-bow; and at last he was caught in the act. He was
suspected of being a kinsman of one of the unhappy sufferers; but in
presence of the magistrates he maintained that he was a loyal friend
of the established government; ‘that he thought it was not sufficient
that traitors should merely suffer death, and that consequently he
had treated the heads with indignity by trying to smash them.’ This
offender, who affected a sort of silliness, was dismissed with a
caution. There were found upon him fifty musket bullets, separately
wrapped in paper, each envelope bearing the motto ‘Eripuit ille
vitam,’ the application of which would have puzzled Œdipus himself.
The next incident of the time connected with GEORGE III.
Jacobitism is the celebrated interview between the AND DR.
king and Dr. Johnson. In that celebrated audience JOHNSON.
which the old Tory had of the king, in February, 1767,
in the library of Buckingham Palace, sovereign and subject acquitted
themselves equally well. Mr. Barnard, the librarian, had settled
Johnson, and left him, by the library fireside. The Doctor was deep in
a volume when the king and Barnard entered quietly by a private
door, and the librarian, going up to Johnson, whispered in his ear,
‘Sir, here is the king.’ George III. was ‘courteously easy.’ Johnson
was self-possessed and equally at his ease, as he stood in the king’s
presence.
With little exception, the conversation was purely literary: the
characteristics of the Oxford and Cambridge libraries; the
publications of the University presses; the labours of Johnson
himself; the controversy between Warburton and Lowth; Lord
Lyttelton as a historian; the merits of the universal Dr. Hill; the quality
of home and foreign periodicals; and so on. When Lyttelton was
named, Johnson said he had blamed Henry II. over much. The king
thought historians seldom did such things by halves. ‘No, Sir,’ said
Johnson, ‘not to kings;’ but he added: ‘That for those who spoke
worse of kings than they deserved, he could find no excuse; but he
could more easily conceive how some might speak better of them
than they deserved, without any ill intention; for as kings had much in
their power to give, those who were favoured by them would
frequently, from gratitude, exaggerate their praises; and as this
proceeded from a good motive, it was certainly excusable—as far as
error was excusable.’
When Johnson submitted that he himself had done
JOHNSON, ON
his part as a writer, ‘I should have thought so, too,’ GEORGE III.
said the king, ‘if you had not written so well.’ Johnson
spoke of this to Boswell in these words: ‘No man could have paid a
handsomer compliment, and it was fit for a king to pay: it was
decisive.’ On another occasion, Johnson being asked if he made any
reply to this high compliment, he answered: ‘No, Sir. When the king
had said it, it was to be so. It was not for me to bandy civilities with
my sovereign.’ Later still he said, ‘I find it does a man good to be
talked to by his sovereign;’ and for some time subsequently he
continued to speak of the king as he had spoken of him to Mr.
Barnard, after the interview: ‘Sir, they may talk of the king as they
will, but he is the finest gentleman I have ever seen;’ and later, ‘still
harping on my daughter,’ he said at Langton’s: ‘Sir, his manners are
those of as fine a gentleman as we may suppose Louis XIV. or
Charles II.’
Assuredly, the fine-gentleman manners of either king were not
now to be found in the Charles Edward who aspired to the throne
which Charles II. had occupied. A passage in an autograph letter,
addressed in May, 1767, by Cardinal York to a friend of the family in
London (where it was offered for sale three or four years ago),
shows the condition of the prince, and shadows forth the lingering
hopes of the family. The Cardinal, after stating that the Pope had
presented Charles Edward with ‘a pair of beads,’ adds: ‘They are of
such a kind as are only given to Sovrains, and could wee but gett the
better of the nasty Bottle, which every now and then comes on by
spurts, I would hope a greet deal of ouer gaining a good deal as to
other things.’
Four years later (that is, in 1771), the pensioning of JOHNSON’S
Jacobite Johnson was brought before the notice of PENSION
the House of Commons. In parliament, his Jacobitism OPPOSED.
was made use of as a weapon against himself.
Townshend’s charge against the Ministry was based on the alleged
fact that Johnson was a pensioner, and was expected to earn his
pension. ‘I consider him,’ said Townshend, ‘a man of some talent, but
no temper. The principle he upholds I shall ever detest. This man, a
Jacobite by principle, has been encouraged, fostered, pensioned,
because he is a Jacobite.’ Wedderburn denied it, and aptly asked, ‘If
a papist, or a theoretical admirer of a republican form of government,
should be a great mathematician or a great poet, doing honour to his
country and his age, and should fall into destitution, is he to be
excluded from the royal bounty?’ The answer is patent; but it is not a
matter for gratulation that Johnson wrote, as Lord Campbell remarks,
‘out of gratitude, “The False Alarm,” and “Taxation no Tyranny,” the
proof sheets of which were revised at the Treasury.’ Johnson himself
did not prove that his withers were unwrung by the vaunting remark
to Davies: ‘I wish my pension, Sir, were twice as large, that they
might make twice as much noise.’
