THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND
FROM THE ACCESSION OF JAMES II,

VOLUME 5 (of 5)

(Chapters XXIII-XXV)

by Thomas Babington Macaulay.

Philadelphia
Porter & Coates

Contents

DETAILED CONTENTS

PREFACE TO THE FIFTH VOLUME.

I HAVE thought it right to publish that portion of the continuation of the
“History of England” which was fairly transcribed and revised by Lord
Macaulay. It is given to the world precisely as it was left: no connecting
link has been added; no reference verified; no authority sought for or
examined. It would indeed have been possible, with the help I might have
obtained from his friends, to have supplied much that is wanting; but I
preferred, and I believe the public will prefer, that the last thoughts of
the great mind passed away from among us should be preserved sacred from
any touch but his own. Besides the revised manuscript, a few pages
containing the first rough sketch of the last two months of William’s
reign are all that is left. From this I have with some difficulty
deciphered the account of the death of William. No attempt has been made
to join it on to the preceding part, or to supply the corrections which
would have been given by the improving hand of the author. But, imperfect
as it must be, I believe it will be received with pleasure and interest as
a fit conclusion to the life of his great hero.

I will only add my grateful thanks for the kind advice and assistance
given me by his most dear and valued friends, Dean Milman and Mr. Ellis.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE rejoicings, by which London, on the second of December 1697,
celebrated the return of peace and prosperity, continued till long after
midnight. On the following morning the Parliament met; and one of the most
laborious sessions of that age commenced.

Among the questions which it was necessary that the Houses should speedily
decide, one stood forth preeminent in interest and importance. Even in the
first transports of joy with which the bearer of the treaty of Ryswick had
been welcomed to England, men had eagerly and anxiously asked one another
what was to be done with that army which had been formed in Ireland and
Belgium, which had learned, in many hard campaigns, to obey and to
conquer, and which now consisted of eighty-seven thousand excellent
soldiers. Was any part of this great force to be retained in the service
of the State? And, if any part, what part? The last two kings had, without
the consent of the legislature, maintained military establishments in time
of peace. But that they had done this in violation of the fundamental laws
of England was acknowledged by all jurists, and had been expressly
affirmed in the Bill of Rights. It was therefore impossible for William,
now that the country was threatened by no foreign and no domestic enemy,
to keep up even a single battalion without the sanction of the Estates of
the Realm; and it might well be doubted whether such a sanction would be
given.

It is not easy for us to see this question in the light in which it
appeared to our ancestors.

No man of sense has, in our days, or in the days of our fathers, seriously
maintained that our island could be safe without an army. And, even if our
island were perfectly secure from attack, an army would still be
indispensably necessary to us. The growth of the empire has left us no
choice. The regions which we have colonized or conquered since the
accession of the House of Hanover contain a population exceeding
twenty-fold that which the House of Stuart governed. There are now more
English soldiers on the other side of the tropic of Cancer in time of
peace than Cromwell had under his command in time of war. All the troops
of Charles II. would not have been sufficient to garrison the posts which
we now occupy in the Mediterranean Sea alone. The regiments which defend
the remote dependencies of the Crown cannot be duly recruited and
relieved, unless a force far larger than that which James collected in the
camp at Hounslow for the purpose of overawing his capital be constantly
kept up within the kingdom. The old national antipathy to permanent
military establishments, an antipathy which was once reasonable and
salutary, but which lasted some time after it had become unreasonable and
noxious, has gradually yielded to the irresistible force of circumstances.
We have made the discovery, that an army may be so constituted as to be in
the highest degree efficient against an enemy, and yet obsequious to the
civil magistrate. We have long ceased to apprehend danger to law and to
freedom from the license of troops, and from the ambition of victorious
generals. An alarmist who should now talk such language, as was common
five generations ago, who should call for the entire disbanding of the
land force; of the realm, and who should gravely predict that the warriors
of Inkerman and Delhi would depose the Queen, dissolve the Parliament, and
plunder the Bank, would be regarded as fit only for a cell in Saint
Luke’s. But before the Revolution our ancestors had known a standing army
only as an instrument of lawless power. Judging by their own experience,
they thought it impossible that such an army should exist without danger
to the rights both of the Crown and of the people. One class of
politicians was never weary of repeating that an Apostolic Church, a loyal
gentry, an ancient nobility, a sainted King, had been foully outraged by
the Joyces and the Prides; another class recounted the atrocities
committed by the Lambs of Kirke, and by the Beelzebubs and Lucifers of
Dundee; and both classes, agreeing in scarcely any thing else, were
disposed to agree in aversion to the red coats.

While such was the feeling of the nation, the King was, both as a
statesman and as a general, most unwilling to see that superb body of
troops which he had formed with infinite difficulty broken up and
dispersed. But, as to this matter, he could not absolutely rely on the
support of his ministers; nor could his ministers absolutely rely on the
support of that parliamentary majority whose attachment had enabled them
to confront enemies abroad and to crush traitors at home, to restore a
debased currency, and to fix public credit on deep and solid foundations.

The difficulties of the King’s situation are to be, in part at least,
attributed to an error which he had committed in the preceding spring. The
Gazette which announced that Sunderland been appointed Chamberlain of the
Royal Household, sworn of the Privy Council, and named one of the Lords
Justices who were to administer the government during the summer had
caused great uneasiness among plain men who remembered all the windings
and doublings of his long career. In truth, his countrymen were unjust to
him. For they thought him, not only an unprincipled and faithless
politician, which he was, but a deadly enemy of the liberties of the
nation, which he was not. What he wanted was simply to be safe, rich and
great. To these objects he had been constant through all the vicissitudes
of his life. For these objects he had passed from Church to Church and
from faction to faction, had joined the most turbulent of oppositions
without any zeal for freedom, and had served the most arbitrary of
monarchs without any zeal for monarchy; had voted for the Exclusion Bill
without being a Protestant, and had adored the Host without being a
Papist; had sold his country at once to both the great parties which
divided the Continent; had taken money from France, and had sent
intelligence to Holland. As far, however, as he could be said to have any
opinions, his opinions were Whiggish. Since his return from exile, his
influence had been generally exerted in favour of the Whig party. It was
by his counsel that the Great Seal had been entrusted to Somers, that
Nottingham had been sacrificed to Russell, and that Montague had been
preferred to Fox. It was by his dexterous management that the Princess
Anne had been detached from the opposition, and that Godolphin had been
removed from the head of the hoard of Treasury. The party which Sunderland
had done so much to serve now held a new pledge for his fidelity. His only
son, Charles Lord Spencer, was just entering on public life. The
precocious maturity of the young man’s intellectual and moral character
had excited hopes which were not destined to be realized. His knowledge of
ancient literature, and his skill in imitating the styles of the masters
of Roman eloquence, were applauded by veteran scholars. The sedateness of
his deportment and the apparent regularity of his life delighted austere
moralists. He was known indeed to have one expensive taste; but it was a
taste of the most respectable kind. He loved books, and was bent or
forming the most magnificent private library in England. While other heirs
of noble houses were inspecting patterns of steinkirks and sword knots,
dangling after actresses, or betting on fighting cocks, he was in pursuit
of the Mentz editions of Tully’s Offices, of the Parmesan Statius, and of
the inestimable Virgin of Zarottus. 1 It was
natural that high expectations should be formed of the virtue and wisdom
of a youth whose very luxury and prodigality had a grave and erudite air,
and that even discerning men should be unable to detect the vices which
were hidden under that show of premature sobriety.

Spencer was a Whig, unhappily for the Whig party, which, before the
unhonoured and unlamented close of his life, was more than once brought to
the verge of ruin by his violent temper and his crooked politics. His
Whiggism differed widely from that of his father. It was not a languid,
speculative, preference of one theory of government to another, but a
fierce and dominant passion. Unfortunately, though an ardent, it was at
the same time a corrupt and degenerate, Whiggism; a Whiggism so narrow and
oligarchical as to be little, if at all, preferable to the worst forms of
Toryism. The young lord’s imagination had been fascinated by those
swelling sentiments of liberty which abound in the Latin poets and
orators; and he, like those poets and orators, meant by liberty something
very different from the only liberty which is of importance to the
happiness of mankind. Like them, he could see no danger to liberty except
from kings. A commonwealth, oppressed and pillaged by such men as Opimius
and Verres, was free, because it had no king. A member of the Grand
Council of Venice, who passed his whole life under tutelage and in fear,
who could not travel where he chose, or visit whom he chose, or invest his
property as he chose, whose path was beset with spies, who saw at the
corners of the streets the mouth of bronze gaping for anonymous
accusations against him, and whom the Inquisitors of State could, at any
moment, and for any or no reason, arrest, torture, fling into the Grand
Canal, was free, because he had no king. To curtail, for the benefit of a
small privileged class, prerogatives which the Sovereign possesses and
ought to possess for the benefit of the whole nation, was the object on
which Spencer’s heart was set. During many years he was restrained by
older and wiser men; and it was not till those whom he had early been
accustomed to respect had passed away, and till he was himself at the head
of affairs, that he openly attempted to obtain for the hereditary nobility
a precarious and invidious ascendency in the State, at the expense both of
the Commons and of the Throne.

In 1695, Spencer had taken his seat in the House of Commons as member for
Tiverton, and had, during two sessions, conducted himself as a steady and
zealous Whig.

The party to which he had attached himself might perhaps have reasonably
considered him as a hostage sufficient to ensure the good faith of his
father; for the Earl was approaching that time of life at which even the
most ambitious and rapacious men generally toil rather for their children
than for themselves. But the distrust which Sunderland inspired was such
as no guarantee could quiet. Many fancied that he was,—with what
object they never took the trouble to inquire,—employing the same
arts which had ruined James for the purpose of ruining William. Each
prince had had his weak side. One was too much a Papist, and the other too
much a soldier, for such a nation as this. The same intriguing sycophant
who had encouraged the Papist in one fatal error was now encouraging the
soldier in another. It might well be apprehended that, under the influence
of this evil counsellor, the nephew might alienate as many hearts by
trying to make England a military country as the uncle had alienated by
trying to make her a Roman Catholic country.

The parliamentary conflict on the great question of a standing army was
preceded by a literary conflict. In the autumn of 1697 began a controversy
of no common interest and importance. The press was now free. An exciting
and momentous political question could be fairly discussed. Those who held
uncourtly opinions could express those opinions without resorting to
illegal expedients and employing the agency of desperate men. The
consequence was that the dispute was carried on, though with sufficient
keenness, yet, on the whole, with a decency which would have been thought
extraordinary in the days of the censorship.

On this occasion the Tories, though they felt strongly, wrote but little.
The paper war was almost entirely carried on between two sections of the
Whig party. The combatants on both sides were generally anonymous. But it
was well known that one of the foremost champions of the malecontent Whigs
was John Trenchard, son of the late Secretary of State. Preeminent among
the ministerial Whigs was one in whom admirable vigour and quickness of
intellect were united to a not less admirable moderation and urbanity, one
who looked on the history of past ages with the eye of a practical
statesman, and on the events which were passing before him with the eye of
a philosophical historian. It was not necessary for him to name himself.
He could be none but Somers.

The pamphleteers who recommended the immediate and entire disbanding of
the army had an easy task. If they were embarrassed, it was only by the
abundance of the matter from which they had to make their selection. On
their side were claptraps and historical commonplaces without number, the
authority of a crowd of illustrious names, all the prejudices, all the
traditions, of both the parties in the state. These writers laid it down
as a fundamental principle of political science that a standing army and a
free constitution could not exist together. What, they asked, had
destroyed the noble commonwealths of Greece? What had enslaved the mighty
Roman people? What had turned the Italian republics of the middle ages
into lordships and duchies? How was it that so many of the kingdoms of
modern Europe had been transformed from limited into absolute monarchies?
The States General of France, the Cortes of Castile, the Grand Justiciary
of Arragon, what had been fatal to them all? History was ransacked for
instances of adventurers who, by the help of mercenary troops, had
subjugated free nations or deposed legitimate princes; and such instances
were easily found. Much was said about Pisistratus, Timophanes, Dionysius,
Agathocles, Marius and Sylla, Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar, Carthage
besieged by her own mercenaries, Rome put up to auction by her own
Praetorian cohorts, Sultan Osman butchered by his own Janissaries, Lewis
Sforza sold into captivity by his own Switzers. But the favourite instance
was taken from the recent history of our own land. Thousands still living
had seen the great usurper, who, strong in the power of the sword, had
triumphed over both royalty and freedom. The Tories were reminded that his
soldiers had guarded the scaffold before the Banqueting House. The Whigs
were reminded that those same soldiers had taken the mace from the table
of the House of Commons. From such evils, it was said, no country could be
secure which was cursed with a standing army. And what were the advantages
which could be set off against such evils? Invasion was the bugbear with
which the Court tried to frighten the nation. But we were not children to
be scared by nursery tales. We were at peace; and, even in time of war, an
enemy who should attempt to invade us would probably be intercepted by our
fleet, and would assuredly, if he reached our shores, be repelled by our
militia. Some people indeed talked as if a militia could achieve nothing
great. But that base doctrine was refuted by all ancient and all modern
history. What was the Lacedaemonian phalanx in the best days of
Lacedaemon? What was, the Roman legion in the best days of Rome? What were
the armies which conquered at Cressy, at Poitiers, at Agincourt, at
Halidon, or at Flodden? What was that mighty array which Elizabeth
reviewed at Tilbury? In the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries
Englishmen who did not live by the trade of war had made war with success
and glory. Were the English of the seventeenth century so degenerate that
they could not be trusted to play the men for their own homesteads and
parish churches?

For such reasons as these the disbanding of the forces was strongly
recommended. Parliament, it was said, might perhaps, from respect and
tenderness for the person of His Majesty, permit him to have guards enough
to escort his coach and to pace the rounds before his palace. But this was
the very utmost that it would be right to concede. The defence of the
realm ought to be confided to the sailors and the militia. Even the Tower
ought to have no garrison except the trainbands of the Tower Hamlets.

It must be evident to every intelligent and dispassionate man that these
declaimers contradicted themselves. If an army composed of regular troops
really was far more efficient than an army composed of husbandmen taken
from the plough and burghers taken from the counter, how could the country
be safe with no defenders but husbandmen and burghers, when a great
prince, who was our nearest neighbour, who had a few months before been
our enemy, and who might, in a few months, be our enemy again, kept up not
less than a hundred and fifty thousand regular troops? If, on the other
hand, the spirit of the English people was such that they would, with
little or no training, encounter and defeat the most formidable array of
veterans from the continent, was it not absurd to apprehend that such a
people could be reduced to slavery by a few regiments of their own
countrymen? But our ancestors were generally so much blinded by prejudice
that this inconsistency passed unnoticed. They were secure where they
ought to have been wary, and timorous where they might well have been
secure. They were not shocked by hearing the same man maintain, in the
same breath, that, if twenty thousand professional soldiers were kept up,
the liberty and property of millions of Englishmen would be at the mercy
of the Crown, and yet that those millions of Englishmen, fighting for
liberty and property, would speedily annihilate an invading army composed
of fifty or sixty thousand of the conquerors of Steinkirk and Landen.
Whoever denied the former proposition was called a tool of the Court.
Whoever denied the latter was accused of insulting and slandering the
nation.

Somers was too wise to oppose himself directly to the strong current of
popular feeling. With rare dexterity he took the tone, not of an advocate,
but of a judge. The danger which seemed so terrible to many honest friends
of liberty he did not venture to pronounce altogether visionary. But he
reminded his countrymen that a choice between dangers was sometimes all
that was left to the wisest of mankind. No lawgiver had ever been able to
devise a perfect and immortal form of government. Perils lay thick on the
right and on the left; and to keep far from one evil was to draw near to
another. That which, considered merely with reference to the internal
polity of England, might be, to a certain extent, objectionable, might be
absolutely essential to her rank among European Powers, and even to her
independence. All that a statesman could do in such a case was to weigh
inconveniences against each other, and carefully to observe which way the
scale leaned. The evil of having regular soldiers, and the evil of not
having them, Somers set forth and compared in a little treatise, which was
once widely renowned as the Balancing Letter, and which was admitted, even
by the malecontents, to be an able and plausible composition. He well knew
that mere names exercise a mighty influence on the public mind; that the
most perfect tribunal which a legislator could construct would be
unpopular if it were called the Star Chamber; that the most judicious tax
which a financier could devise would excite murmurs if it were called the
Shipmoney; and that the words Standing Army then had to English ears a
sound as unpleasing as either Shipmoney or Star Chamber. He declared
therefore that he abhorred the thought of a standing army. What he
recommended was, not a standing, but a temporary army, an army of which
Parliament would annually fix the number, an army for which Parliament
would annually frame a military code, an army which would cease to exist
as soon as either the Lords or the Commons should think that its services
were not needed. From such an army surely the danger to public liberty
could not by wise men be thought serious. On the other hand, the danger to
which the kingdom would be exposed if all the troops were disbanded was
such as might well disturb the firmest mind. Suppose a war with the
greatest power in Christendom to break out suddenly, and to find us
without one battalion of regular infantry, without one squadron of regular
cavalry; what disasters might we not reasonably apprehend? It was idle to
say that a descent could not take place without ample notice, and that we
should have time to raise and discipline a great force. An absolute
prince, whose orders, given in profound secresy, were promptly obeyed at
once by his captains on the Rhine and on the Scheld, and by his admirals
in the Bay of Biscay and in the Mediterranean, might be ready to strike a
blow long before we were prepared to parry it. We might be appalled by
learning that ships from widely remote parts, and troops from widely
remote garrisons, had assembled at a single point within sight of our
coast. To trust to our fleet was to trust to the winds and the waves. The
breeze which was favourable to the invader might prevent our men of war
from standing out to sea. Only nine years ago this had actually happened.
The Protestant wind, before which the Dutch armament had run full sail
down the Channel, had driven King James’s navy back into the Thames. It
must then be acknowledged to be not improbable that the enemy might land.
And, if he landed, what would he find? An open country; a rich country;
provisions everywhere; not a river but which could be forded; no natural
fastnesses such as protect the fertile plains of Italy; no artificial
fastnesses such as, at every step, impede the progress of a conqueror in
the Netherlands. Every thing must then be staked on the steadiness of the
militia; and it was pernicious flattery to represent the militia as equal
to a conflict in the field with veterans whose whole life had been a
preparation for the day of battle. The instances which it was the fashion
to cite of the great achievements of soldiers taken from the threshing
floor and the shopboard were fit only for a schoolboy’s theme. Somers, who
had studied ancient literature like a man,—a rare thing in his time,—said
that those instances refuted the doctrine which they were meant to prove.
He disposed of much idle declamation about the Lacedaemonians by saying,
most concisely, correctly and happily, that the Lacedaemonian commonwealth
really was a standing army which threatened all the rest of Greece. In
fact, the Spartan had no calling except war. Of arts, sciences and letters
he was ignorant. The labour of the spade and of the loom, and the petty
gains of trade, he contemptuously abandoned to men of a lower caste. His
whole existence from childhood to old age was one long military training.
Meanwhile the Athenian, the Corinthian, the Argive, the Theban, gave his
chief attention to his oliveyard or his vineyard, his warehouse or his
workshop, and took up his shield and spear only for short terms and at
long intervals. The difference therefore between a Lacedaemonian phalanx
and any other phalanx was long as great as the difference between a
regiment of the French household troops and a regiment of the London
trainbands. Lacedaemon consequently continued to be dominant in Greece
till other states began to employ regular troops. Then her supremacy was
at an end. She was great while she was a standing army among militias. She
fell when she had to contend with other standing armies. The lesson which
is really to be learned from her ascendency and from her decline is this,
that the occasional soldier is no match for the professional soldier. 2

The same lesson Somers drew from the history of Rome; and every scholar
who really understands that history will admit that he was in the right.
The finest militia that ever existed was probably that of Italy in the
third century before Christ. It might have been thought that seven or
eight hundred thousand fighting men, who assuredly wanted neither natural
courage nor public spirit, would have been able to protect their own
hearths and altars against an invader. An invader came, bringing with him
an army small and exhausted by a march over the snows of the Alps, but
familiar with battles and sieges. At the head of this army he traversed
the peninsula to and fro, gained a succession of victories against immense
numerical odds, slaughtered the hardy youth of Latium like sheep, by tens
of thousands, encamped under the walls of Rome, continued during sixteen
years to maintain himself in a hostile country, and was never dislodged
till he had by a cruel discipline gradually taught his adversaries how to
resist him.

It was idle to repeat the names of great battles won, in the middle ages,
by men who did not make war their chief calling; those battles proved only
that one militia might beat another, and not that a militia could beat a
regular army. As idle was it to declaim about the camp at Tilbury. We had
indeed reason to be proud of the spirit which all classes of Englishmen,
gentlemen and yeomen, peasants and burgesses, had so signally displayed in
the great crisis of 1588. But we had also reason to be thankful that, with
all their spirit, they were not brought face to face with the Spanish
battalions. Somers related an anecdote, well worthy to be remembered,
which had been preserved by tradition in the noble house of De Vere. One
of the most illustrious men of that house, a captain who had acquired much
experience and much fame in the Netherlands, had, in the crisis of peril,
been summoned back to England by Elizabeth, and rode with her through the
endless ranks of shouting pikemen. She asked him what he thought of the
army. “It is,” he said, “a brave army.” There was something in his tone or
manner which showed that he meant more than his words expressed. The Queen
insisted on his speaking out. “Madam,” he said, “Your Grace’s army is
brave indeed. I have not in the world the name of a coward, and yet I am
the greatest coward here. All these fine fellows are praying that the
enemy may land, and that there may be a battle; and I, who know that enemy
well, cannot think of such a battle without dismay.” De Vere was doubtless
in the right. The Duke of Parma, indeed, would not have subjected our
country; but it is by no means improbable that, if he had effected a
landing, the island would have been the theatre of a war greatly
resembling that which Hannibal waged in Italy, and that the invaders would
not have been driven out till many cities had been sacked, till many
counties had been wasted, and till multitudes of our stout-hearted rustics
and artisans had perished in the carnage of days not less terrible than
those of Thrasymene and Cannae.

While the pamphlets of Trenchard and Somers were in every hand, the
Parliament met.

The words with which the King opened the session brought the great
question to a speedy issue. “The circumstances,” he said, “of affairs
abroad are such, that I think myself obliged to tell you my opinion, that,
for the present, England cannot be safe without a land force; and I hope
we shall not give those that mean us ill the opportunity of effecting that
under the notion of a peace which they could not bring to pass by war.”

The speech was well received; for that Parliament was thoroughly well
affected to the Government. The members had, like the rest of the
community, been put into high good humour by the return of peace and by
the revival of trade. They were indeed still under the influence of the
feelings of the preceding day; and they had still in their ears the
thanksgiving sermons and thanksgiving anthems; all the bonfires had hardly
burned out; and the rows of lamps and candles had hardly been taken down.
Many, therefore, who did not assent to all that the King had said, joined
in a loud hum of approbation when he concluded. 3 As soon as
the Commons had retired to their own chamber, they resolved to present an
address assuring His Majesty that they would stand by him in peace as
firmly as they had stood by him in war. Seymour, who had, during the
autumn, been going from shire to shire, for the purpose of inflaming the
country gentlemen against the ministry, ventured to make some uncourtly
remarks; but he gave so much offence that he was hissed down, and did not
venture to demand a division. 4

The friends of the Government were greatly elated by the proceedings of
this day. During the following week hopes were entertained that the
Parliament might be induced to vote a peace establishment of thirty
thousand men. But these hopes were delusive. The hum with which William’s
speech had been received, and the hiss which had drowned the voice of
Seymour, had been misunderstood. The Commons were indeed warmly attached
to the King’s person and government, and quick to resent any disrespectful
mention of his name. But the members who were disposed to let him have
even half as many troops as he thought necessary were a minority. On the
tenth of December his speech was considered in a Committee of the whole
House; and Harley came forward as the chief of the opposition. He did not,
like some hot headed men, among both the Whigs and the Tories, contend
that there ought to be no regular soldiers. But he maintained that it was
unnecessary to keep up, after the peace of Ryswick, a larger force than
had been kept up after the peace of Nimeguen. He moved, therefore, that
the military establishment should be reduced to what it had been in the
year 1680. The Ministers found that, on this occasion, neither their
honest nor their dishonest supporters could be trusted. For, in the minds
of the most respectable men, the prejudice against standing armies was of
too long growth and too deep root to be at once removed; and those means
by which the Court might, at another time, have secured the help of venal
politicians were, at that moment, of less avail than usual. The Triennial
Act was beginning to produce its effects. A general election was at hand.
Every member who had constituents was desirous to please them; and it was
certain that no member would please his constituents by voting for a
standing army; and the resolution moved by Harvey was strongly supported
by Howe, was carried, was reported to the House on the following day, and,
after a debate in which several orators made a great display of their
knowledge of ancient and modern history, was confirmed by one hundred and
eighty-five votes to one hundred and forty-eight. 5

In this debate the fear and hatred with which many of the best friends of
the Government regarded Sunderland were unequivocally manifested. “It is
easy,” such was the language of several members, “it is easy to guess by
whom that unhappy sentence was inserted in the speech from the Throne. No
person well acquainted with the disastrous and disgraceful history of the
last two reigns can doubt who the minister is, who is now whispering evil
counsel in the ear of a third master.” The Chamberlain, thus fiercely
attacked, was very feebly defended. There was indeed in the House of
Commons a small knot of his creatures; and they were men not destitute of
a certain kind of ability; but their moral character was as bad as his.
One of them was the late Secretary of the Treasury, Guy, who had been
turned out of his place for corruption. Another was the late Speaker,
Trevor, who had, from the chair, put the question whether he was or was
not a rogue, and had been forced to pronounce that the Ayes had it. A
third was Charles Duncombe, long the greatest goldsmith of Lombard Street,
and now one of the greatest landowners of the North Riding of Yorkshire.
Possessed of a private fortune equal to that of any duke, he had not
thought it beneath him to accept the place of Cashier of the Excise, and
had perfectly understood how to make that place lucrative; but he had
recently been ejected from office by Montague, who thought, with good
reason, that he was not a man to be trusted. Such advocates as Trevor, Guy
and Duncombe could do little for Sunderland in debate. The statesmen of
the junto would do nothing for him. They had undoubtedly owed much to him.
His influence, cooperating with their own great abilities and with the
force of circumstances, had induced the King to commit the direction of
the internal administration of the realm to a Whig Cabinet. But the
distrust which the old traitor and apostate inspired was not to be
overcome. The ministers could not be sure that he was not, while smiling
on them, whispering in confidential tones to them, pouring out, as it
might seem, all his heart to them, really calumniating them in the closet
or suggesting to the opposition some ingenious mode of attacking them.
They had very recently been thwarted by him. They were bent on making
Wharton a Secretary of State, and had therefore looked forward with
impatience to the retirement of Trumball, who was indeed hardly equal to
the duties of his great place. To their surprise and mortification they
learned, on the eve of the meeting of Parliament, that Trumball had
suddenly resigned, and Vernon, the Under Secretary, had been summoned to
Kensington, and had returned thence with the seals. Vernon was a zealous
Whig, and not personally unacceptable to the chiefs of his party. But the
Lord Chancellor, the First Lord of the Treasury, and the First Lord of the
Admiralty, might not unnaturally think it strange that a post of the
highest importance should have been filled up in opposition to their known
wishes, and with a haste and a secresy which plainly showed that the King
did not wish to be annoyed by their remonstrances. The Lord Chamberlain
pretended that he had done all in his power to serve Wharton. But the Whig
chiefs were not men to be duped by the professions of so notorious a liar.
Montague bitterly described him as a fireship, dangerous at best, but on
the whole most dangerous as a consort, and least dangerous when showing
hostile colours. Smith, who was the most efficient of Montague’s
lieutenants, both in the Treasury and in the Parliament, cordially
sympathised with his leader. Sunderland was therefore left undefended. His
enemies became bolder and more vehement every day. Sir Thomas Dyke, member
for Grinstead, and Lord Norris, son of the Earl of Abingdon, talked of
moving an address requesting the King to banish for ever from the Court
and the Council that evil adviser who had misled His Majesty’s royal
uncles, had betrayed the liberties of the people, and had abjured the
Protestant religion.

Sunderland had been uneasy from the first moment at which his name had
been mentioned in the House of Commons. He was now in an agony of terror.
The whole enigma of his life, an enigma of which many unsatisfactory and
some absurd explanations have been propounded, is at once solved if we
consider him as a man insatiably greedy of wealth and power, and yet
nervously apprehensive of danger. He rushed with ravenous eagerness at
every bait which was offered to his cupidity. But any ominous shadow, any
threatening murmur, sufficed to stop him in his full career, and to make
him change his course or bury himself in a hiding place. He ought to have
thought himself fortunate indeed, when, after all the crimes which he had
committed, he found himself again enjoying his picture gallery and his
woods at Althorpe, sitting in the House of Lords, admitted to the royal
closet, pensioned from the Privy Purse, consulted about the most important
affairs of state. But his ambition and avarice would not suffer him to
rest till he held a high and lucrative office, till he was a regent of the
kingdom. The consequence was, as might have been expected, a violent
clamour; and that clamour he had not the spirit to face.

His friends assured him that the threatened address would not be carried.
Perhaps a hundred and sixty members might vote for it; but hardly more. “A
hundred and sixty!” he cried: “No minister can stand against a hundred and
sixty. I am sure that I will not try.” It must be remembered that a
hundred and sixty votes in a House of five hundred and thirteen members
would correspond to more than two hundred votes in the present House of
Commons; a very formidable minority on the unfavourable side of a question
deeply affecting the personal character of a public man. William,
unwilling to part with a servant whom he knew to be unprincipled, but whom
he did not consider as more unprincipled than many other English
politicians, and in whom he had found much of a very useful sort of
knowledge, and of a very useful sort of ability, tried to induce the
ministry to come to the rescue. It was particularly important to soothe
Wharton, who had been exasperated by his recent disappointment, and had
probably exasperated the other members of the junto. He was sent for to
the palace. The King himself intreated him to be reconciled to the Lord
Chamberlain, and to prevail on the Whig leaders in the Lower House to
oppose any motion which Dyke or Norris might make. Wharton answered in a
manner which made it clear that from him no help was to be expected.
Sunderland’s terrors now became insupportable. He had requested some of
his friends to come to his house that he might consult them; they came at
the appointed hour, but found that he had gone to Kensington, and had left
word that he should soon be back. When he joined them, they observed that
he had not the gold key which is the badge of the Lord Chamberlain, and
asked where it was. “At Kensington,” answered Sunderland. They found that
he had tendered his resignation, and that it had been, after a long
struggle, accepted. They blamed his haste, and told him that, since he had
summoned them to advise him on that day, he might at least have waited
till the morrow. “To morrow,” he exclaimed, “would have ruined me. To
night has saved me.”

Meanwhile, both the disciples of Somers and the disciples of Trenchard
were grumbling at Harley’s resolution. The disciples of Somers maintained
that, if it was right to have an army at all, it must be right to have an
efficient army. The disciples of Trenchard complained that a great
principle had been shamefully given up. On the vital issue, Standing Army
or no Standing Army, the Commons had pronounced an erroneous, a fatal
decision. Whether that army should consist of five regiments or of fifteen
was hardly worth debating. The great dyke which kept out arbitrary power
had been broken. It was idle to say that the breach was narrow; for it
would soon be widened by the flood which would rush in. The war of
pamphlets raged more fiercely than ever. At the same time alarming
symptoms began to appear among the men of the sword. They saw themselves
every day described in print as the scum of society, as mortal enemies of
the liberties of their country. Was it reasonable,—such was the
language of some scribblers,—that an honest gentleman should pay a
heavy land tax, in order to support in idleness and luxury a set of
fellows who requited him by seducing his dairy maids and shooting his
partridges? Nor was it only in Grub Street tracts that such reflections
were to be found. It was known all over the town that uncivil things had
been said of the military profession in the House of Commons, and that
Jack Howe, in particular, had, on this subject, given the rein to his wit
and to his ill nature. Some rough and daring veterans, marked with the
scars of Steinkirk and singed with the smoke of Namur, threatened
vengeance for these insults. The writers and speakers who had taken the
greatest liberties went in constant fear of being accosted by
fierce-looking captains, and required to make an immediate choice between
fighting and being caned. One gentleman, who had made himself conspicuous
by the severity of his language, went about with pistols in his pockets.
Howe, whose courage was not proportionate to his malignity and petulance,
was so much frightened, that he retired into the country. The King, well
aware that a single blow given, at that critical conjuncture, by a soldier
to a member of Parliament might produce disastrous consequences, ordered
the officers of the army to their quarters, and, by the vigorous exertion
of his authority and influence, succeeded in preventing all outrage. 6

All this time the feeling in favour of a regular force seemed to be
growing in the House of Commons. The resignation of Sunderland had put
many honest gentlemen in good humour. The Whig leaders exerted themselves
to rally their followers, held meetings at the “Rose,” and represented
strongly the dangers to which the country would be exposed, if defended
only by a militia. The opposition asserted that neither bribes nor
promises were spared. The ministers at length flattered themselves that
Harley’s resolution might be rescinded. On the eighth of January they
again tried their strength, and were again defeated, though by a smaller
majority than before. A hundred and sixty-four members divided with them.
A hundred and eighty-eight were for adhering to the vote of the eleventh
of December. It was remarked that on this occasion the naval men, with
Rooke at their head, voted against the Government. 7

It was necessary to yield. All that remained was to put on the words of
the resolution of the eleventh of December the most favourable sense that
they could be made to bear. They did indeed admit of very different
interpretations. The force which was actually in England in 1680 hardly
amounted to five thousand men. But the garrison of Tangier and the
regiments in the pay of the Batavian federation, which, as they were
available for the defence of England against a foreign or domestic enemy,
might be said to be in some sort part of the English army, amounted to at
least five thousand more. The construction which the ministers put on the
resolution of the eleventh of December was, that the army was to consist
of ten thousand men; and in this construction the House acquiesced. It was
not held to be necessary that the Parliament should, as in our time, fix
the amount of the land force. The Commons thought that they sufficiently
limited the number of soldiers by limiting the sum which was to be
expended in maintaining soldiers. What that sum should be was a question
which raised much debate. Harley was unwilling to give more than three
hundred thousand pounds. Montague struggled for four hundred thousand. The
general sense of the House was that Harley offered too little, and that
Montague demanded too much. At last, on the fourteenth of January, a vote
was taken for three hundred and fifty thousand pounds. Four days later the
House resolved to grant half-pay to the disbanded officers till they
should be otherwise provided for. The half-pay was meant to be a retainer
as well as a reward. The effect of this important vote therefore was that,
whenever a new war should break out, the nation would be able to command
the services of many gentlemen of great military experience. The ministry
afterwards succeeded in obtaining, much against the will of a portion of
the opposition, a separate vote for three thousand marines.

A Mutiny Act, which had been passed in 1697, expired in the spring of
1698. As yet no such Act had been passed except in time of war; and the
temper of the Parliament and of the nation was such that the ministers did
not venture to ask, in time of peace, for a renewal of powers unknown to
the constitution. For the present, therefore, the soldier was again, as in
the times which preceded the Revolution, subject to exactly the same law
which governed the citizen.

It was only in matters relating to the army that the government found the
Commons unmanageable. Liberal provision was made for the navy. The number
of seamen was fixed at ten thousand, a great force, according to the
notions of that age, for a time of peace. The funds assigned some years
before for the support of the civil list had fallen short of the estimate.
It was resolved that a new arrangement should be made, and that a certain
income should be settled on the King. The amount was fixed, by an
unanimous vote, at seven hundred thousand pounds; and the Commons declared
that, by making this ample provision for his comfort and dignity, they
meant to express their sense of the great things which he had done for the
country. It is probable, however, that so large a sum would not have been
given without debates and divisions, had it not been understood that he
meant to take on himself the charge of the Duke of Gloucester’s
establishment, and that he would in all probability have to pay fifty
thousand pounds a year to Mary of Modena. The Tories were unwilling to
disoblige the Princess of Denmark; and the Jacobites abstained from
offering any opposition to a grant in the benefit of which they hoped that
the banished family would participate.

It was not merely by pecuniary liberality that the Parliament testified
attachment to the Sovereign. A bill was rapidly passed which withheld the
benefit of the Habeas Corpus Act, during twelve months more, from Bernardi
and some other conspirators who had been concerned in the Assassination
Plot, but whose guilt, though demonstrated to the conviction of every
reasonable man, could not be proved by two witnesses. At the same time new
securities were provided against a new danger which threatened the
government. The peace had put an end to the apprehension that the throne
of William might be subverted by foreign arms, but had, at the same time,
facilitated domestic treason. It was no longer necessary for an agent from
Saint Germains to cross the sea in a fishing boat, under the constant
dread of being intercepted by a cruiser. It was no longer necessary for
him to land on a desolate beach, to lodge in a thatched hovel, to dress
himself like a carter, or to travel up to town on foot. He came openly by
the Calais packet, walked into the best inn at Dover, and ordered
posthorses for London. Meanwhile young Englishmen of quality and fortune
were hastening in crowds to Paris. They would naturally wish to see him
who had once been their king; and this curiosity, though in itself
innocent, might have evil consequences. Artful tempters would doubtless be
on the watch for every such traveller; and many such travellers might be
well pleased to be courteously accosted, in a foreign land, by Englishmen
of honourable name, distinguished appearance, and insinuating address. It
was not to be expected that a lad fresh from the university would be able
to refute all the sophisms and calumnies which might be breathed in his
ear by dexterous and experienced seducers. Nor would it be strange if he
should, in no long time, accept an invitation to a private audience at
Saint Germains, should be charmed by the graces of Mary of Modena, should
find something engaging in the childish innocence of the Prince of Wales,
should kiss the hand of James, and should return home an ardent Jacobite.
An Act was therefore passed forbidding English subjects to hold any
intercourse orally, or by writing, or by message, with the exiled family.
A day was fixed after which no English subject, who had, during the late
war, gone into France without the royal permission or borne arms against
his country was to be permitted to reside in this kingdom, except under a
special license from the King. Whoever infringed these rules incurred the
penalties of high treason.

The dismay was at first great among the malecontents. For English and
Irish Jacobites, who had served under the standards of Lewis or hung about
the Court of Saint Germains, had, since the peace, come over in multitudes
to England. It was computed that thousands were within the scope of the
new Act. But the severity of that Act was mitigated by a beneficent
administration. Some fierce and stubborn non-jurors who would not debase
themselves by asking for any indulgence, and some conspicuous enemies of
the government who had asked for indulgence in vain, were under the
necessity of taking refuge on the Continent. But the great majority of
those offenders who promised to live peaceably under William’s rule
obtained his permission to remain in their native land.

In the case of one great offender there were some circumstances which
attracted general interest, and which might furnish a good subject to a
novelist or a dramatist. Near fourteen years before this time, Sunderland,
then Secretary of State to Charles the Second, had married his daughter
Lady Elizabeth Spencer to Donough Macarthy, Earl of Clancarty, the lord of
an immense domain in Munster. Both the bridegroom and the bride were mere
children, the bridegroom only fifteen, the bride only eleven. After the
ceremony they were separated; and many years full of strange vicissitudes
elapsed before they again met. The boy soon visited his estates in
Ireland. He had been bred a member of the Church of England; but his
opinions and his practice were loose. He found himself among kinsmen who
were zealous Roman Catholics. A Roman Catholic king was on the throne. To
turn Roman Catholic was the best recommendation to favour both at
Whitehall and at Dublin Castle. Clancarty speedily changed his religion,
and from a dissolute Protestant became a dissolute Papist. After the
Revolution he followed the fortunes of James; sate in the Celtic
Parliament which met at the King’s Inns; commanded a regiment in the
Celtic army; was forced to surrender himself to Marlborough at Cork; was
sent to England, and was imprisoned in the Tower. The Clancarty estates,
which were supposed to yield a rent of not much less than ten thousand a
year, were confiscated. They were charged with an annuity to the Earl’s
brother, and with another annuity to his wife; but the greater part was
bestowed by the King on Lord Woodstock, the eldest son of Portland; During
some time, the prisoner’s life was not safe. For the popular voice accused
him of outrages for which the utmost license of civil war would not
furnish a plea. It is said that he was threatened with an appeal of murder
by the widow of a Protestant clergyman who had been put to death during
the troubles. After passing three years in confinement, Clancarty made his
escape to the Continent, was graciously received at St. Germains, and was
entrusted with the command of a corps of Irish refugees. When the treaty
of Ryswick had put an end to the hope that the banished dynasty would be
restored by foreign arms, he flattered himself that he might be able to
make his peace with the English Government. But he was grievously
disappointed. The interest of his wife’s family was undoubtedly more than
sufficient to obtain a pardon for him. But on that interest he could not
reckon. The selfish, base, covetous, father-in-law was not at all desirous
to have a highborn beggar and the posterity of a highborn beggar to
maintain. The ruling passion of the brother-in-law was a stern and
acrimonious party spirit. He could not bear to think that he was so nearly
connected with an enemy of the Revolution and of the Bill of Rights, and
would with pleasure have seen the odious tie severed even by the hand of
the executioner. There was one, however, from whom the ruined,
expatriated, proscribed young nobleman might hope to find a kind
reception. He stole across the Channel in disguise, presented himself at
Sunderland’s door, and requested to see Lady Clancarty. He was charged, he
said, with a message to her from her mother, who was then lying on a sick
bed at Windsor. By this fiction he obtained admission, made himself known
to his wife, whose thoughts had probably been constantly fixed on him
during many years, and prevailed on her to give him the most tender proofs
of an affection sanctioned by the laws both of God and of man. The secret
was soon discovered and betrayed by a waiting woman. Spencer learned that
very night that his sister had admitted her husband to her apartment. The
fanatical young Whig, burning with animosity which he mistook for virtue,
and eager to emulate the Corinthian who assassinated his brother, and the
Roman who passed sentence of death on his son, flew to Vernon’s office,
gave information that the Irish rebel, who had once already escaped from
custody, was in hiding hard by, and procured a warrant and a guard of
soldiers. Clancarty was found in the arms of his wife, and dragged to the
Tower. She followed him and implored permission to partake his cell. These
events produced a great stir throughout the society of London. Sunderland
professed everywhere that he heartily approved of his son’s conduct; but
the public had made up its mind about Sunderland’s veracity, and paid very
little attention to his professions on this or on any other subject. In
general, honourable men of both parties, whatever might be their opinion
of Clancarty, felt great compassion for his mother who was dying of a
broken heart, and his poor young wife who was begging piteously to be
admitted within the Traitor’s Gate. Devonshire and Bedford joined with
Ormond to ask for mercy. The aid of a still more powerful intercessor was
called in. Lady Russell was esteemed by the King as a valuable friend; she
was venerated by the nation generally as a saint, the widow of a martyr;
and, when she deigned to solicit favours, it was scarcely possible that
she should solicit in vain. She naturally felt a strong sympathy for the
unhappy couple, who were parted by the walls of that gloomy old fortress
in which she had herself exchanged the last sad endearments with one whose
image was never absent from her. She took Lady Clancarty with her to the
palace, obtained access to William, and put a petition into his hand.
Clancarty was pardoned on condition that he should leave the kingdom and
never return to it. A pension was granted to him, small when compared with
the magnificent inheritance which he had forfeited, but quite sufficient
to enable him to live like a gentleman on the Continent. He retired,
accompanied by his Elizabeth, to Altona.