In 1772, Jacobitism was again under parliamentary
A 30TH OF
notice. At this time, although the Nonjurors kept true JANUARY
in their allegiance to the hereditary right of the SERMON.
Stuarts, the Tories were as opposite as could be to those of the old
turbulent era of ‘High Church and Ormond!’ On the 30th of January,
Dr. Nowell (Principal of St. Mary, Oxford) preached before the House
of Commons a sermon that Sacheverel might have preached. That is
to say, he vindicated Charles I.; he also drew a parallel between him
and George III., and indulged in very high Tory sentiments. As usual,
the preacher was thanked, and he was requested to print his
discourse, which was done accordingly. At this juncture the younger
Townshend moved in the House to have the sermon burnt by the
common hangman; but, says Walpole (in his ‘Last Journals’), ‘as the
Houses had, according to custom, thanked the parson for his
sermon, without hearing or reading it, they could not censure it now
without exposing themselves to great ridicule.’ They did censure it,
nevertheless. Captain Walsingham Boyle, R.N.,
DEBATE ON
proposed, and Major-General Irwin seconded, the THE SERMON.
motion that the vote of thanks should be expunged.
This was opposed by Sir William Dolben and Sir Roger Newdegate,
who had proposed the vote of thanks. ‘Sir Roger,’ says Walpole, as
above, ‘was stupidly hot, and spoke with all the flame of stupid
bigotry, declaring that he would maintain all the doctrines in the
sermon were constitutional.’ T. Townshend, jun., showed how
repugnant they were to the constitution, and it was carried by 152 to
41, to expunge the thanks. General Keppel, Colonel Fitzroy (Vice-
Chamberlain to the king), and Charles Fox, all descendants of
Charles I., voted against the sermon, as did even Dyson and many
courtiers. The 41 were rank Tories, all but Rigby, who had retired
behind the chair; but, being made to vote, voted as he thought the
king would like, to whom he paid the greatest court, expecting to be
Chancellor of the Exchequer if Lord Guilford should die and Lord
North go into the House of Lords. This proper severity on the
sermon,’ as Walpole now calls it, ‘was a great blow to the Court, as
clergymen would fear to be too forward with their servility, when the
censure of Parliament might make it unadvisable for the king to
prefer them.’ Boswell thought that ‘Dr. Nowell will ever have the
honour which is due to a lofty friend of our monarchical constitution.’
‘Sir,’ said Johnson, ‘the Court will be very much to blame if he is not
promoted.’ A dozen years later, Johnson, Boswell, and ‘very
agreeable company at Dr. Nowell’s, drank Church and King after
dinner with true Tory cordiality.’ The toast had a different personal
application in former days.
And there was something a-foot which might
MARRIAGE OF
culminate in restoring that old personal application. CHARLES
London suddenly heard that Charles Edward had EDWARD.
quite as suddenly disappeared from Florence. ‘I am
sorry,’ Walpole wrote to our minister at Florence, in September, ‘that
so watchful a cat should let its mouse slip at last, without knowing
into what hole it is run.’ Walpole conjectured Spain, on his way to
Ireland, with Spanish help. But the prince was bent on other things,
and not on invasion and conquest by force of arms. Charles Edward
had once declared (London gossip at least gave him the credit of the
declaration) that he would never marry, in order that England might
not be trammeled by new complications. When he did marry, the
London papers made less ado about it than if the son of an alderman
had married ‘an agreeable and pretty young lady with a considerable
fortune.’ This single paragraph told the Londoners of the princely
match: ‘April 1st, 1772. The Pretender was married the 28th of last
month at St. Germain, in France, by proxy, to a Princess of Stolberg,
who set off immediately to Italy to meet him.’
Walpole reflects, but exaggerates, the opinions of WALPOLE, ON
London fashionable society, on the marriage of THE
Charles Edward. He knows little about the bride. ‘The MARRIAGE.
new Pretendress is said to be but sixteen, and a
Lutheran. I doubt the latter. If the former is true, I suppose they mean
to carry on the breed in the way it began—by a spurious child. A
Fitz-Pretender is an excellent continuation of the patriarchal line.’ At
that time the Royal Marriage Bill, which prohibited the princes and
princesses of the Royal Family from marrying without the consent of
the Sovereign, or, in certain cases, of Parliament, was being much
discussed. ‘Thereupon,’ Mr. Chute says, ‘when the Royal Family are
prevented from marrying, it is a right time for the Stuarts to marry.