All this time the ways and means for the year were under consideration.
The Parliament was able to grant some relief to the country. The land tax
was reduced from four shillings in the pound to three. But nine expensive
campaigns had left a heavy arrear behind them; and it was plain that the
public burdens must, even in the time of peace, be such as, before the
Revolution, would have been thought more than sufficient to support a
vigorous war. A country gentleman was in no very good humour, when he
compared the sums which were now exacted from him with those which he had
been in the habit of paying under the last two kings; his discontent
became stronger when he compared his own situation with that of courtiers,
and above all of Dutch courtiers, who had been enriched by grants of Crown
property; and both interest and envy made him willing to listen to
politicians who assured him that, if those grants were resumed, he might
be relieved from another shilling.

The arguments against such a resumption were not likely to be heard with
favour by a popular assembly composed of taxpayers, but to statesmen and
legislators will seem unanswerable.

There can be no doubt that the Sovereign was, by the old polity of the
realm, competent to give or let the domains of the Crown in such manner as
seemed good to him. No statute defined the length of the term which he
might grant, or the amount of the rent which he must reserve. He might
part with the fee simple of a forest extending over a hundred square miles
in consideration of a tribute of a brace of hawks to be delivered annually
to his falconer, or of a napkin of fine linen to be laid on the royal
table at the coronation banquet. In fact, there had been hardly a reign
since the Conquest, in which great estates had not been bestowed by our
princes on favoured subjects. Anciently, indeed, what had been lavishly
given was not seldom violently taken away. Several laws for the resumption
of Crown lands were passed by the Parliaments of the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries. Of those laws the last was that which, in the year
1485, immediately after the battle of Bosworth, annulled the donations of
the kings of the House of York. More than two hundred years had since
elapsed without any Resumption Act. An estate derived from the royal
liberality had long been universally thought as secure as an estate which
had descended from father to son since the compilation of Domesday Book.
No title was considered as more perfect than that of the Russells to
Woburn, given by Henry the Eighth to the first Earl of Bedford, or than
that of the Cecils to Hatfield, purchased from the Crown for less than a
third of the real value by the first Earl of Salisbury. The Long
Parliament did not, even in that celebrated instrument of nineteen
articles, which was framed expressly for the purpose of making the King a
mere Doge, propose to restrain him from dealing according to his pleasure
with his parks and his castles, his fisheries and his mines. After the
Restoration, under the government of an easy prince, who had indeed little
disposition to give, but who could not bear to refuse, many noble private
fortunes were carved out of the property of the Crown. Some of the persons
who were thus enriched, Albemarle, for example, Sandwich and Clarendon,
might be thought to have fairly earned their master’s favour by their
services. Others had merely amused his leisure or pandered to his vices.
His mistresses were munificently rewarded. Estates sufficient to support
the highest rank in the peerage were distributed among his illegitimate
children. That these grants, however prodigal, were strictly legal, was
tacitly admitted by the Estates of the Realm, when, in 1689, they
recounted and condemned the unconstitutional acts of the kings of the
House of Stuart. Neither in the Declaration of Right nor in the Bill of
Rights is there a word on the subject. William, therefore, thought himself
at liberty to give away his hereditary domains as freely as his
predecessors had given away theirs. There was much murmuring at the
profusion with which he rewarded his Dutch favourites; and we have seen
that, on one occasion in the year 1696, the House of Commons interfered
for the purpose of restraining his liberality. An address was presented
requesting him not to grant to Portland an extensive territory in North
Wales. But it is to be observed that, though in this address a strong
opinion was expressed that the grant would be mischievous, the Commons did
not deny, and must therefore be considered as having admitted, that it
would be perfectly legal. The King, however, yielded; and Portland was
forced to content himself with ten or twelve manors scattered over various
counties from Cumberland to Sussex.

It seems, therefore, clear that our princes were, by the law of the land,
competent to do what they would with their hereditary estates. It is
perfectly true that the law was defective, and that the profusion with
which mansions, abbeys, chaces, warrens, beds of ore, whole streets, whole
market towns, had been bestowed on courtiers was greatly to be lamented.
Nothing could have been more proper than to pass a prospective statute
tying up in strict entail the little which still remained of the Crown
property. But to annul by a retrospective statute patents, which in
Westminster Hall were held to be legally valid, would have been simply
robbery. Such robbery must necessarily have made all property insecure;
and a statesman must be short-sighted indeed who imagines that what makes
property insecure can really make society prosperous.

But it is vain to expect that men who are inflamed by anger, who are
suffering distress, and who fancy that it is in their power to obtain
immediate relief from their distresses at the expense of those who have
excited their anger, will reason as calmly as the historian who, biassed
neither by interest nor passion, reviews the events of a past age. The
public burdens were heavy. To whatever extent the grants of royal domains
were revoked, those burdens would be lightened. Some of the recent grants
had undoubtedly been profuse. Some of the living grantees were unpopular.
A cry was raised which soon became formidably loud. All the Tories, all
the malecontent Whigs, and multitudes who, without being either Tories or
malecontent Whigs, disliked taxes and disliked Dutchmen, called for a
resumption of all the Crown property which King William had, as it was
phrased, been deceived into giving away.

On the seventh of February 1698, this subject, destined to irritate the
public mind at intervals during many years, was brought under the
consideration of the House of Commons. The opposition asked leave to bring
in a bill vacating all grants of Crown property which had been made since
the Revolution. The ministers were in a great strait; the public feeling
was strong; a general election was approaching; it was dangerous and it
would probably be vain to encounter the prevailing sentiment directly. But
the shock which could not be resisted might be eluded. The ministry
accordingly professed to find no fault with the proposed bill, except that
it did not go far enough, and moved for leave to bring in two more bills,
one for annulling the grants of James the Second, the other for annulling
the grants of Charles the Second. The Tories were caught in their own
snare. For most of the grants of Charles and James had been made to
Tories; and a resumption of those grants would have reduced some of the
chiefs of the Tory party to poverty. Yet it was impossible to draw a
distinction between the grants of William and those of his two
predecessors. Nobody could pretend that the law had been altered since his
accession. If, therefore, the grants of the Stuarts were legal, so were
his; if his grants were illegal, so were the grants of his uncles. And, if
both his grants and the grants of his uncles were illegal, it was absurd
to say that the mere lapse of time made a difference. For not only was it
part of the alphabet of the law that there was no prescription against the
Crown, but the thirty-eight years which had elapsed since the Restoration
would not have sufficed to bar a writ of right brought by a private
demandant against a wrongful tenant. Nor could it be pretended that
William had bestowed his favours less judiciously than Charles and James.
Those who were least friendly to the Dutch would hardly venture to say
that Portland, Zulestein and Ginkell was less deserving of the royal
bounty than the Duchess of Cleveland and the Duchess of Portsmouth, than
the progeny of Nell Gwynn, than the apostate Arlington or the butcher
Jeffreys. The opposition, therefore, sullenly assented to what the
ministry proposed. From that moment the scheme was doomed. Everybody
affected to be for it; and everybody was really against it. The three
bills were brought in together, read a second time together, ordered to be
committed together, and were then, first mutilated, and at length quietly
dropped.

In the history of the financial legislation of this session, there were
some episodes which deserve to be related. Those members, a numerous body,
who envied and dreaded Montague readily became the unconscious tools of
the cunning malice of Sunderland, whom Montague had refused to defend in
Parliament, and who, though detested by the opposition, contrived to
exercise some influence over that party through the instrumentality of
Charles Duncombe. Duncombe indeed had his own reasons for hating Montague,
who had turned him out of the place of Cashier of the Excise. A serious
charge was brought against the Board of Treasury, and especially against
its chief. He was the inventor of Exchequer Bills; and they were popularly
called Montague’s notes. He had induced the Parliament to enact that those
bills, even when at a discount in the market, should be received at par by
the collectors of the revenue. This enactment, if honestly carried into
effect, would have been unobjectionable. But it was strongly rumoured that
there had been foul play, peculation, even forgery. Duncombe threw the
most serious imputations on the Board of Treasury, and pretended that he
had been put out of his office only because he was too shrewd to be
deceived, and too honest to join in deceiving the public. Tories and
malecontent Whigs, elated by the hope that Montague might be convicted of
malversation, eagerly called for inquiry. An inquiry was instituted; but
the result not only disappointed but utterly confounded the accusers. The
persecuted minister obtained both a complete acquittal, and a signal
revenge. Circumstances were discovered which seemed to indicate that
Duncombe himself was not blameless. The clue was followed; he was severely
cross-examined; he lost his head; made one unguarded admission after
another, and was at length compelled to confess, on the floor of the
House, that he had been guilty of an infamous fraud, which, but for his
own confession, it would have been scarcely possible to bring home to him.
He had been ordered by the Commissioners of the Excise to pay ten thousand
pounds into the Exchequer for the public service. He had in his hands, as
cashier, more than double that sum in good milled silver. With some of
this money he bought Exchequer Bills which were then at a considerable
discount; he paid those bills in; and he pocketed the discount, which
amounted to about four hundred pounds. Nor was this all. In order to make
it appear that the depreciated paper, which he had fraudulently
substituted for silver, had been received by him in payment of taxes, he
had employed a knavish Jew to forge endorsements of names, some real and
some imaginary. This scandalous story, wrung out of his own lips, was
heard by the opposition with consternation and shame, by the ministers and
their friends with vindictive exultation. It was resolved, without any
division, that he should be sent to the Tower, that he should be kept
close prisoner there, that he should be expelled from the House. Whether
any further punishment could be inflicted on him was a perplexing
question. The English law touching forgery became, at a later period,
barbarously severe; but, in 1698, it was absurdly lax. The prisoner’s
offence was certainly not a felony; and lawyers apprehended that there
would be much difficulty in convicting him even of a misdemeanour. But a
recent precedent was fresh in the minds of all men. The weapon which had
reached Fenwick might reach Duncombe. A bill of pains and penalties was
brought in, and carried through the earlier stages with less opposition
than might have been expected. Some Noes might perhaps be uttered; but no
members ventured to say that the Noes had it. The Tories were mad with
shame and mortification, at finding that their rash attempt to ruin an
enemy had produced no effect except the ruin of a friend. In their rage,
they eagerly caught at a new hope of revenge, a hope destined to end, as
their former hope had ended, in discomfiture and disgrace. They learned,
from the agents of Sunderland, as many people suspected, but certainly
from informants who were well acquainted with the offices about Whitehall,
that some securities forfeited to the Crown in Ireland had been bestowed
by the King ostensibly on one Thomas Railton, but really on the Chancellor
of the Exchequer. The value of these securities was about ten thousand
pounds. On the sixteenth of February this transaction was brought without
any notice under the consideration of the House of Commons by Colonel
Granville, a Tory member, nearly related to the Earl of Bath. Montague was
taken completely by surprise, but manfully avowed the whole truth, and
defended what he had done. The orators of the opposition declaimed against
him with great animation and asperity. “This gentleman,” they said, “has
at once violated three distinct duties. He is a privy councillor, and, as
such, is bound to advise the Crown with a view, not to his own selfish
interests, but to the general good. He is the first minister of finance,
and is, as such, bound to be a thrifty manager of the royal treasure. He
is a member of this House, and is, as such, bound to see that the burdens
borne by his constituents are not made heavier by rapacity and
prodigality. To all these trusts he has been unfaithful. The advice of the
privy councillor to his master is, ‘Give me money.’ The first Lord of the
Treasury signs a warrant for giving himself money out of the Treasury. The
member for Westminster puts into his pocket money which his constituents
must be taxed to replace.” The surprise was complete; the onset was
formidable; but the Whig majority, after a moment of dismay and wavering,
rallied firmly round their leader. Several speakers declared that they
highly approved of the prudent liberality with which His Majesty had
requited the services of a most able, diligent and trusty counsellor. It
was miserable economy indeed to grudge a reward of a few thousands to one
who had made the State richer by millions. Would that all the largesses of
former kings had been as well bestowed! How those largesses had been
bestowed none knew better than some of the austere patriots who harangued
so loudly against the avidity of Montague. If there is, it was said, a
House in England which has been gorged with undeserved riches by the
prodigality of weak sovereigns, it is the House of Bath. Does it lie in
the mouth of a son of that house to blame the judicious munificence of a
wise and good King? Before the Granvilles complain that distinguished
merit has been rewarded with ten thousand pounds, let them refund some
part of the hundreds of thousands which they have pocketed without any
merit at all.

The rule was, and still is, that a member against whom a charge is made
must be heard in his own defence, and must then leave the House. The
Opposition insisted that Montague should retire. His friends maintained
that this case did not fall within the rule. Distinctions were drawn;
precedents were cited; and at length the question was put, that Mr.
Montague do withdraw. The Ayes were only ninety-seven; the Noes two
hundred and nine. This decisive result astonished both parties. The Tories
lost heart and hope. The joy of the Whigs was boundless. It was instantly
moved that the Honourable Charles Montague, Esquire, Chancellor of the
Exchequer, for his good services to this Government does deserve His
Majesty’s favour. The Opposition, completely cowed, did not venture to
demand another division. Montague scornfully thanked them for the
inestimable service which they had done him. But for their malice he never
should have had the honour and happiness of being solemnly pronounced by
the Commons of England a benefactor of his country. As to the grant which
had been the subject of debate, he was perfectly ready to give it up, if
his accusers would engage to follow his example.

Even after this defeat the Tories returned to the charge. They pretended
that the frauds which had been committed with respect to the Exchequer
Bills had been facilitated by the mismanagement of the Board of Treasury,
and moved a resolution which implied a censure on that Board, and
especially on its chief. This resolution was rejected by a hundred and
seventy votes to eighty-eight. It was remarked that Spencer, as if anxious
to show that he had taken no part in the machinations of which his father
was justly or unjustly suspected, spoke in this debate with great warmth
against Duncombe and for Montague.

A few days later, the bill of pains and penalties against Duncombe passed
the Commons. It provided that two thirds of his enormous property, real
and personal, should be confiscated and applied to the public service.
Till the third reading there was no serious opposition. Then the Tories
mustered their strength. They were defeated by a hundred and thirty-eight
votes to a hundred and three; and the bill was carried up to the Lords by
the Marquess of Hartington, a young nobleman whom the great body of Whigs
respected as one of their hereditary chiefs, as the heir of Devonshire,
and as the son in law of Russell.

That Duncombe had been guilty of shameful dishonesty was acknowledged by
all men of sense and honour in the party to which he belonged. He had
therefore little right to expect indulgence from the party which he had
unfairly and malignantly assailed. Yet it is not creditable to the Whigs
that they should have been so much disgusted by his frauds, or so much
irritated by his attacks, as to have been bent on punishing him in a
manner inconsistent with all the principles which governments ought to
hold most sacred.

Those who concurred in the proceeding against Duncombe tried to vindicate
their conduct by citing as an example the proceeding against Fenwick. So
dangerous is it to violate, on any pretence, those principles which the
experience of ages has proved to be the safeguards of all that is most
precious to a community. Twelve months had hardly elapsed since the
legislature had, in very peculiar circumstances, and for very plausible
reasons, taken upon itself to try and to punish a great criminal whom it
was impossible to reach in the ordinary course of justice; and already the
breach then made in the fences which protect the dearest rights of
Englishmen was widening fast. What had last year been defended only as a
rare exception seemed now to be regarded as the ordinary rule. Nay, the
bill of pains and penalties which now had an easy passage through the
House of Commons was infinitely more objectionable than the bill which had
been so obstinately resisted at every stage in the preceding session.

The writ of attainder against Fenwick was not, as the vulgar imagined and
still imagine, objectionable because it was retrospective. It is always to
be remembered that retrospective legislation is bad in principle only when
it affects the substantive law. Statutes creating new crimes or increasing
the punishment of old crimes ought in no case to be retrospective. But
statutes which merely alter the procedure, if they are in themselves good
statutes, ought to be retrospective. To take examples from the legislation
of our own time, the Act passed in 1845, for punishing the malicious
destruction of works of art with whipping, was most properly made
prospective only. Whatever indignation the authors of that Act might feel
against the ruffian who had broken the Barberini Vase, they knew that they
could not, without the most serious detriment to the commonwealth, pass a
law for scourging him. On the other hand the Act which allowed the
affirmation of a Quaker to be received in criminal cases allowed, and most
justly and reasonably, such affirmation to be received in the case of a
past as well as of a future misdemeanour or felony. If we try the Act
which attainted Fenwick by these rules we shall find that almost all the
numerous writers who have condemned it have condemned it on wrong grounds.
It made no retrospective change in the substantive law. The crime was not
new. It was high treason as defined by the Statute of Edward the Third.
The punishment was not new. It was the punishment which had been inflicted
on traitors of ten generations. All that was new was the procedure; and,
if the new procedure had been intrinsically better than the old procedure,
the new procedure might with perfect propriety have been employed. But the
procedure employed in Fenwick’s case was the worst possible, and would
have been the worst possible if it had been established from time
immemorial. However clearly political crime may have been defined by
ancient laws, a man accused of it ought not to be tried by a crowd of five
hundred and thirteen eager politicians, of whom he can challenge none even
with cause, who have no judge to guide them, who are allowed to come in
and go out as they choose, who hear as much or as little as they choose of
the accusation and of the defence, who are exposed, during the
investigation, to every kind of corrupting influence, who are inflamed by
all the passions which animated debates naturally excite, who cheer one
orator and cough down another, who are roused from sleep to cry Aye or No,
or who are hurried half drunk from their suppers to divide. For this
reason, and for no other, the attainder of Fenwick is to be condemned. It
was unjust and of evil example, not because it was a retrospective Act,
but because it was an act essentially judicial, performed by a body
destitute of all judicial qualities.

The bill for punishing Duncombe was open to all the objections which can
be urged against the bill for punishing Fenwick, and to other objections
of even greater weight. In both cases the judicial functions were usurped
by a body unfit to exercise such functions. But the bill against Duncombe
really was, what the bill against Fenwick was not, objectionable as a
retrospective bill. It altered the substantive criminal law. It visited an
offence with a penalty of which the offender, at the time when he
offended, had no notice.

It may be thought a strange proposition that the bill against Duncombe was
a worse bill than the bill against Fenwick, because the bill against
Fenwick struck at life, and the bill against Duncombe struck only at
property. Yet this apparent paradox is a sober truth. Life is indeed more
precious than property. But the power of arbitrarily taking away the lives
of men is infinitely less likely to be abused than the power of
arbitrarily taking away their property. Even the lawless classes of
society generally shrink from blood. They commit thousands of offences
against property to one murder; and most of the few murders which they do
commit are committed for the purpose of facilitating or concealing some
offence against property. The unwillingness of juries to find a fellow
creature guilty of a capital felony even on the clearest evidence is
notorious; and it may well be suspected that they frequently violate their
oaths in favour of life. In civil suits, on the other hand, they too often
forget that their duty is merely to give the plaintiff a compensation for
evil suffered; and, if the conduct of the defendant has moved their
indignation and his fortune is known to be large, they turn themselves
into a criminal tribunal, and, under the name of damages, impose a large
fine. As housebreakers are more likely to take plate and jewellery than to
cut throats; as juries are far more likely to err on the side of pecuniary
severity in assessing damages than to send to the gibbet any man who has
not richly deserved it; so a legislature, which should be so unwise as to
take on itself the functions properly belonging to the Courts of Law,
would be far more likely to pass Acts of Confiscation than Acts of
Attainder. We naturally feel pity even for a bad man whose head is about
to fall. But, when a bad man is compelled to disgorge his ill-gotten
gains, we naturally feel a vindictive pleasure, in which there is much
danger that we may be tempted to indulge too largely.

The hearts of many stout Whigs doubtless bled at the thought of what
Fenwick must have suffered, the agonizing struggle, in a mind not of the
firmest temper, between the fear of shame and the fear of death, the
parting from a tender wife, and all the gloomy solemnity of the last
morning. But whose heart was to bleed at the thought that Charles
Duncombe, who was born to carry parcels and to sweep down a
counting-house, was to be punished for his knavery by having his income
reduced to eight thousand a year, more than most earls then possessed?

His judges were not likely to feel compassion for him; and they all had
strong selfish reasons to vote against him. They were all in fact bribed
by the very bill by which he would be punished.

His property was supposed to amount to considerably more than four hundred
thousand pounds. Two thirds of that property were equivalent to about
sevenpence in the pound on the rental of the kingdom as assessed to the
land tax. If, therefore, two thirds of that property could have been
brought into the Exchequer, the land tax for 1699, a burden most painfully
felt by the class which had the chief power in England, might have been
reduced from three shillings to two and fivepence. Every squire of a
thousand a year in the House of Commons would have had thirty pounds more
to spend; and that sum might well have made to him the whole difference
between being at ease and being pinched during twelve months. If the bill
had passed, if the gentry and yeomanry of the kingdom had found that it
was possible for them to obtain a welcome remission of taxation by
imposing on a Shylock or an Overreach, by a retrospective law, a fine not
heavier than his misconduct might, in a moral view, seem to have deserved,
it is impossible to believe that they would not soon have recurred to so
simple and agreeable a resource. In every age it is easy to find rich men
who have done bad things for which the law has provided no punishment or
an inadequate punishment. The estates of such men would soon have been
considered as a fund applicable to the public service. As often as it was
necessary to vote an extraordinary supply to the Crown, the Committee of
Ways and Means would have looked about for some unpopular capitalist to
plunder. Appetite would have grown with indulgence. Accusations would have
been eagerly welcomed. Rumours and suspicions would have been received as
proofs. The wealth of the great goldsmiths of the Royal Exchange would
have become as insecure as that of a Jew under the Plantagenets, as that
of a Christian under a Turkish Pasha. Rich men would have tried to invest
their acquisitions in some form in which they could lie closely hidden and
could be speedily removed. In no long time it would have been found that
of all financial resources the least productive is robbery, and that the
public had really paid far more dearly for Duncombe’s hundreds of
thousands than if it had borrowed them at fifty per cent.

These considerations had more weight with the Lords than with the Commons.
Indeed one of the principal uses of the Upper House is to defend the
vested rights of property in cases in which those rights are unpopular,
and are attacked on grounds which to shortsighted politicians seem valid.
An assembly composed of men almost all of whom have inherited opulence,
and who are not under the necessity of paying court to constituent bodies,
will not easily be hurried by passion or seduced by sophistry into
robbery. As soon as the bill for punishing Duncombe had been read at the
table of the Peers, it became clear that there would be a sharp contest.
Three great Tory noblemen, Rochester, Nottingham and Leeds, headed the
opposition; and they were joined by some who did not ordinarily act with
them. At an early stage of the proceedings a new and perplexing question
was raised. How did it appear that the facts set forth in the preamble
were true, that Duncombe had committed the frauds for which it was
proposed to punish him in so extraordinary a manner? In the House of
Commons, he had been taken by surprise; he had made admissions of which he
had not foreseen the consequences; and he had then been so much
disconcerted by the severe manner in which he had been interrogated that
he had at length avowed everything. But he had now had time to prepare
himself; he had been furnished with advice by counsel; and, when he was
placed at the bar of the Peers, he refused to criminate himself and defied
his persecutors to prove him guilty. He was sent back to the Tower. The
Lords acquainted the Commons with the difficulty which had arisen. A
conference was held in the Painted Chamber; and there Hartington, who
appeared for the Commons, declared that he was authorized, by those who
had sent him, to assure the Lords that Duncombe had, in his place in
Parliament, owned the misdeeds which he now challenged his accusers to
bring home to him. The Lords, however, rightly thought that it would be a
strange and a dangerous thing to receive a declaration of the House of
Commons in its collective character as conclusive evidence of the fact
that a man had committed a crime. The House of Commons was under none of
those restraints which were thought necessary in ordinary cases to protect
innocent defendants against false witnesses. The House of Commons could
not be sworn, could not be cross-examined, could not be indicted,
imprisoned, pilloried, mutilated, for perjury. Indeed the testimony of the
House of Commons in its collective character was of less value than the
uncontradicted testimony of a single member. For it was only the testimony
of the majority of the House. There might be a large respectable minority
whose recollections might materially differ from the recollections of the
majority. This indeed was actually the case. For there had been a dispute
among those who had heard Duncombe’s confession as to the precise extent
of what he had confessed; and there had been a division; and the statement
which the Upper House was expected to receive as decisive on the point of
fact had been at last carried only by ninety votes to sixty-eight. It
should seem therefore that, whatever moral conviction the Lords might feel
of Duncombe’s guilt, they were bound, as righteous judges, to absolve him.

After much animated debate, they divided; and the bill was lost by
forty-eight votes to forty-seven. It was proposed by some of the minority
that proxies should be called; but this scandalous proposition was
strenuously resisted; and the House, to its great honour, resolved that on
questions which were substantially judicial, though they might be in form
legislative, no peer who was absent should be allowed to have a voice.

Many of the Whig Lords protested. Among them were Orford and Wharton. It
is to be lamented that Burnet, and the excellent Hough, who was now Bishop
of Oxford, should have been impelled by party spirit to record their
dissent from a decision which all sensible and candid men will now
pronounce to have been just and salutary. Somers was present; but his name
is not attached to the protest which was subscribed by his brethren of the
junto. We may therefore not unreasonably infer that, on this as on many
other occasions, that wise and virtuous statesman disapproved of the
violence of his friends.

In rejecting the bill, the Lords had only exercised their indisputable
right. But they immediately proceeded to take a step of which the legality
was not equally clear. Rochester moved that Duncombe should be set at
liberty. The motion was carried; a warrant for the discharge of the
prisoner was sent to the Tower, and was obeyed without hesitation by Lord
Lucas, who was Lieutenant of that fortress. As soon as this was known, the
anger of the Commons broke forth with violence. It was by their order that
the upstart Duncombe had been put in ward. He was their prisoner; and it
was monstrous insolence in the Peers to release him. The Peers defended
what they had done by arguments which must be allowed to have been
ingenious, if not satisfactory. It was quite true that Duncombe had
originally been committed to the Tower by the Commons. But, it was said,
the Commons, by sending a penal bill against him to the Lords, did, by
necessary implication, send him also to the Lords. For it was plainly
impossible for the Lords to pass the bill without hearing what he had to
say against it. The Commons had felt this, and had not complained when he
had, without their consent, been brought from his place of confinement,
and set at the bar of the Peers. From that moment he was the prisoner of
the Peers. He had been taken back from the bar to the Tower, not by virtue
of the Speaker’s warrant, of which the force was spent, but by virtue of
their order which had remanded him. They, therefore, might with perfect
propriety discharge him.

Whatever a jurist might have thought of these arguments, they had no
effect on the Commons. Indeed, violent as the spirit of party was in those
times, it was less violent than the spirit of caste. Whenever a dispute
arose between the two Houses, many members of both forgot that they were
Whigs or Tories, and remembered only that they were Patricians or
Plebeians. On this occasion nobody was louder in asserting the privileges
of the representatives of the people in opposition to the encroachments of
the nobility than Harley. Duncombe was again arrested by the Serjeant at
Arms, and remained in confinement till the end of the session. Some eager
men were for addressing the King to turn Lucas out of office. This was not
done; but during several days the ill humour of the Lower House showed
itself by a studied discourtesy. One of the members was wanted as a
witness in a matter which the Lords were investigating. They sent two
judges with a message requesting the permission of the Commons to examine
him. At any other time the judges would have been called in immediately,
and the permission would have been granted as of course. But on this
occasion the judges were kept waiting some hours at the door; and such
difficulties were made about the permission that the Peers desisted from
urging a request which seemed likely to be ungraciously refused.

The attention of the Parliament was, during the remainder of the session,
chiefly occupied by commercial questions. Some of those questions required
so much investigation, and gave occasion to so much dispute, that the
prorogation did not take place till the fifth of July. There was
consequently some illness and much discontent among both Lords and
Commons. For, in that age, the London season usually ended soon after the
first notes of the cuckoo had been heard, and before the poles had been
decked for the dances and mummeries which welcomed the genial May day of
the ancient calendar. Since the year of the Revolution, a year which was
an exception to all ordinary rules, the members of the two Houses had
never been detained from their woods and haycocks even so late as the
beginning of June.

The Commons had, soon after they met, appointed a Committee to enquire
into the state of trade, and had referred to this Committee several
petitions from merchants and manufacturers who complained that they were
in danger of being undersold, and who asked for additional protection.

A highly curious report on the importation of silks and the exportation of
wool was soon presented to the House. It was in that age believed by all
but a very few speculative men that the sound commercial policy was to
keep out of the country the delicate and brilliantly tinted textures of
southern looms, and to keep in the country the raw material on which most
of our own looms were employed. It was now fully proved that, during eight
years of war, the textures which it was thought desirable to keep out had
been constantly coming in, and the material which it was thought desirable
to keep in had been constantly going out. This interchange, an
interchange, as it was imagined, pernicious to England, had been chiefly
managed by an association of Huguenot refugees, residing in London. Whole
fleets of boats with illicit cargoes had been passing and repassing
between Kent and Picardy. The loading and unloading had taken place
sometimes in Romney Marsh, sometimes on the beach under the cliffs between
Dover and Folkstone. All the inhabitants of the south eastern coast were
in the plot. It was a common saying among them that, if a gallows were set
up every quarter of a mile along the coast, the trade would still go on
briskly. It had been discovered, some years before, that the vessels and
the hiding places which were necessary to the business of the smuggler had
frequently afforded accommodation to the traitor. The report contained
fresh evidence upon this point. It was proved that one of the
contrabandists had provided the vessel in which the ruffian O’Brien had
carried Scum Goodman over to France.

The inference which ought to have been drawn from these facts was that the
prohibitory system was absurd. That system had not destroyed the trade
which was so much dreaded, but had merely called into existence a
desperate race of men who, accustomed to earn their daily bread by the
breach of an unreasonable law, soon came to regard the most reasonable
laws with contempt, and, having begun by eluding the custom house
officers, ended by conspiring against the throne. And, if, in time of war,
when the whole Channel was dotted with our cruisers, it had been found
impossible to prevent the regular exchange of the fleeces of Cotswold for
the alamodes of Lyons, what chance was there that any machinery which
could be employed in time of peace would be more efficacious? The
politicians of the seventeenth century, however, were of opinion that
sharp laws sharply administered could not fail to save Englishmen from the
intolerable grievance of selling dear what could be best produced by
themselves, and of buying cheap what could be best produced by others. The
penalty for importing French silks was made more severe. An Act was passed
which gave to a joint stock company an absolute monopoly of lustrings for
a term of fourteen years. The fruit of these wise counsels was such as
might have been foreseen. French silks were still imported; and, long
before the term of fourteen years had expired, the funds of the Lustring
Company had been spent, its offices had been shut up, and its very name
had been forgotten at Jonathan’s and Garraway’s.

Not content with prospective legislation, the Commons unanimously
determined to treat the offences which the Committee had brought to light
as high crimes against the State, and to employ against a few cunning
mercers in Nicholas Lane and the Old Jewry all the gorgeous and cumbrous
machinery which ought to be reserved for the delinquencies of great
Ministers and Judges. It was resolved, without a division, that several
Frenchmen and one Englishman who had been deeply concerned in the
contraband trade should be impeached. Managers were appointed; articles
were drawn up; preparations were made for fitting up Westminster Hall with
benches and scarlet hangings; and at one time it was thought that the
trials would last till the partridge shooting began. But the defendants,
having little hope of acquittal, and not wishing that the Peers should
come to the business of fixing the punishment in the temper which was
likely to be the effect of an August passed in London, very wisely
declined to give their lordships unnecessary trouble, and pleaded guilty.
The sentences were consequently lenient. The French offenders were merely
fined; and their fines probably did not amount to a fifth part of the sums
which they had realised by unlawful traffic. The Englishman who had been
active in managing the escape of Goodman was both fined and imprisoned.

The progress of the woollen manufactures of Ireland excited even more
alarm and indignation than the contraband trade with France. The French
question indeed had been simply commercial. The Irish question, originally
commercial, became political. It was not merely the prosperity of the
clothiers of Wiltshire and of the West Riding that was at stake; but the
dignity of the Crown, the authority of the Parliament, and the unity of
the empire. Already might be discerned among the Englishry, who were now,
by the help and under the protection of the mother country, the lords of
the conquered island, some signs of a spirit, feeble indeed, as yet, and
such as might easily be put down by a few resolute words, but destined to
revive at long intervals, and to be stronger and more formidable at every
revival.

The person who on this occasion came forward as the champion of the
colonists, the forerunner of Swift and of Grattan, was William Molyneux.
He would have rejected the name of Irishman as indignantly as a citizen of
Marseilles or Cyrene, proud of his pure Greek blood, and fully qualified
to send a chariot to the Olympic race course, would have rejected the name
of Gaul or Libyan. He was, in the phrase of that time, an English
gentleman of family and fortune born in Ireland. He had studied at the
Temple, had travelled on the Continent, had become well known to the most
eminent scholars and philosophers of Oxford and Cambridge, had been
elected a member of the Royal Society of London, and had been one of the
founders of the Royal Society of Dublin. In the days of Popish ascendancy
he had taken refuge among his friends here; he had returned to his home
when the ascendancy of his own caste had been reestablished; and he had
been chosen to represent the University of Dublin in the House of Commons.
He had made great efforts to promote the manufactures of the kingdom in
which he resided; and he had found those efforts impeded by an Act of the
English Parliament which laid severe restrictions on the exportation of
woollen goods from Ireland. In principle this Act was altogether
indefensible. Practically it was altogether unimportant. Prohibitions were
not needed to prevent the Ireland of the seventeenth century from being a
great manufacturing country; nor could the most liberal bounties have made
her so. The jealousy of commerce, however, is as fanciful and unreasonable
as the jealousy of love. The clothiers of Wilts and Yorkshire were weak
enough to imagine that they should be ruined by the competition of a half
barbarous island, an island where there was far less capital than in
England, where there was far less security for life and property than in
England, and where there was far less industry and energy among the
labouring classes than in England. Molyneux, on the other hand, had the
sanguine temperament of a projector. He imagined that, but for the
tyrannical interference of strangers, a Ghent would spring up in
Connemara, and a Bruges in the Bog of Allen. And what right had strangers
to interfere? Not content with showing that the law of which he complained
was absurd and unjust, he undertook to prove that it was null and void.
Early in the year 1698 he published and dedicated to the King a treatise
in which it was asserted in plain terms that the English Parliament had no
authority over Ireland.

Whoever considers without passion or prejudice the great constitutional
question which was thus for the first time raised will probably be of
opinion that Molyneux was in error. The right of the Parliament of England
to legislate for Ireland rested on the broad general principle that the
paramount authority of the mother country extends over all colonies
planted by her sons in all parts of the world. This principle was the
subject of much discussion at the time of the American troubles, and was
then maintained, without any reservation, not only by the English
Ministers, but by Burke and all the adherents of Rockingham, and was
admitted, with one single reservation, even by the Americans themselves.
Down to the moment of separation the Congress fully acknowledged the
competency of the King, Lords and Commons to make laws, of any kind but
one, for Massachusetts and Virginia. The only power which such men as
Washington and Franklin denied to the Imperial legislature was the power
of taxing. Within living memory, Acts which have made great political and
social revolutions in our Colonies have been passed in this country; nor
has the validity of those Acts ever been questioned; and conspicuous among
them were the law of 1807 which abolished the slave trade, and the law of
1833 which abolished slavery.

The doctrine that the parent state has supreme power over the colonies is
not only borne out by authority and by precedent, but will appear, when
examined, to be in entire accordance with justice and with policy. During
the feeble infancy of colonies independence would be pernicious, or rather
fatal, to them. Undoubtedly, as they grow stronger and stronger, it will
be wise in the home government to be more and more indulgent. No sensible
parent deals with a son of twenty in the same way as with a son of ten.
Nor will any government not infatuated treat such a province as Canada or
Victoria in the way in which it might be proper to treat a little band of
emigrants who have just begun to build their huts on a barbarous shore,
and to whom the protection of the flag of a great nation is indispensably
necessary. Nevertheless, there cannot really be more than one supreme
power in a society. If, therefore, a time comes at which the mother
country finds it expedient altogether to abdicate her paramount authority
over a colony, one of two courses ought to be taken. There ought to be
complete incorporation, if such incorporation be possible. If not, there
ought to be complete separation. Very few propositions in polities can be
so perfectly demonstrated as this, that parliamentary government cannot be
carried on by two really equal and independent parliaments in one empire.

And, if we admit the general rule to be that the English parliament is
competent to legislate for colonies planted by English subjects, what
reason was there for considering the case of the colony in Ireland as an
exception? For it is to be observed that the whole question was between
the mother country and the colony. The aboriginal inhabitants, more than
five sixths of the population, had no more interest in the matter than the
swine or the poultry; or, if they had an interest, it was for their
interest that the caste which domineered over them should not be
emancipated from all external control. They were no more represented in
the parliament which sate at Dublin than in the parliament which sate at
Westminster. They had less to dread from legislation at Westminster than
from legislation at Dublin. They were, indeed, likely to obtain but a very
scanty measure of justice from the English Tories, a more scanty measure
still from the English Whigs; but the most acrimonious English Whig did
not feel towards them that intense antipathy, compounded of hatred, fear
and scorn, with which they were regarded by the Cromwellian who dwelt
among them. 8
For the Irishry Molyneux, though boasting that he was the champion of
liberty, though professing to have learned his political principles from
Locke’s writings, and though confidently expecting Locke’s applause, asked
nothing but a more cruel and more hopeless slavery. What he claimed was
that, as respected the colony to which he belonged, England should forego
rights which she has exercised and is still exercising over every other
colony that she has ever planted. And what reason could be given for
making such a distinction? No colony had owed so much to England. No
colony stood in such need of the support of England. Twice, within the
memory of men then living, the natives had attempted to throw off the
alien yoke; twice the intruders had been in imminent danger of
extirpation; twice England had come to the rescue, and had put down the
Celtic population under the feet of her own progeny. Millions of English
money had been expended in the struggle. English blood had flowed at the
Boyne and at Athlone, at Aghrim and at Limerick. The graves of thousands
of English soldiers had been dug in the pestilential morass of Dundalk. It
was owing to the exertions and sacrifices of the English people that, from
the basaltic pillars of Ulster to the lakes of Kerry, the Saxon settlers
were trampling on the children of the soil. The colony in Ireland was
therefore emphatically a dependency; a dependency, not merely by the
common law of the realm, but by the nature of things. It was absurd to
claim independence for a community which could not cease to be dependent
without ceasing to exist.

Molyneux soon found that he had ventured on a perilous undertaking. A
member of the English House of Commons complained in his place that a book
which attacked the most precious privileges of the supreme legislature was
in circulation. The volume was produced; some passages were read; and a
Committee was appointed to consider the whole subject. The Committee soon
reported that the obnoxious pamphlet was only one of several symptoms
which indicated a spirit such as ought to be suppressed. The Crown of
Ireland had been most improperly described in public instruments as an
imperial Crown. The Irish Lords and Commons had presumed, not only to
reenact an English Act passed expressly for the purpose of binding them,
but to reenact it with alterations. The alterations were indeed small; but
the alteration even of a letter was tantamount to a declaration of
independence. Several addresses were voted without a division. The King
was entreated to discourage all encroachments of subordinate powers on the
supreme authority of the English legislature, to bring to justice the
pamphleteer who had dared to question that authority, to enforce the Acts
which had been passed for the protection of the woollen manufactures of
England, and to direct the industry and capital of Ireland into the
channel of the linen trade, a trade which might grow and flourish in
Leinster and Ulster without exciting the smallest jealousy at Norwich or
at Halifax.

The King promised to do what the Commons asked; but in truth there was
little to be done. The Irish, conscious of their impotence, submitted
without a murmur. The Irish woollen manufacture languished and
disappeared, as it would, in all probability, have languished and
disappeared if it had been left to itself. Had Molyneux lived a few months
longer he would probably have been impeached. But the close of the session
was approaching; and before the Houses met again a timely death had
snatched him from their vengeance; and the momentous question which had
been first stirred by him slept a deep sleep till it was revived in a more
formidable shape, after the lapse of twenty-six years, by the fourth
letter of The Drapier.

Of the commercial questions which prolonged this session far into the
summer the most important respected India. Four years had elapsed since
the House of Commons had decided that all Englishmen had an equal right to
traffic in the Asiatic Seas, unless prohibited by Parliament; and in that
decision the King had thought it prudent to acquiesce. Any merchant of
London or Bristol might now fit out a ship for Bengal or for China,
without the least apprehension of being molested by the Admiralty or sued
in the Courts of Westminster. No wise man, however, was disposed to stake
a large sum on such a venture. For the vote which protected him from
annoyance here left him exposed to serious risks on the other side of the
Cape of Good Hope. The Old Company, though its exclusive privileges were
no more, and though its dividends had greatly diminished, was still in
existence, and still retained its castles and warehouses, its fleet of
fine merchantmen, and its able and zealous factors, thoroughly qualified
by a long experience to transact business both in the palaces and in the
bazaars of the East, and accustomed to look for direction to the India
House alone. The private trader therefore still ran great risk of being
treated as a smuggler, if not as a pirate. He might indeed, if he was
wronged, apply for redress to the tribunals of his country. But years must
elapse before his cause could be heard; his witnesses must be conveyed
over fifteen thousand miles of sea; and in the meantime he was a ruined
man. The experiment of free trade with India had therefore been tried
under every disadvantage, or, to speak more correctly, had not been tried
at all. The general opinion had always been that some restriction was
necessary; and that opinion had been confirmed by all that had happened
since the old restrictions had been removed. The doors of the House of
Commons were again besieged by the two great contending factions of the
City. The Old Company offered, in return for a monopoly secured by law, a
loan of seven hundred thousand pounds; and the whole body of Tories was
for accepting the offer. But those indefatigable agitators who had, ever
since the Revolution, been striving to obtain a share in the trade of the
Eastern seas exerted themselves at this conjuncture more strenuously than
ever, and found a powerful patron in Montague.

That dexterous and eloquent statesman had two objects in view. One was to
obtain for the State, as the price of the monopoly, a sum much larger than
the Old Company was able to give. The other was to promote the interest of
his own party. Nowhere was the conflict between Whigs and Tories sharper
than in the City of London; and the influence of the City of London was
felt to the remotest corner of the realm. To elevate the Whig section of
that mighty commercial aristocracy which congregated under the arches of
the Royal Exchange, and to depress the Tory section, had long been one of
Montague’s favourite schemes. He had already formed one citadel in the
heart of that great emporium; and he now thought that it might be in his
power to erect and garrison a second stronghold in a position scarcely
less commanding. It had often been said, in times of civil war, that
whoever was master of the Tower and of Tilbury Fort was master of London.
The fastnesses by means of which Montague proposed to keep the capital
obedient in times of peace and of constitutional government were of a
different kind. The Bank was one of his fortresses; and he trusted that a
new India House would be the other.

The task which he had undertaken was not an easy one. For, while his
opponents were united, his adherents were divided. Most of those who were
for a New Company thought that the New Company ought, like the Old
Company, to trade on a joint stock. But there were some who held that our
commerce with India would be best carried on by means of what is called a
regulated Company. There was a Turkey Company, the members of which
contributed to a general fund, and had in return the exclusive privilege
of trafficking with the Levant; but those members trafficked, each on his
own account; they forestalled each other; they undersold each other; one
became rich; another became bankrupt. The Corporation meanwhile watched
over the common interest of all the members, furnished the Crown with the
means of maintaining an embassy at Constantinople, and placed at several
important ports consuls and vice-consuls, whose business was to keep the
Pacha and the Cadi in good humour, and to arbitrate in disputes among
Englishmen. Why might not the same system be found to answer in regions
lying still further to the east? Why should not every member of the New
Company be at liberty to export European commodities to the countries
beyond the Cape, and to bring back shawls, saltpetre and bohea to England,
while the Company, in its collective capacity, might treat with Asiatic
potentates, or exact reparation from them, and might be entrusted with
powers for the administration of justice and for the government of forts
and factories?