This event seems to explain the Pretender’s disappearance last
autumn; and though they sent him back from Paris, they may not
dislike the propagation of thorns in our side.’
In a subsequent letter, Walpole continues the subject. ‘I do not
believe,’ he says, ‘that she is a Protestant, though I have heard from
one who should know, General Redmond, an Irish officer in the
French service, that the Pretender himself abjured the Roman
Catholic religion at Liége, a few years ago, and that, on that account,
the Irish Catholics no longer make him remittances. This would be
some, and the only apology, but fear, for the Pope’s refusing him the
title of king. What say you to this Protestantism? At Paris they call
his income twenty-five thousand pound sterling a year. His bride has
nothing but many quarters. The Cardinal of York’s answer last year
to the question of whither his brother was gone? is now explained.
“You told me,” he replied, “whither he should have gone a year
sooner.”’
The London papers of the 1st of April contained THE LAST
other information not uninteresting to Jacobites. It HEADS ON
was in this form:—‘Yesterday, one of the rebel heads TEMPLE BAR.
on Temple Bar fell down. There is only one head now
remaining.’ The remaining head fell shortly after. They were
popularly said to be those of Towneley and Fletcher; and, as before
noticed, there is a legend that Towneley’s head is still preserved in
London. The late Mr. Timbs, in his ‘London and Westminster,’ gives
this account of ‘the rebel heads’ and their farewell to the Bar:—‘Mrs.
Black, the wife of the editor of the ‘Morning Chronicle,’ when asked if
she remembered any heads on Temple Bar, used to reply in her
brusque, hearty way: “Boys, I recollect the scene well. I have seen
on that Temple Bar, about which you ask, two human heads—real
heads—traitors’ heads—spiked on iron poles. There were two. I saw
one fall (March 31st, 1772). Women shrieked as it fell; men, as I
have heard, shrieked. One woman near me fainted. Yes, boys, I
recollect seeing human heads on Temple Bar.”’ The spikes were not
removed till early in the present century.
At this period merit in literature was allowed or DALRYMPLE’S
denied, according to the writer’s politics. In 1773 Sir ‘MEMOIRS.’
John Dalrymple published the famous second volume
of his ‘Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland, from the dissolution of
the last Parliament until the Sea-Battle of La Hogue.’ The first
volume had appeared two years previously. The third and concluding
volume was not published till 1788. The second volume was famous
for its exposure of Lord William Russell and Algernon Sidney as
recipients of money from Louis XIV.; money not personally applied,
but used, or supposed to be used, for the purpose of establishing a
republic. Walpole was furious at a book which, while it treated both
sides, generally, with little tenderness, absolved the last two Stuart
kings from blame, and spoke of William with particular severity.
Walpole says of Sir John: ‘He had been a hearty Jacobite; pretended
to be converted; then paid his court when he found his old principles
were no longer a disrecommendation at court. The great object of his
work was to depreciate and calumniate all the friends of the
Revolution.... The famous second volume was a direct charge of
bribery from France, on the venerable hero, Algernon Sidney,
pretended to be drawn from Barillon’s papers at Versailles, a source
shut up to others, and actually opened to Sir John, by the
intercession of even George III.—a charge I would not make but on
the best authority. Lord Nuneham, son of Lord Harcourt, then
ambassador in Paris, told me his father obtained licence for Sir John
to search those archives—amazing proof of all I have said on the
designs of this reign; what must they be when George III.
encourages a Jacobite wretch to hunt in France for materials for
blackening the heroes who withstood the enemies of Protestants and
Liberty?... Men saw the Court could have no meaning but to sap all
virtuous principles and to level the best men to the worst,—a plot
more base and destructive than any harboured by the Stuarts....
Who could trust to evidence either furnished from Versailles or
coined as if it came from thence? And who could trust to Sir John,
who was accused, I know not how truly, of having attempted to get
his own father hanged, and who had been turned out of a place, by
Lord Rockingham, for having accepted a bribe?’
The above, from Walpole’s ‘Last Journals,’ is a WALPOLE’S
curious burst of Anti-Jacobitism, on the part of a man ANTI-
who gave Sir John Dalrymple a letter of introduction JACOBITISM.
to the French Minister, de Choiseul! Sir John in his
preface names ‘Mr. Stanley, Lord Harcourt, and Mr. Walpole,’ as
furnishing him with such introductions. All that the king did was to
allow access to William III.’s private chest, at Kensington, and the
‘ex-Jacobite wretch’ to make what he could out of the contents.