Montague tried to please all those whose support was necessary to him; and
this he could effect only by bringing forward a plan so intricate that it
cannot without some pains be understood. He wanted two millions to
extricate the State from its financial embarrassments. That sum he
proposed to raise by a loan at eight per cent. The lenders might be either
individuals or corporations. But they were all, individuals and
corporations, to be united in a new corporation, which was to be called
the General Society. Every member of the General Society, whether
individual or corporation, might trade separately with India to an extent
not exceeding the amount which such member had advanced to the government.
But all the members or any of them might, if they so thought fit, give up
the privilege of trading separately, and unite themselves under a royal
Charter for the purpose of trading in common. Thus the General Society
was, by its original constitution, a regulated company; but it was
provided that either the whole Society or any part of it might become a
joint stock company.

The opposition to the scheme was vehement and pertinacious. The Old
Company presented petition after petition. The Tories, with Seymour at
their head, appealed both to the good faith and to the compassion of
Parliament. Much was said about the sanctity of the existing Charter, and
much about the tenderness due to the numerous families which had, in
reliance on that Charter, invested their substance in India stock. On the
other side there was no want of plausible topics or of skill to use them.
Was it not strange that those who talked so much about the Charter should
have altogether overlooked the very clause of the Charter on which the
whole question turned? That clause expressly reserved to the government
power of revocation, after three years’ notice, if the Charter should not
appear to be beneficial to the public. The Charter had not been found
beneficial to the public; the three years’ notice should be given; and in
the year 1701 the revocation would take effect. What could be fairer? If
anybody was so weak as to imagine that the privileges of the Old Company
were perpetual, when the very instrument which created those privileges
expressly declared them to be terminable, what right had he to blame the
Parliament, which was bound to do the best for the State, for not saving
him, at the expense of the State, from the natural punishment of his own
folly? It was evident that nothing was proposed inconsistent with strict
justice. And what right had the Old Company to more than strict justice?
These petitioners who implored the legislature to deal indulgently with
them in their adversity, how had they used their boundless prosperity? Had
not the India House recently been the very den of corruption, the tainted
spot from which the plague had spread to the Court and the Council, to the
House of Commons and the House of Lords? Were the disclosures of 1695
forgotten, the eighty thousand pounds of secret service money disbursed in
one year, the enormous bribes direct and indirect, Seymour’s saltpetre
contracts, Leeds’s bags of golds? By the malpractices which the inquiry in
the Exchequer Chamber then brought to light, the Charter had been
forfeited; and it would have been well if the forfeiture had been
immediately enforced. “Had not time then pressed,” said Montague, “had it
not been necessary that the session should close, it is probable that the
petitioners, who now cry out that they cannot get justice, would have got
more justice than they desired. If they had been called to account for
great and real wrong in 1695, we should not have had them here complaining
of imaginary wrong in 1698.”

The fight was protracted by the obstinacy and dexterity of the Old Company
and its friends from the first week of May to the last week in June. It
seems that many even of Montague’s followers doubted whether the promised
two millions would be forthcoming. His enemies confidently predicted that
the General Society would be as complete a failure as the Land Bank had
been in the year before the last, and that he would in the autumn find
himself in charge of an empty exchequer. His activity and eloquence,
however, prevailed. On the twenty-sixth of June, after many laborious
sittings, the question was put that this Bill do pass, and was carried by
one hundred and fifteen votes to seventy-eight. In the upper House, the
conflict was short and sharp. Some peers declared that, in their opinion,
the subscription to the proposed loan, far from amounting to the two
millions which the Chancellor of the Exchequer expected, would fall far
short of one million. Others, with much reason, complained that a law of
such grave importance should have been sent up to them in such a shape
that they must either take the whole or throw out the whole. The privilege
of the Commons with respect to money bills had of late been grossly
abused. The Bank had been created by one money bill; this General Society
was to be created by another money bill. Such a bill the Lords could not
amend; they might indeed reject it; but to reject it was to shake the
foundations of public credit and to leave the kingdom defenceless. Thus
one branch of the legislature was systematically put under duress by the
other, and seemed likely to be reduced to utter insignificance. It was
better that the government should be once pinched for money than that the
House of Peers should cease to be part of the Constitution. So strong was
this feeling that the Bill was carried only by sixty-five to forty-eight.
It received the royal sanction on the fifth of July. The King then spoke
from the throne. This was the first occasion on which a King of England
had spoken to a Parliament of which the existence was about to be
terminated, not by his own act, but by the act of the law. He could not,
he said, take leave of the Lords and Gentlemen before him without publicly
acknowledging the great things which they had done for his dignity and for
the welfare of the nation. He recounted the chief services which they had,
during three eventful sessions, rendered to the country. “These things
will,” he said, “give a lasting reputation to this Parliament, and will be
a subject of emulation to Parliaments which shall come after.” The Houses
were then prorogued.

During the week which followed there was some anxiety as to the result of
the subscription for the stock of the General Society. If that
subscription failed, there would be a deficit; public credit would be
shaken; and Montague would be regarded as a pretender who had owed his
reputation to a mere run of good luck, and who had tempted chance once too
often. But the event was such as even his sanguine spirit had scarcely
ventured to anticipate. At one in the afternoon of the 14th of July the
books were opened at the Hall of the Company of Mercers in Cheapside. An
immense crowd was already collected in the street. As soon as the doors
were flung wide, wealthy citizens, with their money in their hands,
pressed in, pushing and elbowing each other. The guineas were paid down
faster than the clerks could count them. Before night six hundred thousand
pounds had been subscribed. The next day the throng was as great. More
than one capitalist put down his name for thirty thousand pounds. To the
astonishment of those ill boding politicians who were constantly repeating
that the war, the debt, the taxes, the grants to Dutch courtiers, had
ruined the kingdom, the sum, which it had been doubted whether England
would be able to raise in many weeks, was subscribed by London in a few
hours. The applications from the provincial towns and rural districts came
too late. The merchants of Bristol had intended to take three hundred
thousand pounds of the stock, but had waited to learn how the subscription
went on before they gave their final orders; and, by the time that the
mail had gone down to Bristol and returned, there was no more stock to be
had.

This was the moment at which the fortunes of Montague reached the
meridian. The decline was close at hand. His ability and his constant
success were everywhere talked of with admiration and envy. That man, it
was commonly said, has never wanted, and never will want, an expedient.

During the long and busy session which had just closed, some interesting
and important events had taken place which may properly be mentioned here.
One of those events was the destruction of the most celebrated palace in
which the sovereigns of England have ever dwelt. On the evening of the 4th
of January, a woman,—the patriotic journalists and pamphleteers of
that time did not fail to note that she was a Dutchwoman,—who was
employed as a laundress at Whitehall, lighted a charcoal fire in her room
and placed some linen round it. The linen caught fire and burned
furiously. The tapestry, the bedding, the wainscots were soon in a blaze.
The unhappy woman who had done the mischief perished. Soon the flames
burst out of the windows. All Westminster, all the Strand, all the river
were in commotion. Before midnight the King’s apartments, the Queen’s
apartments, the Wardrobe, the Treasury, the office of the Privy Council,
the office of the Secretary of State, had been destroyed. The two chapels
perished together; that ancient chapel where Wolsey had heard mass in the
midst of gorgeous copes, golden candlesticks, and jewelled crosses, and
that modern edifice which had been erected for the devotions of James and
had been embellished by the pencil of Verrio and the chisel of Gibbons.
Meanwhile a great extent of building had been blown up; and it was hoped
that by this expedient a stop had been put to the conflagration. But early
in the morning a new fire broke out of the heaps of combustible matter
which the gunpowder had scattered to right and left. The guard room was
consumed. No trace was left of that celebrated gallery which had witnessed
so many balls and pageants, in which so many maids of honour had listened
too easily to the vows and flatteries of gallants, and in which so many
bags of gold had changed masters at the hazard table. During some time men
despaired of the Banqueting House. The flames broke in on the south of
that beautiful hall, and were with great difficulty extinguished by the
exertions of the guards, to whom Cutts, mindful of his honourable nickname
of the Salamander, set as good an example on this night of terror as he
had set in the breach of Namur. Many lives were lost, and many grievous
wounds were inflicted by the falling masses of stone and timber, before
the fire was effectually subdued. When day broke, the heaps of smoking
ruins spread from Scotland Yard to the Bowling Green, where the mansion of
the Duke of Buccleuch now stands. The Banqueting House was safe; but the
graceful columns and festoons designed by Inigo were so much defaced and
blackened that their form could hardly be discerned. There had been time
to move the most valuable effects which were moveable. Unfortunately some
of Holbein’s finest pictures were painted on the walls, and are
consequently known to us only by copies and engravings. The books of the
Treasury and of the Privy Council were rescued, and are still preserved.
The Ministers whose offices had been burned down were provided with new
offices in the neighbourhood. Henry the Eighth had built, close to St.
James’s Park, two appendages to the Palace of Whitehall, a cockpit and a
tennis court. The Treasury now occupies the site of the cockpit, the Privy
Council Office the site of the tennis court.

Notwithstanding the many associations which make the name of Whitehall
still interesting to an Englishman, the old building was little regretted.
It was spacious indeed and commodious, but mean and inelegant. The people
of the capital had been annoyed by the scoffing way in which foreigners
spoke of the principal residence of our sovereigns, and often said that it
was a pity that the great fire had not spared the old portico of St.
Paul’s and the stately arcades of Gresham’s Bourse, and taken in exchange
that ugly old labyrinth of dingy brick and plastered timber. It might now
be hoped that we should have a Louvre. Before the ashes of the old palace
were cold, plans for a new palace were circulated and discussed. But
William, who could not draw his breath in the air of Westminster, was
little disposed to expend a million on a house which it would have been
impossible for him to inhabit. Many blamed him for not restoring the
dwelling of his predecessors; and a few Jacobites, whom evil temper and
repeated disappointments had driven almost mad, accused him of having
burned it down. It was not till long after his death that Tory writers
ceased to call for the rebuilding of Whitehall, and to complain that the
King of England had no better town house than St. James’s, while the
delightful spot where the Tudors and the Stuarts had held their councils
and their revels was covered with the mansions of his jobbing courtiers.
9

In the same week in which Whitehall perished, the Londoners were supplied
with a new topic of conversation by a royal visit, which, of all royal
visits, was the least pompous and ceremonious and yet the most interesting
and important. On the 10th of January a vessel from Holland anchored off
Greenwich and was welcomed with great respect. Peter the First, Czar of
Muscovy, was on board. He took boat with a few attendants and was rowed up
the Thames to Norfolk Street, where a house overlooking the river had been
prepared for his reception.

His journey is an epoch in the history, not only of his own country, but
of our’s, and of the world. To the polished nations of Western Europe, the
empire which he governed had till then been what Bokhara or Siam is to us.
That empire indeed, though less extensive than at present, was the most
extensive that had ever obeyed a single chief. The dominions of Alexander
and of Trajan were small when compared with the immense area of the
Scythian desert. But in the estimation of statesmen that boundless expanse
of larch forest and morass, where the snow lay deep during eight months of
every year, and where a wretched peasantry could with difficulty defend
their hovels against troops of famished wolves, was of less account than
the two or three square miles into which were crowded the counting houses,
the warehouses, and the innumerable masts of Amsterdam. On the Baltic
Russia had not then a single port. Her maritime trade with the other
rations of Christendom was entirely carried on at Archangel, a place which
had been created and was supported by adventurers from our island. In the
days of the Tudors, a ship from England, seeking a north east passage to
the land of silk and spice, had discovered the White Sea. The barbarians
who dwelt on the shores of that dreary gulf had never before seen such a
portent as a vessel of a hundred and sixty tons burden. They fled in
terror; and, when they were pursued and overtaken, prostrated themselves
before the chief of the strangers and kissed his feet. He succeeded in
opening a friendly communication with them; and from that time there had
been a regular commercial intercourse between our country and the subjects
of the Czar. A Russia Company was incorporated in London. An English
factory was built at Archangel. That factory was indeed, even in the
latter part of the seventeenth century, a rude and mean building. The
walls consisted of trees laid one upon another; and the roof was of birch
bark. This shelter, however, was sufficient in the long summer day of the
Arctic regions. Regularly at that season several English ships cast anchor
in the bay. A fair was held on the beach. Traders came from a distance of
many hundreds of miles to the only mart where they could exchange hemp and
tar, hides and tallow, wax and honey, the fur of the sable and the
wolverine, and the roe of the sturgeon of the Volga, for Manchester
stuffs, Sheffield knives, Birmingham buttons, sugar from Jamaica and
pepper from Malabar. The commerce in these articles was open. But there
was a secret traffic which was not less active or less lucrative, though
the Russian laws had made it punishable, and though the Russian divines
pronounced it damnable. In general the mandates of princes and the lessons
of priests were received by the Muscovite with profound reverence. But the
authority of his princes and of his priests united could not keep him from
tobacco. Pipes he could not obtain; but a cow’s horn perforated served his
turn. From every Archangel fair rolls of the best Virginia speedily found
their way to Novgorod and Tobolsk.

The commercial intercourse between England and Russia made some diplomatic
intercourse necessary. The diplomatic intercourse however was only
occasional. The Czar had no permanent minister here. We had no permanent
minister at Moscow; and even at Archangel we had no consul. Three or four
times in a century extraordinary embassies were sent from Whitehall to the
Kremlin and from the Kremlin to Whitehall.

The English embassies had historians whose narratives may still be read
with interest. Those historians described vividly, and sometimes bitterly,
the savage ignorance and the squalid poverty of the barbarous country in
which they had sojourned. In that country, they said, there was neither
literature nor science, neither school nor college. It was not till more
than a hundred years after the invention of printing that a single
printing press had been introduced into the Russian empire; and that
printing press had speedily perished in a fire which was supposed to have
been kindled by the priests. Even in the seventeenth century the library
of a prelate of the first dignity consisted of a few manuscripts. Those
manuscripts too were in long rolls; for the art of bookbinding was
unknown. The best educated men could barely read and write. It was much if
the secretary to whom was entrusted the direction of negotiations with
foreign powers had a sufficient smattering of Dog Latin to make himself
understood. The arithmetic was the arithmetic of the dark ages. The denary
notation was unknown. Even in the Imperial Treasury the computations were
made by the help of balls strung on wires. Round the person of the
Sovereign there was a blaze of gold and jewels; but even in his most
splendid palaces were to be found the filth and misery of an Irish cabin.
So late as the year 1663 the gentlemen of the retinue of the Earl of
Carlisle were, in the city of Moscow, thrust into a single bedroom, and
were told that, if they did not remain together, they would be in danger
of being devoured by rats.

Such was the report which the English legations made of what they had seen
and suffered in Russia; and their evidence was confirmed by the appearance
which the Russian legations made in England. The strangers spoke no
civilised language. Their garb, their gestures, their salutations, had a
wild and barbarous character. The ambassador and the grandees who
accompanied him were so gorgeous that all London crowded to stare at them,
and so filthy that nobody dared to touch them. They came to the court
balls dropping pearls and vermin. It was said that one envoy cudgelled the
lords of his train whenever they soiled or lost any part of their finery,
and that another had with difficulty been prevented from putting his son
to death for the crime of shaving and dressing after the French fashion.

Our ancestors therefore were not a little surprised to learn that a young
barbarian, who had, at seventeen years of age, become the autocrat of the
immense region stretching from the confines of Sweden to those of China,
and whose education had been inferior to that of an English farmer or
shopman, had planned gigantic improvements, had learned enough of some
languages of Western Europe to enable him to communicate with civilised
men, had begun to surround himself with able adventurers from various
parts of the world, had sent many of his young subjects to study
languages, arts and sciences in foreign cities, and finally had determined
to travel as a private man, and to discover, by personal observation, the
secret of the immense prosperity and power enjoyed by some communities
whose whole territory was far less than the hundredth part of his
dominions.

It might have been expected that France would have been the first object
of his curiosity. For the grace and dignity of the French King, the
splendour of the French Court, the discipline of the French armies, and
the genius and learning of the French writers, were then renowned all over
the world. But the Czar’s mind had early taken a strange ply which it
retained to the last. His empire was of all empires the least capable of
being made a great naval power. The Swedish provinces lay between his
States and the Baltic. The Bosporus and the Dardanelles lay between his
States and the Mediterranean. He had access to the ocean only in a
latitude in which navigation is, during a great part of every year,
perilous and difficult. On the ocean he had only a single port, Archangel;
and the whole shipping of Archangel was foreign. There did not exist a
Russian vessel larger than a fishing-boat. Yet, from some cause which
cannot now be traced, he had a taste for maritime pursuits which amounted
to a passion, indeed almost to a monomania. His imagination was full of
sails, yardarms, and rudders. That large mind, equal to the highest duties
of the general and the statesman, contracted itself to the most minute
details of naval architecture and naval discipline. The chief ambition of
the great conqueror and legislator was to be a good boatswain and a good
ship’s carpenter. Holland and England therefore had for him an attraction
which was wanting to the galleries and terraces of Versailles. He repaired
to Amsterdam, took a lodging in the dockyard, assumed the garb of a pilot,
put down his name on the list of workmen, wielded with his own hand the
caulking iron and the mallet, fixed the pumps, and twisted the ropes.
Ambassadors who came to pay their respects to him were forced, much
against their will, to clamber up the rigging of a man of war, and found
him enthroned on the cross trees.

Such was the prince whom the populace of London now crowded to behold. His
stately form, his intellectual forehead, his piercing black eyes, his
Tartar nose and mouth, his gracious smile, his frown black with all the
stormy rage and hate of a barbarian tyrant, and above all a strange
nervous convulsion which sometimes transformed his countenance during a
few moments, into an object on which it was impossible to look without
terror, the immense quantities of meat which he devoured, the pints of
brandy which he swallowed, and which, it was said, he had carefully
distilled with his own hands, the fool who jabbered at his feet, the
monkey which grinned at the back of his chair, were, during some weeks,
popular topics of conversation. He meanwhile shunned the public gaze with
a haughty shyness which inflamed curiosity. He went to a play; but, as
soon as he perceived that pit, boxes and galleries were staring, not at
the stage, but at him, he retired to a back bench where he was screened
from observation by his attendants. He was desirous to see a sitting of
the House of Lords; but, as he was determined not to be seen, he was
forced to climb up to the leads, and to peep through a small window. He
heard with great interest the royal assent given to a bill for raising
fifteen hundred thousand pounds by land tax, and learned with amazement
that this sum, though larger by one half than the whole revenue which he
could wring from the population of the immense empire of which he was
absolute master, was but a small part of what the Commons of England
voluntarily granted every year to their constitutional King.

William judiciously humoured the whims of his illustrious guest, and stole
to Norfolk Street so quietly that nobody in the neighbourhood recognised
His Majesty in the thin gentleman who got out of the modest looking coach
at the Czar’s lodgings. The Czar returned the visit with the same
precautions, and was admitted into Kensington House by a back door. It was
afterwards known that he took no notice of the fine pictures with which
the palace was adorned. But over the chimney of the royal sitting room was
a plate which, by an ingenious machinery, indicated the direction of the
wind; and with this plate he was in raptures.

He soon became weary of his residence. He found that he was too far from
the objects of his curiosity, and too near to the crowds to which he was
himself an object of curiosity. He accordingly removed to Deptford, and
was there lodged in the house of John Evelyn, a house which had long been
a favourite resort of men of letters, men of taste and men of science.
Here Peter gave himself up to his favourite pursuits. He navigated a yacht
every day up and down the river. His apartment was crowded with models of
three deckers and two deckers, frigates, sloops and fireships. The only
Englishman of rank in whose society he seemed to take much pleasure was
the eccentric Caermarthen, whose passion for the sea bore some resemblance
to his own, and who was very competent to give an opinion about every part
of a ship from the stem to the stern. Caermarthen, indeed, became so great
a favourite that he prevailed on the Czar to consent to the admission of a
limited quantity of tobacco into Russia. There was reason to apprehend
that the Russian clergy would cry out against any relaxation of the
ancient rule, and would strenuously maintain that the practice of smoking
was condemned by that text which declares that man is defiled, not by
those things which enter in at the mouth, but by those which proceed out
of it. This apprehension was expressed by a deputation of merchants who
were admitted to an audience of the Czar; but they were reassured by the
air with which he told them that he knew how to keep priests in order.

He was indeed so free from any bigoted attachment to the religion in which
he had been brought up that both Papists and Protestants hoped at
different times to make him a proselyte. Burnet, commissioned by his
brethren, and impelled, no doubt, by his own restless curiosity and love
of meddling, repaired to Deptford and was honoured with several audiences.
The Czar could not be persuaded to exhibit himself at Saint Paul’s; but he
was induced to visit Lambeth palace. There he saw the ceremony of
ordination performed, and expressed warm approbation of the Anglican
ritual. Nothing in England astonished him so much as the Archiepiscopal
library. It was the first good collection of books that he had seen; and
he declared that he had never imagined that there were so many printed
volumes in the world.

The impression which he made on Burnet was not favourable. The good bishop
could not understand that a mind which seemed to be chiefly occupied with
questions about the best place for a capstan and the best way of rigging a
jury mast might be capable, not merely of ruling an empire, but of
creating a nation. He complained that he had gone to see a great prince,
and had found only an industrious shipwright. Nor does Evelyn seem to have
formed a much more favourable opinion of his august tenant. It was,
indeed, not in the character of tenant that the Czar was likely to gain
the good word of civilised men. With all the high qualities which were
peculiar to himself, he had all the filthy habits which were then common
among his countrymen. To the end of his life, while disciplining armies,
founding schools, framing codes, organising tribunals, building cities in
deserts, joining distant seas by artificial rivers, he lived in his palace
like a hog in a sty; and, when he was entertained by other sovereigns,
never failed to leave on their tapestried walls and velvet state beds
unequivocal proof that a savage had been there. Evelyn’s house was left in
such a state that the Treasury quieted his complaints with a considerable
sum of money.

Towards the close of March the Czar visited Portsmouth, saw a sham
seafight at Spithead, watched every movement of the contending fleets with
intense interest, and expressed in warm terms his gratitude to the
hospitable government which had provided so delightful a spectacle for his
amusement and instruction. After passing more than three months in
England, he departed in high good humour. 10

His visit, his singular character, and what was rumoured of his great
designs, excited much curiosity here, but nothing more than curiosity.
England had as yet nothing to hope or to fear from his vast empire. All
her serious apprehensions were directed towards a different quarter. None
could say how soon France, so lately an enemy, might be an enemy again.

The new diplomatic relations between the two great western powers were
widely different from those which had existed before the war. During the
eighteen years which had elapsed between the signing of the Treaty of
Dover and the Revolution, all the envoys who had been sent from Whitehall
to Versailles had been mere sycophants of the great King. In England the
French ambassador had been the object of a degrading worship. The chiefs
of both the great parties had been his pensioners and his tools. The
ministers of the Crown had paid him open homage. The leaders of the
opposition had stolen into his house by the back door. Kings had stooped
to implore his good offices, had persecuted him for money with the
importunity of street beggars; and, when they had succeeded in obtaining
from him a box of doubloons or a bill of exchange, had embraced him with
tears of gratitude and joy. But those days were past. England would never
again send a Preston or a Skelton to bow down before the majesty of
France. France would never again send a Barillon to dictate to the cabinet
of England. Henceforth the intercourse between the two states would be on
terms of perfect equality.

William thought it necessary that the minister who was to represent him at
the French Court should be a man of the first consideration, and one on
whom entire reliance could be reposed. Portland was chosen for this
important and delicate mission; and the choice was eminently judicious. He
had, in the negotiations of the preceding year, shown more ability than
was to be found in the whole crowd of formalists who had been exchanging
notes and drawing up protocols at Ryswick. Things which had been kept
secret from the plenipotentiaries who had signed the treaty were well
known to him. The clue of the whole foreign policy of England and Holland
was in his possession. His fidelity and diligence were beyond all praise.
These were strong recommendations. Yet it seemed strange to many that
William should have been willing to part, for a considerable time, from a
companion with whom he had during a quarter of a century lived on terms of
entire confidence and affection. The truth was that the confidence was
still what it had long been, but that the affection, though it was not yet
extinct, though it had not even cooled, had become a cause of uneasiness
to both parties. Till very recently, the little knot of personal friends
who had followed William from his native land to his place of splendid
banishment had been firmly united. The aversion which the English nation
felt for them had given him much pain; but he had not been annoyed by any
quarrel among themselves. Zulestein and Auverquerque had, without a
murmur, yielded to Portland the first place in the royal favour; nor had
Portland grudged to Zulestein and Auverquerque very solid and very signal
proofs of their master’s kindness. But a younger rival had lately obtained
an influence which created much jealousy. Among the Dutch gentlemen who
had sailed with the Prince of Orange from Helvoetsluys to Torbay was one
named Arnold Van Keppel. Keppel had a sweet and obliging temper, winning
manners, and a quick, though not a profound, understanding. Courage,
loyalty and secresy were common between him and Portland. In other points
they differed widely. Portland was naturally the very opposite of a
flatterer, and, having been the intimate friend of the Prince of Orange at
a time when the interval between the House of Orange and the House of
Bentinck was not so wide as it afterwards became, had acquired a habit of
plain speaking which he could not unlearn when the comrade of his youth
had become the sovereign of three kingdoms. He was a most trusty, but not
a very respectful, subject. There was nothing which he was not ready to do
or suffer for William. But in his intercourse with William he was blunt
and sometimes surly. Keppel, on the other hand, had a great desire to
please, and looked up with unfeigned admiration to a master whom he had
been accustomed, ever since he could remember, to consider as the first of
living men. Arts, therefore, which were neglected by the elder courtier
were assiduously practised by the younger. So early as the spring of 1691
shrewd observers were struck by the manner in which Keppel watched every
turn of the King’s eye, and anticipated the King’s unuttered wishes.
Gradually the new servant rose into favour. He was at length made Earl of
Albemarle and Master of the Robes. But his elevation, though it furnished
the Jacobites with a fresh topic for calumny and ribaldry, was not so
offensive to the nation as the elevation of Portland had been. Portland’s
manners were thought dry and haughty; but envy was disarmed by the
blandness of Albemarle’s temper and by the affability of his deportment.

Portland, though strictly honest, was covetous; Albemarle was generous.
Portland had been naturalised here only in name and form; but Albemarle
affected to have forgotten his own country, and to have become an
Englishman in feelings and manners. The palace was soon disturbed by
quarrels in which Portland seems to have been always the aggressor, and in
which he found little support either among the English or among his own
countrymen. William, indeed, was not the man to discard an old friend for
a new one. He steadily gave, on all occasions, the preference to the
companion of his youthful days. Portland had the first place in the
bed-chamber. He held high command in the army. On all great occasions he
was trusted and consulted. He was far more powerful in Scotland than the
Lord High Commissioner, and far deeper in the secret of foreign affairs
than the Secretary of State. He wore the Garter, which sovereign princes
coveted. Lands and money had been bestowed on him so liberally that he was
one of the richest subjects in Europe. Albemarle had as yet not even a
regiment; he had not been sworn of the Council; and the wealth which he
owed to the royal bounty was a pittance when compared with the domains and
the hoards of Portland. Yet Portland thought himself aggrieved. He could
not bear to see any other person near him, though below him, in the royal
favour. In his fits of resentful sullenness, he hinted an intention of
retiring from the Court. William omitted nothing that a brother could have
done to soothe and conciliate a brother. Letters are still extant in which
he, with the utmost solemnity, calls God to witness that his affection for
Bentinck still is what it was in their early days. At length a compromise
was made. Portland, disgusted with Kensington, was not sorry to go to
France as ambassador; and William with deep emotion consented to a
separation longer than had ever taken place during an intimacy of
twenty-five years. A day or two after the new plenipotentiary had set out
on his mission, he received a touching letter from his master. “The loss
of your society,” the King wrote, “has affected me more than you can
imagine. I should be very glad if I could believe that you felt as much
pain at quitting me as I felt at seeing you depart; for then I might hope
that you had ceased to doubt the truth of what I so solemnly declared to
you on my oath. Assure yourself that I never was more sincere. My feeling
towards you is one which nothing but death can alter.” It should seem that
the answer returned to these affectionate assurances was not perfectly
gracious; for, when the King next wrote, he gently complained of an
expression which had wounded him severely.

But, though Portland was an unreasonable and querulous friend, he was a
most faithful and zealous minister. His despatches show how indefatigably
he toiled for the interests, and how punctiliously he guarded the dignity,
of the prince by whom he imagined that he had been unjustly and unkindly
treated.

The embassy was the most magnificent that England had ever sent to any
foreign court. Twelve men of honourable birth and ample fortune, some of
whom afterwards filled high offices in the State, attended the mission at
their own charge. Each of them had his own carriage, his own horses, and
his own train of servants. Two less wealthy persons, who, in different
ways, attained great note in literature, were of the company. Rapin, whose
history of England might have been found, a century ago, in every library,
was the preceptor of the ambassador’s eldest son, Lord Woodstock. Prior
was Secretary of Legation. His quick parts, his industry, his politeness,
and his perfect knowledge of the French language, marked him out as
eminently fitted for diplomatic employment. He had, however, found much
difficulty in overcoming an odd prejudice which his chief had conceived
against him. Portland, with good natural abilities and great expertness in
business, was no scholar. He had probably never read an English book; but
he had a general notion, unhappily but too well founded, that the wits and
poets who congregated at Will’s were a most profane and licentious set;
and, being himself a man of orthodox opinions and regular life, he was not
disposed to give his confidence to one whom he supposed to be a ribald
scoffer. Prior, with much address, and perhaps with the help of a little
hypocrisy, completely removed this unfavourable impression. He talked on
serious subjects seriously, quoted the New Testament appositely,
vindicated Hammond from the charge of popery, and, by way of a decisive
blow, gave the definition of a true Church from the nineteenth Article.
Portland stared at him. “I am glad, Mr. Prior, to find you so good a
Christian. I was afraid that you were an atheist.” “An atheist, my good
lord!” cried Prior. “What could lead your Lordship to entertain such a
suspicion?” “Why,” said Portland, “I knew that you were a poet; and I took
it for granted that you did not believe in God.” “My lord,” said the wit,
“you do us poets the greatest injustice. Of all people we are the farthest
from atheism. For the atheists do not even worship the true God, whom the
rest of mankind acknowledge; and we are always invoking and hymning false
gods whom everybody else has renounced.” This jest will be perfectly
intelligible to all who remember the eternally recurring allusions to
Venus and Minerva, Mars, Cupid and Apollo, which were meant to be the
ornaments, and are the blemishers, of Prior’s compositions. But Portland
was much puzzled. However, he declared himself satisfied; and the young
diplomatist withdrew, laughing to think with how little learning a man
might shine in courts, lead armies, negotiate treaties, obtain a coronet
and a garter, and leave a fortune of half a million.

The citizens of Paris and the courtiers of Versailles, though more
accustomed than the Londoners to magnificent pageantry, allowed that no
minister from any foreign state had ever made so superb an appearance as
Portland. His horses, his liveries, his plate, were unrivalled. His state
carriage, drawn by eight fine Neapolitan greys decorated with orange
ribands, was specially admired. On the day of his public entry the
streets, the balconies, and the windows were crowded with spectators along
a line of three miles. As he passed over the bridge on which the statue of
Henry IV. stands, he was much amused by hearing one of the crowd exclaim:
“Was it not this gentleman’s master that we burned on this very bridge
eight years ago?” The Ambassador’s hotel was constantly thronged from
morning to night by visitors in plumes and embroidery. Several tables were
sumptuously spread every day under his roof; and every English traveller
of decent station and character was welcome to dine there. The board at
which the master of the house presided in person, and at which he
entertained his most distinguished guests, was said to be more luxurious
than that of any prince of the House of Bourbon. For there the most
exquisite cookery of France was set off by a certain neatness and comfort
which then, as now, peculiarly belonged to England. During the banquet the
room was filled with people of fashion, who went to see the grandees eat
and drink. The expense of all this splendour and hospitality was enormous,
and was exaggerated by report. The cost to the English government really
was fifty thousand pounds in five months. It is probable that the opulent
gentlemen who accompanied the mission as volunteers laid out nearly as
much more from their private resources.

The malecontents at the coffeehouses of London murmured at this profusion,
and accused William of ostentation. But, as this fault was never, on any
other occasion, imputed to him even by his detractors, we may not
unreasonably attribute to policy what to superficial or malicious
observers seemed to be vanity. He probably thought it important, at the
commencement of a new era in the relations between the two great kingdoms
of the West, to hold high the dignity of the Crown which he wore. He well
knew, indeed, that the greatness of a prince does not depend on piles of
silver bowls and chargers, trains of gilded coaches, and multitudes of
running footmen in brocade, and led horses in velvet housings. But he knew
also that the subjects of Lewis had, during the long reign of their
magnificent sovereign, been accustomed to see power constantly associated
with pomp, and would hardly believe that the substance existed unless they
were dazzled by the trappings.

If the object of William was to strike the imagination of the French
people, he completely succeeded. The stately and gorgeous appearance which
the English embassy made on public occasions was, during some time, the
general topic of conversation at Paris. Portland enjoyed a popularity
which contrasts strangely with the extreme unpopularity which he had
incurred in England. The contrast will perhaps seem less strange when we
consider what immense sums he had accumulated at the expense of the
English, and what immense sums he was laying out for the benefit of the
French. It must also be remembered that he could not confer or correspond
with Englishmen in their own language, and that the French tongue was at
least as familiar to him, as that of his native Holland. He, therefore,
who here was called greedy, niggardly, dull, brutal, whom one English
nobleman had described as a block of wood, and another as just capable of
carrying a message right, was in the brilliant circles of France
considered as a model of grace, of dignity and of munificence, as a
dexterous negotiator and a finished gentleman. He was the better liked
because he was a Dutchman. For, though fortune had favoured William,
though considerations of policy had induced the Court of Versailles to
acknowledge him, he was still, in the estimation of that Court, an
usurper; and his English councillors and captains were perjured traitors
who richly deserved axes and halters, and might, perhaps, get what they
deserved. But Bentinck was not to be confounded with Leeds and
Marlborough, Orford and Godolphin. He had broken no oath, had violated no
law. He owed no allegiance to the House of Stuart; and the fidelity and
zeal with which he had discharged his duties to his own country and his
own master entitled him to respect. The noble and powerful vied with each
other in paying honour to the stranger.

The Ambassador was splendidly entertained by the Duke of Orleans at St.
Cloud, and by the Dauphin at Meudon. A Marshal of France was charged to do
the honours of Marli; and Lewis graciously expressed his concern that the
frosts of an ungenial spring prevented the fountains and flower beds from
appearing to advantage. On one occasion Portland was distinguished, not
only by being selected to hold the waxlight in the royal bedroom, but by
being invited to go within the balustrade which surrounded the couch, a
magic circle which the most illustrious foreigners had hitherto found
impassable. The Secretary shared largely in the attentions which were paid
to his chief. The Prince of Conde took pleasure in talking with him on
literary subjects. The courtesy of the aged Bossuet, the glory of the
Church of Rome, was long gratefully remembered by the young heretic.
Boileau had the good sense and good feeling to exchange a friendly
greeting with the aspiring novice who had administered to him a discipline
as severe as he had administered to Quinault. The great King himself
warmly praised Prior’s manners and conversation, a circumstance which will
be thought remarkable when it is remembered that His Majesty was an
excellent model and an excellent judge of gentlemanlike deportment, and
that Prior had passed his boyhood in drawing corks at a tavern, and his
early manhood in the seclusion of a college. The Secretary did not however
carry his politeness so far as to refrain from asserting, on proper
occasions, the dignity of his country and of his master. He looked coldly
on the twenty-one celebrated pictures in which Le Brun had represented on
the coifing of the gallery of Versailles the exploits of Lewis. When he
was sneeringly asked whether Kensington Palace could boast of such
decorations, he answered, with spirit and propriety: “No, Sir. The
memorials of the great things which my master has done are to be seen in
many places; but not in his own house.”

Great as was the success of the embassy, there was one drawback. James was
still at Saint Germains; and round the mock King were gathered a mock
Court and Council, a Great Seal and a Privy Seal, a crowd of garters and
collars, white staves and gold keys. Against the pleasure which the marked
attentions of the French princes and grandees gave to Portland, was to be
set off the vexation which he felt when Middleton crossed his path with
the busy look of a real Secretary of State. But it was with emotions far
deeper that the Ambassador saw on the terraces and in the antechambers of
Versailles men who had been deeply implicated in plots against the life of
his master. He expressed his indignation loudly and vehemently. “I hope,”
he said, “that there is no design in this; that these wretches are not
purposely thrust in my way. When they come near me all my blood runs back
in my veins.” His words were reported to Lewis. Lewis employed Boufflers
to smooth matters; and Boufflers took occasion to say something on the
subject as if from himself. Portland easily divined that in talking with
Boufflers he was really talking with Lewis, and eagerly seized the
opportunity of representing the expediency, the absolute necessity, of
removing James to a greater distance from England. “It was not
contemplated, Marshal,” he said, “when we arranged the terms of peace in
Brabant, that a palace in the suburbs of Paris was to continue to be an
asylum for outlaws and murderers.” “Nay, my Lord,” said Boufflers, uneasy
doubtless on his own account, “you will not; I am sure, assert that I gave
you any pledge that King James would be required to leave France. You are
too honourable a man, you are too much my friend, to say any such thing.”
“It is true,” answered Portland, “that I did not insist on a positive
promise from you; but remember what passed. I proposed that King James
should retire to Rome or Modena. Then you suggested Avignon; and I
assented. Certainly my regard for you makes me very unwilling to do
anything that would give you pain. But my master’s interests are dearer to
me than all the friends that I have in the world put together. I must tell
His Most Christian Majesty all that passed between us; and I hope that,
when I tell him, you will be present, and that you will be able to bear
witness that I have not put a single word of mine into your mouth.”

When Boufflers had argued and expostulated in vain, Villeroy was sent on
the same errand, but had no better success. A few days later Portland had
a long private audience of Lewis. Lewis declared that he was determined to
keep his word, to preserve the peace of Europe, to abstain from everything
which could give just cause of offence to England, but that, as a man of
honour, as a man of humanity, he could not refuse shelter to an
unfortunate King, his own first cousin. Portland replied that nobody
questioned His Majesty’s good faith; but that while Saint Germains was
occupied by its present inmates it would be beyond even His Majesty’s
power to prevent eternal plotting between them and the malecontents on the
other side of the Straits of Dover, and that, while such plotting went on,
the peace must necessarily be insecure. The question was really not one of
humanity. It was not asked, it was not wished, that James should be left
destitute. Nay, the English government was willing to allow him an income
larger than that which he derived from the munificence of France. Fifty
thousand pounds a year, to which in strictness of law he had no right,
awaited his acceptance, if he would only move to a greater distance from
the country which, while he was near it, could never be at rest. If, in
such circumstances, he refused to move, this was the strongest reason for
believing that he could not safely be suffered to stay. The fact that he
thought the difference between residing at Saint Germains and residing at
Avignon worth more than fifty thousand a year sufficiently proved that he
had not relinquished the hope of being restored to his throne by means of
a rebellion or of something worse. Lewis answered that on that point his
resolution was unalterable. He never would compel his guest and kinsman to
depart. “There is another matter,” said Portland, “about which I have felt
it my duty to make representations. I mean the countenance given to the
assassins.” “I know nothing about assassins,” said Lewis. “Of course,”
answered the Ambassador, “your Majesty knows nothing about such men. At
least your Majesty does not know them for what they are. But I can point
them out, and can furnish ample proofs of their guilt.” He then named
Berwick. For the English Government, which had been willing to make large
allowances for Berwick’s peculiar position as long as he confined himself
to acts of open and manly hostility, conceived that he had forfeited all
claim to indulgence by becoming privy to the Assassination Plot. This man,
Portland said, constantly haunted Versailles. Barclay, whose guilt was of
a still deeper dye,—Barclay, the chief contriver of the murderous
ambuscade of Turnham Green,—had found in France, not only an asylum,
but an honourable military position. The monk who was sometimes called
Harrison and sometimes went by the alias of Johnson, but who, whether
Harrison or Johnson, had been one of the earliest and one of the most
bloodthirsty of Barclays accomplices, was now comfortably settled as prior
of a religious house in France. Lewis denied or evaded all these charges.
“I never,” he said, “heard of your Harrison. As to Barclay, he certainly
once had a company; but it has been disbanded; and what has become of him
I do not know. It is true that Berwick was in London towards the close of
1695; but he was there only for the purpose of ascertaining whether a
descent on England was practicable; and I am confident that he was no
party to any cruel and dishonourable design.” In truth Lewis had a strong
personal motive for defending Berwick. The guilt of Berwick as respected
the Assassination Plot does not appear to have extended beyond connivance;
and to the extent of connivance Lewis himself was guilty.

Thus the audience terminated. All that was left to Portland was to
announce that the exiles must make their choice between Saint Germains and
fifty thousand a year; that the protocol of Ryswick bound the English
government to pay to Mary of Modena only what the law gave her; that the
law gave her nothing; that consequently the English government was bound
to nothing; and that, while she, her husband and her child remained where
they were, she should have nothing. It was hoped that this announcement
would produce a considerable effect even in James’s household; and indeed
some of his hungry courtiers and priests seem to have thought the chance
of a restoration so small that it would be absurd to refuse a splendid
income, though coupled with a condition which might make that small chance
somewhat smaller. But it is certain that, if there was murmuring among the
Jacobites, it was disregarded by James. He was fully resolved not to move,
and was only confirmed in his resolution by learning that he was regarded
by the usurper as a dangerous neighbour. Lewis paid so much regard to
Portland’s complaints as to intimate to Middleton a request, equivalent to
a command, that the Lords and gentlemen who formed the retinue of the
banished King of England would not come to Versailles on days on which the
representative of the actual King was expected there. But at other places
there was constant risk of an encounter which might have produced several
duels, if not an European war. James indeed, far from shunning such
encounters, seems to have taken a perverse pleasure in thwarting his
benefactor’s wish to keep the peace, and in placing the Ambassador in
embarrassing situations. One day his Excellency, while drawing on his
boots for a run with the Dauphin’s celebrated wolf pack, was informed that
King James meant to be of the party, and was forced to stay at home.
Another day, when his Excellency had set his heart on having some sport
with the royal staghounds, he was informed by the Grand Huntsman that King
James might probably come to the rendezvous without any notice. Melfort
was particularly active in laying traps for the young noblemen and
gentlemen of the Legation. The Prince of Wales was more than once placed
in such a situation that they could scarcely avoid passing close to him.
Were they to salute him? Were they to stand erect and covered while every
body else saluted him? No Englishman zealous for the Bill of Rights and
the Protestant religion would willingly do any thing which could be
construed into an act of homage to a Popish pretender. Yet no goodnatured
and generous man, however firm in his Whig principles, would willingly
offer any thing which could look like an affront to an innocent and a most
unfortunate child.

Meanwhile other matters of grave importance claimed Portland’s attention.
There was one matter in particular about which the French ministers
anxiously expected him to say something, but about which he observed
strict silence. How to interpret that silence they scarcely knew. They
were certain only that it could not be the effect of unconcern. They were
well assured that the subject which he so carefully avoided was never,
during two waking hours together, out of his thoughts or out of the
thoughts of his master. Nay, there was not in all Christendom a single
politician, from the greatest ministers of state down to the silliest
newsmongers of coffeehouses, who really felt that indifference which the
prudent Ambassador of England affected. A momentous event, which had
during many years been constantly becoming more and more probable, was now
certain and near. Charles the Second of Spain, the last descendant in the
male line of the Emperor Charles the Fifth, would soon die without
posterity. Who would then be the heir to his many kingdoms, dukedoms,
counties, lordships, acquired in different ways, held by different titles
and subject to different laws? That was a question about which jurists
differed, and which it was not likely that jurists would, even if they
were unanimous, be suffered to decide. Among the claimants were the
mightiest sovereigns of the continent; there was little chance that they
would submit to any arbitration but that of the sword; and it could not be
hoped that, if they appealed to the sword, other potentates who had no
pretension to any part of the disputed inheritance would long remain
neutral. For there was in Western Europe no government which did not feel
that its own prosperity, dignity and security might depend on the event of
the contest.

It is true that the empire, which had, in the preceding century,
threatened both France and England with subjugation, had of late been of
hardly so much account as the Duchy of Savoy or the Electorate of
Brandenburg. But it by no means followed that the fate of that empire was
matter of indifference to the rest of the world. The paralytic
helplessness and drowsiness of the body once so formidable could not be
imputed to any deficiency of the natural elements of power. The dominions
of the Catholic King were in extent and in population superior to those of
Lewis and of William united. Spain alone, without a single dependency,
ought to have been a kingdom of the first rank; and Spain was but the
nucleus of the Spanish monarchy. The outlying provinces of that monarchy
in Europe would have sufficed to make three highly respectable states of
the second order. One such state might have been formed in the
Netherlands. It would have been a wide expanse of cornfield, orchard and
meadow, intersected by navigable rivers and canals. At short intervals, in
that thickly peopled and carefully tilled region, rose stately old towns,
encircled by strong fortifications, embellished by fine cathedrals and
senate-houses, and renowned either as seats of learning or as seats of
mechanical industry. A second flourishing principality might have been
created between the Alps and the Po, out of that well watered garden of
olives and mulberry trees which spreads many miles on every side of the
great white temple of Milan. Yet neither the Netherlands nor the Milanese
could, in physical advantages, vie with the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, a
land which nature had taken pleasure in enriching and adorning, a land
which would have been paradise, if tyranny and superstition had not,
during many ages, lavished all their noxious influences on the bay of
Campania, the plain of Enna, and the sunny banks of Galesus.

In America the Spanish territories spread from the Equator northward and
southward through all the signs of the Zodiac far into the temperate zone.
Thence came gold and silver to be coined in all the mints, and curiously
wrought in all the jewellers’ shops, of Europe and Asia. Thence came the
finest tobacco, the finest chocolate, the finest indigo, the finest
cochineal, the hides of innumerable wild oxen, quinquina, coffee, sugar.
Either the viceroyalty of Mexico or the viceroyalty of Peru would, as an
independent state with ports open to all the world, have been an important
member of the great community of nations.

And yet the aggregate, made up of so many parts, each of which separately
might have been powerful and highly considered, was impotent to a degree
which moved at once pity and laughter. Already one most remarkable
experiment had been tried on this strange empire. A small fragment, hardly
a three hundredth part of the whole in extent, hardly a thirtieth part of
the whole in population, had been detached from the rest, had from that
moment begun to display a new energy and to enjoy a new prosperity, and
was now, after the lapse of a hundred and twenty years, far more feared
and reverenced than the huge mass of which it had once been an obscure
corner. What a contrast between the Holland which Alva had oppressed and
plundered, and the Holland from which William had sailed to deliver
England! And who, with such an example before him, would venture to
foretell what changes might be at hand, if the most languid and torpid of
monarchies should be dissolved, and if every one of the members which had
composed it should enter on an independent existence?

To such a dissolution that monarchy was peculiarly liable. The King, and
the King alone, held it together. The populations which acknowledged him
as their chief either knew nothing of each other, or regarded each other
with positive aversion. The Biscayan was in no sense the countryman of the
Valencian, nor the Lombard of the Biscayan, nor the Fleeting of the
Lombard, nor the Sicilian of the Fleeting. The Arragonese had never ceased
to pine for their lost independence. Within the memory of many persons
still living the Catalans had risen in rebellion, had entreated Lewis the
Thirteenth of France to become their ruler with the old title of Count of
Barcelona, and had actually sworn fealty to him. Before the Catalans had
been quieted, the Neapolitans had taken arms, had abjured their foreign
master, had proclaimed their city a republic, and had elected a Loge. In
the New World the small caste of born Spaniards which had the exclusive
enjoyment of power and dignity was hated by Creoles and Indians, Mestizos
and Quadroons. The Mexicans especially had turned their eyes on a chief
who bore the name and had inherited the blood of the unhappy Montezuma.
Thus it seemed that the empire against which Elizabeth and Henry the
Fourth had been scarcely able to contend would not improbably fall to
pieces of itself, and that the first violent shock from without would
scatter the ill-cemented parts of the huge fabric in all directions.

But, though such a dissolution had no terrors for the Catalonian or the
Fleming, for the Lombard or the Calabrian, for the Mexican or the
Peruvian, the thought of it was torture and madness to the Castilian.
Castile enjoyed the supremacy in that great assemblage of races and
languages. Castile sent out governors to Brussels, Milan, Naples, Mexico,
Lima. To Castile came the annual galleons laden with the treasures of
America. In Castile was ostentatiously displayed and lavishly spent great
fortunes made in remote provinces by oppression and corruption. In Castile
were the King and his Court. There stood the stately Escurial, once the
centre of the politics of the world, the place to which distant potentates
looked, some with hope and gratitude, some with dread and hatred, but none
without anxiety and awe. The glory of the house had indeed departed. It
was long since couriers bearing orders big with the fate of kings and
commonwealths had ridden forth from those gloomy portals. Military renown,
maritime ascendency, the policy once reputed so profound, the wealth once
deemed inexhaustible, had passed away. An undisciplined army, a rotting
fleet, an incapable council, an empty treasury, were all that remained of
that which had been so great. Yet the proudest of nations could not bear
to part even with the name and the shadow of a supremacy which was no
more. All, from the grandee of the first class to the peasant, looked
forward with dread to the day when God should be pleased to take their
king to himself. Some of them might have a predilection for Germany; but
such predilections were subordinate to a stronger feeling. The paramount
object was the integrity of the empire of which Castile was the head; and
the prince who should appear to be most likely to preserve that integrity
unviolated would have the best right to the allegiance of every true
Castilian.

No man of sense, however, out of Castile, when he considered the nature of
the inheritance and the situation of the claimants, could doubt that a
partition was inevitable. Among those claimants three stood preeminent,
the Dauphin, the Emperor Leopold, and the Electoral Prince of Bavaria.

If the question had been simply one of pedigree, the right of the Dauphin
would have been incontestable. Lewis the Fourteeenth had married the
Infanta Maria Theresa, eldest daughter of Philip the Fourth and sister of
Charles the Second. Her eldest son, the Dauphin, would therefore, in the
regular course of things, have been her brother’s successor. But she had,
at the time of her marriage, renounced, for herself and her posterity, all
pretensions to the Spanish crown.

To that renunciation her husband had assented. It had been made an article
of the Treaty of the Pyrenees. The Pope had been requested to give his
apostolical sanction to an arrangement so important to the peace of
Europe; and Lewis had sworn, by every thing that could bind a gentleman, a
king, and a Christian, by his honour, by his royal word, by the canon of
the Mass, by the Holy Gospels, by the Cross of Christ, that he would hold
the renunciation sacred. 11

The claim of the Emperor was derived from his mother Mary Anne, daughter
of Philip the Third, and aunt of Charles the Second, and could not
therefore, if nearness of blood alone were to be regarded, come into
competition with the claim of the Dauphin. But the claim of the Emperor
was barred by no renunciation. The rival pretensions of the great Houses
of Bourbon and Habsburg furnished all Europe with an inexhaustible subject
of discussion. Plausible topics were not wanting to the supporters of
either cause. The partisans of the House of Austria dwelt on the
sacredness of treaties; the partisans of France on the sacredness of
birthright. How, it was asked on one side, can a Christian king have the
effrontery, the impiety, to insist on a claim which he has with such
solemnity renounced in the face of heaven and earth? How, it was asked on
the other side, can the fundamental laws of a monarchy be annulled by any
authority but that of the supreme legislature? The only body which was
competent to take away from the children of Maria Theresa their hereditary
rights was the Comes. The Comes had not ratified her renunciation. That
renunciation was therefore a nullity; and no swearing, no signing, no
sealing, could turn that nullity into a reality.

Which of these two mighty competitors had the better case may perhaps be
doubted. What could not be doubted was that neither would obtain the prize
without a struggle which would shake the world. Nor can we justly blame
either for refusing to give way to the other. For, on this occasion, the
chief motive which actuated them was, not greediness, but the fear of
degradation and ruin. Lewis, in resolving to put every thing to hazard
rather than suffer the power of the House of Austria to be doubled;
Leopold, in determining to put every thing to hazard rather than suffer
the power of the House of Bourbon to be doubled; merely obeyed the law of
self preservation. There was therefore one way, and one alone, by which
the great woe which seemed to be coming on Europe could be averted. Was it
possible that the dispute might be compromised? Might not the two great
rivals be induced to make to a third party concessions such as neither
could reasonably be expected to make to the other?

The third party, to whom all who were anxious for the peace of Christendom
looked as their best hope, was a child of tender age, Joseph, son of the
Elector of Bavaria. His mother, the Electress Mary Antoinette, was the
only child of the Emperor Leopold by his first wife Margaret, a younger
sister of the Queen of Lewis the Fourteenth. Prince Joseph was, therefore,
nearer in blood to the Spanish throne than his grandfather the Emperor, or
than the sons whom the Emperor had by his second wife. The Infanta
Margaret had indeed, at the time of her marriage, renounced her rights to
the kingdom of her forefathers. But the renunciation wanted many
formalities which had been observed in her sister’s case, and might be
considered as cancelled by the will of Philip the Fourth, which had
declared that, failing his issue male, Margaret and her posterity would be
entitled to inherit his Crown. The partisans of France held that the
Bavarian claim was better than the Austrian claim; the partisans of
Austria held that the Bavarian claim was better than the French claim. But
that which really constituted the strength of the Bavarian claim was the
weakness of the Bavarian government. The Electoral Prince was the only
candidate whose success would alarm nobody; would not make it necessary
for any power to raise another regiment, to man another frigate, to have
in store another barrel of gunpowder. He was therefore the favourite
candidate of prudent and peaceable men in every country.

Thus all Europe was divided into the French, the Austrian, and the
Bavarian factions. The contests of these factions were daily renewed in
every place where men congregated, from Stockholm to Malta, and from
Lisbon to Smyrna. But the fiercest and most obstinate conflict was that
which raged in the palace of the Catholic King. Much depended on him. For,
though it was not pretended that he was competent to alter by his sole
authority the law which regulated the descent of the Crown, yet, in a case
in which the law was doubtful, it was probable that his subjects might be
disposed to accept the construction which he might put upon it, and to
support the claimant whom he might, either by a solemn adoption or by
will, designate as the rightful heir. It was also in the power of the
reigning sovereign to entrust all the most important offices in his
kingdom, the government of all the provinces subject to him in the Old and
in the New World, and the keys of all his fortresses and arsenals, to
persons zealous for the family which he was inclined to favour. It was
difficult to say to what extent the fate of whole nations might be
affected by the conduct of the officers who, at the time of his decease,
might command the garrisons of Barcelona, of Mons, and of Namur.

The prince on whom so much depended was the most miserable of human
beings. In old times he would have been exposed as soon as he came into
the world; and to expose him would have been a kindness. From his birth a
blight was on his body and on his mind. With difficulty his almost
imperceptible spark of life had been screened and fanned into a dim and
flickering flame. His childhood, except when he could be rocked and sung
into sickly sleep, was one long piteous wail. Until he was ten years old
his days were passed on the laps of women; and he has never once suffered
to stand on his ricketty legs. None of those tawny little urchins, clad in
rags stolen from scarecrows, whom Murillo loved to paint begging or
rolling in the sand, owed less to education than this despotic ruler of
thirty millions of subjects, The most important events in the history of
his own kingdom, the very names of provinces and cities which were among
his most valuable possessions, were unknown to him. It may well be doubted
whether he was aware that Sicily was an island, that Christopher Columbus
had discovered America, or that the English were not Mahometans. In his
youth, however, though too imbecile for study or for business, he was not
incapable of being amused. He shot, hawked and hunted. He enjoyed with the
delight of a true Spaniard two delightful spectacles, a horse with its
bowels gored out, and a Jew writhing in the fire. The time came when the
mightiest of instincts ordinarily wakens from its repose. It was hoped
that the young King would not prove invincible to female attractions, and
that he would leave a Prince of Asturias to succeed him. A consort was
found for him in the royal family of France; and her beauty and grace gave
him a languid pleasure. He liked to adorn her with jewels, to see her
dance, and to tell her what sport he had had with his dogs and his
falcons. But it was soon whispered that she was a wife only in name. She
died; and her place was supplied by a German princess nearly allied to the
Imperial House. But the second marriage, like the first, proved barren;
and, long before the King had passed the prime of life, all the
politicians of Europe had begun to take it for granted in all their
calculations that he would be the last descendant, in the male line, of
Charles the Fifth. Meanwhile a sullen and abject melancholy took
possession of his soul. The diversions which had been the serious
employment of his youth became distasteful to him. He ceased to find
pleasure in his nets and boar spears, in the fandango and the bullfight.
Sometimes he shut himself up in an inner chamber from the eyes of his
courtiers. Sometimes he loitered alone, from sunrise to sunset, in the
dreary and rugged wilderness which surrounds the Escurial. The hours which
he did not waste in listless indolence were divided between childish
sports and childish devotions. He delighted in rare animals, and still
more in dwarfs. When neither strange beasts nor little men could dispel
the black thoughts which gathered in his mind, he repeated Aves and
Credos; he walked in processions; sometimes he starved himself; sometimes
he whipped himself. At length a complication of maladies completed the
ruin of all his faculties. His stomach failed; nor was this strange; for
in him the malformation of the jaw, characteristic of his family, was so
serious that he could not masticate his food; and he was in the habit of
swallowing ollas and sweetmeats in the state in which they were set before
him. While suffering from indigestion he was attacked by ague. Every third
day his convulsive tremblings, his dejection, his fits of wandering,
seemed to indicate the approach of dissolution. His misery was increased
by the knowledge that every body was calculating how long he had to live,
and wondering what would become of his kingdoms when he should be dead.
The stately dignitaries of his household, the physicians who ministered to
his diseased body, the divines whose business was to soothe his not less
diseased mind, the very wife who should have been intent on those gentle
offices by which female tenderness can alleviate even the misery of
hopeless decay, were all thinking of the new world which was to commence
with his death, and would have been perfectly willing to see him in the
hands of the embalmer if they could have been certain that his successor
would be the prince whose interest they espoused. As yet the party of the
Emperor seemed to predominate. Charles had a faint sort of preference for
the House of Austria, which was his own house, and a faint sort of
antipathy to the House of Bourbon, with which he had been quarrelling, he
did not well know why, ever since he could remember. His Queen, whom he
did not love, but of whom he stood greatly in awe, was devoted to the
interests of her kinsman the Emperor; and with her was closely leagued the
Count of Melgar, Hereditary Admiral of Castile and Prime Minister.

Such was the state of the question of the Spanish succession at the time
when Portland had his first public audience at Versailles. The French
ministers were certain that he must be constantly thinking about that
question, and were therefore perplexed by his evident determination to say
nothing about it. They watched his lips in the hope that he would at least
let fall some unguarded word indicating the hopes or fears entertained by
the English and Dutch Governments. But Portland was not a man out of whom
much was to be got in that way. Nature and habit cooperating had made him
the best keeper of secrets in Europe. Lewis therefore directed Pomponne
and Torcy, two ministers of eminent ability, who had, under himself, the
chief direction of foreign affairs, to introduce the subject which the
discreet confidant of William seemed studiously to avoid. Pomponne and
Torcy accordingly repaired to the English embassy; and there opened one of
the most remarkable negotiations recorded in the annals of European
diplomacy.

The two French statesmen professed in their master’s name the most earnest
desire, not only that the peace might remain unbroken, but that there
might be a close union between the Courts of Versailles and Kensington.
One event only seemed likely to raise new troubles. If the Catholic King
should die before it had been settled who should succeed to his immense
dominions, there was but too much reason to fear that the nations, which
were just beginning to breathe after an exhausting and devastating
struggle of nine years, would be again in arms. His Most Christian Majesty
was therefore desirous to employ the short interval which might remain, in
concerting with the King of England the means of preserving the
tranquillity of the world.

Portland made a courteous but guarded answer. He could not, he said,
presume to say exactly what William’s sentiments were; but this he knew,
that it was not solely or chiefly by the sentiments of the King of England
that the policy of England on a great occasion would be regulated. The
islanders must and would have their government administered according to
certain maxims which they held sacred; and of those maxims they held none
more sacred than this, that every increase of the power of France ought to
be viewed with extreme jealousy.

Pomponne and Torcy answered that their master was most desirous to avoid
every thing which could excite the jealousy of which Portland had spoken.
But was it of France alone that a nation so enlightened as the English
must be jealous? Was it forgotten that the House of Austria had once
aspired to universal dominion? And would it be wise in the princes and
commonwealths of Europe to lend their aid for the purpose of
reconstructing the gigantic monarchy which, in the sixteenth century, had
seemed likely to overwhelm them all?

Portland answered that, on this subject, he must be understood to express
only the opinions of a private man. He had however now lived, during some
years, among the English, and believed himself to be pretty well
acquainted with their temper. They would not, he thought, be much alarmed
by any augmentation of power which the Emperor might obtain. The sea was
their element. Traffic by sea was the great source of their wealth;
ascendency on the sea the great object of their ambition. Of the Emperor
they had no fear. Extensive as was the area which he governed, he had not
a frigate on the water; and they cared nothing for his Pandours and
Croatians. But France had a great navy. The balance of maritime power was
what would be anxiously watched in London; and the balance of maritime
power would not be affected by an union between Spain and Austria, but
would be most seriously deranged by an union between Spain and France.

Pomponne and Torcy declared that every thing should be done to quiet the
apprehensions which Portland had described. It was not contemplated, it
was not wished, that France and Spain should be united. The Dauphin and
his eldest son the Duke of Burgundy would waive their rights. The younger
brothers of the Duke of Burgundy, Philip Duke of Anjou and Charles Duke of
Berry, were not named; but Portland perfectly understood what was meant.
There would, he said, be scarcely less alarm in England if the Spanish
dominions devolved on a grandson of His Most Christian Majesty than if
they were annexed to the French crown. The laudable affection of the young
princes for their country and their family, and their profound respect for
the great monarch from whom they were descended, would inevitably
determine their policy. The two kingdoms would be one; the two navies
would be one; and all other states would be reduced to vassalage. England
would rather see the Spanish monarchy added to the Emperor’s dominions
than governed by one of the younger French princes, who would, though
nominally independent, be really a viceroy of France. But in truth there
was no risk that the Spanish monarchy would be added to the Emperor’s
dominions. He and his eldest son the Archduke Joseph would, no doubt, be
as ready to waive their rights as the Dauphin and the Duke of Burgundy
could be; and thus the Austrian claim to the disputed heritage would pass
to the younger Archduke Charles. A long discussion followed. At length
Portland plainly avowed, always merely as his own private opinion, what
was the opinion of every intelligent man who wished to preserve the peace
of the world. “France is afraid,” he said, “of every thing which can
increase the power of the Emperor. All Europe is afraid of every thing
which can increase the power of France. Why not put an end to all these
uneasy feelings at once, by agreeing to place the Electoral Prince of
Bavaria on the throne of Spain?” To this suggestion no decisive answer was
returned. The conference ended; and a courier started for England with a
despatch informing William of what had passed, and soliciting further
instructions.

William, who was, as he had always been, his own Secretary for Foreign
Affairs, did not think it necessary to discuss the contents of this
despatch with any of his English ministers. The only person whom he
consulted was Heinsius. Portland received a kind letter warmly approving
all that he had said in the conference, and directing him to declare that
the English government sincerely wished to avert the calamities which were
but too likely to follow the death of the King of Spain, and would
therefore be prepared to take into serious consideration any definite plan
which His Most Christian Majesty might think fit to suggest. “I will own
to you,” William wrote to his friend, “that I am so unwilling to be again
at war during the short time which I still have to live, that I will omit
nothing that I can honestly and with a safe conscience do for the purpose
of maintaining peace.”

William’s message was delivered by Portland to Lewis at a private
audience. In a few days Pomponne and Torcy were authorised to propose a
plan. They fully admitted that all neighbouring states were entitled to
demand the strongest security against the union of the French and Spanish
crowns. Such security should be given. The Spanish government might be
requested to choose between the Duke of Anjou and the Duke of Berry. The
youth who was selected would, at the utmost, be only fifteen years old,
and could not be supposed to have any very deeply rooted national
prejudices. He should be sent to Madrid without French attendants, should
be educated by Spaniards, should become a Spaniard. It was absurd to
imagine that such a prince would be a mere viceroy of France.
Apprehensions had been sometimes hinted that a Bourbon, seated on the
throne of Spain, might cede his dominions in the Netherlands to the head
of his family. It was undoubtedly important to England, and all important
to Holland, that those provinces should not become a part of the French
monarchy. All danger might be averted by making them over to the Elector
of Bavaria, who was now governing them as representative of the Catholic
King. The Dauphin would be perfectly willing to renounce them for himself
and for all his descendants. As to what concerned trade, England and
Holland had only to say what they desired, and every thing in reason
should be done to give them satisfaction.

As this plan was, in the main, the same which had been suggested by the
French ministers in the former conference, Portland did little more than
repeat what he had then said. As to the new scheme respecting the
Netherlands, he shrewdly propounded a dilemma which silenced Pomponne and
Torcy.

If renunciations were of any value, the Dauphin and his posterity were
excluded from the Spanish succession; and, if renunciations were of no
value, it was idle to offer England and Holland a renunciation as a
guarantee against a great danger.

The French Ministers withdrew to make their report to their master, and
soon returned to say that their proposals had been merely first thoughts,
that it was now the turn of King William to suggest something, and that
whatever he might suggest should receive the fullest and fairest
consideration.

And now the scene of the negotiation was shifted from Versailles to
Kensington. The Count of Tallard had just set out for England as
Ambassador. He was a fine gentleman; he was a brave soldier; and he was as
yet reputed a skilful general. In all the arts and graces which were
priced as qualifications for diplomatic missions of the highest class, he
had, among the brilliant aristocracy to which he belonged, no superior and
only one equal, the Marquess of Harcourt, who was entrusted with the care
of the interests of the House of Bourbon at Madrid.

Tallard carried with him instructions carefully framed in the French
Foreign Office. He was reminded that his situation would be widely
different from that of his predecessors who had resided in England before
the Revolution. Even his predecessors, however, had considered it as their
duty to study the temper, not only of the Court, but of the nation. It
would now be more than ever necessary to watch the movements of the public
mind. A man of note was not to be slighted merely because he was out of
place. Such a man, with a great name in the country and a strong following
in Parliament, might exercise as much influence on the politics of
England, and consequently of Europe, as any minister. The Ambassador must
therefore try to be on good terms with those who were out as well as with
those who were in. To this rule, however, there was one exception which he
must constantly bear in mind. With nonjurors and persons suspected of
plotting against the existing government he must not appear to have any
connection. They must not be admitted into his house. The English people
evidently wished to be at rest, and had given the best proof of their
pacific disposition by insisting on the reduction of the army. The sure
way to stir up jealousies and animosities which were just sinking to sleep
would be to make the French embassy the head quarters of the Jacobite
party. It would be wise in Tallard to say and to charge his agents to say,
on all fit occasions, and particularly in societies where members of
Parliament might be present, that the Most Christian King had never been
an enemy of the liberties of England. His Majesty had indeed hoped that it
might be in his power to restore his cousin, but not without the assent of
the nation. In the original draft of the instructions was a curious
paragraph which, on second thoughts, it was determined to omit. The
Ambassador was directed to take proper opportunities of cautioning the
English against a standing army, as the only thing which could really be
fatal to their laws and liberties. This passage was suppressed, no doubt,
because it occurred to Pomponne and Torcy that, with whatever approbation
the English might listen to such language when uttered by a demagogue of
their own race, they might be very differently affected by hearing it from
a French diplomatist, and might think that there could not be a better
reason for arming, than that Lewis and his emissaries earnestly wished
them to disarm.

Tallard was instructed to gain, if possible, some members of the House of
Commons. Every thing, he was told, was now subjected to the scrutiny of
that assembly; accounts of the public income, of the public expenditure,
of the army, of the navy, were regularly laid on the table; and it would
not be difficult to find persons who would supply the French legation with
copious information on all these subjects.

The question of the Spanish succession was to be mentioned to William at a
private audience. Tallard was fully informed of all that had passed in the
conferences which the French ministers had held with Portland; and was
furnished with all the arguments that the ingenuity of publicists could
devise in favour of the claim of the Dauphin.

The French embassy made as magnificent an appearance m England as the
English embassy had made in France. The mansion of the Duke of Ormond, one
of the finest houses in Saint James’s Square, was taken for Tallard. On
the day of the public entry, all the streets from Tower Hill to Pall Mall
were crowded with gazers who admired the painting and gilding of his
Excellency’s carriages, the surpassing beauty of his horses, and the
multitude of his running footmen, dressed in gorgeous liveries of scarlet
and gold lace. The Ambassador was graciously received at Kensington, and
was invited to accompany William to Newmarket, where the largest and most
splendid Spring Meeting ever known was about to assemble. The attraction
must be supposed to have been great; for the risks of the journey were not
trifling. The peace had, all over Europe, and nowhere more than in
England, turned crowds of old soldiers into marauders. 12
Several aristocratical equipages had been attacked even in Hyde Park.
Every newspaper contained stories of travellers stripped, bound and flung
into ditches. One day the Bristol mail was robbed; another day the Dover
coach; then the Norwich waggon. On Hounslow Heath a company of horsemen,
with masks on their faces, waited for the great people who had been to pay
their court to the King at Windsor. Lord Ossulston escaped with the loss
of two horses. The Duke of Saint Albans, with the help of his servants,
beat off the assailants. His brother the Duke of Northumberland, less
strongly guarded, fell into their hands. They succeeded in stopping thirty
or forty coaches, and rode off with a great booty in guineas, watches and
jewellery. Nowhere, however, does the peal seem to have been so great as
on the Newmarket road. There indeed robbery was organised on a scale
unparalleled in the kingdom since the days of Robin Hood and Little John.
A fraternity of plunderers, thirty in number according to the lowest
estimate, squatted, near Waltham Cross, under the shades of Epping Forest,
and built themselves huts, from which they sallied forth with sword and
pistol to bid passengers stand. The King and Tallard were doubtless too
well attended to be in jeopardy. But, soon after they had passed the
dangerous spot, there was a fight on the highway attended with loss of
life. A warrant of the Lord Chief justice broke up the Maroon village for
a short time, but the dispersed thieves soon mustered again, and had the
impudence to bid defiance to the government in a cartel signed, it was
said, with their real names. The civil power was unable to deal with this
frightful evil. It was necessary that, during some time, cavalry should
patrol every evening on the roads near the boundary between Middlesex and
Essex.

The state of those roads, however, though contemporaries described it as
dangerous beyond all example, did not deter men of rank and fashion from
making the joyous pilgrimages to Newmarket. Half the Dukes in the kingdom
were there. Most of the chief ministers of state swelled the crowd; nor
was the opposition unrepresented. Montague stole two or three days from
the Treasury, and Orford from the Admiralty. Godolphin was there, looking
after his horses and his bets, and probably went away a richer man than he
came. But racing was only one of the many amusements of that festive
season. On fine mornings there was hunting. For those who preferred
hawking choice falcons had been brought from Holland. On rainy days the
cockpit was encircled by stars and blue ribands. On Sundays William went
to church in state, and the most eminent divines of the neighbouring
University of Cambridge preached before him. He omitted no opportunity of
showing marked civility to Tallard. The Ambassador informed his Court that
his place at table was next to the royal arm chair, and that his health
had been most graciously drunk by the King.

All this time, both at Kensington and Newmarket, the Spanish question was
the subject of constant and earnest discussion. To trace all the windings
of the negotiation would be tedious. The general course which it took may
easily be described. The object of William was to place the Electoral
Prince of Bavaria on the Spanish throne. To obtain the consent of Lewis to
such an arrangement seemed all but impossible; but William manoeuvred with
rare skill. Though he frankly acknowledged that he preferred the Electoral
Prince to any other candidate, he professed. himself desirous to meet, as
far as he honourably or safely could, the wishes of the French King. There
were conditions on which England and Holland might perhaps consent, though
not without reluctance, that a son of the Dauphin should reign at Madrid,
and should be master of the treasures of the New World. Those conditions
were that the Milanese and the Two Sicilies should belong to the Archduke
Charles, that the Elector of Bavaria should have the Spanish Netherlands,
that Lewis should give up some fortified towns in Artois for the purpose
of strengthening the barrier which protected the United Provinces, and
that some important places both in the Mediterranean sea and in the Gulf
of Mexico should be made over to the English and Dutch for the security of
trade. Minorca and Havanna were mentioned as what might satisfy England.

Against these terms Lewis exclaimed loudly. Nobody, he said, who knew with
how sensitive a jealousy the Spaniards watched every encroachment on their
colonial empire would believe that they would ever consent to give up any
part of that empire either to England or to Holland. The demand which was
made upon himself was altogether inadmissible. A barrier was not less
necessary to France than to Holland; and he never would break the iron
chain of frontier fastnesses which was the defence of his own kingdom,
even in order to purchase another kingdom for his grandson. On that
subject he begged that he might hear no more. The proposition was one
which he would not discuss, one to which he would not listen.

As William, however, resolutely maintained that the terms which he had
offered, hard as they might seem, were the only terms on which England and
Holland could suffer a Bourbon to reign at Madrid, Lewis began seriously
to consider, whether it might not be on the whole for his interest and
that of his family rather to sell the Spanish crown dear than to buy it
dear. He therefore now offered to withdraw his opposition to the Bavarian
claim, provided a portion of the disputed inheritance were assigned to him
in consideration of his disinterestedness and moderation. William was
perfectly willing and even eager to treat on this basis. The first demands
of Lewis were, as might have been expected, exorbitantly high. He asked
for the kingdom of Navarre, which would have made him little less than
master of the whole Iberian peninsula, and for the duchy of Luxemburg,
which would have made him more dangerous than ever to the United
Provinces. On both points he encountered a steady resistance. The
impression which, throughout these transactions, the firmness and good
faith of William made on Tallard is remarkable. At first the dexterous and
keen witted Frenchman was all suspicion. He imagined that there was an
evasion in every phrase, a hidden snare in every offer. But after a time
he began to discover that he had to do with a man far too wise to be
false. “The King of England,” he wrote, and it is impossible to doubt that
he wrote what he thought, “acts with good faith in every thing. His way of
dealing is upright and sincere.” 13 “The King
of England,” he wrote a few days later, “has hitherto acted with great
sincerity; and I venture to say that, if he once enters into a treaty, he
will steadily adhere to it.” But in the same letter the Ambassador thought
it necessary to hint to his master that the diplomatic chicanery which
might be useful in other negotiations would be all thrown away here. “I
must venture to observe to Your Majesty that the King of England is very
sharpsighted, that his judgment is sound, and that, if we try to spin the
negotiation out, he will very soon perceive that we are trifling with
him.” 14

During some time projects and counterprojects continued to pass and repass
between Kensington and Versailles. Something was conceded on both sides;
and when the session of Parliament ended there seemed to be fair hopes of
a settlement. And now the scene of the negotiation was again changed.
Having been shifted from France to England, it was shifted from England to
Holland. As soon as William had prorogued the Houses, he was impatient to
be again in his native land. He felt all the glee of a schoolboy who is
leaving harsh masters and quarrelsome comrades to pass the Christmas
holidays at a happy home. That stern and composed face which had been the
same in the pursuit at the Boyne and in the rout at Landen, and of which
the keenest politicians had in vain tried to read the secrets, now wore an
expression but too intelligible. The English were not a little provoked by
seeing their King so happy. Hitherto his annual visits to the Continent
had been not only pardoned but approved. It was necessary that he should
be at the head of his army. If he had left his people, it had been in
order to put his life in jeopardy for their independence, their liberty,
and their religion. But they had hoped that, when peace had been restored,
when no call of duty required him to cross the sea, he would generally,
during the summer and autumn, reside in his fair palaces and parks on the
banks of the Thames, or travel from country seat to country seat, and from
cathedral town to cathedral town, making himself acquainted with every
shire of his realm, and giving his hand to be kissed by multitudes of
squires, clergymen and aldermen who were not likely ever to see him unless
he came among them. It now appeared that he was sick of the noble
residences which had descended to him from ancient princes; that he was
sick even of those mansions which the liberality of Parliament had enabled
him to build and embellish according to his own taste; that he was sick of
Windsor, of Richmond, and of Hampton; that he promised himself no
enjoyment from a progress through those flourishing and populous counties
which he had never seen, Yorkshire and Norfolk, Cheshire, Shropshire and
Worcestershire. While he was forced to be with us, he was weary of us,
pining for his home, counting the hours to the prorogation. As soon as the
passing of the last bill of supply had set him at liberty, he turned his
back on his English subjects; he hastened to his seat in Guelders, where,
during some months, he might be free from the annoyance of seeing English
faces and hearing English words; and he would with difficulty tear himself
away from his favourite spot when it became absolutely necessary that he
should again ask for English money.

Thus his subjects murmured; but, in spite of their murmurs, he set off in
high spirits. It had been arranged that Tallard should speedily follow
him, and that the discussion in which they had been engaged at Kensington
should be resumed at Loo.

Heinsius, whose cooperation was indispensable, would be there. Portland
too would lend his assistance. He had just returned. He had always
considered his mission as an extraordinary mission, of which the object
was to put the relations between the two great Western powers on a proper
footing after a long series of years during which England had been
sometimes the enemy, but never the equal friend, of France. His task had
been well performed; and he now came back, leaving behind him the
reputation of an excellent minister, firm yet cautious as to substance,
dignified yet conciliating in manner. His last audience at Versailles was
unusually long; and no third person was present. Nothing could be more
gracious than the language and demeanour of Lewis. He condescended to
trace a route for the embassy, and insisted that Portland should make a
circuit for the purpose of inspecting some of the superb fortresses of the
French Netherlands. At every one of those fortresses the governors and
engineers had orders to pay every attention to the distinguished stranger.
Salutes were everywhere fired to welcome him. A guard of honour was
everywhere in attendance on him. He stopped during three days at
Chantilly, and was entertained there by the Prince of Condé with all that
taste and magnificence for which Chantilly had long been renowned. There
were boar hunts in the morning and concerts in the evening. Every
gentleman of the legation had a gamekeeper specially assigned to him. The
guests, who, in their own island were accustomed to give extravagant vails
at every country house which they visited, learned, with admiration, that
His Highness’s servants were strictly forbidden to receive presents. At
his luxurious table, by a refinement of politeness, choice cider from the
orchards round the Malvern Hills made its appearance in company with the
Champagne and the Burgundy.

Portland was welcomed by his master with all the kindness of old times.
But that kindness availed nothing. For Albemarle was still in the royal
household, and appeared to have been, during the last few months, making
progress in the royal favour. Portland was angry, and the more angry
because he could not but perceive that his enemies enjoyed his anger, and
that even his friends generally thought it unreasonable; nor did he take
any pains to conceal his vexation. But he was the very opposite of the
vulgar crowd of courtiers who fawn on a master while they betray him. He
neither disguised his ill humour, nor suffered it to interfere with the
discharge of his duties. He gave his prince sullen looks, short answers,
and faithful and strenuous services. His first wish, he said, was to
retire altogether from public life. But he was sensible that, having borne
a chief part in the negotiation on which the fate of Europe depended, he
might be of use at Loo; and, with devoted loyalty, though with a sore
heart and a gloomy brow, he prepared to attend William thither.

Before the King departed he delegated his power to nine Lords Justices.
The public was well pleased to find that Sunderland was not among them.
Two new names appeared in the list. That of Montague could excite no
surprise. But that of Marlborough awakened many recollections and gave
occasion to many speculations. He had once enjoyed a large measure of
royal favour. He had then been dismissed, disgraced, imprisoned. The
Princess Anne, for refusing to discard his wife, had been turned out of
the palace, and deprived of the honours which had often been enjoyed by
persons less near to the throne. Ministers who were supposed to have great
influence in the closet had vainly tried to overcome the dislike with
which their master regarded the Churchills. It was not till he had been
some time reconciled to his sister in law that he ceased to regard her two
favourite servants as his enemies. So late as the year 1696 he had been
heard to say, “If I had been a private gentleman, my Lord Marlborough and
I must have measured swords.” All these things were now, it seemed,
forgotten. The Duke of Gloucester’s household had just been arranged. As
he was not yet nine years old, and the civil list was burdened with a
heavy debt, fifteen thousand pounds was thought for the present a
sufficient provision. The child’s literary education was directed by
Burnet, with the title of Preceptor. Marlborough was appointed Governor;
and the London Gazette announced his appointment, not with official
dryness, but in the fervid language of panegyric. He was at the same time
again sworn a member of the Privy Council from which he had been expelled
with ignominy; and he was honoured a few days later with a still higher
mark of the King’s confidence, a seat at the board of Regency.

Some persons imagined that they saw in this strange reconciliation a sign
that the influence of Portland was on the wane and that the influence of
Albemarle was growing. For Marlborough had been many years at feud with
Portland, and had even—a rare event indeed—been so much
irritated as to speak of Portland in coarse and ungentlemanlike terms.
With Albemarle, on the other hand, Marlborough had studiously ingratiated
himself by all the arts which a mind singularly observant and sagacious
could learn from a long experience in courts; and it is possible that
Albemarle may have removed some difficulties. It is hardly necessary,
however, to resort to that supposition for the purpose of explaining why
so wise a man as William forced himself, after some delay caused by very
just and natural resentment, to act wisely. His opinion of Marlborough’s
character was probably unaltered. But he could not help perceiving that
Marlborough’s situation was widely different from what it had been a few
years before. That very ambition, that very avarice, which had, in former
times, impelled him to betray two masters, were now sufficient securities
for his fidelity to the order of things which had been established by the
Bill of Rights. If that order of things could be maintained inviolate, he
could scarcely fail to be, in a few years, the greatest and wealthiest
subject in Europe. His military and political talents might therefore now
be used without any apprehension that they would be turned against the
government which used them. It is to be remembered too that he derived his
importance less from his military and political talents, great as they
were, than from the dominion which, through the instrumentality of his
wife, he exercised over the mind of the Princess. While he was on good
terms with the Court it was certain that she would lend no countenance to
any cabal which might attack either the title or the prerogatives of her
brother in law. Confident that from this quarter, a quarter once the
darkest and most stormy in the whole political horizon, nothing but
sunshine and calm was now to be expected, William set out cheerfully on
his expedition to his native country.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE Gazette which informed the public that the King had set out for
Holland announced also the names of the first members returned, in
obedience to his writ, by the constituent bodies of the Realm. The history
of those times has been so little studied that few persons are aware how
remarkable an epoch the general election of 1698 is in the history of the
English Constitution.

We have seen that the extreme inconvenience which had resulted from the
capricious and headstrong conduct of the House of Commons during the years
immediately following the Revolution had forced William to resort to a
political machinery which had been unknown to his predecessors, and of
which the nature and operation were but very imperfectly understood by
himself or by his ablest advisers. For the first time the administration
was confided to a small body of statesmen, who, on all grave and pressing
questions, agreed with each other and with the majority of the
representatives of the people. The direction of war and of diplomacy the
King reserved to himself; and his servants, conscious that they were less
versed than he in military affairs and in foreign affairs, were content to
leave to him the command of the army, and to know only what he thought fit
to communicate about the instructions which he gave to his own ambassadors
and about the conferences which he held with the ambassadors of other
princes. But, with these important exceptions, the government was
entrusted to what then began to be called the Ministry.

The first English ministry was gradually formed; nor is it possible to say
quite precisely when it began to exist. But, on the whole, the date from
which the era of ministries may most properly be reckoned is the day of
the meeting of the Parliament after the general election of 1695. That
election had taken place at a time when peril and distress had called
forth all the best qualities of the nation. The hearts of men were in the
struggle against France for independence, for liberty, and for the
Protestant religion. Everybody knew that such a struggle could not be
carried on without large establishments and heavy taxes. The government
therefore could hardly ask for more than the country was ready to give. A
House of Commons was chosen in which the Whig party had a decided
preponderance. The leaders of that party had presently been raised, one by
one, to the highest executive offices. The majority, therefore, readily
arranged itself in admirable order under the ministers, and during three
sessions gave them on almost every occasion a cordial support. The
consequence was that the country was rescued from its dangerous position,
and, when that Parliament had lived out its three years, enjoyed
prosperity after a terrible commercial crisis, peace after a long and
sanguinary war, and liberty united with order after civil troubles which
had lasted during two generations, and in which sometimes order and
sometimes liberty had been in danger of perishing.

Such were the fruits of the general election of 1695. The ministers had
flattered themselves that the general election of 1698 would be equally
favourable to them, and that in the new Parliament the old Parliament
would revive. Nor is it strange that they should have indulged such a
hope. Since they had been called to the direction of affairs every thing
had been changed, changed for the better, and changed chiefly by their
wise and resolute policy, and by the firmness with which their party had
stood by them. There was peace abroad and at home. The sentinels had
ceased to watch by the beacons of Dorsetshire and Sussex. The merchant
ships went forth without fear from the Thames and the Avon. Soldiers had
been disbanded by tens of thousands. Taxes had been remitted. The value of
all public and private securities had risen. Trade had never been so
brisk. Credit had never been so solid. All over the kingdom the
shopkeepers and the farmers, the artisans and the ploughmen, relieved,
beyond all hope, from the daily and hourly misery of the clipped silver,
were blessing the broad faces of the new shillings and half crowns. The
statesmen whose administration had been so beneficent might be pardoned if
they expected the gratitude and confidence which they had fairly earned.
But it soon became clear that they had served their country only too well
for their own interest. In 1695 adversity and danger had made men amenable
to that control to which it is the glory of free nations to submit
themselves, the control of superior minds. In 1698 prosperity and security
had made men querulous, fastidious and unmanageable. The government was
assailed with equal violence from widely different quarters. The
opposition, made up of Tories many of whom carried Toryism to the length
of Jacobitism, and of discontented Whigs some of whom carried Whiggism to
the length of republicanism, called itself the Country party, a name which
had been popular before the words Whig and Tory were known in England. The
majority of the late House of Commons, a majority which had saved the
State, was nicknamed the Court party. The Tory gentry, who were powerful
in all the counties, had special grievances. The whole patronage of the
government, they said, was in Whig hands. The old landed interest, the old
Cavalier interest, had now no share in the favours of the Crown. Every
public office, every bench of justice, every commission of Lieutenancy,
was filled with Roundheads. The Tory rectors and vicars were not less
exasperated. They accused the men in power of systematically protecting
and preferring Presbyterians, Latitudinarians, Arians, Socinians, Deists,
Atheists. An orthodox divine, a divine who held high the dignity of the
priesthood and the mystical virtue of the sacraments, who thought schism
as great a sin as theft and venerated the Icon as much as the Gospel, had
no more chance of a bishopric or a deanery than a Papist recusant. Such
complaints as these were not likely to call forth the sympathy of the Whig
malecontents. But there were three war cries in which all the enemies of
the government, from Trenchard to Seymour, could join: No standing army;
No grants of Crown property; and No Dutchmen. Multitudes of honest
freeholders and freemen were weak enough to believe that, unless the land
force, which had already been reduced below what the public safety
required, were altogether disbanded, the nation would be enslaved, and
that, if the estates which the King had given away were resumed, all
direct taxes might be abolished. The animosity to the Dutch mingled itself
both with the animosity to standing armies and with the animosity to Crown
grants. For a brigade of Dutch troops was part of the military
establishment which was still kept up; and it was to Dutch favourites that
William had been most liberal of the royal domains.