Walpole never forgave him. In 1774, when a Bill, to relieve
booksellers who had bought property in copies, was before the
Commons, ‘the impudent Sir John Dalrymple,’ as Walpole calls him,
‘pleaded at the bar of the House against the booksellers, who had
paid him 2000l. for his book in support of the Stuarts. This was the
wretch,’ cries Walpole, ‘who had traduced Virtue and Algernon
Sidney!’
Walpole spared Lord Mansfield, the brother of ANTI-
Murray of Broughton (and almost as much of a ULTRAMONTA
Jacobite), as little as he did Dalrymple. In June, this NISM.
year, there was a hotly-sustained battle in the
Commons over the Quebec Bill. The Bill was denounced as an
attempt to involve Protestants under a Roman Catholic jurisdiction.
The Court was accused of preparing a Popish army to keep down
the American colonies. Walpole charged Lord Mansfield with being
the author of the Bill, and with disavowing the authorship. On the 9th
of June, Lord North proposed to adjourn the debate till the 11th, as
on the intervening day Lord Stanley was to give a grand
entertainment at the Oaks, near Epsom, in honour of his intended
bride, Lady Betty Hamilton. The opposition in the House did not let
slip the palpable opportunity. They severely ridiculed the minister,
and Tom Townshend told him,—the Pretender’s birthday, the 10th of
June, was a proper festival for finishing a Bill of so Stuart-like a
complexion! Camden said, in the Lords, that the king, by favouring
such a measure, would commit a breach of his coronation oath.
Walpole has recorded, in his ‘Last Journals,’ that the sovereign who
was wearing the crown of England, to the prejudice of the Stuart
family, was doing by the authority of a free parliament what James II.
was expelled for doing. The City told the king, in a petition not to
pass the Bill, that he had no right to the crown but as a protector of
the Protestant religion. Walpole remarked, ‘The King has a Scotch
Chief Justice, abler than Laud, though not so intrepid as Lord
Strafford. Laud and Strafford lost their heads,—Lord Mansfield would
not lose his, for he would die of fear, if he were in danger, of which,
unfortunately, there is no prospect.’ The Bill was carried in both
Houses. On the 22nd of June, the king went down to the Lords to
pass the Bill, and prorogue the Parliament. The crowded streets
wore quite the air of old Jacobite times. The feeling of dread and
hatred, not against English Catholics, but against that form of Popery
called Ultramontanism, which would, if it could, dash out the brains
of Protestantism, and overthrow kings and thrones ‘ad majorem Dei
gloriam,’ found bitter expression on that day. ‘His Majesty,’ according
to the journals, ‘was much insulted on his way to the House of Peers
yesterday. The cry of No Popery! was re-echoed from every
quarter, and the noisy expressions of displeasure were greater than
his Majesty ever yet heard.’ On the other hand, the king’s brother,
the Duke of Gloucester, rose suddenly into favour. He voted against
the Bill. With reference to that step, the ‘Public Advertiser’ chronicled
the following lines: ‘’Tis said that a great personage has taken an
additional disgust at another great personage dividing with the
minority on Friday last. This is the second heinous offence the latter
has been guilty of; the first, committing matrimony; and now,
professing himself a Protestant.’ Walpole thought it was judicious in
him to let it be seen that at least one Prince of the House of Hanover
had the Protestant cause at heart, and the preservation of the ‘happy
establishment.’
As the study of the times is pursued, the student is ‘THE HAPPY
no sooner disposed to believe that Jacobitism has ESTABLISHME
ultimately evaporated, than he comes upon some NT.’
remarkable proof to the contrary. The following is one
of such proofs.
In the year 1775, some friend of the drama GARRICK’S
remonstrated with Garrick on the absurdity of the MACBETH.
costume in which he and other actors of Macbeth
played the hero of Shakespeare’s tragedy. The actor of the Thane
generally dressed the character in a modern military uniform. As an
improvement, it was suggested that a tartan dress was the proper
costume to wear. Of course the real Macbeth was never seen in
such a dress; but Garrick was not troubled at that. He objected for
another reason. ‘It is only thirty years ago,’ he said, ‘that the
Pretender was in England. Party spirit runs so high that if I were to
put on tartan, I should be hissed off the stage, and perhaps the
house would be pulled down!’ It should be remembered that when
Macklin changed his Macbeth costume from that of an English
general to a plaid coat and trousers, Quin said that Macklin had
turned Macbeth into an old Scotch piper.
The party spirit to which Garrick alluded seems to have revived in
the person of Dr. Johnson, whose principles led him still to
sympathise with the Jacobite cause.

You might also like