The elections, however, began auspiciously for the government. The first
great contest was in Westminster. It must be remembered that Westminster
was then by far the greatest city in the island, except only the
neighbouring city of London, and contained more than three times as large
a population as Bristol or Norwich, which came next in size. The right of
voting at Westminster was in the householders paying scot and lot; and the
householders paying scot and lot were many thousands. It is also to be
observed that their political education was much further advanced than
that of the great majority of the electors of the kingdom. A burgess in a
country town, or a forty shilling freeholder in an agricultural district,
then knew little about public affairs except what he could learn from
reading the Postman at the alehouse, and from hearing, on the 30th of
January, the 29th of May or the 5th of November, a sermon in which
questions of state were discussed with more zeal than sense. But the
citizen of Westminster passed his days in the vicinity of the palace, of
the public offices, of the houses of parliament, of the courts of law. He
was familiar with the faces and voices of ministers, senators and judges.
In anxious times he walked in the great Hall to pick up news. When there
was an important trial, he looked into the Court of King’s Bench, and
heard Cowper and Harcourt contending, and Holt moderating between them.
When there was an interesting debate, in the House of Commons, he could at
least squeeze himself into the lobby or the Court of Requests, and hear
who had spoken, and how and what were the numbers on the division. He
lived in a region of coffeehouses, of booksellers’ shops, of clubs, of
pamphlets, of newspapers, of theatres where poignant allusions to the most
exciting questions of the day perpetually called forth applause and
hisses, of pulpits where the doctrines of the High Churchman, of the Low
Churchman, of the Nonjuror, of the Nonconformist, were explained and
defended every Sunday by the most eloquent and learned divines of every
persuasion. At that time, therefore, the metropolitan electors were, as a
class, decidedly superior in intelligence and knowledge to the provincial
electors.

Montague and Secretary Vernon were the ministerial candidates for
Westminster. They were opposed by Sir Henry Colt, a dull, surly, stubborn
professor of patriotism, who tired everybody to death with his endless
railing at standing armies and placemen. The electors were summoned to
meet on an open space just out of the streets. The first Lord of the
Treasury and the Secretary of State appeared at the head of three thousand
horsemen. Colt’s followers were almost all on foot. He was a favourite
with the keepers of pot-houses, and had enlisted a strong body of porters
and chairmen. The two parties, after exchanging a good deal of abuse, came
to blows. The adherents of the ministers were victorious, put the adverse
mob to the rout, and cudgelled Colt himself into a muddy ditch. The poll
was taken in Westminster Hall. From the first there was no doubt of the
result. But Colt tried to prolong the contest by bringing up a voter an
hour. When it became clear that this artifice was employed for the purpose
of causing delay, the returning officer took on himself the responsibility
of closing the books, and of declaring Montague and Vernon duly elected.

At Guildhall the junto was less fortunate. Three ministerial Aldermen were
returned. But the fourth member, Sir John Fleet, was not only a Tory, but
was Governor of the old East India Company, and had distinguished himself
by the pertinacity with which he had opposed the financial and commercial
policy of the first Lord of the Treasury. While Montague suffered the
mortification of finding that his empire over the city was less absolute
than he had imagined, Wharton, notwithstanding his acknowledged
preeminence in the art of electioneering, underwent a succession of
defeats in boroughs and counties for which he had expected to name the
members. He failed at Brackley, at Malmesbury and at Cockermouth. He was
unable to maintain possession even of his own strongholds, Wycombe and
Aylesbury. He was beaten in Oxfordshire. The freeholders of
Buckinghamshire, who had been true to him during many years, and who in
1685, when the Whig party was in the lowest state of depression, had, in
spite of fraud and tyranny, not only placed him at the head of the poll
but put their second votes at his disposal, now rejected one of his
candidates, and could hardly be induced to return the other, his own
brother, by a very small majority.

The elections for Exeter appear to have been in that age observed by the
nation with peculiar interest. For Exeter was not only one of the largest
and most thriving cities in the Kingdom, but was also the capital of the
West of England, and was much frequented by the gentry of several
counties. The franchise was popular. Party spirit ran high; and the
contests were among the fiercest and the longest of which there is any
record in our history. Seymour had represented Exeter in the Parliament of
James, and in the two first Parliaments of William. In 1695, after a
struggle of several weeks which had attracted much attention not only here
but on the Continent, he had been defeated by two Whig candidates, and
forced to take refuge in a small borough. But times had changed. He was
now returned in his absence by a large majority; and with him was joined
another Tory less able and, if possible, more unprincipled than himself,
Sir Bartholomew Shower. Shower had been notorious as one of the hangmen of
James. When that cruel King was bent on punishing with death soldiers who
deserted from the army which he kept up in defiance of the constitution,
he found that he could expect no assistance from Holt, who was the
Recorder of London. Holt was accordingly removed. Shower was made
Recorder, and showed his gratitude for his promotion by sending to Tyburn
men who, as every barrister in the Inns of Court knew, were guilty of no
offence at all. He richly deserved to have been excepted from the Act of
Grace, and left to the vengeance of the laws which he had so foully
perverted. The return which he made for the clemency which spared him was
most characteristic. He missed no opportunity of thwarting and damaging
the Government which had saved him from the gallows. Having shed innocent
blood for the purpose of enabling James to keep up thirty thousand troops
without the consent of Parliament, he now pretended to think it monstrous
that William should keep up ten thousand with the consent of Parliament.
That a great constituent body should be so forgetful of the past and so
much out of humour with the present as to take this base and hardhearted
pettifogger for a patriot was an omen which might well justify the most
gloomy prognostications.

When the returns were complete, it appeared that the new House of Commons
contained an unusual number of men about whom little was known, and on
whose support neither the government nor the opposition could with any
confidence reckon. The ranks of the staunch ministerial Whigs were
certainly much thinned; but it did not appear that the Tory ranks were
much fuller than before. That section of the representative body which was
Whiggish without being ministerial had gamed a great accession of
strength, and seemed likely to have, during some time, the fate of the
country in its hands. It was plain that the next session would be a trying
one. Yet it was not impossible that the servants of the Crown might, by
prudent management, succeed in obtaining a working majority. Towards the
close of August the statesmen of the junto, disappointed and anxious but
not hopeless, dispersed in order to lay in a stock of health and vigour
for the next parliamentary campaign. There were races at that season in
the neighbourhood of Winchenden, Wharton’s seat in Buckinghamshire; and a
large party assembled there. Orford, Montague and Shrewsbury repaired to
the muster. But Somers, whose chronic maladies, aggravated by sedulous
application to judicial and political business, made it necessary for him
to avoid crowds and luxurious banquets, retired to Tunbridge Wells, and
tried to repair his exhausted frame with the water of the springs and the
air of the heath. Just at this moment despatches of the gravest importance
arrived from Guelders at Whitehall.

The long negotiation touching the Spanish succession had at length been
brought to a conclusion. Tallard had joined William at Loo, and had there
met Heinsius and Portland. After much discussion, the price in
consideration of which the House of Bourbon would consent to waive all
claim to Spain and the Indies, and to support the pretensions of the
Electoral Prince of Bavaria, was definitively settled. The Dauphin was to
have the Province of Guipuscoa, Naples, Sicily and some small Italian
islands which were part of the Spanish monarchy. The Milanese was allotted
to the Archduke Charles. As the Electoral Prince was still a child, it was
agreed that his father, who was then governing the Spanish Netherlands as
Viceroy, should be Regent of Spain during the minority. Such was the first
Partition Treaty, a treaty which has been during five generations
confidently and noisily condemned, and for which scarcely any writer has
ventured to offer even a timid apology, but which it may perhaps not be
impossible to defend by grave and temperate argument.

It was said, when first the terms of the Partition Treaty were made
public, and has since been many times repeated, that the English and Dutch
Governments, in making this covenant with France, were guilty of a
violation of plighted faith. They had, it was affirmed, by a secret
article of a Treaty of Alliance concluded in 1689, bound themselves to
support the pretensions of the Emperor to the Spanish throne; and they
now, in direct defiance of that article, agreed to an arrangement by which
he was excluded from the Spanish throne. The truth is that the secret
article will not, whether construed according to the letter or according
to the spirit, bear the sense which has generally been put upon it. The
stipulations of that article were introduced by a preamble, in which it
was set forth that the Dauphin was preparing to assert by arms his claim
to the great heritage which his mother had renounced, and that there was
reason to believe that he also aspired to the dignity of King of the
Romans. For these reasons, England and the States General, considering the
evil consequences which must follow if he should succeed in attaining
either of his objects, promised to support with all their power his
Caesarean Majesty against the French and their adherents. Surely we cannot
reasonably interpret this engagement to mean that, when the dangers
mentioned in the preamble had ceased to exist, when the eldest Archduke
was King of the Romans, and when the Dauphin had, for the sake of peace,
withdrawn his claim to the Spanish Crown, England and the United Provinces
would be bound to go to war for the purpose of supporting the cause of the
Emperor, not against the French but against his own grandson, against the
only prince who could reign at Madrid without exciting fear and jealousy
throughout all Christendom.

While some persons accused William of breaking faith with the House of
Austria, others accused him of interfering unjustly in the internal
affairs of Spain. In the most ingenious and humorous political satire
extant in our language, Arbuthnot’s History of John Bull, England and
Holland are typified by a clothier and a linendraper, who take upon
themselves to settle the estate of a bedridden old gentleman in their
neighbourhood. They meet at the corner of his park with paper and pencils,
a pole, a chain and a semicircle, measure his fields, calculate the value
of his mines, and then proceed to his house in order to take an inventory
of his plate and furniture. But this pleasantry, excellent as pleasantry,
hardly deserves serious refutation. No person who has a right to give any
opinion at all about politics can think that the question, whether two of
the greatest empires in the world should be virtually united so as to form
one irresistible mass, was a question with which other states had nothing
to do, a question about which other states could not take counsel together
without being guilty of impertinence as gross as that of a busybody in
private life who should insist on being allowed to dictate the wills of
other people. If the whole Spanish monarchy should pass to the House of
Bourbon, it was highly probable that in a few years England would cease to
be great and free, and that Holland would be a mere province of France.
Such a danger England and Holland might lawfully have averted by war; and
it would be absurd to say that a danger which may be lawfully averted by
war cannot lawfully be averted by peaceable means. If nations are so
deeply interested in a question that they would be justified in resorting
to arms for the purpose of settling it, they must surely be sufficiently
interested in it to be justified in resorting to amicable arrangements for
the purpose of settling it. Yet, strange to say, a multitude of writers
who have warmly praised the English and Dutch governments for waging a
long and bloody war in order to prevent the question of the Spanish
succession from being settled in a manner prejudicial to them, have
severely blamed those governments for trying to attain the same end
without the shedding of a drop of blood, without the addition of a crown
to the taxation of any country in Christendom, and without a moment’s
interruption of the trade of the world by land or by sea.

It has been said to have been unjust that three states should have
combined to divide a fourth state without its own consent; and, in recent
times, the partition of the Spanish monarchy which was meditated in 1698
has been compared to the greatest political crime which stains the history
of modern Europe, the partition of Poland. But those who hold such
language cannot have well considered the nature of the Spanish monarchy in
the seventeenth century. That monarchy was not a body pervaded by one
principle of vitality and sensation. It was an assemblage of distinct
bodies, none of which had any strong sympathy with the rest, and some of
which had a positive antipathy for each other. The partition planned at
Loo was therefore the very opposite of the partition of Poland. The
partition of Poland was the partition of a nation. It was such a partition
as is effected by hacking a living man limb from limb. The partition
planned at Loo was the partition of an ill governed empire which was not a
nation. It was such a partition as is effected by setting loose a drove of
slaves who have been fastened together with collars and handcuffs, and
whose union has produced only pain, inconvenience and mutual disgust.
There is not the slightest reason to believe that the Neapolitans would
have preferred the Catholic King to the Dauphin, or that the Lombards
would have preferred the Catholic King to the Archduke. How little the
Guipuscoans would have disliked separation from Spain and annexation to
France we may judge from the fact that, a few years later, the States of
Guipuscoa actually offered to transfer their allegiance to France on
condition that their peculiar franchises should be held sacred.

One wound the partition would undoubtedly have inflicted, a wound on the
Castilian pride. But surely the pride which a nation takes in exercising
over other nations a blighting and withering dominion, a dominion without
prudence or energy, without justice or mercy, is not a feeling entitled to
much respect. And even a Castilian who was not greatly deficient in
sagacity must have seen that an inheritance claimed by two of the greatest
potentates in Europe could hardly pass entire to one claimant; that a
partition was therefore all but inevitable; and that the question was in
truth merely between a partition effected by friendly compromise and a
partition effected by means of a long and devastating war.

There seems, therefore, to be no ground at all for pronouncing the terms
of the Treaty of Loo unjust to the Emperor, to the Spanish monarchy
considered as a whole, or to any part of that monarchy. Whether those
terms were or were not too favourable to France is quite another question.
It has often been maintained that she would have gained more by
permanently annexing to herself Guipuscoa, Naples and Sicily than by
sending the Duke of Anjou or the Duke of Berry to reign at the Escurial.
On this point, however, if on any point, respect is due to the opinion of
William. That he thoroughly understood the politics of Europe is as
certain as that jealousy of the greatness of France was with him a
passion, a ruling passion, almost an infirmity. Before we blame him,
therefore, for making large concessions to the power which it was the
chief business of his life to keep within bounds, we shall do well to
consider whether those concessions may not, on close examination, be found
to be rather apparent than real. The truth is that they were so, and were
well known to be so both by William and by Lewis.

Naples and Sicily formed indeed a noble kingdom, fertile, populous,
blessed with a delicious climate, and excellently situated for trade. Such
a kingdom, had it been contiguous to Provence, would indeed have been a
most formidable addition to the French monarchy. But a glance at the map
ought to have been sufficient to undeceive those who imagined that the
great antagonist of the House of Bourbon could be so weak as to lay the
liberties of Europe at the feet of that house. A King of France would, by
acquiring territories in the South of Italy, have really bound himself
over to keep the peace; for, as soon as he was at war with his neighbours,
those territories were certain to be worse than useless to him. They were
hostages at the mercy of his enemies. It would be easy to attack them. It
would be hardly possible to defend them. A French army sent to them by
land would have to force its way through the passes of the Alps, through
Piedmont, through Tuscany, and through the Pontifical States, in
opposition probably to great German armies. A French fleet would run great
risk of being intercepted and destroyed by the squadrons of England and
Holland. Of all this Lewis was perfectly aware. He repeatedly declared
that he should consider the kingdom of the Two Sicilies as a source, not
of strength, but of weakness. He accepted it at last with murmurs; he
seems to have intended to make it over to one of his younger grandsons;
and he would beyond all doubt have gladly given it in exchange for a
thirtieth part of the same area in the Netherlands. 15 But in the
Netherlands England and Holland were determined to allow him nothing. What
he really obtained in Italy was little more than a splendid provision for
a cadet of his house. Guipuscoa was then in truth the price in
consideration of which France consented that the Electoral Prince of
Bavaria should be King of Spain and the Indies. Guipuscoa, though a small,
was doubtless a valuable province, and was in a military point of view
highly important. But Guipuscoa was not in the Netherlands. Guipuscoa
would not make Lewis a more formidable neighbour to England or to the
United Provinces. And, if the Treaty should be broken off, if the vast
Spanish empire should be struggled for and torn in pieces by the rival
races of Bourbon and Habsburg, was it not possible, was it not probable,
that France might lay her iron grasp, not on Guipuscoa alone, but on
Luxemburg and Namur, on Hainault, Brabant and Antwerp, on Flanders East
and West? Was it certain that the united force of all her neighbours would
be sufficient to compel her to relinquish her prey? Was it not certain
that the contest would be long and terrible? And would not the English and
Dutch think themselves most fortunate if, after many bloody and costly
campaigns, the French King could be compelled to sign a treaty, the same,
word for word, with that which he was ready uncompelled to sign now?

William, firmly relying on his own judgment, had not yet, in the whole
course of this momentous negotiation, asked the advice or employed the
agency of any English minister. But the treaty could not be formally
concluded without the instrumentality of one of the Secretaries of State
and of the Great Seal. Portland was directed to write to Vernon. The King
himself wrote to the Chancellor. Somers was authorised to consult any of
his colleagues whom he might think fit to be entrusted with so high a
secret; and he was requested to give his own opinion of the proposed
arrangement. If that opinion should be favourable, not a day must be lost.
The King of Spain might die at any moment, and could hardly live till the
winter. Full powers must be sent to Loo, sealed, but with blanks left for
the names of the plenipotentiaries. Strict secresy must be observed; and
care must be taken that the clerks whose duty it was to draw up the
necessary documents should not entertain any suspicion of the importance
of the work which they were performing.

The despatch from Loo found Somers at a distance from all his political
friends, and almost incapacitated by infirmities and by remedies from
attending to serious business, his delicate frame worn out by the labours
and vigils of many months, his head aching and giddy with the first
draughts from the chalybeate spring. He roused himself, however, and
promptly communicated by writing with Shrewsbury and Orford. Montague and
Vernon came down to Tunbridge Wells, and conferred fully with him. The
opinion of the leading Whig statesmen was communicated to the King in a
letter which was not many months later placed on the records of
Parliament. These statesmen entirely agreed with William in wishing to see
the question of the Spanish succession speedily and peaceably settled.
They apprehended that, if Charles should die leaving that question
unsettled, the immense power of the French King and the geographical
situation of his dominions would enable him to take immediate possession
of the most important parts of the great inheritance. Whether he was
likely to venture on so bold a course, and whether, if he did venture on
it, any continental government would have the means and the spirit to
withstand him, were questions as to which the English ministers, with
unfeigned deference, submitted their opinion to that of their master,
whose knowledge of the interests and tempers of all the courts of Europe
was unrivalled. But there was one important point which must not be left
out of consideration, and about which his servants might perhaps be better
informed than himself, the temper of their own country. It was, the
Chancellor wrote, their duty to tell His Majesty that the recent elections
had indicated the public feeling in a manner which had not been expected,
but which could not be mistaken. The spirit which had borne the nation up
through nine years of exertions and sacrifices seemed to be dead. The
people were sick of taxes; they hated the thought of war. As it would, in
such circumstances, be no easy matter to form a coalition capable of
resisting the pretensions of France, it was most desirable that she should
be induced to withdraw those pretensions; and it was not to be expected
that she would withdraw them without securing for herself a large
compensation. The principle of the Treaty of Loo, therefore, the English
Ministers cordially approved. But whether the articles of that treaty were
or were not too favourable to the House of Bourbon, and whether the House
of Bourbon was likely faithfully to observe them, were questions about
which Somers delicately hinted that he and his colleagues felt some
misgivings. They had their fears that Lewis might be playing false. They
had their fears also that, possessed of Sicily, he would be master of the
trade of the Levant; and that, possessed of Guipuscoa, he would be able at
any moment to push an army into the heart of Castile. But they had been
reassured by the thought that their Sovereign thoroughly understood this
department of politics, that he had fully considered all these things,
that he had neglected no precaution, and that the concessions which he had
made to France were the smallest which could have averted the calamities
impending over Christendom. It was added that the service which His
Majesty had rendered to the House of Bavaria gave him a right to ask for
some return. Would it be too much to expect, from the gratitude of the
prince who was soon to be a great king, some relaxation of the rigorous
system which excluded the English trade from the Spanish colonies? Such a
relaxation would greatly endear His Majesty to his subjects.

With these suggestions the Chancellor sent off the powers which the King
wanted. They were drawn up by Vernon with his own hand, and sealed in such
a manner that no subordinate officer was let into the secret. Blanks were
left, as the King had directed, for the names of two Commissioners. But
Somers gently hinted that it would be proper to fill those blanks with the
names of persons who were English by naturalisation, if not by birth, and
who would therefore be responsible to Parliament.

The King now had what he wanted from England. The peculiarity of the
Batavian polity threw some difficulties in his way; but every difficulty
gelded to his authority and to the dexterous management of Heinsius. And
in truth the treaty could not but be favourably regarded by the States
General; for it had been carefully framed with the especial object of
preventing France from obtaining any accession of territory, or influence
on the side of the Netherlands; and Dutchmen, who remembered the terrible
year when the camp of Lewis had been pitched between Utrecht and
Amsterdam, were delighted to find that he was not to add to his dominions
a single fortress in their neighbourhood, and were quite willing to buy
him off with whole provinces under the Pyrenees and the Apennines. The
sanction both of the federal and of the provincial governments was given
with ease and expedition; and in the evening of the fourth of September
1698, the treaty was signed. As to the blanks in the English powers,
William had attended to his Chancellor’s suggestion, and had inserted the
names of Sir Joseph Williamson, minister at the Hague, a born Englishman,
and of Portland, a naturalised Englishman. The Grand Pensionary and seven
other Commissioners signed on behalf of the United Provinces. Tallard
alone signed for France. He seems to have been extravagantly elated by
what seemed to be the happy issue of the negotiation in which he had borne
so great a part, and in his next despatch to Lewis boasted of the new
treaty as destined to be the most famous that had been made during many
centuries.

William too was well pleased; and he had reason to be so. Had the King of
Spain died, as all men expected, before the end of that year, it is highly
probable that France would have kept faith with England and the United
Provinces; and it is almost certain that, if France had kept faith, the
treaty would have been carried into effect without any serious opposition
in any quarter. The Emperor might have complained and threatened; but he
must have submitted; for what could he do? He had no fleet; and it was
therefore impossible for him even to attempt to possess himself of
Castile, of Arragon, of Sicily, of the Indies, in opposition to the united
navies of the three greatest maritime powers in the world. In fact, the
only part of the Spanish empire which he could hope to seize and hold by
force against the will of the confederates of Loo was the Milanese; and
the Milanese the confederates of Loo had agreed to assign to his family.
He would scarcely have been so mad as to disturb the peace of the world
when the only thing which he had any chance of gaining by war was offered
him without war. The Castilians would doubtless have resented the
dismemberment of the unwieldy body of which they formed the head. But they
would have perceived that by resisting they were much more likely to lose
the Indies than to preserve Guipuscoa. As to Italy, they could no more
make war there than in the moon. Thus the crisis which had seemed likely
to produce an European war of ten years would have produced nothing worse
than a few angry notes and plaintive manifestoes.

Both the confederate Kings wished their compact to remain a secret while
their brother Charles lived; and it probably would have remained secret,
had it been confided only to the English and French Ministers. But the
institutions of the United Provinces were not well fitted for the purpose
of concealment. It had been necessary to trust so many deputies and
magistrates that rumours of what had been passing at Loo got abroad.
Quiros, the Spanish Ambassador at the Hague, followed the trail with such
skill and perseverance that he discovered, if not the whole truth, yet
enough to furnish materials for a despatch which produced much irritation
and alarm at Madrid. A council was summoned, and sate long in
deliberation. The grandees of the proudest of Courts could hardly fail to
perceive that their next sovereign, be he who he might, would find it
impossible to avoid sacrificing part of his defenceless and widely
scattered empire in order to preserve the rest; they could not bear to
think that a single fort, a single islet, in any of the four quarters of
the world was about to escape from the sullen domination of Castile. To
this sentiment all the passions and prejudices of the haughty race were
subordinate. “We are ready,” such was the phrase then in their mouths, “to
go to any body, to go to the Dauphin, to go to the Devil, so that we all
go together.” In the hope of averting the threatened dismemberment, the
Spanish ministers advised their master to adopt as his heir the candidate
whose pretensions it was understood that France, England and Holland were
inclined to support. The advice was taken; and it was soon every where
known that His Catholic Majesty had solemnly designated as his successor
his nephew Francis Joseph, Electoral Prince of Bavaria. France protested
against this arrangement, not, as far as can now be judged, because she
meant to violate the Treaty of Loo, but because it would have been
difficult for her, if she did not protest, to insist on the full execution
of that treaty. Had she silently acquiesced in the nomination of the
Electoral Prince, she would have appeared to admit that the Dauphin’s
pretensions were unfounded; and, if she admitted the Dauphin’s pretensions
to be unfounded, she could not, without flagrant injustice, demand several
provinces as the price in consideration of which she would consent to
waive those pretensions. Meanwhile the confederates had secured the
cooperation of a most important person, the Elector of Bavaria, who was
actually Governor of the Netherlands, and was likely to be in a few
months, at farthest, Regent of the whole Spanish monarchy. He was
perfectly sensible that the consent of France, England and Holland to his
son’s elevation was worth purchasing at almost any cost, and, with much
alacrity, promised that, when the time came, he would do all in his power
to facilitate the execution of the Treaty of Partition. He was indeed
bound by the strongest ties to the confederates of Loo. They had, by a
secret article, added to the treaty, agreed that, if the Electoral Prince
should become King of Spain, and then die without issue, his father should
be his heir. The news that young Francis Joseph had been declared heir to
the throne of Spain was welcome to all the potentates of Europe with the
single exception of his grandfather the Emperor. The vexation and
indignation of Leopold were extreme. But there could be no doubt that,
graciously or ungraciously, he would submit. It would have been madness in
him to contend against all Western Europe on land; and it was physically
impossible for him to wage war on the sea. William was therefore able to
indulge, during some weeks, the pleasing belief that he had by skill and
firmness averted from the civilised world a general war which had lately
seemed to be imminent, and that he had secured the great community of
nations against the undue predominance of one too powerful member.

But the pleasure and the pride with which he contemplated the success of
his foreign policy gave place to very different feelings as soon as he
again had to deal with our domestic factions. And, indeed, those who most
revere his memory must acknowledge that, in dealing with these factions,
he did not, at this time, show his wonted statesmanship. For a wise man,
he seems never to have been sufficiently aware how much offence is given
by discourtesy in small things. His ministers had apprised him that the
result of the elections had been unsatisfactory, and that the temper of
the new representatives of the people would require much management.
Unfortunately he did not lay this intimation to heart. He had by
proclamation fixed the opening of the Parliament for the 29th of November.
This was then considered as a very late day. For the London season began
together with Michaelmas Term; and, even during the war, the King had
scarcely ever failed to receive the compliments of his faithful Lords and
Commons on the fifth of November, the anniversary both of his birth and of
his memorable landing. The numerous members of the House of Commons who
were in town, having their time on their hands, formed cabals, and heated
themselves and each other by murmuring at his partiality for the country
of his birth. He had been off to Holland, they said, at the earliest
possible moment. He was now lingering in Holland till the latest possible
moment. This was not the worst. The twenty-ninth of November came; but the
King was not come. It was necessary that the Lords Justices should
prorogue the Parliament to the sixth of December. The delay was imputed,
and justly, to adverse winds. But the malecontents asked, with some
reason, whether His Majesty had not known that there were often gales from
the West in the German Ocean, and whether, when he had made a solemn
appointment with the Estates of his Realm for a particular day, he ought
not to have arranged things in such a way that nothing short of a miracle
could have prevented him from keeping that appointment.

Thus the ill humour which a large proportion of the new legislators had
brought up from their country seats became more and more aced every day,
till they entered on their functions. One question was much agitated
during this unpleasant interval. Who was to be Speaker? The junto wished
to place Sir Thomas Littleton in the chair. He was one of their ablest,
most zealous and most steadfast friends; and had been, both in the House
of Commons and at the Board of Treasury, an invaluable second to Montague.
There was reason indeed to expect a strong opposition. That Littleton was
a Whig was a grave objection to him in the opinion of the Tories. That he
was a placeman, and that he was for a standing army, were grave objections
to him in the opinion of many who were not Tories. But nobody else came
forward. The health of the late Speaker Foley had failed. Musgrave was
talked of in coffeehouses; but the rumour that he would be proposed soon
died away. Seymour’s name was in a few mouths; but Seymour’s day had gone
by. He still possessed, indeed, those advantages which had once made him
the first of the country gentlemen of England, illustrious descent, ample
fortune, ready and weighty eloquence, perfect familiarity with
parliamentary business. But all these things could not do so much to raise
him as his moral character did to drag him down. Haughtiness such as his,
though it could never have been liked, might, if it had been united with
elevated sentiments of virtue and honour, have been pardoned. But of all
the forms of pride, even the pride of upstart wealth not excepted, the
most offensive is the pride of ancestry when found in company with sordid
and ignoble vices, greediness, mendacity, knavery and impudence; and such
was the pride of Seymour. Many, even of those who were well pleased to see
the ministers galled by his keen and skilful rhetoric, remembered that he
had sold himself more than once, and suspected that he was impatient to
sell himself again. On the very eve of the opening of Parliament, a little
tract entitled “Considerations on the Choice of a Speaker” was widely
circulated, and seems to have produced a great sensation. The writer
cautioned the representatives of the people, at some length, against
Littleton; and then, in even stronger language, though more concisely,
against Seymour; but did not suggest any third person. The sixth of
December came, and found the Country party, as it called itself, still
unprovided with a candidate. The King, who had not been many hours in
London, took his seat in the House of Lords. The Commons were summoned to
the bar, and were directed to choose a Speaker. They returned to their
Chamber. Hartington proposed Littleton; and the proposition was seconded
by Spencer. No other person was put in nomination; but there was a warm
debate of two hours. Seymour, exasperated by finding that no party was
inclined to support his pretensions, spoke with extravagant violence. He
who could well remember the military despotism of Cromwell, who had been
an active politician in the days of the Cabal, and who had seen his own
beautiful county turned into a Golgotha by the Bloody Circuit, declared
that the liberties of the nation had never been in greater danger than at
that moment, and that their doom would be fixed if a courtier should be
called to the chair. The opposition insisted on dividing. Hartington’s
motion was carried by two hundred and forty-two votes to a hundred and
thirty-five, Littleton himself, according to the childish old usage which
has descended to our times, voting in the minority. Three days later, he
was presented and approved.

The King then spoke from the throne. He declared his firm conviction that
the Houses were disposed to do whatever was necessary for the safety,
honour and happiness of the kingdom; and he asked them for nothing more.
When they came to consider the military and naval establishments, they
would remember that, unless England were secure from attack, she could not
continue to hold the high place which she had won for herself among
European powers; her trade would languish; her credit would fail; and even
her internal tranquillity would be in danger. He also expressed a hope
that some progress would be made in the discharge of the debts contracted
during the War. “I think,” he said, “an English Parliament can never make
such a mistake as not to hold sacred all Parliamentary engagements.”

The speech appeared to be well received; and during a short time William
flattered himself that the great fault, as he considered it, of the
preceding session would be repaired, that the army would be augmented, and
that he should be able, at the important conjuncture which was
approaching, to speak to foreign powers in tones of authority, and
especially to keep France steady to her engagements. The Whigs of the
junto, better acquainted with the temper of the country and of the new
House of Commons, pronounced it impossible to carry a vote for a land
force of more than ten thousand men. Ten thousand men would probably be
obtained if His Majesty would authorise his servants to ask in his name
for that number, and to declare that with a smaller number he could not
answer for the public safety. William, firmly convinced that twenty
thousand would be too few, refused to make or empower others to make a
proposition which seemed to him absurd and disgraceful. Thus, at a moment
at which it was peculiarly desirable that all who bore a part in the
executive administration should act cordially together, there was serious
dissension between him and his ablest councillors. For that dissension
neither he nor they can be severely blamed. They were differently
situated, and necessarily saw the same objects from different points of
view. He, as was natural, considered the question chiefly as an European
question. They, as was natural, considered it chiefly as an English
question. They had found the antipathy to a standing army insurmountably
strong even in the late Parliament, a Parliament disposed to place large
confidence in them and in their master. In the new Parliament that
antipathy amounted almost to a mania. That liberty, law, property, could
never be secured while the Sovereign had a large body of regular troops at
his command in time of peace, and that of all regular troops foreign
troops were the most to be dreaded, had, during the recent elections, been
repeated in every town hall and market place, and scrawled upon every dead
wall. The reductions of the preceding year, it was said, even if they had
been honestly carved into effect, would not have been sufficient; and they
had not been honestly carried into effect. On this subject the ministers
pronounced the temper of the Commons to be such that, if any person high
in office were to ask for what His Majesty thought necessary, there would
assuredly be a violent explosion; the majority would probably be provoked
into disbanding all that remained of the army; and the kingdom would be
left without a single soldier. William, however, could not be brought to
believe that the case was so hopeless. He listened too easily to some
secret adviser, Sunderland was probably the man, who accused Montague and
Somers of cowardice and insincerity. They had, it was whispered in the
royal ear, a majority, whenever they really wanted one. They were bent
upon placing their friend Littleton in the Speaker’s chair; and they had
carried their point triumphantly. They would carry as triumphantly a vote
for a respectable military establishment if the honour of their master and
the safety of their country were as dear to them as the petty interests of
their own faction. It was to no purpose that the King was told, what was
nevertheless perfectly true, that not one half of the members who had
voted for Littleton, could, by any art or eloquence, be induced to vote
for an augmentation of the land force. While he was urging his ministers
to stand up manfully against the popular prejudice, and while they were
respectfully representing to him that by so standing up they should only
make that prejudice stronger and more noxious, the day came which the
Commons had fixed for taking the royal speech into consideration. The
House resolved itself into a Committee. The great question was instantly
raised; What provision should be made for the defence of the realm? It was
naturally expected that the confidential advisers of the Crown would
propose something. As they remained silent, Harley took the lead which
properly belonged to them, and moved that the army should not exceed seven
thousand men. Sir Charles Sedley suggested ten thousand. Vernon, who was
present, was of opinion that this number would have been carved if it had
been proposed by one who was known to speak on behalf of the King. But few
members cared to support an amendment which was certain to be less
pleasing to their constituents, and did not appear to be more pleasing to
the Court, than the original motion. Harley’s resolution passed the
Committee. On the morrow it was reported and approved. The House also
resolved that all the seven thousand men who were to be retained should be
natural born English subjects. Other votes were carried without a single
division either in the Committee or when the mace was on the table.

The King’s indignation and vexation were extreme. He was angry with the
opposition, with the ministers, with all England. The nation seemed to him
to be under a judicial infatuation, blind to dangers which his sagacity
perceived to be real, near and formidable, and morbidly apprehensive of
dangers which his conscience told him were no dangers at all. The perverse
islanders were willing to trust every thing that was most precious to
them, their independence, their property, their laws, their religion, to
the moderation and good faith of France, to the winds and the waves, to
the steadiness and expertness of battalions of ploughmen commanded by
squires; and yet they were afraid to trust him with the means of
protecting them lest he should use those means for the destruction of the
liberties which he had saved from extreme peril, which he had fenced with
new securities, which he had defended with the hazard of his life, and
which from the day of his accession he had never once violated. He was
attached, and not without reason, to the Blue Dutch Foot Guards. That
brigade had served under him for many years, and had been eminently
distinguished by courage, discipline and fidelity. In December 1688 that
brigade had been the first in his army to enter the English capital, and
had been entrusted with the important duty of occupying Whitehall and
guarding the person of James. Eighteen months later, that brigade had been
the first to plunge into the waters of the Boyne. Nor had the conduct of
these veteran soldiers been less exemplary in their quarters than in the
field. The vote which required the King to discard them merely because
they were what he himself was seemed to him a personal affront. All these
vexations and scandals he imagined that his ministers might have averted,
if they had been more solicitous for his honour and for the success of his
great schemes of policy, and less solicitous about their own popularity.
They, on the other hand, continued to assure him, and, as far as can now
be judged, to assure him with perfect truth, that it was altogether out of
their power to effect what he wished. Something they might perhaps be able
to do. Many members of the House of Commons had said in private that seven
thousand men was too small a number. If His Majesty would let it be
understood that he should consider those who should vote for ten thousand
as having done him good service, there might be hopes. But there could be
no hope if gentlemen found that by voting for ten thousand they should
please nobody, that they should be held up to the counties and towns which
they represented as turncoats and slaves for going so far to meet his
wishes, and that they should be at the same time frowned upon at
Kensington for not going farther. The King was not to be moved. He had
been too great to sink into littleness without a struggle. He had been the
soul of two great coalitions, the dread of France, the hope of all
oppressed nations. And was he to be degraded into a mere puppet of the
Harleys and the Hooves, a petty prince who could neither help nor hurt, a
less formidable enemy and less valuable ally than the Elector of
Brandenburg or the Duke of Savoy? His spirit, quite as arbitrary and as
impatient of control as that of any of his predecessors, Stuart, Tudor or
Plantagenet, swelled high against this ignominious bondage. It was well
known at Versailles that he was cruelly mortified and incensed; and,
during a short time, a strange hope was cherished there that, in the heat
of his resentment, he might be induced to imitate his uncles, Charles and
James, to conclude another treaty of Dover, and to sell himself into
vassalage for a subsidy which might make him independent of his niggardly
and mutinous Parliament. Such a subsidy, it was thought, might be
disguised under the name of a compensation for the little principality of
Orange, which Lewis had long been desirous to purchase even at a fancy
price. A despatch was drawn up containing a paragraph by which Tallard was
to be apprised of his master’s views, and instructed not to hazard any
distinct proposition, but to try the effect of cautious and delicate
insinuations, and, if possible, to draw William on to speak first. This
paragraph was, on second thoughts, cancelled; but that it should ever have
been written must be considered a most significant circumstance.

It may with confidence be affirmed that William would never have stooped
to be the pensioner of France; but it was with difficulty that he was, at
this conjuncture, dissuaded from throwing up the government of England.
When first he threw out hints about retiring to the Continent, his
ministers imagined that he was only trying to frighten them into making a
desperate effort to obtain for him an efficient army. But they soon saw
reason to believe that he was in earnest. That he was in earnest, indeed,
can hardly be doubted. For, in a confidential letter to Heinsius, whom he
could have no motive for deceiving, he intimated his intention very
clearly. “I foresee,” he writes, “that I shall be driven to take an
extreme course, and that I shall see you again in Holland sooner than I
had imagined.” 16 In fact he had resolved to go
down to the Lords, to send for the Commons, and to make his last speech
from the throne. That speech he actually prepared and had it translated.
He meant to tell his hearers that he had come to England to rescue their
religion and their liberties; that, for that end, he had been under the
necessity of waging a long and cruel war; that the war had, by the
blessing of God, ended in an honourable and advantageous peace; and that
the nation might now be tranquil and happy, if only those precautions were
adopted which he had on the first day of the session recommended as
essential to the public security. Since, however, the Estates of the Realm
thought fit to slight his advice, and to expose themselves to the imminent
risk of ruin, he would not be the witness of calamities which he had not
caused and which he could not avert. He must therefore request the Houses
to present to him a bill providing for the government of the realm; he
would pass that bill, and withdraw from a post in which he could no longer
be useful, but he should always take a deep interest in the welfare of
England; and, if what he foreboded should come to pass, if in some day of
danger she should again need his services, his life should be hazarded as
freely as ever in her defence.

When the King showed his speech to the Chancellor, that wise minister
forgot for a moment his habitual self-command. “This is extravagance,
Sir,” he said: “this is madness. I implore your Majesty, for the sake of
your own honour, not to say to anybody else what you have said to me.” He
argued the matter during two hours, and no doubt lucidly and forcibly.
William listened patiently; but his purpose remained unchanged.

The alarm of the ministers seems to have been increased by finding that
the King’s intention had been confided to Marlborough, the very last man
to whom such a secret would have been imparted unless William had really
made up his mind to abdicate in favour of the Princess of Denmark. Somers
had another audience, and again began to expostulate. But William cut him
short. “We shall not agree, my Lord; my mind is made up.” “Then, Sir,”
said Somers, “I have to request that I may be excused from assisting as
Chancellor at the fatal act which Your Majesty meditates. It was from my
King that I received this seal; and I beg that he will take it from me
while he is still my King.”

In these circumstances the ministers, though with scarcely the faintest
hope of success, determined to try what they could do to meet the King’s
wishes. A select Committee had been appointed by the House of Commons to
frame a bill for the disbanding of all the troops above seven thousand. A
motion was made by one of the Court party that this Committee should be
instructed to reconsider the number of men. Vernon acquitted himself well
in the debate. Montague spoke with even more than his wonted ability and
energy, but in vain. So far was he from being able to rally round him such
a majority as that which had supported him in the preceding Parliament,
that he could not count on the support even of the placemen who sate at
the same executive board with him. Thomas Pelham, who had, only a few
months before, been made a Lord of the Treasury, tried to answer him. “I
own,” said Pelham, “that last year I thought a large land force necessary;
this year I think such a force unnecessary; but I deny that I have been
guilty of any inconsistency. Last year the great question of the Spanish
succession was unsettled, and there was serious danger of a general war.
That question has now been settled in the best possible way; and we may
look forward to many years of peace.” A Whig of still greater note and
authority, the Marquess of Hartington, separated himself on this occasion
from the junto. The current was irresistible. At last the voices of those
who tried to speak for the Instruction were drowned by clamour. When the
question was put, there was a great shout of No, and the minority
submitted. To divide would have been merely to have exposed their
weakness.

By this time it became clear that the relations between the executive
government and the Parliament were again what they had been before the
year 1695. The history of our polity at this time is closely connected
with the history of one man. Hitherto Montague’s career had been more
splendidly and uninterruptedly successful than that of any member of the
House of Commons, since the House of Commons had begun to exist. And now
fortune had turned. By the Tories he had long been hated as a Whig; and
the rapidity of his rise, the brilliancy of his fame, and the unvarying
good luck which seemed to attend him, had made many Whigs his enemies. He
was absurdly compared to the upstart favourites of a former age, Carr and
Villiers, men whom he resembled in nothing but in the speed with which he
had mounted from a humble to a lofty position. They had, without rendering
any service to the State, without showing any capacity for the conduct of
great affairs, been elevated to the highest dignities, in spite of the
murmurs of the whole nation, by the mere partiality of the Sovereign.
Montague owed every thing to his own merit and to the public opinion of
his merit. With his master he appears to have had very little intercourse,
and none that was not official. He was in truth a living monument of what
the Revolution had done for the Country. The Revolution had found him a
young student in a cell by the Cam, poring on the diagrams which
illustrated the newly discovered laws of centripetal and centrifugal
force, writing little copies of verses, and indulging visions of
parsonages with rich glebes, and of closes in old cathedral towns had
developed in him new talents; had held out to him the hope of prizes of a
very different sort from a rectory or a prebend. His eloquence had gained
for him the ear of the legislature. His skill in fiscal and commercial
affairs had won for him the confidence of the City. During four years he
had been the undisputed leader of the majority of the House of Commons;
and every one of those years he had made memorable by great parliamentary
victories, and by great public services. It should seem that his success
ought to have been gratifying to the nation, and especially to that
assembly of which he was the chief ornament, of which indeed he might be
called the creature. The representatives of the people ought to have been
well pleased to find that their approbation could, in the new order of
things, do for the man whom they delighted to honour all that the
mightiest of the Tudors could do for Leicester, or the most arbitrary of
the Stuarts for Strafford. But, strange to say, the Commons soon began to
regard with an evil eve that greatness which was their own work. The fault
indeed was partly Montague’s. With all his ability, he had not the wisdom
to avert, by suavity and moderation, that curse, the inseparable
concomitant of prosperity and glory, which the ancients personified under
the name of Nemesis. His head, strong for all the purposes of debate and
arithmetical calculation, was weak against the intoxicating influence of
success and fame. He became proud even to insolence. Old companions, who,
a very few years before, had punned and rhymed with him in garrets, had
dined with him at cheap ordinaries, had sate with him in the pit, and had
lent him some silver to pay his seamstress’s bill, hardly knew their
friend Charles in the great man who could not forget for one moment that
he was First Lord of the Treasury, that he was Chancellor of the
Exchequer, that he had been a Regent of the kingdom, that he had founded
the Bank of England and the new East India Company, that he had restored
the currency, that he had invented the Exchequer Bills, that he had
planned the General Mortgage, and that he had been pronounced, by a solemn
vote of the Commons, to have deserved all the favours which he had
received from the Crown. It was said that admiration of himself and
contempt of others were indicated by all his gestures and written in all
the lines of his face. The very way in which the little jackanapes, as the
hostile pamphleteers loved to call him, strutted through the lobby, making
the most of his small figure, rising on his toe, and perking up his chin,
made him enemies. Rash and arrogant sayings were imputed to him, and
perhaps invented for him. He was accused of boasting that there was
nothing that he could not carry through the House of Commons, that he
could turn the majority round his finger. A crowd of libellers assailed
him with much more than political hatred. Boundless rapacity and
corruption were laid to his charge. He was represented as selling all the
places in the revenue department for three years’ purchase. The
opprobrious nickname of Filcher was fastened on him. His luxury, it was
said, was not less inordinate than his avarice. There was indeed an
attempt made at this time to raise against the leading Whig politicians
and their allies, the great moneyed men of the City, a cry much resembling
the cry which, seventy or eighty years later, was raised against the
English Nabobs. Great wealth, suddenly acquired, is not often enjoyed with
moderation, dignity and good taste. It is therefore not impossible that
there may have been some small foundation for the extravagant stories with
which malecontent pamphleteers amused the leisure of malecontent squires.
In such stories Montague played a conspicuous part. He contrived, it was
said, to be at once as rich as Croesus and as riotous as Mark Antony. His
stud and his cellar were beyond all price. His very lacqueys turned up
their noses at claret. He and his confederates were described as spending
the immense sums of which they had plundered the public in banquets of
four courses, such as Lucullus might have eaten in the Hall of Apollo. A
supper for twelve Whigs, enriched by jobs, grants, bribes, lucky purchases
and lucky sales of stock, was cheap at eighty pounds. At the end of every
course all the fine linen on the table was changed. Those who saw the
pyramids of choice wild fowl imagined that the entertainment had been
prepared for fifty epicures at the least. Only six birds’ nests from the
Nicobar islands were to be had in London; and all the six, bought at an
enormous price, were smoking in soup on the board. These fables were
destitute alike of probability and of evidence. But Grub Street could
devise no fable injurious to Montague which was not certain to find
credence in more than half the manor houses and vicarages of England.

It may seem strange that a man who loved literature passionately, and
rewarded literary merit munificently, should have been more savagely
reviled both in prose and verse than almost any other politician in our
history. But there is really no cause for wonder. A powerful, liberal and
discerning protector of genius is very likely to be mentioned with honour
long after his death, but is very likely also to be most brutally libelled
during his life. In every age there will be twenty bad writers for one
good one; and every bad writer will think himself a good one. A ruler who
neglects all men of letters alike does not wound the self love of any man
of letters. But a ruler who shows favour to the few men of letters who
deserve it inflicts on the many the miseries of disappointed hope, of
affronted pride, of jealousy cruel as the grave. All the rage of a
multitude of authors, irritated at once by the sting of want and by the
sting of vanity, is directed against the unfortunate patron. It is true
that the thanks and eulogies of those whom he has befriended will be
remembered when the invectives of those whom he has neglected are
forgotten. But in his own time the obloquy will probably make as much
noise and find as much credit as the panegyric. The name of Maecenas has
been made immortal by Horace and Virgil, and is popularly used to
designate an accomplished statesman, who lives in close intimacy with the
greatest poets and wits of his time, and heaps benefits on them with the
most delicate generosity. But it may well be suspected that, if the verses
of Alpinus and Fannius, of Bavius and Maevius, had come down to us, we
might see Maecenas represented as the most niggardly and tasteless of
human beings, nay as a man who, on system, neglected and persecuted all
intellectual superiority. It is certain that Montague was thus represented
by contemporary scribblers. They told the world in essays, in letters, in
dialogues, in ballads, that he would do nothing for anybody without being
paid either in money or in some vile services; that he not only never
rewarded merit, but hated it whenever he saw it; that he practised the
meanest arts for the purpose of depressing it; that those whom he
protected and enriched were not men of ability and virtue, but wretches
distinguished only by their sycophancy and their low debaucheries. And
this was said of the man who made the fortune of Joseph Addison, and of
Isaac Newton.

Nothing had done more to diminish the influence of Montague in the House
of Commons than a step which he had taken a few weeks before the meeting
of the Parliament. It would seem that the result of the general election
had made him uneasy, and that he had looked anxiously round him for some
harbour in which he might take refuge from the storms which seemed to be
gathering. While his thoughts were thus employed, he learned that the
Auditorship of the Exchequer had suddenly become vacant. The Auditorship
was held for life. The duties were formal and easy. The gains were
uncertain; for they rose and fell with the public expenditure; but they
could hardly, in time of peace, and under the most economical
administration, be less than four thousand pounds a year, and were likely,
in time of war, to be more than double of that sum. Montague marked this
great office for his own. He could not indeed take it, while he continued
to be in charge of the public purse. For it would have been indecent, and
perhaps illegal, that he should audit his own accounts. He therefore
selected his brother Christopher, whom he had lately made a Commissioner
of the Excise, to keep the place for him. There was, as may easily be
supposed, no want of powerful and noble competitors for such a prize.
Leeds had, more than twenty years before, obtained from Charles the Second
a patent granting the reversion to Caermarthen. Godolphin, it was said,
pleaded a promise made by William. But Montague maintained, and was, it
seems, right in maintaining, that both the patent of Charles and the
promise of William had been given under a mistake, and that the right of
appointing the Auditor belonged, not to the Crown, but to the Board of
Treasury. He carried his point with characteristic audacity and celerity.
The news of the vacancy reached London on a Sunday. On the Tuesday the new
Auditor was sworn in. The ministers were amazed. Even the Chancellor, with
whom Montague was on terms of intimate friendship, had not been consulted.
Godolphin devoured his ill temper. Caermarthen ordered out his wonderful
yacht, and hastened to complain to the King, who was then at Loo. But what
had been done could not be undone.

This bold stroke placed Montague’s fortune, in the lower sense of the
word, out of hazard, but increased the animosity of his enemies and cooled
the zeal of his adherents. In a letter written by one of his colleagues,
Secretary Vernon, on the day after the appointment, the Auditorship is
described as at once a safe and lucrative place. “But I thought,” Vernon
proceeds, “Mr. Montague was too aspiring to stoop to any thing below the
height he was in, and that he least considered profit.” This feeling was
no doubt shared by many of the friends of the ministry. It was plain that
Montague was preparing a retreat for himself. This flinching of the
captain, just on the eve of a perilous campaign, naturally disheartened
the whole army. It deserves to be remarked that, more than eighty years
later, another great parliamentary leader was placed in a very similar
situation. The younger William Pitt held in 1784 the same offices which
Montague had held in 1698. Pitt was pressed in 1784 by political
difficulties not less than those with which Montague had contended in
1698. Pitt was also in 1784 a much poorer man than Montague in 1698. Pitt,
in 1784, like Montage in 1698, had at his own absolute disposal a
lucrative sinecure place in the Exchequer. Pitt gave away the office which
would have made him an opulent man, and gave it away in such a manner as
at once to reward unfortunate merit, and to relieve the country from a
burden. For this disinterestedness he was repaid by the enthusiastic
applause of his followers, by the enforced respect of his opponents, and
by the confidence which, through all the vicissitudes of a chequered and
at length disastrous career, the great body of Englishmen reposed in his
public spirit and in his personal integrity. In the intellectual qualities
of a statesman Montague was probably not inferior to Pitt. But the
magnanimity, the dauntless courage, the contempt for riches and for
baubles, to which, more than to any intellectual quality, Pitt owed his
long ascendency, were wanting to Montague.

The faults of Montague were great; but his punishment was cruel. It was
indeed a punishment which must have been more bitter than the bitterness
of death to a man whose vanity was exquisitely sensitive, and who had been
spoiled by early and rapid success and by constant prosperity. Before the
new Parliament had been a month sitting it was plain that his empire was
at an end. He spoke with the old eloquence; but his speeches no longer
called forth the old response. Whatever he proposed was maliciously
scrutinised. The success of his budget of the preceding year had surpassed
all expectation. The two millions which he had undertaken to find had been
raised with a rapidity which seemed magical. Yet for bringing the riches
of the City, in an unprecedented flood, to overflow the Exchequer he was
reviled as if his scheme had failed more ludicrously than the Tory Land
Bank. Emboldened by his unpopularity, the Old East India Company presented
a petition praying that the General Society Act, which his influence and
eloquence had induced the late Parliament to pass, might be extensively
modified. Howe took the matter up. It was moved that leave should be given
to bring in a bill according to the prayer of the petition; the motion was
carried by a hundred and seventy-five votes to a hundred and forty-eight;
and the whole question of the trade with the Eastern seas was reopened.
The bill was brought in, but was, with great difficulty and by a very
small majority, thrown out on the second reading. 17 On other
financial questions Montague, so lately the oracle of the Committee of
Supply, was now heard with malevolent distrust. If his enemies were unable
to detect any flaw in his reasonings and calculations, they could at least
whisper that Mr. Montague was very cunning, that it was not easy to track
him, but that it might be taken for granted that for whatever he did he
had some sinister motive, and that the safest course was to negative
whatever he proposed. Though that House of Commons was economical even to
a vice, the majority preferred paying high interest to paying low
interest, solely because the plan for raising money at low interest had
been framed by him. In a despatch from the Dutch embassy the States
General were informed that many of the votes of that session which had
caused astonishment out of doors were to be ascribed to nothing but to the
bitter envy which the ability and fame of Montague had excited. It was not
without a hard struggle and a sharp pang that the first Englishman who has
held that high position which has now been long called the Leadership of
the House of Commons submitted to be deposed. But he was set upon with
cowardly malignity by whole rows of small men none of whom singly would
have dared to look him in the face. A contemporary pamphleteer compared
him to an owl in the sunshine pursued and pecked to death by flights of
tiny birds. On one occasion he was irritated into uttering an oath. Then
there was a cry of Order; and he was threatened with the Serjeant and the
Tower. On another occasion he was moved even to shedding tears of rage and
vexation, tears which only moved the mockery of his low minded and bad
hearted foes.

If a minister were now to find himself thus situated in a House of Commons
which had just been elected, and from which it would therefore be idle to
appeal to the electors, he would instantly resign his office, and his
adversaries would take his place. The change would be most advantageous to
the public, even if we suppose his successor to be both less virtuous and
less able than himself. For it is much better for the country to have a
bad ministry than to have no ministry at all, and there would be no
ministry at all if the executive departments were filled by men whom the
representatives of the people took every opportunity of thwarting and
insulting. That an unprincipled man should be followed by a majority of
the House of Commons is no doubt an evil. But, when this is the case, he
will nowhere be so harmless as at the head of affairs. As he already
possesses the power to do boundless mischief, it is desirable to give him
a strong motive to abstain from doing mischief; and such a motive he has
from the moment that he is entrusted with the administration. Office of
itself does much to equalise politicians. It by no means brings all
characters to a level; but it does bring high characters down and low
characters up towards a common standard. In power the most patriotic and
most enlightened statesman finds that he must disappoint the expectations
of his admirers; that, if he effects any good, he must effect it by
compromise; that he must relinquish many favourite schemes; that he must
bear with many abuses. On the other hand, power turns the very vices of
the most worthless adventurer, his selfish ambition, his sordid cupidity,
his vanity, his cowardice, into a sort of public spirit. The most greedy
and cruel wrecker that ever put up false lights to lure mariners to their
destruction will do his best to preserve a ship from going to pieces on
the rocks, if he is taken on board of her and made pilot; and so the most
profligate Chancellor of the Exchequer most wish that trade may flourish,
that the revenue may come in well, and that he may be able to take taxes
off instead of putting them on. The most profligate First Lord of the
Admiralty must wish to receive news of a victory like that of the Nile
rather than of a mutiny like that at the Nore. There is, therefore, a
limit to the evil which is to be apprehended from the worst ministry that
is likely ever to exist in England. But to the evil of having no ministry,
to the evil of having a House of Commons permanently at war with the
executive government, there is absolutely no limit. This was signally
proved in 1699 and 1700. Had the statesmen of the junto, as soon as they
had ascertained the temper of the new Parliament, acted as statesmen
similarly situated would now act, great calamities would have been
averted. The chiefs of the opposition must then have been called upon to
form a government. With the power of the late ministry the responsibility
of the late ministry would have been transferred to them; and that
responsibility would at once have sobered them. The orator whose eloquence
had been the delight of the Country party would have had to exert his
ingenuity on a new set of topics. There would have been an end of his
invectives against courtiers and placemen, of piteous meanings about the
intolerable weight of the land tax, of his boasts that the militia of Kent
and Sussex, without the help of a single regular soldier, would turn the
conquerors of Landen to the right about. He would himself have been a
courtier; he would himself have been a placeman; he would have known that
he should be held accountable for all the misery which a national
bankruptcy or a French invasion might produce; and, instead of labouring
to get up a clamour for the reduction of imposts, and the disbanding of
regiments, he would have employed all his talents and influence for the
purpose of obtaining from Parliament the means of supporting public
credit, and of putting the country in a good posture of defence. Meanwhile
the statesmen who were out might have watched the new men, might have
checked them when they were wrong, might have come to their help when, by
doing right, they had raised a mutiny in their own absurd and perverse
faction. In this way Montague and Somers might, in opposition, have been
really far more powerful than they could be while they filled the highest
posts in the executive government and were outvoted every day in the House
of Commons. Their retirement would have mitigated envy; their abilities
would have been missed and regretted; their unpopularity would have passed
to their successors, who would have grievously disappointed vulgar
expectation, and would have been under the necessity of eating their own
words in every debate. The league between the Tories and the discontented
Whigs would have been dissolved; and it is probable that, in a session or
two, the public voice would have loudly demanded the recall of the best
Keeper of the Great Seal, and of the best First Lord of the Treasury, the
oldest man living could remember.

But these lessons, the fruits of the experience of five generations, had
never been taught to the politicians of the seventeenth century. Notions
imbibed before the Revolution still kept possession of the public mind.
Not even Somers, the foremost man of his age in civil wisdom, thought it
strange that one party should be in possession of the executive
administration while the other predominated in the legislature. Thus, at
the beginning of 1699, there ceased to be a ministry; and years elapsed
before the servants of the Crown and the representatives of the people
were again joined in an union as harmonious as that which had existed from
the general election of 1695 to the general election of 1698. The anarchy
lasted, with some short intervals of composedness, till the general
election of 1765. No portion of our parliamentary history is less pleasing
or more instructive. It will be seen that the House of Commons became
altogether ungovernable, abused its gigantic power with unjust and
insolent caprice, browbeat King and Lords, the Courts of Common Law and
the Constituent bodies, violated rights guaranteed by the Great Charter,
and at length made itself so odious that the people were glad to take
shelter, under the protection of the throne and of the hereditary
aristocracy, from the tyranny of the assembly which had been chosen by
themselves.

The evil which had brought on so much discredit on representative
institutions was of gradual though of rapid growth, and did not, in the
first session of the Parliament of 1698, take the most alarming form. The
lead of the House of Commons had, however, entirely passed away from
Montague, who was still the first minister of finance, to the chiefs of
the turbulent and discordant opposition. Among those chiefs the most
powerful was Harley, who, while almost constantly acting with the Tories
and High Churchmen, continued to use, on occasions cunningly selected, the
political and religious phraseology which he had learned in his youth
among the Roundheads. He thus, while high in the esteem of the country
gentlemen and even of his hereditary enemies, the country parsons,
retained a portion of the favour with which he and his ancestors had long
been regarded by Whigs and Nonconformists. He was therefore peculiarly
well qualified to act as mediator between the two sections of the
majority.

The bill for the disbanding of the army passed with little opposition
through the House till it reached the last stage. Then, at length, a stand
was made, but in vain. Vernon wrote the next day to Shrewsbury that the
ministers had had a division which they need not be ashamed of; for that
they had mustered a hundred and fifty-four against two hundred and
twenty-one. Such a division would not be considered as matter of boast by
a Secretary of State in our time.

The bill went up to the House of Lords, where it was regarded with no
great favour. But this was not one of those occasions on which the House
of Lords can act effectually as a check on the popular branch of the
legislature. No good would have been done by rejecting the bill for
disbanding the troops, unless the King could have been furnished with the
means of maintaining them; and with such means he could be furnished only
by the House of Commons. Somers, in a speech of which both the eloquence
and the wisdom were greatly admired, placed the question in the true
light. He set forth strongly the dangers to which the jealousy and
parsimony of the representatives of the people exposed the country. But
any thing, he said, was better than that the King and the Peers should
engage, without hope of success, in an acrimonious conflict with the
Commons. Tankerville spoke with his usual ability on the same side.
Nottingham and the other Tories remained silent; and the bill passed
without a division.

By this time the King’s strong understanding had mastered, as it seldom
failed, after a struggle, to master, his rebellious temper. He had made up
his mind to fulfil his great mission to the end. It was with no common
pain that he admitted it to be necessary for him to give his assent to the
disbanding bill. But in this case it would have been worse than useless to
resort to his veto. For, if the bill had been rejected, the army would
have been dissolved, and he would have been left without even the seven
thousand men whom the Commons were willing to allow him. He determined,
therefore, to comply with the wish of his people, and at the same time to
give them a weighty and serious but friendly admonition. Never had he
succeeded better in suppressing the outward signs of his emotions than on
the day on which he carried this determination into effect. The public
mind was much excited. The crowds in the parks and streets were immense.
The Jacobites came in troops, hoping to enjoy the pleasure of reading
shame and rage on the face of him whom they most hated and dreaded. The
hope was disappointed. The Prussian Minister, a discerning observer, free
from the passions which distracted English society, accompanied the royal
procession from St. James’s Palace to Westminster Hall. He well knew how
bitterly William had been mortified, and was astonished to see him present
himself to the public gaze with a serene and cheerful aspect.

The speech delivered from the throne was much admired; and the
correspondent of the States General acknowledged that he despaired of
exhibiting in a French translation the graces of style which distinguished
the original. Indeed that weighty, simple and dignified eloquence which
becomes the lips of a sovereign was seldom wanting in any composition of
which the plan was furnished by William and the language by Somers. The
King informed the Lords and Commons that he had come down to pass their
bill as soon as it was ready for him. He could not indeed but think that
they had carried the reduction of the army to a dangerous extent. He could
not but feel that they had treated him unkindly in requiring him to part
with those guards who had come over with him to deliver England, and who
had since been near him on every field of battle. But it was his fixed
opinion that nothing could be so pernicious to the State as that he should
be regarded by his people with distrust, distrust of which he had not
expected to be the object after what he had endeavoured, ventured, and
acted, to restore and to secure their liberties. He had now, he said, told
the Houses plainly the reason, the only reason, which had induced him to
pass their bill; and it was his duty to tell them plainly, in discharge of
his high trust, and in order that none might hold him accountable for the
evils which he had vainly endeavoured to avert, that, in his judgment, the
nation was left too much exposed.

When the Commons had returned to their chamber, and the King’s speech had
been read from the chair, Howe attempted to raise a storm. A gross insult
had been offered to the House. The King ought to be asked who had put such
words into his mouth. But the spiteful agitator found no support. The
majority were so much pleased with the King for promptly passing the bill
that they were not disposed to quarrel with him for frankly declaring that
he disliked it. It was resolved without a division that an address should
be presented, thanking him for his gracious speech and for his ready
compliance with the wishes of his people, and assuring him that his
grateful Commons would never forget the great things which he had done for
the country, would never give him cause to think them unkind or undutiful,
and would, on all occasions, stand by him against all enemies.

Just at this juncture tidings arrived which might well raise misgivings in
the minds of those who had voted for reducing the national means of
defence. The Electoral Prince of Bavaria was no more. The Gazette which
announced that the Disbanding Bill had received the royal assent informed
the public that he was dangerously ill at Brussels. The next Gazette
contained the news of his death. Only a few weeks had elapsed since all
who were anxious for the peace of the world had learned with joy that he
had been named heir to the Spanish throne. That the boy just entering upon
life with such hopes should die, while the wretched Charles, long ago half
dead, continued to creep about between his bedroom and his chapel, was an
event for which, notwithstanding the proverbial uncertainty of life, the
minds of men were altogether unprepared. A peaceful solution of the great
question now seemed impossible. France and Austria were left confronting
each other. Within a month the whole Continent might be in arms. Pious men
saw in this stroke, so sudden and so terrible, the plain signs of the
divine displeasure. God had a controversy with the nations. Nine years of
fire, of slaughter and of famine had not been sufficient to reclaim a
guilty world; and a second and more severe chastisement was at hand.
Others muttered that the event which all good men lamented was to be
ascribed to unprincipled ambition. It would indeed have been strange if,
in that age, so important a death, happening at so critical a moment, had
not been imputed to poison. The father of the deceased Prince loudly
accused the Court of Vienna; and the imputation, though not supported by
the slightest evidence, was, during some time, believed by the vulgar.

The politicians at the Dutch embassy imagined that now at length the
parliament would listen to reason. It seemed that even the country
gentlemen must begin to contemplate the probability of an alarming crisis.
The merchants of the Royal Exchange, much better acquainted than the
country gentlemen with foreign lands, and much more accustomed than the
country gentlemen to take large views, were in great agitation. Nobody
could mistake the beat of that wonderful pulse which had recently begun,
and has during five generations continued, to indicate the variations of
the body politic. When Littleton was chosen speaker, the stocks rose. When
it was resolved that the army should be reduced to seven thousand men, the
stocks fell. When the death of the Electoral Prince was known, they fell
still lower. The subscriptions to a new loan, which the Commons had, from
mere spite to Montague, determined to raise on conditions of which he
disapproved, came in very slowly. The signs of a reaction of feeling were
discernible both in and out of Parliament. Many men are alarmists by
constitution. Trenchard and Howe had frightened most men by writing and
talking about the danger to which liberty and property would be exposed if
the government were allowed to keep a large body of Janissaries in pay.
The danger had ceased to exist; and those people who must always be afraid
of something, as they could no longer be afraid of a standing army, began
to be afraid of the French King. There was a turn in the tide of public
opinion; and no part of statesmanship is more important than the art of
taking the tide of public opinion at the turn. On more than one occasion
William showed himself a master of that art. But, on the present occasion,
a sentiment, in itself amiable and respectable, led him to commit the
greatest mistake of his whole life. Had he at this conjuncture again
earnestly pressed on the Houses the importance of providing for the
defence of the kingdom, and asked of them an additional number of English
troops, it is not improbable that he might have carried his point; it is
certain that, if he had failed, there would have been nothing ignominious
in his failure. Unhappily, instead of raising a great public question, on
which he was in the right, on which he had a good chance of succeeding,
and on which he might have been defeated without any loss of dignity, he
chose to raise a personal question, on which he was in the wrong, on
which, right or wrong, he was sure to be beaten, and on which he could not
be beaten without being degraded. Instead of pressing for more English
regiments, he exerted all his influence to obtain for the Dutch guards
permission to remain in the island.

The first trial of strength was in the Upper House. A resolution was moved
there to the effect that the Lords would gladly concur in any plan that
could be suggested for retaining the services of the Dutch brigade. The
motion was carried by fifty-four votes to thirty-eight. But a protest was
entered, and was signed by all the minority. It is remarkable that
Devonshire was, and that Marlborough was not, one of the Dissentients.
Marlborough had formerly made himself conspicuous by the keenness and
pertinacity with which he had attacked the Dutch. But he had now made his
peace with the Court, and was in the receipt of a large salary from the
civil list. He was in the House on that day; and therefore, if he voted,
must have voted with the majority. The Cavendishes had generally been
strenuous supporters of the King and the junto. But on the subject of the
foreign troops Hartington in one House and his father in the other were
intractable.

This vote of the Lords caused much murmuring among the Commons. It was
said to be most unparliamentary to pass a bill one week, and the next week
to pass a resolution condemning that bill. It was true that the bill had
been passed before the death of the Electoral Prince was known in London.
But that unhappy event, though it might be a good reason for increasing
the English army, could be no reason for departing from the principle that
the English army should consist of Englishmen. A gentleman who despised
the vulgar clamour against professional soldiers, who held the doctrine of
Somers’s Balancing Letter, and who was prepared to vote for twenty or even
thirty thousand men, might yet well ask why any of those men should be
foreigners. Were our countrymen naturally inferior to men of other races
in any of the qualities which, under proper training, make excellent
soldiers? That assuredly was not the opinion of the Prince who had, at the
head of Ormond’s Life Guards, driven the French household troops, till,
then invincible, back over the ruins of Neerwinden, and whose eagle eye
and applauding voice had followed Cutts’s grenadiers up the glacis of
Namur. Bitter spirited malecontents muttered that, since there was no
honourable service which could not be as well performed by the natives of
the realm as by alien mercenaries, it might well be suspected that the
King wanted his alien mercenaries for some service not honourable. If it
were necessary to repel a French invasion or to put down an Irish
insurrection, the Blues and the Buffs would stand by him to the death.
But, if his object were to govern in defiance of the votes of his
Parliament and of the cry of his people, he might well apprehend that
English swords and muskets would, at the crisis, fail him, as they had
failed his father in law, and might well wish to surround himself with men
who were not of our blood, who had no reverence for our laws, and no
sympathy with our feelings. Such imputations could find credit with no
body superior in intelligence to those clownish squires who with
difficulty managed to spell out Dyer’s Letter over their ale. Men of sense
and temper admitted that William had never shown any disposition to
violate the solemn compact which he had made with the nation, and that,
even if he were depraved enough to think of destroying the constitution by
military violence, he was not imbecile enough to imagine that the Dutch
brigade, or five such brigades, would suffice for his purpose. But such
men, while they fully acquitted him of the design attributed to him by
factious malignity, could not acquit him of a partiality which it was
natural that he should feel, but which it would have been wise in him to
hide, and with which it was impossible that his subjects should
sympathise. He ought to have known that nothing is more offensive to free
and proud nations than the sight of foreign uniforms and standards. Though
not much conversant with books, he must have been acquainted with the
chief events in the history of his own illustrious House; and he could
hardly have been ignorant that his great grandfather had commenced a long
and glorious struggle against despotism by exciting the States General of
Ghent to demand that all Spanish troops should be withdrawn from the
Netherlands. The final parting between the tyrant and the future deliverer
was not an event to be forgotten by any of the race of Nassau. “It was the
States, Sir,” said the Prince of Orange. Philip seized his wrist with a
convulsive grasp, and exclaimed, “Not the States, but you, you, you.”

William, however, determined to try whether a request made by himself in
earnest and almost supplicating terms would induce his subjects to indulge
his national partiality at the expense of their own. None of his ministers
could flatter him with any hope of success. But on this subject he was too
much excited to hear reason. He sent down to the Commons a message, not
merely signed by himself according to the usual form, but written
throughout with his own hand. He informed them that the necessary
preparations had been made for sending away the guards who came with him
to England, and that they would immediately embark, unless the House
should, out of consideration for him, be disposed to retain them, which he
should take very kindly. When the message had been read, a member proposed
that a day might be fixed for the consideration of the subject. But the
chiefs of the majority would not consent to any thing which might seem to
indicate hesitation, and moved the previous question. The ministers were
in a false position. It was out of their power to answer Harley when he
sarcastically declared that he did not suspect them of having advised His
Majesty on this occasion. If, he said, those gentlemen had thought it
desirable that the Dutch brigade should remain in the kingdom, they would
have done so before. There had been many opportunities of raising the
question in a perfectly regular manner during the progress of the
Disbanding Bill. Of those opportunities nobody had thought fit to avail
himself; and it was now too late to reopen the question. Most of the other
members who spoke against taking the message into consideration took the
same line, declined discussing points which might have been discussed when
the Disbanding Bill was before the House, and declared merely that they
could not consent to any thing so unparliamentary as the repealing of an
Act which had just been passed. But this way of dealing with the message
was far too mild and moderate to satisfy the implacable malice of Howe. In
his courtly days he had vehemently called on the King to use the Dutch for
the purpose of quelling the insubordination of the English regiments.
“None but the Dutch troops,” he said, “are to be trusted.” He was now not
ashamed to draw a parallel between those very Dutch troops and the Popish
Kernes whom James had brought over from Munster and Connaught to enslave
our island. The general feeling was such that the previous question was
carried without a division. A Committee was immediately appointed to draw
up an address explaining the reasons which made it impossible for the
House to comply with His Majesty’s wish. At the next sitting the Committee
reported; and on the report there was an animated debate. The friends of
the government thought the proposed address offensive. The most
respectable members of the majority felt that it would be ungraceful to
aggravate by harsh language the pain which must be caused by their
conscientious opposition to the King’s wishes. Some strong expressions
were therefore softened down; some courtly phrases were inserted; but the
House refused to omit one sentence which almost reproachfully reminded the
King that in his memorable Declaration of 1688 he had promised to send
back all the foreign forces as soon as he had effected the deliverance of
this country. The division was, however, very close. There were one
hundred and fifty-seven votes for omitting this passage, and one hundred
and sixty-three for retaining it. 18

The address was presented by the whole House. William’s answer was as good
as it was possible for him, in the unfortunate position in which he had
placed himself, to return. It showed that he was deeply hurt; but it was
temperate and dignified. Those who saw him in private knew that his
feelings had been cruelly lacerated. His body sympathised with his mind.
His sleep was broken. His headaches tormented him more than ever. From
those whom he had been in the habit of considering as his friends, and who
had failed him in the recent struggle, he did not attempt to conceal his
displeasure. The lucrative see of Worcester was vacant; and some powerful
Whigs of the cider country wished to obtain it for John Hall, Bishop of
Bristol. One of the Foleys, a family zealous for the Revolution, but
hostile to standing armies, spoke to the King on the subject. “I will pay
as much respect to your wishes,” said William, “as you and yours have paid
to mine.” Lloyd of St. Asaph was translated to Worcester.

The Dutch Guards immediately began to march to the coast. After all the
clamour which had been raised against them, the populace witnessed their
departure rather with sorrow than with triumph. They had been long
domiciled here; they had been honest and inoffensive; and many of them
were accompanied by English wives and by young children who talked no
language but English. As they traversed the capital, not a single shout of
exultation was raised; and they were almost everywhere greeted with
kindness. One rude spectator, indeed, was heard to remark that Hans made a
much better figure, now that he had been living ten years on the fat of
the land, than when he first came. “A pretty figure you would have made,”
said a Dutch soldier, “if we had not come.” And the retort was generally
applauded. It would not, however, be reasonable to infer from the signs of
public sympathy and good will with which the foreigners were dismissed
that the nation wished them to remain. It was probably because they were
going that they were regarded with favour by many who would never have
seen them relieve guard at St. James’s without black looks and muttered
curses.

Side by side with the discussion about the land force had been proceeding
a discussion, scarcely less animated, about the naval administration. The
chief minister of marine was a man whom it had once been useless and even
perilous to attack in the Commons. It was to no purpose that, in 1693,
grave charges, resting on grave evidence, had been brought against the
Russell who had conquered at La Hogue. The name of Russell acted as a
spell on all who loved English freedom. The name of La Hogue acted as a
spell on all who were proud of the glory of the English arms. The
accusations, unexamined and unrefuted, were contemptuously flung aside;
and the thanks of the House were voted to the accused commander without
one dissentient voice. But times had changed. The Admiral still had
zealous partisans; but the fame of his exploits had lost their gloss;
people in general were quick to discern his faults; and his faults were
but too discernible. That he had carried on a traitorous correspondence
with Saint Germains had not been proved, and had been pronounced by the
representatives of the people to be a foul calumny. Yet the imputation had
left a stain on his name. His arrogant, insolent and quarrelsome temper
made him an object of hatred. His vast and growing wealth made him an
object of envy. What his official merits and demerits really were it is
not easy to discover through the mist made up of factious abuse and
factious panegyric. One set of writers described him as the most ravenous
of all the plunderers of the poor overtaxed nation. Another set asserted
that under him the ships were better built and rigged, the crews were
better disciplined and better tempered, the biscuit was better, the beer
was better, the slops were better, than under any of his predecessors; and
yet that the charge to the public was less than it had been when the
vessels were unseaworthy, when the sailors were riotous, when the food was
alive with vermin, when the drink tasted like tanpickle, and when the
clothes and hammocks were rotten. It may, however, be observed that these
two representations are not inconsistent with each other; and there is
strong reason to believe that both are, to a great extent, true. Orford
was covetous and unprincipled; but he had great professional skill and
knowledge, great industry, and a strong will. He was therefore an useful
servant of the state when the interests of the state were not opposed to
his own; and this was more than could be said of some who had preceded
him. He was, for example, an incomparably better administrator than
Torrington. For Torrington’s weakness and negligence caused ten times as
much mischief as his rapacity. But, when Orford had nothing to gain by
doing what was wrong, he did what was right, and did it ably and
diligently. Whatever Torrington did not embezzle he wasted. Orford may
have embezzled as much as Torrington; but he wasted nothing.

Early in the session, the House of Commons resolved itself into a
Committee on the state of the Navy. This Committee sate at intervals
during more than three months. Orford’s administration underwent a close
scrutiny, and very narrowly escaped a severe censure. A resolution
condemning the manner in which his accounts had been kept was lost by only
one vote. There were a hundred and forty against him, and a hundred and
forty-one for him. When the report was presented to the House, another
attempt was made to put a stigma upon him. It was moved that the King
should be requested to place the direction of maritime affairs in other
hands. There were a hundred and sixty Ayes to a hundred and sixty-four
Noes. With this victory, a victory hardly to be distinguished from a
defeat, his friends were forced to be content. An address setting forth
some of the abuses in the naval department, and beseeching King William to
correct them, was voted without a division. In one of those abuses Orford
was deeply interested. He was First Lord of the Admiralty; and he had
held, ever since the Revolution, the lucrative place of Treasurer of the
Navy. It was evidently improper that two offices, one of which was meant
to be a check on the other, should be united in the same person; and this
the Commons represented to the King.

Questions relating to the military and naval Establishments occupied the
attention of the Commons so much during the session that, until the
prorogation was at hand, little was said about the resumption of the Crown
grants. But, just before the Land Tax Bill was sent up to the Lords, a
clause was added to it by which seven Commissioners were empowered to take
account of the property forfeited in Ireland during the late troubles. The
selection of those Commissioners the House reserved to itself. Every
member was directed to bring a list containing the names of seven persons
who were not members; and the seven names which appeared in the greatest
number of lists were inserted in the bill. The result of the ballot was
unfavourable to the government. Four of the seven on whom the choice fell
were connected with the opposition; and one of them, Trenchard, was the
most conspicuous of the pamphleteers who had been during many months
employed in raising a cry against the army.

The Land Tax Bill, with this clause tacked to it, was carried to the Upper
House. The Peers complained, and not without reason, of this mode of
proceeding. It may, they said, be very proper that Commissioners should be
appointed by Act of Parliament to take account of the forfeited property
in Ireland. But they should be appointed by a separate Act. Then we should
be able to make amendments, to ask for conferences, to give and receive
explanations. The Land Tax Bill we cannot amend. We may indeed reject it;
but we cannot reject it without shaking public credit, without leaving the
kingdom defenceless, without raising a mutiny in the navy. The Lords
yielded, but not without a protest which was signed by some strong Whigs
and some strong Tories. The King was even more displeased than the Peers.
“This Commission,” he said, in one of his private letters, “will give
plenty of trouble next winter.” It did indeed give more trouble than he at
all anticipated, and brought the nation nearer than it has ever since been
to the verge of another revolution.

And now the supplies had been voted. The spring was brightening and
blooming into summer. The lords and squires were sick of London; and the
King was sick of England. On the fourth day of May he prorogued the Houses
with a speech very different from the speeches with which he had been in
the habit of dismissing the preceding Parliament. He uttered not one word
of thanks or praise. He expressed a hope that, when they should meet
again, they would make effectual provision for the public safety. “I
wish,” these were his concluding words, “no mischief may happen in the
mean time.” The gentlemen who thronged the bar withdrew in wrath, and, as
they could not take immediate vengeance, laid up his reproaches in their
hearts against the beginning of the next session.

The Houses had broken up; but there was still much to be done before the
King could set out for Loo. He did not yet perceive that the true way to
escape from his difficulties was to form an entirely new ministry
possessing the confidence of the majority which had, in the late session,
been found so unmanageable. But some partial changes he could not help
making. The recent votes of the Commons forced him seriously to consider
the state of the Board of Admiralty. It was impossible that Orford could
continue to preside at that Board and be at the same time Treasurer of the
Navy. He was offered his option. His own wish was to keep the
Treasurership, which was both the more lucrative and the more secure of
his two places. But it was so strongly represented to him that he would
disgrace himself by giving up great power for the sake of gains which,
rich and childless as he was, ought to have been beneath his
consideration, that he determined to remain at the Admiralty. He seems to
have thought that the sacrifice which he had made entitled him to govern
despotically the department at which he had been persuaded to remain. But
he soon found that the King was determined to keep in his own hands the
power of appointing and removing the junior Lords. One of these Lords,
especially, the First Commissioner hated, and was bent on ejecting, Sir
George Rooke, who was Member of Parliament for Portsmouth. Rooke was a
brave and skilful officer, and had, therefore, though a Tory in politics,
been suffered to keep his place during the ascendency of the Whig junto.
Orford now complained to the King that Rooke had been in correspondence
with the factious opposition which had given so much trouble, and had lent
the weight of his professional and official authority to the accusations
which had been brought against the naval administration. The King spoke to
Rooke, who declared that Orford had been misinformed. “I have a great
respect for my Lord; and on proper occasions I have not failed to express
it in public. There have certainly been abuses at the Admiralty which I am
unable to defend. When those abuses have been the subject of debate in the
House of Commons, I have sate silent. But, whenever any personal attack
has been made on my Lord, I have done him the best service that I could.”
William was satisfied, and thought that Orford should have been satisfied
too. But that haughty and perverse nature could be content with nothing
but absolute dominion. He tendered his resignation, and could not be
induced to retract it. He said that he could be of no use. It would be
easy to supply his place; and his successors should have his best wishes.
He then retired to the country, where, as was reported and may easily be
believed, he vented his ill humour in furious invectives against the King.
The Treasurership of the Navy was given to the Speaker Littleton. The Earl
of Bridgewater, a nobleman of very fair character and of some experience
in business, became First Lord of the Admiralty.

Other changes were made at the same time. There had during some time been
really no Lord President of the Council. Leeds, indeed, was still called
Lord President, and, as such, took precedence of dukes of older creation;
but he had not performed any of the duties of his office since the
prosecution instituted against him by the Commons in 1695 had been
suddenly stopped by an event which made the evidence of his guilt at once
legally defective and morally complete. It seems strange that a statesman
of eminent ability, who had been twice Prime Minister, should have wished
to hold, by so ignominious a tenure, a place which can have had no
attraction for him but the salary. To that salary, however, Leeds had
clung, year after year; and he now relinquished it with a very bad grace.
He was succeeded by Pembroke; and the Privy Seal which Pembroke laid down
was put into the hands of a peer of recent creation, Viscount Lonsdale.
Lonsdale had been distinguished in the House of Commons as Sir John
Lowther, and had held high office, but had quitted public life in
weariness and disgust, and had passed several years in retirement at his
hereditary seat in Cumberland. He had planted forests round his house, and
had employed Verrio to decorate the interior with gorgeous frescoes which
represented the gods at their banquet of ambrosia. Very reluctantly, and
only in compliance with the earnest and almost angry importunity of the
King, Lonsdale consented to leave his magnificent retreat, and again to
encounter the vexations of public life.

Trumball resigned the Secretaryship of State; and the Seals which he had
held were given to Jersey, who was succeeded at Paris by the Earl of
Manchester.

It is to be remarked that the new Privy Seal and the new Secretary of
State were moderate Tories. The King had probably hoped that, by calling
them to his councils, he should conciliate the opposition. But the device
proved unsuccessful; and soon it appeared that the old practice of filling
the chief offices of state with men taken from various parties, and
hostile to one another, or, at least, unconnected with one another, was
altogether unsuited to the new state of affairs; and that, since the
Commons had become possessed of supreme power, the only way to prevent
them from abusing that power with boundless folly and violence was to
intrust the government to a ministry which enjoyed their confidence.

While William was making these changes in the great offices of state, a
change in which he took a still deeper interest was taking place in his
own household. He had laboured in vain during many months to keep the
peace between Portland and Albemarle. Albemarle, indeed, was all courtesy,
good humour, and submission; but Portland would not be conciliated. Even
to foreign ministers he railed at his rival and complained of his master.
The whole Court was divided between the competitors, but divided very
unequally. The majority took the side of Albemarle, whose manners were
popular and whose power was evidently growing. Portland’s few adherents
were persons who, like him, had already made their fortunes, and who did
not therefore think it worth their while to transfer their homage to a new
patron. One of these persons tried to enlist Prior in Portland’s faction,
but with very little success. “Excuse me,” said the poet, “if I follow
your example and my Lord’s. My Lord is a model to us all; and you have
imitated him to good purpose. He retires with half a million. You have
large grants, a lucrative employment in Holland, a fine house. I have
nothing of the kind. A court is like those fashionable churches into which
we have looked at Paris. Those who have received the benediction are
instantly away to the Opera House or the wood of Boulogne. Those who have
not received the benediction are pressing and elbowing each other to get
near the altar. You and my Lord have got your blessing, and are quite
right to take yourselves off with it. I have not been blest, and must
fight my way up as well as I can.” Prior’s wit was his own. But his
worldly wisdom was common to him with multitudes; and the crowd of those
who wanted to be lords of the bedchamber, rangers of parks, and
lieutenants of counties, neglected Portland and tried to ingratiate
themselves with Albemarle.

By one person, however, Portland was still assiduously courted; and that
person was the King. Nothing was omitted which could soothe an irritated
mind. Sometimes William argued, expostulated and implored during two hours
together. But he found the comrade of his youth an altered man,
unreasonable, obstinate and disrespectful even before the public eye. The
Prussian minister, an observant and impartial witness, declared that his
hair had more than once stood on end to see the rude discourtesy with
which the servant repelled the gracious advances of the master. Over and
over William invited his old friend to take the long accustomed seat in
his royal coach, that seat which Prince George himself had never been
permitted to invade; and the invitation was over and over declined in a
way which would have been thought uncivil even between equals. A sovereign
could not, without a culpable sacrifice of his personal dignity, persist
longer in such a contest. Portland was permitted to withdraw from the
palace. To Heinsius, as to a common friend, William announced this
separation in a letter which shows how deeply his feelings had been
wounded. “I cannot tell you what I have suffered. I have done on my side
every thing that I could do to satisfy him; but it was decreed that a
blind jealousy should make him regardless of every thing that ought to
have been dear to him.” To Portland himself the King wrote in language
still more touching. “I hope that you will oblige me in one thing. Keep
your key of office. I shall not consider you as bound to any attendance.
But I beg you to let me see you as often as possible. That will be a great
mitigation of the distress which you have caused me. For, after all that
has passed, I cannot help loving you tenderly.”

Thus Portland retired to enjoy at his ease immense estates scattered over
half the shires of England, and a hoard of ready money, such, it was said,
as no other private man in Europe possessed. His fortune still continued
to grow. For, though, after the fashion of his countrymen, he laid out
large sums on the interior decoration of his houses, on his gardens, and
on his aviaries, his other expenses were regulated with strict frugality.
His repose was, however, during some years not uninterrupted. He had been
trusted with such grave secrets, and employed in such high missions, that
his assistance was still frequently necessary to the government; and that
assistance was given, not, as formerly, with the ardour of a devoted
friend, but with the exactness of a conscientious servant. He still
continued to receive letters from William; letters no longer indeed
overflowing with kindness, but always indicative of perfect confidence and
esteem.

The chief subject of those letters was the question which had been for a
time settled in the previous autumn at Loo, and which had been reopened in
the spring by the death of the Electoral Prince of Bavaria.

As soon as that event was known at Paris, Lewis directed Tallard to sound
William as to a new treaty. The first thought which occurred to William
was that it might be possible to put the Elector of Bavaria in his son’s
place. But this suggestion was coldly received at Versailles, and not
without reason. If, indeed, the young Francis Joseph had lived to succeed
Charles, and had then died a minor without issue, the case would have been
very different. Then the Elector would have been actually administering
the government of the Spanish monarchy, and, supported by France, England
and the United Provinces, might without much difficulty have continued to
rule as King the empire which he had begun to rule as Regent. He would
have had also, not indeed a right, but something which to the vulgar would
have looked like a right, to be his son’s heir. Now he was altogether
unconnected with Spain. No more reason could be given for selecting him to
be the Catholic King than for selecting the Margrave of Baden or the Grand
Duke of Tuscany. Something was said about Victor Amadeus of Savoy, and
something about the King of Portugal; but to both there were
insurmountable objections. It seemed, therefore, that the only choice was
between a French Prince and an Austrian Prince; and William learned, with
agreeable surprise, that Lewis might possibly be induced to suffer the
younger Archduke to be King of Spain and the Indies. It was intimated at
the same time that the House of Bourbon would expect, in return for so
great a concession to the rival House of Habsburg, greater advantages than
had been thought sufficient when the Dauphin consented to waive his claims
in favour of a candidate whose elevation could cause no jealousies. What
Lewis demanded, in addition to the portion formerly assigned to France,
was the Milanese. With the Milanese he proposed to buy Lorraine from its
Duke. To the Duke of Lorraine this arrangement would have been beneficial,
and to the people of Lorraine more beneficial still. They were, and had
long been, in a singularly unhappy situation. Lewis domineered over them
as if they had been his subjects, and troubled himself as little about
their happiness as if they had been his enemies. Since he exercised as
absolute a power over them as over the Normans and Burgundians, it was
desirable that he should have as great an interest in their welfare as in
the welfare of the Normans and Burgundians.

On the basis proposed by France William was willing to negotiate; and,
when, in June 1699, he left Kensington to pass the summer at Loo, the
terms of the treaty known as the Second Treaty of Partition were very
nearly adjusted. The great object now was to obtain the consent of the
Emperor. That consent, it should seem, ought to have been readily and even
eagerly given. Had it been given, it might perhaps have saved Christendom
from a war of eleven years. But the policy of Austria was, at that time,
strangely dilatory and irresolute. It was in vain that William and
Heinsius represented the importance of every hour. “The Emperor’s
ministers go on dawdling,” so the King wrote to Heinsius, “not because
there is any difficulty about the matter, not because they mean to reject
the terms, but solely because they are people who can make up their minds
to nothing.” While the negotiation at Vienna was thus drawn out into
endless length, evil tidings came from Madrid.

Spain and her King had long been sunk so low that it seemed impossible for
him to sink lower. Yet the political maladies of the monarchy and the
physical maladies of the monarch went on growing, and exhibited every day
some new and frightful symptom. Since the death of the Bavarian Prince,
the Court had been divided between the Austrian faction, of which the
Queen and the leading ministers Oropesa and Melgar were the chiefs, and
the French faction, of which the most important member was Cardinal
Portocarrero, Archbishop of Toledo. At length an event which, as far as
can now be judged, was not the effect of a deeply meditated plan, and was
altogether unconnected with the disputes about the succession, gave the
advantage to the adherents of France. The government, having committed the
great error of undertaking to supply Madrid with food, committed the still
greater error of neglecting to perform what it had undertaken. The price
of bread doubled. Complaints were made to the magistrates, and were heard
with the indolent apathy characteristic of the Spanish administration from
the highest to the lowest grade. Then the populace rose, attacked the
house of Oropesa, poured by thousands into the great court of the palace,
and insisted on seeing the King. The Queen appeared in a balcony, and told
the rioters that His Majesty was asleep. Then the multitude set up a roar
of fury. “It is false; we do not believe you. We will see him.” “He has
slept too long,” said one threatening voice; “and it is high time that he
should wake.” The Queen retired weeping; and the wretched being on whose
dominions the sun never set tottered to the window, bowed as he had never
bowed before, muttered some gracious promises, waved a handkerchief in the
air, bowed again, and withdrew. Oropesa, afraid of being torn to pieces,
retired to his country seat. Melgar made some show of resistance,
garrisoned his house, and menaced the rabble with a shower of grenades,
but was soon forced to go after Oropesa; and the supreme power passed to
Portocarrero.

Portocarrero was one of a race of men of whom we, happily for us, have
seen very little, but whose influence has been the curse of Roman Catholic
countries. He was, like Sixtus the Fourth and Alexander the Sixth, a
politician made out of an impious priest. Such politicians are generally
worse than the worst of the laity, more merciless than any ruffian that
can be found in camps, more dishonest than any pettifogger who haunts the
tribunals. The sanctity of their profession has an unsanctifying influence
on them. The lessons of the nursery, the habits of boyhood and of early
youth, leave in the minds of the great majority of avowed infidels some
traces of religion, which, in seasons of mourning and of sickness, become
plainly discernible. But it is scarcely possible that any such trace
should remain in the mind of the hypocrite who, during many years, is
constantly going through what he considers as the mummery of preaching,
saying mass, baptizing, shriving. When an ecclesiastic of this sort mixes
in the contests of men of the world, he is indeed much to be dreaded as an
enemy, but still more to be dreaded as an ally. From the pulpit where he
daily employs his eloquence to embellish what he regards as fables, from
the altar whence he daily looks down with secret scorn on the prostrate
dupes who believe that he can turn a drop of wine into blood, from the
confessional where he daily studies with cold and scientific attention the
morbid anatomy of guilty consciences, he brings to courts some talents
which may move the envy of the more cunning and unscrupulous of lay
courtiers; a rare skill in reading characters and in managing tempers, a
rare art of dissimulation, a rare dexterity in insinuating what it is not
safe to affirm or to propose in explicit terms. There are two feelings
which often prevent an unprincipled layman from becoming utterly depraved
and despicable, domestic feeling, and chivalrous feeling. His heart may be
softened by the endearments of a family. His pride may revolt from the
thought of doing what does not become a gentleman. But neither with the
domestic feeling nor with the chivalrous feeling has the wicked priest any
sympathy. His gown excludes him from the closest and most tender of human
relations, and at the same time dispenses him from the observation of the
fashionable code of honour.

Such a priest was Portocarrero; and he seems to have been a consummate
master of his craft. To the name of statesman he had no pretensions. The
lofty part of his predecessor Ximenes was out of the range, not more of
his intellectual, than his moral capacity. To reanimate a paralysed and
torpid monarchy, to introduce order and economy into a bankrupt treasury,
to restore the discipline of an army which had become a mob, to refit a
navy which was perishing from mere rottenness, these were achievements
beyond the power, beyond even the ambition, of that ignoble nature. But
there was one task for which the new minister was admirably qualified,
that of establishing, by means of superstitious terror, an absolute
dominion over a feeble mind; and the feeblest of all minds was that of his
unhappy sovereign. Even before the riot which had made the cardinal
supreme in the state, he had succeeded in introducing into the palace a
new confessor selected by himself. In a very short time the King’s malady
took a new form. That he was too weak to lift his food to his misshapen
mouth, that, at thirty-seven, he had the bald head and wrinkled face of a
man of seventy, that his complexion was turning from yellow to green, that
he frequently fell down in fits and remained long insensible, these were
no longer the worst symptoms of his malady. He had always been afraid of
ghosts and demons; and it had long been necessary that three friars should
watch every night by his restless bed as a guard against hobgoblins. But
now he was firmly convinced that he was bewitched, that he was possessed,
that there was a devil within him, that there were devils all around him.
He was exorcised according to the forms of his Church; but this ceremony,
instead of quieting him, scared him out of almost all the little reason
that nature had given him. In his misery and despair he was induced to
resort to irregular modes of relief. His confessor brought to court
impostors who pretended that they could interrogate the powers of
darkness. The Devil was called up, sworn and examined. This strange
deponent made oath, as in the presence of God, that His Catholic Majesty
was under a spell, which had been laid on him many years before, for the
purpose of preventing the continuation of the royal line. A drug had been
compounded out of the brains and kidneys of a human corpse, and had been
administered in a cup of chocolate. This potion had dried up all the
sources of life; and the best remedy to which the patient could now resort
would be to swallow a bowl of consecrated oil every morning before
breakfast. Unhappily, the authors of this story fell into contradictions
which they could excuse only by throwing the blame on Satan, who, they
said, was an unwilling witness, and a liar from the beginning. In the
midst of their conjuring, the Inquisition came down upon them. It must be
admitted that, if the Holy Office had reserved all its terrors for such
cases, it would not now have been remembered as the most hateful
judicature that was ever known among civilised men. The subaltern
impostors were thrown into dungeons. But the chief criminal continued to
be master of the King and of the kingdom. Meanwhile, in the distempered
mind of Charles one mania succeeded another. A longing to pry into those
mysteries of the grave from which human beings avert their thoughts had
long been hereditary in his house. Juana, from whom the mental
constitution of her posterity seems to have derived a morbid taint, had
sate, year after year, by the bed on which lay the ghastly remains of her
husband, apparelled in the rich embroidery and jewels which he had been
wont to wear while living. Her son Charles found an eccentric pleasure in
celebrating his own obsequies, in putting on his shroud, placing himself
in the coffin, covering himself with the pall; and lying as one dead till
the requiem had been sung, and the mourners had departed leaving him alone
in the tomb. Philip the Second found a similar pleasure in gazing on the
huge chest of bronze in which his remains were to be laid, and especially
on the skull which, encircled with the crown of Spain, grinned at him from
the cover. Philip the Fourth, too, hankered after burials and burial
places, gratified his curiosity by gazing on the remains of his great
grandfather, the Emperor, and sometimes stretched himself out at full
length like a corpse in the niche which he had selected for himself in the
royal cemetery. To that cemetery his son was now attracted by a strange
fascination. Europe could show no more magnificent place of sepulture. A
staircase encrusted with jasper led down from the stately church of the
Escurial into an octagon situated just beneath the high altar. The vault,
impervious to the sun, was rich with gold and precious marbles, which
reflected the blaze from a huge chandelier of silver. On the right and on
the left reposed, each in a massy sarcophagus, the departed kings and
queens of Spain. Into this mausoleum the King descended with a long train
of courtiers, and ordered the coffins to be unclosed. His mother had been
embalmed with such consummate skill that she appeared as she had appeared
on her death bed. The body of his grandfather too seemed entire, but
crumbled into dust at the first touch. From Charles neither the remains of
his mother nor those of his grandfather could draw any sign of
sensibility. But, when the gentle and graceful Louisa of Orleans, the
miserable man’s first wife, she who had lighted up his dark existence with
one short and pale gleam of happiness, presented herself, after the lapse
of ten years, to his eyes, his sullen apathy gave way. “She is in heaven,”
he cried; “and I shall soon be there with her;” and, with all the speed of
which his limbs were capable, he tottered back to the upper air.

Such was the state of the Court of Spain when, in the autumn of 1699, it
became known that, since the death of the Electoral Prince of Bavaria, the
governments of France, of England and of the United Provinces, were busily
engaged in framing a second Treaty of Partition. That Castilians would be
indignant at learning that any foreign potentate meditated the
dismemberment of that empire of which Castile was the head might have been
foreseen. But it was less easy to foresee that William would be the chief
and indeed almost the only object of their indignation. If the meditated
partition really was unjustifiable, there could be no doubt that Lewis was
far more to blame than William. For it was by Lewis, and not by William,
that the partition had been originally suggested; and it was Lewis, and
not William, who was to gain an accession of territory by the partition.
Nobody could doubt that William would most gladly have acceded to any
arrangement by which the Spanish monarchy, could be preserved entire
without danger to the liberties of Europe, and that he had agreed to the
division of that monarchy solely for the purpose of contenting Lewis.
Nevertheless the Spanish ministers carefully avoided whatever could give
offence to Lewis, and indemnified themselves by offering a gross indignity
to William. The truth is that their pride had, as extravagant pride often
has, a close affinity with meanness. They knew that it was unsafe to
insult Lewis; and they believed that they might with perfect safety insult
William. Lewis was absolute master of his large kingdom. He had at no
great distance armies and fleets which one word from him would put in
motion. If he were provoked, the white flag might in a few days be again
flying on the walls of Barcelona. His immense power was contemplated by
the Castilians with hope as well as with fear. He and he alone, they
imagined, could avert that dismemberment of which they could not bear to
think. Perhaps he might yet be induced to violate the engagements into
which he had entered with England and Holland, if one of his grandsons
were named successor to the Spanish throne. He, therefore, must be
respected and courted. But William could at that moment do little to hurt
or to help. He could hardly be said to have an army. He could take no step
which would require an outlay of money without the sanction of the House
of Commons; and it seemed to be the chief study of the House of Commons to
cross him and to humble him. The history of the late session was known to
the Spaniards principally by inaccurate reports brought by Irish friars.
And, had those reports been accurate, the real nature of a Parliamentary
struggle between the Court party and the Country party could have been but
very imperfectly understood by the magnates of a realm in which there had
not, during several generations, been any constitutional opposition to the
royal pleasure. At one time it was generally believed at Madrid, not by
the mere rabble, but by Grandees who had the envied privilege of going in
coaches and four through the streets of the capital, that William had been
deposed, that he had retired to Holland, that the Parliament had resolved
that there should be no more kings, that a commonwealth had been
proclaimed, and that a Doge was about to be appointed and, though this
rumour turned out to be false, it was but too true that the English
government was, just at that conjuncture, in no condition to resent
slights. Accordingly, the Marquess of Canales, who represented the
Catholic King at Westminster, received instructions to remonstrate in
strong language, and was not afraid to go beyond those instructions. He
delivered to the Secretary of State a note abusive and impertinent beyond
all example and all endurance. His master, he wrote, had learnt with
amazement that King William, Holland and other powers,—for the
ambassador, prudent even in his blustering, did not choose to name the
King of France,—were engaged in framing a treaty, not only for
settling the succession to the Spanish crown, but for the detestable
purpose of dividing the Spanish monarchy. The whole scheme was vehemently
condemned as contrary to the law of nature and to the law of God. The
ambassador appealed from the King of England to the Parliament, to the
nobility, and to the whole nation, and concluded by giving notice that he
should lay the whole case before the two Houses when next they met.

The style of this paper shows how strong an impression had been made on
foreign nations by the unfortunate events of the late session. The King,
it was plain, was no longer considered as the head of the government. He
was charged with having committed a wrong; but he was not asked to make
reparation. He was treated as a subordinate officer who had been guilty of
an offence against public law, and was threatened with the displeasure of
the Commons, who, as the real rulers of the state, were bound to keep
their servants in order. The Lords justices read this outrageous note with
indignation, and sent it with all speed to Loo. Thence they received, with
equal speed, directions to send Canales out of the country. Our ambassador
was at the same time recalled from Madrid; and all diplomatic intercourse
between England and Spain was suspended.

It is probable that Canales would have expressed himself in a less
unbecoming manner, had there not already existed a most unfortunate
quarrel between Spain and William, a quarrel in which William was
perfectly blameless, but in which the unanimous feeling of the English
Parliament and of the English nation was on the side of Spain.

It is necessary to go back some years for the purpose of tracing the
origin and progress of this quarrel. Few portions of our history are more
interesting or instructive; but few have been more obscured and distorted
by passion and prejudice. The story is an exciting one; and it has
generally been told by writers whose judgment had been perverted by strong
national partiality. Their invectives and lamentations have still to be
temperately examined; and it may well be doubted whether, even now, after
the lapse of more than a century and a half, feelings hardly compatible
with temperate examination will not be stirred up in many minds by the
name of Darien. In truth that name is associated with calamities so cruel
that the recollection of them may not unnaturally disturb the equipoise
even of a fair and sedate mind.

The man who brought these calamities on his country was not a mere
visionary or a mere swindler. He was that William Paterson whose name is
honourably associated with the auspicious commencement of a new era in
English commerce and in English finance. His plan of a national bank,
having been examined and approved by the most eminent statesmen who sate
in the Parliament house at Westminster and by the most eminent merchants
who walked the Exchange of London, had been carried into execution with
signal success. He thought, and perhaps thought with reason, that his
services had been ill requited. He was, indeed, one of the original
Directors of the great corporation which owed its existence to him; but he
was not reelected. It may easily be believed that his colleagues, citizens
of ample fortune and of long experience in the practical part of trade,
aldermen, wardens of companies, heads of firms well known in every Burse
throughout the civilised world, were not well pleased to see among them in
Grocers’ Hall a foreign adventurer whose whole capital consisted in an
inventive brain and a persuasive tongue. Some of them were probably weak
enough to dislike him for being a Scot; some were probably mean enough to
be jealous of his parts and knowledge; and even persons who were not
unfavourably disposed to him might have discovered, before they had known
him long, that, with all his cleverness, he was deficient in common sense;
that his mind was full of schemes which, at the first glance, had a
specious aspect, but which, on closer examination, appeared to be
impracticable or pernicious; and that the benefit which the public had
derived from one happy project formed by him would be very dearly
purchased if it were taken for granted that all his other projects must be
equally happy. Disgusted by what he considered as the ingratitude of the
English, he repaired to the Continent, in the hope that he might be able
to interest the traders of the Hanse Towns and the princes of the German
Empire in his plans. From the Continent he returned unsuccessful to
London; and then at length the thought that he might be more justly
appreciated by his countrymen than by strangers seems to have risen in his
mind. Just at this time he fell in with Fletcher of Saltoun, who happened
to be in England. These eccentric men soon became intimate. Each of them
had his monomania; and the two monomaniac suited each other perfectly.
Fletcher’s whole soul was possessed by a sore, jealous, punctilious
patriotism. His heart was ulcerated by the thought of the poverty, the
feebleness, the political insignificance of Scotland, and of the
indignities which she had suffered at the hand of her powerful and opulent
neighbour. When he talked of her wrongs his dark meagre face took its
sternest expression; his habitual frown grew blacker, and his eyes flashed
more than their wonted fire. Paterson, on the other hand, firmly believed
himself to have discovered the means of making any state which would
follow his counsel great and prosperous in a time which, when compared
with the life of an individual, could hardly be called long, and which, in
the life of a nation, was but as a moment. There is not the least reason
to believe that he was dishonest. Indeed he would have found more
difficulty in deceiving others had he not begun by deceiving himself. His
faith to his own schemes was strong even to martyrdom; and the eloquence
with which he illustrated and defended them had all the charm of sincerity
and of enthusiasm. Very seldom has any blunder committed by fools, or any
villany devised by impostors, brought on any society miseries so great as
the dreams of these two friends, both of them men of integrity and both of
them men of parts, were destined to bring on Scotland.

In 1695 the pair went down together to their native country. The
Parliament of that country was then about to meet under the presidency of
Tweeddale, an old acquaintance and country neighbour of Fletcher. On
Tweeddale the first attack was made. He was a shrewd, cautious, old
politician. Yet it should seem that he was not able to hold out against
the skill and energy of the assailants. Perhaps, however, he was not
altogether a dupe. The public mind was at that moment violently agitated.
Men of all parties were clamouring for an inquiry into the slaughter of
Glencoe. There was reason to fear that the session which was about to
commence would be stormy. In such circumstances the Lord High Commissioner
might think that it would be prudent to appease the anger of the Estates
by offering an almost irresistible bait to their cupidity. If such was the
policy of Tweeddale, it was, for the moment, eminently successful. The
Parliament, which met burning with indignation, was soothed into good
humour. The blood of the murdered Macdonalds continued to cry for
vengeance in vain. The schemes of Paterson, brought forward under the
patronage of the ministers of the Crown, were sanctioned by the unanimous
voice of the Legislature.

The great projector was the idol of the whole nation. Men spoke to him
with more profound respect than to the Lord High Commissioner. His
antechamber was crowded with solicitors desirous to catch some drops of
that golden shower of which he was supposed to be the dispenser. To be
seen walking with him in the High Street, to be honoured by him with a
private interview of a quarter of an hour, were enviable distinctions. He,
after the fashion of all the false prophets who have deluded themselves
and others, drew new faith in his own lie from the credulity of his
disciples. His countenance, his voice, his gestures, indicated boundless
self-importance. When he appeared in public he looked,—such is the
language of one who probably had often seen him,—like Atlas
conscious that a world was on his shoulders. But the airs which he gave
himself only heightened the respect and admiration which he inspired. His
demeanour was regarded as a model. Scotch men who wished to be thought
wise looked as like Paterson as they could.

His plan, though as yet disclosed to the public only by glimpses, was
applauded by all classes, factions and sects, lords, merchants, advocates,
divines, Whigs and Jacobites, Cameronians and Episcopalians. In truth, of
all the ten thousand bubbles of which history has preserved the memory,
none was ever more skilfully puffed into existence; none ever soared
higher, or glittered more brilliantly; and none ever burst with a more
lamentable explosion. There was, however, a certain mixture of truth in
the magnificent day dream which produced such fatal effects.

Scotland was, indeed, not blessed with a mild climate or a fertile soil.
But the richest spots that had ever existed on the face of the earth had
been spots quite as little favoured by nature. It was on a bare rock,
surrounded by deep sea, that the streets of Tyre were piled up to a dizzy
height. On that sterile crag were woven the robes of Persian satraps and
Sicilian tyrants; there were fashioned silver bowls and chargers for the
banquets of kings; and there Pomeranian amber was set in Lydian gold to
adorn the necks of queens. In the warehouses were collected the fine linen
of Egypt and the odorous gums of Arabia; the ivory of India, and the tin
of Britain. In the port lay fleets of great ships which had weathered the
storms of the Euxine and the Atlantic. Powerful and wealthy colonies in
distant parts of the world looked up with filial reverence to the little
island; and despots, who trampled on the laws and outraged the feelings of
all the nations between the Hydaspes and the Aegean, condescended to court
the population of that busy hive. At a later period, on a dreary bank
formed by the soil which the Alpine streams swept down to the Adriatic,
rose the palaces of Venice. Within a space which would not have been
thought large enough for one of the parks of a rude northern baron were
collected riches far exceeding those of a northern kingdom. In almost
every one of the prorate dwellings which fringed the Great Canal were to
be seen plate, mirrors, jewellery, tapestry, paintings, carving, such as
might move the envy of the master of Holyrood. In the arsenal were
munitions of war sufficient to maintain a contest against the whole power
of the Ottoman Empire. And, before the grandeur of Venice had declined,
another commonwealth, still less favoured, if possible, by nature, had
rapidly risen to a power and opulence which the whole civilised world
contemplated with envy and admiration. On a desolate marsh overhung by
fogs and exhaling diseases, a marsh where there was neither wood nor
stone, neither firm earth nor drinkable water, a marsh from which the
ocean on one side and the Rhine on the other were with difficulty kept out
by art, was to be found the most prosperous community in Europe. The
wealth which was collected within five miles of the Stadthouse of
Amsterdam would purchase the fee simple of Scotland. And why should this
be? Was there any reason to believe that nature had bestowed on the
Phoenician, on the Venetian, or on the Hollander, a larger measure of
activity, of ingenuity, of forethought, of self command, than on the
citizen of Edinburgh or Glasgow? The truth was that, in all those
qualities which conduce to success in life, and especially in commercial
life, the Scot had never been surpassed; perhaps he had never been
equalled. All that was necessary was that his energy should take a proper
direction, and a proper direction Paterson undertook to give.

His esoteric project was the original project of Christopher Columbus,
extended and modified. Columbus had hoped to establish a communication
between our quarter of the world and India across the great western ocean.
But he was stopped by an unexpected obstacle. The American continent,
stretching far north and far south into cold and inhospitable regions,
presented what seemed an insurmountable barrier to his progress; and, in
the same year in which he first set foot on that continent, Gama reached
Malabar by doubling the Cape of Good Hope. The consequence was that during
two hundred years the trade of Europe with the remoter parts of Asia had
been carried on by rounding the immense peninsula of Africa. Paterson now
revived the project of Columbus, and persuaded himself and others that it
was possible to carry that project into effect in such a manner as to make
his country the greatest emporium that had ever existed on our globe.

For this purpose it was necessary to occupy in America some spot which
might be a resting place between Scotland and India. It was true that
almost every habitable part of America had already been seized by some
European power. Paterson, however, imagined that one province, the most
important of all, had been overlooked by the short-sighted cupidity of
vulgar politicians and vulgar traders. The isthmus which joined the two
great continents of the New World remained, according to him,
unappropriated. Great Spanish viceroyalties, he said, lay on the east and
on the west; but the mountains and forests of Darien were abandoned to
rude tribes which followed their own usages and obeyed their own princes.
He had been in that part of the world, in what character was not quite
clear. Some said that he had gone thither to convert the Indians, and some
that he had gone thither to rob the Spaniards. But, missionary or pirate,
he had visited Darien, and had brought away none but delightful
recollections. The havens, he averred, were capacious and secure; the sea
swarmed with turtle; the country was so mountainous that, within nine
degrees of the equator, the climate was temperate; and yet the
inequalities of the ground offered no impediment to the conveyance of
goods. Nothing would be easier than to construct roads along which a
string of mules or a wheeled carriage might in the course of a single day
pass from sea to sea. The soil was, to the depth of several feet, a rich
black mould, on which a profusion of valuable herbs and fruits grew
spontaneously, and on which all the choicest productions of tropical
regions might easily be raised by human industry and art; and yet the
exuberant fertility of the earth had not tainted the purity of the air.
Considered merely as a place of residence, the isthmus was a paradise. A
colony placed there could not fail to prosper, even if it had no wealth
except what was derived from agriculture. But agriculture was a secondary
object in the colonization of Darien. Let but that precious neck of land
be occupied by an intelligent, an enterprising, a thrifty race; and, in a
few years, the whole trade between India and Europe must be drawn to that
point. The tedious and perilous passage round Africa would soon be
abandoned. The merchant would no longer expose his cargoes to the
mountainous billows and capricious gales of the Antarctic seas. The
greater part of the voyage from Europe to Darien, and the whole voyage
from Darien to the richest kingdoms of Asia, would be a rapid yet easy
gliding before the trade winds over blue and sparkling waters. The voyage
back across the Pacific would, in the latitude of Japan, be almost equally
speedy and pleasant. Time, labour, money, would be saved. The returns
would come in more quickly. Fewer hands would be required to navigate the
ships. The loss of a vessel would be a rare event. The trade would
increase fast. In a short time it would double; and it would all pass
through Darien. Whoever possessed that door of the sea, that key of the
universe,—such were the bold figures which Paterson loved to employ,—would
give law to both hemispheres; and would, by peaceful arts, without
shedding one drop of blood, establish an empire as splendid as that of
Cyrus or Alexander. Of the kingdoms of Europe, Scotland was, as yet, the
poorest and the least considered. If she would but occupy Darien, if she
would but become one great free port, one great warehouse for the wealth
which the soil of Darien might produce, and for the still greater wealth
which would be poured into Darien from Canton and Siam, from Ceylon and
the Moluccas, from the mouths of the Ganges and the Gulf of Cambay, she
would at once take her place in the first rank among nations. No rival
would be able to contend with her either in the West Indian or in the East
Indian trade. The beggarly country, as it had been insolently called by
the inhabitants of warmer and more fruitful regions, would be the great
mart for the choicest luxuries, sugar, rum, coffee, chocolate, tobacco,
the tea and porcelain of China, the muslin of Dacca, the shawls of
Cashmere, the diamonds of Golconda, the pearls of Karrack, the delicious
birds’ nests of Nicobar, cinnamon and pepper, ivory and sandal wood. From
Scotland would come all the finest jewels and brocade worn by duchesses at
the balls of St. James’s and Versailles. From Scotland would come all the
saltpetre which would furnish the means of war to the fleets and armies of
contending potentates. And on all the vast riches which would be
constantly passing through the little kingdom a toll would be paid which
would remain behind. There would be a prosperity such as might seem
fabulous, a prosperity of which every Scotchman, from the peer to the
cadie, would partake. Soon, all along the now desolate shores of the Forth
and Clyde, villas and pleasure grounds would be as thick as along the
edges of the Dutch canals. Edinburgh would vie with London and Paris; and
the baillie of Glasgow or Dundee would have as stately and well furnished
a mansion, and as fine a gallery of pictures, as any burgomaster of
Amsterdam.

This magnificent plan was at first but partially disclosed to the public.
A colony was to be planted; a vast trade was to be opened between both the
Indies and Scotland; but the name of Darien was as yet pronounced only in
whispers by Paterson and by his most confidential friends. He had however
shown enough to excite boundless hopes and desires. How well he succeeded
in inspiring others with his own feelings is sufficiently proved by the
memorable Act to which the Lord High Commissioner gave the Royal sanction
on the 26th of June 1695. By this Act some persons who were named, and
such other persons as should join with them, were formed into a
corporation, which was to be named the Company of Scotland trading to
Africa and the Indies. The amount of the capital to be employed was not
fixed by law; but it was provided that one half of the stock at least must
be held by Scotchmen resident in Scotland, and that no stock which had
been originally held by a Scotchman resident in Scotland should ever be
transferred to any but a Scotchman resident in Scotland. An entire
monopoly of the trade with Asia, Africa and America, for a term of
thirty-one years, was granted to the Company. All goods imported by the
Company were during twenty-one years to be duty free, with the exception
of foreign sugar and tobacco. Sugar and tobacco grown on the Company’s own
plantations were exempted from all taxation. Every member and every
servant of the Company was to be privileged against impressment and
arrest. If any of these privileged persons was impressed or arrested, the
Company was authorised to release him, and to demand the assistance both
of the civil and of the military power. The Company was authorised to take
possession of unoccupied territories in any part of Asia, Africa or
America, and there to plant colonies, to build towns and forts, to impose
taxes, and to provide magazines, arms and ammunition, to raise troops, to
wage war, to conclude treaties; and the King was made to promise that, if
any foreign state should injure the Company, he would interpose, and
would, at the public charge, obtain reparation. Lastly it was provided
that, in order to give greater security and solemnity to this most
exorbitant grant, the whole substance of the Act should be set forth in
Letters Patent to which the Chancellor was directed to put the Great Seal
without delay.

The letters were drawn; the Great Seal was affixed; the subscription books
were opened; the shares were fixed at a hundred pounds sterling each; and
from the Pentland Firth to the Solway Firth every man who had a hundred
pounds was impatient to put down his name. About two hundred and twenty
thousand pounds were actually paid up. This may not, at first sight,
appear a large sum to those who remember the bubbles of 1825 and of 1845,
and would assuredly not have sufficed to defray the charge of three months
of war with Spain. Yet the effort was marvellous when it may be affirmed
with confidence that the Scotch people voluntarily contributed for the
colonisation of Darien a larger proportion of their substance than any
other people ever, in the same space of time, voluntarily contributed to
any commercial undertaking. A great part of Scotland was then as poor and
rude as Iceland now is. There were five or six shires which did not
altogether contain so many guineas and crowns as were tossed about every
day by the shovels of a single goldsmith in Lombard Street. Even the
nobles had very little ready money. They generally took a large part of
their rents in kind, and were thus able, on their own domains, to live
plentifully and hospitably. But there were many esquires in Kent and
Somersetshire who received from their tenants a greater quantity of gold
and silver than a Duke of Cordon or a Marquess of Atholl drew from
extensive provinces. The pecuniary remuneration of the clergy was such as
would have moved the pity of the most needy curate who thought it a
privilege to drink his ale and smoke his pipe in the kitchen of an English
manor house. Even in the fertile Merse there were parishes of which the
minister received only from four to eight pounds sterling in cash. The
official income of the Lord President of the Court of Session was only
five hundred a year; that of the Lord Justice Clerk only four hundred a
year. The land tax of the whole kingdom was fixed some years later by the
Treaty of Union at little more than half the land tax of the single county
of Norfolk. Four hundred thousand pounds probably bore as great a ratio to
the wealth of Scotland then as forty millions would bear now.

The list of the members of the Darien Company deserves to be examined. The
number of shareholders was about fourteen hundred. The largest quantity of
stock registered in one name was three thousand pounds. The heads of three
noble houses took three thousand pounds each, the Duke of Hamilton, the
Duke of Queensbury and Lord Belhaven, a man of ability, spirit and
patriotism, who had entered into the design with enthusiasm not inferior
to that of Fletcher. Argyle held fifteen hundred pounds. John Dalrymple,
but too well known as the Master of Stair, had just succeeded to his
father’s title and estate, and was now Viscount Stair. He put down his
name for a thousand pounds. The number of Scotch peers who subscribed was
between thirty and forty. The City of Edinburgh, in its corporate
capacity, took three thousand pounds, the City of Glasgow three thousand,
the City of Perth two thousand. But the great majority of the subscribers
contributed only one hundred or two hundred pounds each. A very few
divines who were settled in the capital or in other large towns were able
to purchase shares. It is melancholy to see in the roll the name of more
than one professional man whose paternal anxiety led him to lay out
probably all his hardly earned savings in purchasing a hundred pound share
for each of his children. If, indeed, Paterson’s predictions had been
verified, such a share would, according to the notions of that age and
country, have been a handsome portion for the daughter of a writer or a
surgeon.

That the Scotch are a people eminently intelligent, wary, resolute and
self possessed, is obvious to the most superficial observation. That they
are a people peculiarly liable to dangerous fits of passion and delusions
of the imagination is less generally acknowledged, but is not less true.
The whole kingdom seemed to have gone mad. Paterson had acquired an
influence resembling rather that of the founder of a new religion, that of
a Mahomet, that of a Joseph Smith, than that of a commercial projector.
Blind faith in a religion, fanatical zeal for a religion, are too common
to astonish us. But such faith and zeal seem strangely out of place in the
transactions of the money market. It is true that we are judging after the
event. But before the event materials sufficient for the forming of a
sound judgment were within the reach of all who cared to use them. It
seems incredible that men of sense, who had only a vague and general
notion of Paterson’s scheme, should have staked every thing on the success
of that scheme. It seems more incredible still that men to whom the
details of that scheme had been confided should not have looked into any
of the common books of history or geography in which an account of Darien
might have been found, and should not have asked themselves the simple
question, whether Spain was likely to endure a Scotch colony in the midst
of her Transatlantic dominions. It was notorious that she claimed the
sovereignty of the isthmus on specious, nay, on solid, grounds. A Spaniard
had been the first discoverer of the coast of Darien. A Spaniard had built
a town and established a government on that coast. A Spaniard had, with
great labour and peril, crossed the mountainous neck of land, had seen
rolling beneath him the vast Pacific, never before revealed to European
eyes, had descended, sword in hand, into the waves up to his girdle, and
had there solemnly taken possession of sea and shore in the name of the
Crown of Castile. It was true that the region which Paterson described as
a paradise had been found by the first Castilian settlers to be a land of
misery and death. The poisonous air, exhaled from rank jungle and stagnant
water, had compelled them to remove to the neighbouring haven of Panama;
and the Red Indians had been contemptuously permitted to live after their
own fashion on the pestilential soil. But that soil was still considered,
and might well be considered, by Spain as her own. In many countries there
were tracts of morass, of mountain, of forest, in which governments did
not think it worth while to be at the expense of maintaining order, and in
which rude tribes enjoyed by connivance a kind of independence. It was not
necessary for the members of the Company of Scotland trading to Africa and
the Indies to look very far for an example. In some highland districts,
not more than a hundred miles from Edinburgh, dwelt clans which had always
regarded the authority of King, Parliament, Privy Council and Court of
Session, quite as little as the aboriginal population of Darien regarded
the authority of the Spanish Viceroys and Audiences. Yet it would surely
have been thought an outrageous violation of public law in the King of
Spain to take possession of Appin and Lochaber. And would it be a less
outrageous violation of public law in the Scots to seize on a province in
the very centre of his possessions, on the plea that this province was in
the same state in which Appin and Lochaber had been during centuries?

So grossly unjust was Paterson’s scheme; and yet it was less unjust than
impolitic. Torpid as Spain had become, there was still one point on which
she was exquisitely sensitive. The slightest encroachment of any other
European power even on the outskirts of her American dominions sufficed to
disturb her repose and to brace her paralysed nerves. To imagine that she
would tamely suffer adventurers from one of the most insignificant
kingdoms of the Old World to form a settlement in the midst of her empire,
within a day’s sail of Portobello on one side and of Carthagena on the
other, was ludicrously absurd. She would have been just as likely to let
them take possession of the Escurial. It was, therefore, evident that,
before the new Company could even begin its commercial operations, there
must be a war with Spain and a complete triumph over Spain. What means had
the Company of waging such a war, and what chance of achieving such a
triumph? The ordinary revenue of Scotland in time of peace was between
sixty and seventy thousand a year. The extraordinary supplies granted to
the Crown during the war with France had amounted perhaps to as much more.
Spain, it is true, was no longer the Spain of Pavia and Lepanto. But, even
in her decay, she possessed in Europe resources which exceeded thirty fold
those of Scotland; and in America, where the struggle must take place, the
disproportion was still greater. The Spanish fleets and arsenals were
doubtless in wretched condition. But there were Spanish fleets; there were
Spanish arsenals. The galleons, which sailed every year from Seville to
the neighbourhood of Darien and from the neighbourhood of Darien back to
Seville, were in tolerable condition, and formed, by themselves, a
considerable armament. Scotland had not a single ship of the line, nor a
single dockyard where such a ship could be built. A marine sufficient to
overpower that of Spain must be, not merely equipped and manned, but
created. An armed force sufficient to defend the isthmus against the whole
power of the viceroyalties of Mexico and Peru must be sent over five
thousand miles of ocean. What was the charge of such an expedition likely
to be? Oliver had, in the preceding generation, wrested a West Indian
island from Spain; but, in order to do this, Oliver, a man who thoroughly
understood the administration of war, who wasted nothing, and who was
excellently served, had been forced to spend, in a single year, on his
navy alone, twenty times the ordinary revenue of Scotland; and, since his
days, war had been constantly becoming more and more costly.

It was plain that Scotland could not alone support the charge of a contest
with the enemy whom Paterson was bent on provoking. And what assistance
was she likely to have from abroad? Undoubtedly the vast colonial empire
and the narrow colonial policy of Spain were regarded with an evil eye by
more than one great maritime power. But there was no great maritime power
which would not far rather have seen the isthmus between the Atlantic and
the Pacific in the hands of Spain than in the hands of the Darien Company.
Lewis could not but dread whatever tended to aggrandise a state governed
by William. To Holland the East India trade was as the apple of her eye.
She had been the chief gainer by the discoveries of Gama; and it might be
expected that she would do all that could be done by craft, and, if need
were, by violence, rather than suffer any rival to be to her what she had
been to Venice. England remained; and Paterson was sanguine enough to
flatter himself that England might be induced to lend her powerful aid to
the Company. He and Lord Belhaven repaired to London, opened an office in
Clement’s Lane, formed a Board of Directors auxiliary to the Central Board
at Edinburgh, and invited the capitalists of the Royal Exchange to
subscribe for the stock which had not been reserved for Scotchmen resident
in Scotland. A few moneyed men were allured by the bait; but the clamour
of the City was loud and menacing; and from the City a feeling of
indignation spread fast through the country. In this feeling there was
undoubtedly a large mixture of evil. National antipathy operated on some
minds, religious antipathy on others. But it is impossible to deny that
the anger which Paterson’s schemes excited throughout the south of the
island was, in the main, just and reasonable. Though it was not yet
generally known in what precise spot his colony was to be planted, there
could be little doubt that he intended to occupy some part of America; and
there could be as little doubt that such occupation would be resisted.
There would be a maritime war; and such a war Scotland had no means of
carrying on. The state of her finances was such that she must be quite
unable to fit out even a single squadron of moderate size. Before the
conflict had lasted three months, she would have neither money nor credit
left. These things were obvious to every coffeehouse politician; and it
was impossible to believe that they had escaped the notice of men so able
and well informed as some who sate in the Privy Council and Parliament at
Edinburgh. In one way only could the conduct of these schemers be
explained. They meant to make a dupe and a tool of the Southron. The two
British kingdoms were so closely connected, physically and politically,
that it was scarcely possible for one of them to be at peace with a power
with which the other was at war. If the Scotch drew King William into a
quarrel, England must, from regard to her own dignity which was bound up
with his, support him in it. She was to be tricked into a bloody and
expensive contest in the event of which she had no interest; nay, into a
contest in which victory would be a greater calamity to her than defeat.
She was to lavish her wealth and the lives of her seamen, in order that a
set of cunning foreigners might enjoy a monopoly by which she would be the
chief sufferer. She was to conquer and defend provinces for this Scotch
Corporation; and her reward was to be that her merchants were to be
undersold, her customers decoyed away, her exchequer beggared. There would
be an end to the disputes between the old East India Company and the new
East India Company; for both Companies would be ruined alike. The two
great springs of revenue would be dried up together. What would be the
receipt of the Customs, what of the Excise, when vast magazines of sugar,
rum, tobacco, coffee, chocolate, tea, spices, silks, muslins, all duty
free, should be formed along the estuaries of the Forth and of the Clyde,
and along the border from the mouth of the Esk to the mouth of the Tweed?
What army, what fleet, would be sufficient to protect the interests of the
government and of the fair trader when the whole kingdom of Scotland
should be turned into one great smuggling establishment? Paterson’s plan
was simply this, that England should first spend millions in defence of
the trade of his Company, and should then be plundered of twice as many
millions by means of that very trade.

The cry of the city and of the nation was soon echoed by the legislature.
When the Parliament met for the first time after the general election of
1695, Rochester called the attention of the Lords to the constitution and
designs of the Company. Several witnesses were summoned to the bar, and
gave evidence which produced a powerful effect on the House. “If these
Scots are to have their way,” said one peer, “I shall go and settle in
Scotland, and not stay here to be made a beggar.” The Lords resolved to
represent strongly to the King the injustice of requiring England to exert
her power in support of an enterprise which, if successful, must be fatal
to her commerce and to her finances. A representation was drawn up and
communicated to the Commons. The Commons eagerly concurred, and
complimented the Peers on the promptitude with which their Lordships had,
on this occasion, stood forth to protect the public interests. The two
Houses went up together to Kensington with the address. William had been
under the walls of Namur when the Act for incorporating the Company had
been touched with his sceptre at Edinburgh, and had known nothing about
that Act till his attention had been called to it by the clamour of his
English subjects. He now said, in plain terms, that he had been ill served
in Scotland, but that he would try to find a remedy for the evil which bad
been brought to his notice. The Lord High Commissioner Tweeddale and
Secretary Johnstone were immediately dismissed. But the Act which had been
passed by their management still continued to be law in Scotland, nor was
it in their master’s power to undo what they had done.

The Commons were not content with addressing the throne. They instituted
an inquiry into the proceedings of the Scotch Company in London. Belhaven
made his escape to his own country, and was there beyond the reach of the
Serjeant-at-Arms. But Paterson and some of his confederates were severely
examined. It soon appeared that the Board which was sitting in Clement’s
Lane had done things which were certainly imprudent and perhaps illegal.
The Act of Incorporation empowered the detectors to take and to administer
to their servants an oath of fidelity. But that Act was on the south of
the Tweed a nullity. Nevertheless the directors had, in the heart of the
City of London, taken and administered this oath, and had thus, by
implication, asserted that the powers conferred on them by the legislature
of Scotland accompanied them to England. It was resolved that they had
been guilty of a high crime and misdemeanour, and that they should be
impeached. A committee was appointed to frame articles of impeachment; but
the task proved a difficult one; and the prosecution was suffered to drop,
not however till the few English capitalists who had at first been
friendly to Paterson’s project had been terrified into renouncing all
connection with him.

Now, surely, if not before, Paterson ought to have seen that his project
could end in nothing but shame to himself and ruin to his worshippers.
From the first it had been clear that England alone could protect his
Company against the enmity of Spain; and it was now clear that Spain would
be a less formidable enemy than England. It was impossible that his plan
could excite greater indignation in the Council of the Indies at Madrid,
or in the House of Trade at Seville, than it had excited in London.
Unhappily he was given over to a strong delusion, and the blind multitude
eagerly followed their blind leader. Indeed his dupes were maddened by
that which should have sobered them. The proceedings of the Parliament
which sate at Westminster, proceedings just and reasonable in substance,
but in manner doubtless harsh and insolent, had roused the angry passions
of a nation, feeble indeed in numbers and in material resources, but
eminently high spirited. The proverbial pride of the Scotch was too much
for their proverbial shrewdness. The votes of the English Lords and
Commons were treated with marked contempt. The populace of Edinburgh
burned Rochester in effigy. Money was poured faster than ever into the
treasury of the Company. A stately house, in Milne Square, then the most
modern and fashionable part of Edinburgh, was purchased and fitted up at
once as an office and a warehouse. Ships adapted both for war and for
trade were required; but the means of building such ships did not exist in
Scotland; and no firm in the south of the island was disposed to enter
into a contract which might not improbably be considered by the House of
Commons as an impeachable offence. It was necessary to have recourse to
the dockyards of Amsterdam and Hamburg. At an expense of fifty thousand
pounds a few vessels were procured, the largest of which would hardly have
ranked as sixtieth in the English navy; and with this force, a force not
sufficient to keep the pirates of Sallee in check, the Company threw down
the gauntlet to all the maritime powers in the world.

It was not till the summer of 1698 that all was ready for the expedition
which was to change the face of the globe. The number of seamen and
colonists who embarked at Leith was twelve hundred. Of the colonists many
were younger sons of honourable families, or officers who had been
disbanded since the peace. It was impossible to find room for all who were
desirous of emigrating. It is said that some persons who had vainly
applied for a passage hid themselves in dark corners about the ships, and,
when discovered, refused to depart, clung to the rigging, and were at last
taken on shore by main force. This infatuation is the more extraordinary
because few of the adventurers knew to what place they were going. All
that was quite certain was that a colony was to be planted somewhere, and
to be named Caledonia. The general opinion was that the fleet would steer
for some part of the coast of America. But this opinion was not universal.
At the Dutch Embassy in Saint James’s Square there was an uneasy suspicion
that the new Caledonia would be founded among those Eastern spice islands
with which Amsterdam had long carried on a lucrative commerce.

The supreme direction of the expedition was entrusted to a Council of
Seven. Two Presbyterian chaplains and a preceptor were on board. A cargo
had been laid in which was afterwards the subject of much mirth to the
enemies of the Company, slippers innumerable, four thousand periwigs of
all kinds from plain bobs to those magnificent structures which, in that
age, towered high above the foreheads and descended to the elbows of men
of fashion, bales of Scotch woollen stuffs which nobody within the tropics
could wear, and many hundreds of English bibles which neither Spaniard nor
Indian could read. Paterson, flushed with pride and hope, not only
accompanied the expedition, but took with him his wife, a comely dame,
whose heart he had won in London, where she had presided over one of the
great coffeehouses in the neighbourhood of the Royal Exchange. At length
on the twenty-fifth of July the ships, followed by many tearful eyes, and
commended to heaven in many vain prayers, sailed out of the estuary of the
Forth.

The voyage was much longer than a voyage to the Antipodes now is; and the
adventurers suffered much. The rations were scanty; there were bitter
complaints both of the bread and of the meat; and, when the little fleet,
after passing round the Orkneys and Ireland, touched at Madeira, those
gentlemen who had fine clothes among their baggage were glad to exchange
embroidered coats and laced waistcoats for provisions and wine. From
Madeira the adventurers ran across the Atlantic, landed on an uninhabited
islet lying between Porto Rico and St. Thomas, took possession of this
desolate spot in the name of the Company, set up a tent, and hoisted the
white cross of St. Andrew. Soon, however, they were warned off by an
officer who was sent from St. Thomas to inform them that they were
trespassing on the territory of the King of Denmark. They proceeded on
their voyage, having obtained the services of an old buccaneer who knew
the coast of Central America well. Under his pilotage they anchored on the
first of November close to the Isthmus of Darien. One of the greatest
princes of the country soon came on board. The courtiers who attended him,
ten or twelve in number, were stark naked; but he was distinguished by a
red coat, a pair of cotton drawers, and an old hat. He had a Spanish name,
spoke Spanish, and affected the grave deportment of a Spanish don. The
Scotch propitiated Andreas, as he was called, by a present of a new hat
blazing with gold lace, and assured him that, if he would trade with them,
they would treat him better than the Castilians had done.

A few hours later the chiefs of the expedition went on shore, took formal
possession of the country, and named it Caledonia. They were pleased with
the aspect of a small peninsula about three miles in length and a quarter
of a mile in breadth, and determined to fix here the city of New
Edinburgh, destined, as they hoped, to be the great emporium of both
Indies. The peninsula terminated in a low promontory of about thirty
acres, which might easily be turned into an island by digging a trench.
The trench was dug; and on the ground thus separated from the main land a
fort was constructed; fifty guns were placed on the ramparts; and within
the enclosures houses were speedily built and thatched with palm leaves.

Negotiations were opened with the chieftains, as they were called, who
governed the neighbouring tribes. Among these savage rulers were found as
insatiable a cupidity, as watchful a jealousy, and as punctilious a pride,
as among the potentates whose disputes had seemed likely to make the
Congress of Ryswick eternal. One prince hated the Spaniards because a fine
rifle had been taken away from him by the Governor of Portobello on the
plea that such a weapon was too good for a red man. Another loved the
Spaniards because they had given him a stick tipped with silver. On the
whole, the new comers succeeded in making friends of the aboriginal race.
One mighty monarch, the Lewis the Great of the isthmus, who wore with
pride a cap of white reeds lined with red silk and adorned with an ostrich
feather, seemed well inclined to the strangers, received them hospitably
in a palace built of canes and covered with palmetto royal, and regaled
them with calabashes of a sort of ale brewed from Indian corn and
potatoes. Another chief set his mark to a treaty of peace and alliance
with the colony. A third consented to become a vassal of the Company,
received with great delight a commission embellished with gold thread and
flowered riband, and swallowed to the health of his new masters not a few
bumpers of their own brandy.

Meanwhile the internal government of the colony was organised according to
a plan devised by the directors at Edinburgh. The settlers were divided
into bands of fifty or sixty; each band chose a representative; and thus
was formed an assembly which took the magnificent name of Parliament. This
Parliament speedily framed a curious code. The first article provided that
the precepts, instructions, examples, commands and prohibitions expressed
and contained in the Holy Scriptures should have the full force and effect
of laws in New Caledonia, an enactment which proves that those who drew it
up either did not know what the Holy Scriptures contained or did not know
what a law meant. There is another provision which shows not less clearly
how far these legislators were from understanding the first principles of
legislation. “Benefits received and good services done shall always be
generously and thankfully compensated, whether a prior bargain hath been
made or not; and, if it shall happen to be otherwise, and the Benefactor
obliged justly to complain of the ingratitude, the Ungrateful shall in
such case be obliged to give threefold satisfaction at the least.” An
article much more creditable to the little Parliament, and much needed in
a community which was likely to be constantly at war, prohibits, on pain
of death, the violation of female captives.

By this time all the Antilles and all the shores of the Gulf of Mexico
were in a ferment. The new colony was the object of universal hatred. The
Spaniards began to fit out armaments. The chiefs of the French
dependencies in the West Indies eagerly offered assistance to the
Spaniards. The governors of the English settlements put forth
proclamations interdicting all communication with this nest of buccaneers.
Just at this time, the Dolphin, a vessel of fourteen guns, which was the
property of the Scotch Company, was driven on shore by stress of weather
under the walls of Carthagena. The ship and cargo were confiscated, the
crew imprisoned and put in irons. Some of the sailors were treated as
slaves, and compelled to sweep the streets and to work on the
fortifications. Others, and among them the captain, were sent to Seville
to be tried for piracy. Soon an envoy with a flag of truce arrived at
Carthagena, and, in the name of the Council of Caledonia, demanded the
release of the prisoners. He delivered to the authorities a letter
threatening them with the vengeance of the King of Great Britain, and a
copy of the Act of Parliament by which the Company had been created. The
Castilian governor, who probably knew that William, as Sovereign of
England, would not, and, as Sovereign of Scotland, could not, protect the
squatters who had occupied Darien, flung away both letter and Act of
Parliament with a gesture of contempt, called for a guard, and was with
difficulty dissuaded from throwing the messenger into a dungeon. The
Council of Caledonia, in great indignation, issued letters of mark and
reprisal against Spanish vessels. What every man of common sense must have
foreseen had taken place. The Scottish flag had been but a few months
planted on the walls of New Edinburgh; and already a war, which Scotland,
without the help of England, was utterly unable to sustain, had begun.

By this time it was known in Europe that the mysterious voyage of the
adventurers from the Forth had ended at Darien. The ambassador of the
Catholic King repaired to Kensington, and complained bitterly to William
of this outrageous violation of the law of nations. Preparations were made
in the Spanish ports for an expedition against the intruders; and in no
Spanish port were there more fervent wishes for the success of that
expedition than in the cities of London and Bristol. In Scotland, on the
other hand, the exultation was boundless. In the parish churches all over
the kingdom the ministers gave public thanks to God for having vouchsafed
thus far to protect and bless the infant colony. At some places a day was
set apart for religious exercises on this account. In every borough bells
were rung; bonfires were lighted; and candles were placed in the windows
at night. During some months all the reports which arrived from the other
side of the Atlantic were such as to excite hope and joy in the north of
the island, and alarm and envy in the south. The colonists, it was
asserted, had found rich gold mines, mines in which the precious metal was
far more abundant and in a far purer state than on the coast of Guinea.
Provisions were plentiful. The rainy season had not proved unhealthy. The
settlement was well fortified. Sixty guns were mounted on the ramparts. An
immense crop of Indian corn was expected. The aboriginal tribes were
friendly. Emigrants from various quarters were coming in. The population
of Caledonia had already increased from twelve hundred to ten thousand.
The riches of the country,—these are the words of a newspaper of
that time,—were great beyond imagination. The mania in Scotland rose
to the highest point. Munitions of war and implements of agriculture were
provided in large quantities. Multitudes were impatient to emigrate to the
land of promise.

In August 1699 four ships, with thirteen hundred men on board, were
despatched by the Company to Caledonia. The spiritual care of these
emigrants was entrusted to divines of the Church of Scotland. One of these
was that Alexander Shields whose Hind Let Loose proves that in his zeal
for the Covenant he had forgotten the Gospel. To another, John Borland, we
owe the best account of the voyage which is now extant. The General
Assembly had charged the chaplains to divide the colonists into
congregations, to appoint ruling elders, to constitute a presbytery, and
to labour for the propagation of divine truth among the Pagan inhabitants
of Darien. The second expedition sailed as the first had sailed, amidst
the acclamations and blessings of all Scotland. During the earlier part of
September the whole nation was dreaming a delightful dream of prosperity
and glory; and triumphing, somewhat maliciously, in the vexation of the
English. But, before the close of that month, it began to be rumoured
about Lombard Street and Cheapside that letters had arrived from Jamaica
with strange news. The colony from which so much had been hoped and
dreaded was no more. It had disappeared from the face of the earth. The
report spread to Edinburgh, but was received there with scornful
incredulity. It was an impudent lie devised by some Englishmen who could
not bear to see that, in spite of the votes of the English Parliament, in
spite of the proclamations of the governors of the English colonies,
Caledonia was waxing great and opulent. Nay, the inventor of the fable was
named. It was declared to be quite certain that Secretary Vernon was the
man. On the fourth of October was put forth a vehement contradiction of
the story.

On the fifth the whole truth was known. Letters were received from New
York announcing that a few miserable men, the remains of the colony which
was to have been the garden, the warehouse, the mart, of the whole world,
their bones peeping through their skin, and hunger and fever written in
their faces, had arrived in the Hudson.

The grief, the dismay and the rage of those who had a few hours before
fancied themselves masters of all the wealth of both Indies may easily be
imagined. The Directors, in their fury, lost all self command, and, in
their official letters, railed at the betrayers of Scotland, the
white-livered deserters. The truth is that those who used these hard words
were far more deserving of blame than the wretches whom they had sent to
destruction, and whom they now reviled for not staying to be utterly
destroyed. Nothing had happened but what might easily have been foreseen.
The Company had, in childish reliance on the word of an enthusiastic
projector, and in defiance of facts known to every educated man in Europe,
taken it for granted that emigrants born and bred within ten degrees of
the Arctic Circle would enjoy excellent health within ten degrees of the
Equator. Nay, statesmen and scholars had been deluded into the belief that
a country which, as they might have read in books so common as those of
Hakluyt and Purchas, was noted even among tropical countries for its
insalubrity, and had been abandoned by the Spaniards solely on account of
its insalubrity, was a Montpelier. Nor had any of Paterson’s dupes
considered how colonists from Fife or Lothian, who had never in their
lives known what it was to feel the heat of a distressing midsummer day,
could endure the labour of breaking clods and carrying burdens under the
fierce blaze of a vertical sun. It ought to have been remembered that such
colonists would have to do for themselves what English, French, Dutch, and
Spanish colonists employed Negroes or Indians to do for them. It was
seldom indeed that a white freeman in Barbadoes or Martinique, in Guiana
or at Panama, was employed in severe bodily labour. But the Scotch who
settled at Darien must at first be without slaves, and must therefore dig
the trench round their town, build their houses, cultivate their fields,
hew wood, and draw water, with their own hands. Such toil in such an
atmosphere was too much for them. The provisions which they had brought
out had been of no good quality, and had not been improved by lapse of
time or by change of climate. The yams and plantains did not suit stomachs
accustomed to good oatmeal. The flesh of wild animals and the green fat of
the turtle, a luxury then unknown in Europe, went but a small way; and
supplies were not to be expected from any foreign settlement. During the
cool months, however, which immediately followed the occupation of the
isthmus there were few deaths. But, before the equinox, disease began to
make fearful havoc in the little community. The mortality gradually rose
to ten or twelve a day. Both the clergymen who had accompanied the
expedition died. Paterson buried his wife in that soil which, as he had
assured his too credulous countrymen, exhaled health and vigour. He was
himself stretched on his pallet by an intermittent fever. Still he would
not admit that the climate of his promised land was bad. There could not
be a purer air. This was merely the seasoning which people who passed from
one country to another must expect. In November all would be well again.
But the rate at which the emigrants died was such that none of them seemed
likely to live till November. Those who were not laid on their beds were
yellow, lean, feeble, hardly able to move the sick and to bury the dead,
and quite unable to repel the expected attack of the Spaniards. The cry of
the whole community was that death was all around them, and that they
must, while they still had strength to weigh an anchor or spread a sail,
fly to some less fatal region. The men and provisions were equally
distributed among three ships, the Caledonia, the Unicorn, and the Saint
Andrew. Paterson, though still too ill to sit in the Council, begged hard
that he might be left behind with twenty or thirty companions to keep up a
show of possession, and to await the next arrivals from Scotland. So small
a number of people, he said, might easily subsist by catching fish and
turtles. But his offer was disregarded; he was carried, utterly helpless,
on board of the Saint Andrew; and the vessel stood out to sea.

The voyage was horrible. Scarcely any Guinea slave ship has ever had such
a middle passage. Of two hundred and fifty persons who were on board of
the Saint Andrew, one hundred and fifty fed the sharks of the Atlantic
before Sandy Hook was in sight. The Unicorn lost almost all its officers,
and about a hundred and forty men. The Caledonia, the healthiest ship of
the three, threw overboard a hundred corpses. The squalid survivors, as if
they were not sufficiently miserable, raged fiercely against one another.
Charges of incapacity, cruelty, brutal insolence, were hurled backward and
forward. The rigid Presbyterians attributed the calamities of the colony
to the wickedness of Jacobites, Prelatists, Sabbath-breakers, Atheists,
who hated in others that image of God which was wanting in themselves. The
accused malignants, on the other hand, complained bitterly of the
impertinence of meddling fanatics and hypocrites. Paterson was cruelly
reviled, and was unable to defend himself. He had been completely
prostrated by bodily and mental suffering. He looked like a skeleton. His
heart was broken. His inventive faculties and his plausible eloquence were
no more; and he seemed to have sunk into second childhood.

Meanwhile the second expedition had been on the seas. It reached Darien
about four months after the first settlers had fled. The new comers had
fully expected to find a flourishing young town, secure fortifications,
cultivated fields, and a cordial welcome. They found a wilderness. The
castle of New Edinburgh was in ruins. The huts had been burned. The site
marked out for the proud capital which was to have been the Tyre, the
Venice, the Amsterdam of the eighteenth century was overgrown with jungle,
and inhabited only by the sloth and the baboon. The hearts of the
adventurers sank within them. For their fleet had been fitted out, not to
plant a colony, but to recruit a colony already planted and supposed to be
prospering. They were therefore worse provided with every necessary of
life than their predecessors had been. Some feeble attempts, however, were
made to restore what had perished. A new fort was constructed on the old
ground; and within the ramparts was built a hamlet, consisting of eighty
or ninety cabins, generally of twelve feet by ten. But the work went on
languidly. The alacrity which is the effect of hope, the strength which is
the effect of union, were alike wanting to the little community. From the
councillors down to the humblest settlers all was despondency and
discontent. The stock of provisions was scanty. The stewards embezzled
great part of it. The rations were small; and soon there was a cry that
they were unfairly distributed. Factions were formed. Plots were laid. One
ringleader of the malecontents was hanged. The Scotch were generally, as
they still are, a religious people; and it might therefore have been
expected that the influence of the divines to whom the spiritual charge of
the colony had been confided would have been employed with advantage for
the preserving of order and the calming of evil passions. Unfortunately
those divines seem to have been at war with almost all the rest of the
society. They described their companions as the most profligate of
mankind, and declared that it was impossible to constitute a presbytery
according to the directions of the General Assembly; for that persons fit
to be ruling elders of a Christian Church were not to be found among the
twelve or thirteen hundred emigrants. Where the blame lay it is now
impossible to decide. All that can with confidence be said is that either
the clergymen must have been most unreasonably and most uncharitably
austere, or the laymen must have been most unfavourable specimens of the
nation and class to which they belonged.

It may be added that the provision by the General Assembly for the
spiritual wants of the colony was as defective as the provision made for
temporal wants by the directors of the Company. Nearly one third of the
emigrants who sailed with the second expedition were Highlanders, who did
not understand a word of English; and not one of the four chaplains could
speak a word of Gaelic. It was only through interpreters that a pastor
could communicate with a large portion of the Christian flock of which he
had charge. Even by the help of interpreters he could not impart religious
instruction to those heathen tribes which the Church of Scotland had
solemnly recommended to his care. In fact, the colonists left behind them
no mark that baptized men had set foot on Darien, except a few Anglo-Saxon
curses, which, having been uttered more frequently and with greater energy
than any other words in our language, had caught the ear and been retained
in the memory of the native population of the isthmus.

The months which immediately followed the arrival of the new comers were
the coolest and most salubrious of the year. But, even in those months,
the pestilential influence of a tropical sun, shining on swamps rank with
impenetrable thickets of black mangroves, began to be felt. The mortality
was great; and it was but too clear that, before the summer was far
advanced, the second colony would, like the first, have to choose between
death and flight. But the agony of the inevitable dissolution was
shortened by violence. A fleet of eleven vessels under the flag of Castile
anchored off New Edinburgh. At the same time an irregular army of
Spaniards, Creoles, negroes, mulattoes and Indians marched across the
isthmus from Panama; and the fort was blockaded at once by sea and land.

A drummer soon came with a message from the besiegers, but a message which
was utterly unintelligible to the besieged. Even after all that we have
seen of the perverse imbecility of the directors of the Company, it must
be thought strange that they should have sent a colony to a remote part of
the world, where it was certain that there must be constant intercourse,
peaceable or hostile, with Spaniards, and yet should not have taken care
that there should be in the whole colony a single person who knew a little
Spanish.

With some difficulty a negotiation was carried on in such French and such
Latin as the two parties could furnish. Before the end of March a treaty
was signed by which the Scotch bound themselves to evacuate Darien in
fourteen days; and on the eleventh of April they departed, a much less
numerous body than when they arrived. In little more than four months,
although the healthiest months of the year, three hundred men out of
thirteen hundred had been swept away by disease. Of the survivors very few
lived to see their native country again. Two of the ships perished at sea.
Many of the adventurers, who had left their homes flushed with hopes of
speedy opulence, were glad to hire themselves out to the planters of
Jamaica, and laid their bones in that land of exile. Shields died there,
worn out and heart broken. Borland was the only minister who came back. In
his curious and interesting narrative, he expresses his feelings, after
the fashion of the school in which he had been bred, by grotesque
allusions to the Old Testament, and by a profusion of Hebrew words. On his
first arrival, he tells us, he found New Edinburgh a Ziklag. He had
subsequently been compelled to dwell in the tents of Kedar. Once, indeed,
during his sojourn, he had fallen in with a Beer-lahai-roi, and had set up
his Ebenezer; but in general Darien was to him a Magor Missabib, a
Kibroth-hattaavah. The sad story is introduced with the words in which a
great man of old, delivered over to the malice of the Evil Power, was
informed of the death of his children and of the ruin of his fortunes: “I
alone am escaped to tell thee.”

CHAPTER XXV.

THE passions which had agitated the Parliament during the late session
continued to ferment in the minds of men during the recess, and, having no
longer a vent in the senate, broke forth in every part of the empire,
destroyed the peace of towns, brought into peril the honour and the lives
of innocent men, and impelled magistrates to leave the bench of justice
and attack one another sword in hand. Private calamities, private brawls,
which had nothing to do with the disputes between court and country, were
turned by the political animosities of that unhappy summer into grave
political events.

One mournful tale, which called forth the strongest feelings of the
contending factions, is still remembered as a curious part of the history
of our jurisprudence, and especially of the history of our medical
jurisprudence. No Whig member of the lower House, with the single
exception of Montague, filled a larger space in the public eye than
William Cowper. In the art of conciliating an audience, Cowper was
preeminent. His graceful and engaging eloquence cast a spell on juries;
and the Commons, even in those stormy moments when no other defender of
the administration could obtain a hearing, would always listen to him. He
represented Hertford, a borough in which his family had considerable
influence; but there was a strong Tory minority among the electors, and he
had not won his seat without a hard fight, which had left behind it many
bitter recollections. His younger brother Spencer, a man of parts and
learning, was fast rising into practice as a barrister on the Home
Circuit.

At Hertford resided an opulent Quaker family named Stout. A pretty young
woman of this family had lately sunk into a melancholy of a kind not very
unusual in girls of strong sensibility and lively imagination who are
subject to the restraints of austere religious societies. Her dress, her
looks, her gestures, indicated the disturbance of her mind. She sometimes
hinted her dislike of the sect to which she belonged. She complained that
a canting waterman who was one of the brotherhood had held forth against
her at a meeting. She threatened to go beyond sea, to throw herself out of
window, to drown herself. To two or three of her associates she owned that
she was in love; and on one occasion she plainly said that the man whom
she loved was one whom she never could marry. In fact, the object of her
fondness was Spencer Cowper, who was already married. She at length wrote
to him in language which she never would have used if her intellect had
not been disordered. He, like an honest man, took no advantage of her
unhappy state of mind, and did his best to avoid her. His prudence
mortified her to such a degree that on one occasion she went into fits. It
was necessary, however, that he should see her, when he came to Hertford
at the spring assizes of 1699. For he had been entrusted with some money
which was due to her on mortgage. He called on her for this purpose late
one evening, and delivered a bag of gold to her. She pressed him to be the
guest of her family; but he excused himself and retired. The next morning
she was found dead among the stakes of a mill dam on the stream called the
Priory River. That she had destroyed herself there could be no reasonable
doubt. The coroner’s inquest found that she had drowned herself while in a
state of mental derangement. But her family was unwilling to admit that
she had shortened her own life, and looked about for somebody who might be
accused of murdering her. The last person who could be proved to have been
in her company was Spencer Cowper. It chanced that two attorneys and a
scrivener, who had come down from town to the Hertford assizes, had been
overheard, on that unhappy night, talking over their wine about the charms
and flirtations of the handsome Quaker girl, in the light way in which
such subjects are sometimes discussed even at the circuit tables and mess
tables of our more refined generation. Some wild words, susceptible of a
double meaning, were used about the way in which she had jilted one lover,
and the way in which another lover would punish her for her coquetry. On
no better grounds than these her relations imagined that Spencer Cowper
had, with the assistance of these three retainers of the law, strangled
her, and thrown her corpse into the water. There was absolutely no
evidence of the crime. There was no evidence that any one of the accused
had any motive to commit such a crime; there was no evidence that Spencer
Cowper had any connection with the persons who were said to be his
accomplices. One of those persons, indeed, he had never seen. But no story
is too absurd to be imposed on minds blinded by religious and political
fanaticism. The Quakers and the Tories joined to raise a formidable
clamour. The Quakers had, in those days, no scruples about capital
punishments. They would, indeed, as Spencer Cowper said bitterly, but too
truly, rather send four innocent men to the gallows than let it be
believed that one who had their light within her had committed suicide.
The Tories exulted in the prospect of winning two seats from the Whigs.
The whole kingdom was divided between Stouts and Cowpers. At the summer
assizes Hertford was crowded with anxious faces from London and from parts
of England more distant than London. The prosecution was conducted with a
malignity and unfairness which to us seem almost incredible; and,
unfortunately, the dullest and most ignorant judge of the twelve was on
the bench. Cowper defended himself and those who were said to be his
accomplices with admirable ability and self possession. His brother, much
more distressed than himself, sate near him through the long agony of that
day. The case against the prisoners rested chiefly on the vulgar error
that a human body, found, as this poor girl’s body had been found,
floating in water, must have been thrown into the water while still alive.
To prove this doctrine the counsel for the Crown called medical
practitioners, of whom nothing is now known except that some of them had
been active against the Whigs at Hertford elections. To confirm the
evidence of these gentlemen two or three sailors were put into the witness
box. On the other side appeared an array of men of science whose names are
still remembered. Among them was William Cowper, not a kinsman of the
defendant, but the most celebrated anatomist that England had then
produced. He was, indeed, the founder of a dynasty illustrious in the
history of science; for he was the teacher of William Cheselden, and
William Cheselden was the teacher of John Hunter. On the same side
appeared Samuel Garth, who, among the physicians of the capital, had no
rival except Radcliffe, and Hans Sloane, the founder of the magnificent
museum which is one of the glories of our country. The attempt of the
prosecutors to make the superstitions of the forecastle evidence for the
purpose of taking away the lives of men was treated by these philosophers
with just disdain. The stupid judge asked Garth what he could say in
answer to the testimony of the seamen. “My Lord,” replied Garth, “I say
that they are mistaken. I will find seamen in abundance to swear that they
have known whistling raise the wind.”

The jury found the prisoners Not guilty; and the report carried back to
London by persons who had been present at the trial was that everybody
applauded the verdict, and that even the Stouts seemed to be convinced of
their error. It is certain, however, that the malevolence of the defeated
party soon revived in all its energy. The lives of the four men who had
just been absolved were again attacked by means of the most absurd and
odious proceeding known to our old law, the appeal of murder. This attack
too failed. Every artifice of chicane was at length exhausted; and nothing
was left to the disappointed sect and the disappointed faction except to
calumniate those whom it had been found impossible to murder. In a
succession of libels Spencer Cowper was held up to the execration of the
public. But the public did him justice. He rose to high eminence in his
profession; he at length took his seat, with general applause, on the
judicial bench, and there distinguished himself by the humanity which he
never failed to show to unhappy men who stood, as he had once stood, at
the bar. Many who seldom trouble themselves about pedigrees may be
interested by learning that he was the grandfather of that excellent man
and excellent poet William Cowper, whose writings have long been
peculiarly loved and prized by the members of the religious community
which, under a strong delusion, sought to slay his innocent progenitor. 19

Though Spencer Cowper had escaped with life and honour, the Tories had
carried their point. They had secured against the next election the
support of the Quakers of Hertford; and the consequence was that the
borough was lost to the family and to the party which had lately
predominated there.

In the very week in which the great trial took place at Hertford, a feud
arising out of the late election for Buckinghamshire very nearly produced
fatal effects. Wharton, the chief of the Buckinghamshire Whigs, had with
difficulty succeeded in bringing in his brother as one of the knights of
the shire. Graham Viscount Cheyney, of the kingdom of Scotland, had been
returned at the head of the poll by the Tories. The two noblemen met at
the quarter sessions. In England Cheyney was before the Union merely an
Esquire. Wharton was undoubtedly entitled to take place of him, and had
repeatedly taken place of him without any dispute. But angry passions now
ran so high that a decent pretext for indulging them was hardly thought
necessary. Cheyney fastened a quarrel on Wharton. They drew. Wharton,
whose cool good humoured courage and skill in fence were the envy of all
the swordsmen of that age, closed with his quarrelsome neighbour, disarmed
him, and gave him his life.

A more tragical duel had just taken place at Westminster. Conway Seymour,
the eldest son of Sir Edward Seymour, had lately come of age. He was in
possession of an independent fortune of seven thousand pounds a year,
which he lavished in costly fopperies. The town had nicknamed him Beau
Seymour. He was displaying his curls and his embroidery in Saint James’s
Park on a midsummer evening, after indulging too freely in wine, when a
young officer of the Blues named Kirke, who was as tipsy as himself,
passed near him. “There goes Beau Seymour,” said Kirke. Seymour flew into
a rage. Angry words were exchanged between the foolish boys. They
immediately went beyond the precincts of the Court, drew, and exchanged
some pushes. Seymour was wounded in the neck. The wound was not very
serious; but, when his cure was only half completed, he revelled in fruit,
ice and Burgundy till he threw himself into a violent fever. Though a
coxcomb and a voluptuary, he seems to have had some fine qualities. On the
last day of his life he saw Kirke. Kirke implored forgiveness; and the
dying man declared that he forgave as he hoped to be forgiven. There can
be no doubt that a person who kills another in a duel is, according to
law, guilty of murder. But the law had never been strictly enforced
against gentlemen in such cases; and in this case there was no peculiar
atrocity, no deep seated malice, no suspicion of foul play. Sir Edward,
however, vehemently declared that he would have life for life. Much
indulgence is due to the resentment of an affectionate father maddened by
the loss of a son. But there is but too much reason to believe that the
implacability of Seymour was the implacability, not of an affectionate
father, but of a factious and malignant agitator. He tried to make what
is, in the jargon of our time, called political capital out of the
desolation of his house and the blood of his first born. A brawl between
two dissolute youths, a brawl distinguished by nothing but its unhappy
result from the hundred brawls which took place every month in theatres
and taverns, he magnified into an attack on the liberties of the nation,
an attempt to introduce a military tyranny. The question was whether a
soldier was to be permitted to insult English gentlemen, and, if they
murmured, to cut their throats? It was moved in the Court of King’s Bench
that Kirke should either be brought to immediate trial or admitted to
bail. Shower, as counsel for Seymour, opposed the motion. But Seymour was
not content to leave the case in Shower’s hands. In defiance of all
decency, he went to Westminster Hall, demanded a hearing, and pronounced a
harangue against standing armies. “Here,” he said, “is a man who lives on
money taken out of our pockets. The plea set up for taxing us in order to
support him is that his sword protects us, and enables us to live in peace
and security. And is he to be suffered to use that sword to destroy us?”
Kirke was tried and found guilty of manslaughter. In his case, as in the
case of Spencer Cowper, an attempt was made to obtain a writ of appeal.
The attempt failed; and Seymour was disappointed of his revenge; but he
was not left without consolation. If he had lost a son, he had found, what
he seems to have prized quite as much, a fertile theme for invective.

The King, on his return from the Continent, found his subjects in no bland
humour. All Scotland, exasperated by the fate of the first expedition to
Darien, and anxiously waiting for news of the second, called loudly for a
Parliament. Several of the Scottish peers carried to Kensington an address
which was subscribed by thirty-six of their body, and which earnestly
pressed William to convoke the Estates at Edinburgh, and to redress the
wrongs which had been done to the colony of New Caledonia. A petition to
the same effect was widely circulated among the commonalty of his Northern
kingdom, and received, if report could be trusted, not less than thirty
thousand signatures. Discontent was far from being as violent in England
as in Scotland. Yet in England there was discontent enough to make even a
resolute prince uneasy. The time drew near at which the Houses must
reassemble; and how were the Commons to be managed? Montague, enraged,
mortified, and intimidated by the baiting of the last session, was fully
determined not again to appear in the character of chief minister of
finance. The secure and luxurious retreat which he had, some months ago,
prepared for himself was awaiting him. He took the Auditorship, and
resigned his other places. Smith became Chancellor of the Exchequer. A new
commission of Treasury issued; and the first name was that of Tankerville.
He had entered on his career, more than twenty years before, with the
fairest hopes, young, noble, nobly allied, of distinguished abilities, of
graceful manners. There was no more brilliant man of fashion in the
theatre and in the ring. There was no more popular tribune in Guildhall.
Such was the commencement of a life so miserable that all the indignation
excited by great faults is overpowered by pity. A guilty passion,
amounting to a madness, left on the moral character of the unhappy man a
stain at which even libertines looked grave. He tried to make the errors
of his private life forgotten by splendid and perilous services to a
public cause; and, having endured in that cause penury and exile, the
gloom of a dungeon, the prospect of a scaffold, the ruin of a noble
estate, he was so unfortunate as to be regarded by the party for which he
had sacrificed every thing as a coward, if not a traitor. Yet, even
against such accumulated disasters and disgraces, his vigorous and
aspiring mind bore up. His parts and eloquence gained for him the ear of
the House of Lords; and at length, though not till his constitution was so
broken that he was fitter for flannel and cushions than for a laborious
office at Whitehall, he was put at the head of one of the most important
departments of the administration. It might have been expected that this
appointment would call forth clamours from widely different quarters; that
the Tories would be offended by the elevation of a rebel; that the Whigs
would set up a cry against the captain to whose treachery or
faintheartedness they had been in the habit of imputing the rout of
Sedgemoor; and that the whole of that great body of Englishmen which
cannot be said to be steadily Whig or Tory, but which is zealous for
decency and the domestic virtues, would see with indignation a signal mark
of royal favour bestowed on one who had been convicted of debauching a
noble damsel, the sister of his own wife. But so capricious is public
feeling that it will be difficult, if not impossible, to find, in any of
the letters, essays, dialogues, and poems which bear the date of 1699 or
of 1700, a single allusion to the vices or misfortunes of the new First
Lord of the Treasury. It is probable that his infirm health and his
isolated position were his protection. The chiefs of the opposition did
not fear him enough to hate him. The Whig junto was still their terror and
their abhorrence. They continued to assail Montague and Orford, though
with somewhat less ferocity than while Montague had the direction of the
finances, and Orford of the marine. But the utmost spite of all the
leading malecontents were concentrated on one object, the great magistrate
who still held the highest civil post in the realm, and who was evidently
determined to hold it in defiance of them. It was not so easy to get rid
of him as it had been to drive his colleagues from office. His abilities
the most intolerant Tories were forced grudgingly to acknowledge. His
integrity might be questioned in nameless libels and in coffeehouse
tattle, but was certain to come forth bright and pure from the most severe
Parliamentary investigation. Nor was he guilty of those faults of temper
and of manner to which, more than to any grave delinquency, the
unpopularity of his associates is to be ascribed. He had as little of the
insolence and perverseness of Orford as of the petulance and
vaingloriousness of Montague. One of the most severe trials to which the
head and heart of man can be put is great and rapid elevation. To that
trial both Montague and Somers were put. It was too much for Montague. But
Somers was found equal to it. He was the son of a country attorney. At
thirty-seven he had been sitting in a stuff gown on a back bench in the
Court of King’s Bench. At forty-two he was the first lay dignitary of the
realm, and took precedence of the Archbishop of York, and of the Duke of
Norfolk. He had risen from a lower point than Montague, had risen as fast
as Montague, had risen as high as Montague, and yet had not excited envy
such as dogged Montague through a long career. Garreteers, who were never
weary of calling the cousin of the Earls of Manchester and Sandwich an
upstart, could not, without an unwonted sense of shame, apply those words
to the Chancellor, who, without one drop of patrician blood in his veins,
had taken his place at the head of the patrician order with the quiet
dignity of a man ennobled by nature. His serenity, his modesty, his
selfcommand, proof even against the most sudden surprises of passion, his
selfrespect, which forced the proudest grandees of the kingdom to respect
him, his urbanity, which won the hearts of the youngest lawyers of the
Chancery Bar, gained for him many private friends and admirers among the
most respectable members of the opposition. But such men as Howe and
Seymour hated him implacably; they hated his commanding genius much; they
hated the mild majesty of his virtue still more. They sought occasion
against him everywhere; and they at length flattered themselves that they
had found it.

Some years before, while the war was still raging, there had been loud
complaints in the city that even privateers of St. Malo’s and Dunkirk
caused less molestation to trade than another class of marauders. The
English navy was fully employed in the Channel, in the Atlantic, and in
the Mediterranean. The Indian Ocean, meanwhile, swarmed with pirates of
whose rapacity and cruelty frightful stories were told. Many of these men,
it was said, came from our North American colonies, and carried back to
those colonies the spoils gained by crime. Adventurers who durst not show
themselves in the Thames found a ready market for their illgotten spices
and stuffs at New York. Even the Puritans of New England, who in
sanctimonious austerity surpassed even their brethren of Scotland, were
accused of conniving at the wickedness which enabled them to enjoy
abundantly and cheaply the produce of Indian looms and Chinese tea
plantations.

In 1695 Richard Coote, Earl of Bellamont, an Irish peer who sate in the
English House of Commons, was appointed Governor of New York and
Massachusets. He was a man of eminently fair character, upright,
courageous and independent. Though a decided Whig, he had distinguished
himself by bringing before the Parliament at Westminster some tyrannical
acts done by Whigs at Dublin, and particularly the execution, if it is not
rather to be called the murder, of Gafney. Before Bellamont sailed for
America, William spoke strongly to him about the freebooting which was the
disgrace of the colonies. “I send you, my Lord, to New York,” he said,
“because an honest and intrepid man is wanted to put these abuses down,
and because I believe you to be such a man.” Bellamont exerted himself to
justify the high opinion which the King had formed of him. It was soon
known at New York that the Governor who had just arrived from England was
bent on the suppression of piracy; and some colonists in whom he placed
great confidence suggested to him what they may perhaps have thought the
best mode of attaining that object. There was then in the settlement a
veteran mariner named William Kidd. He had passed most of his life on the
waves, had distinguished himself by his seamanship, had had opportunities
of showing his valour in action with the French, and had retired on a
competence. No man knew the Eastern seas better. He was perfectly
acquainted with all the haunts of the pirates who prowled between the Cape
of Good Hope and the Straits of Malacca; and he would undertake, if he
were entrusted with a single ship of thirty or forty guns, to clear the
Indian Ocean of the whole race. The brigantines of the rovers were
numerous, no doubt; but none of them was large; one man of war, which in
the royal navy would hardly rank as a fourth rate, would easily deal with
them all in succession; and the lawful spoils of the enemies of mankind
would much more than defray the charges of the expedition. Bellamont was
charmed with this plan, and recommended it to the King. The King referred
it to the Admiralty. The Admiralty raised difficulties, such as are
perpetually raised by public boards when any deviation, whether for the
better or for the worse, from the established course of proceeding is
proposed. It then occurred to Bellamont that his favourite scheme might be
carried into effect without any cost to the state. A few public spirited
men might easily fit out a privateer which would soon make the Arabian
Gulph and the Bay of Bengal secure highways for trade. He wrote to his
friends in England imploring, remonstrating, complaining of their
lamentable want of public spirit. Six thousand pounds would be enough.
That sum would be repaid, and repaid with large interest, from the sale of
prizes; and an inestimable benefit would be conferred on the kingdom and
on the world. His urgency succeeded. Shrewsbury and Romney contributed.
Orford, though, as first Lord of the Admiralty, he had been unwilling to
send Kidd to the Indian ocean with a king’s ship, consented to subscribe a
thousand pounds. Somers subscribed another thousand. A ship called the
Adventure Galley was equipped in the port of London; and Kidd took the
command. He carried with him, besides the ordinary letters of marque, a
commission under the Great Seal empowering him to seize pirates, and to
take them to some place where they might be dealt with according to law.
Whatever right the King might have to the goods found in the possession of
these malefactors he granted, by letters patent, to the persons who had
been at the expense of fitting out the expedition, reserving to himself
only one tenth part of the gains of the adventure, which was to be paid
into the treasury. With the claim of merchants to have back the property
of which they had been robbed His Majesty of course did not interfere. He
granted away, and could grant away, no rights but his own.

The press for sailors to man the royal navy was at that time so hot that
Kidd could not obtain his full complement of hands in the Thames. He
crossed the Atlantic, visited New York, and there found volunteers in
abundance. At length, in February 1697, he sailed from the Hudson with a
crew of more than a hundred and fifty men, and in July reached the coast
of Madagascar.

It is possible that Kidd may at first have meant to act in accordance with
his instructions. But, on the subject of piracy, he held the notions which
were then common in the North American colonies; and most of his crew were
of the same mind. He found himself in a sea which was constantly traversed
by rich and defenceless merchant ships; and he had to determine whether he
would plunder those ships or protect them. The gain which might be made by
plundering them was immense, and might be snatched without the dangers of
a battle or the delays of a trial. The rewards of protecting the lawful
trade were likely to be comparatively small. Such as they were, they would
be got only by first fighting with desperate ruffians who would rather be
killed than taken, and by then instituting a proceeding and obtaining a
judgment in a Court of Admiralty. The risk of being called to a severe
reckoning might not unnaturally seem small to one who had seen many old
buccaneers living in comfort and credit at New York and Boston. Kidd soon
threw off the character of a privateer, and became a pirate. He
established friendly communications, and exchanged arms and ammunition,
with the most notorious of those rovers whom his commission authorised him
to destroy, and made war on those peaceful traders whom he was sent to
defend. He began by robbing Mussulmans, and speedily proceeded from
Mussulmans to Armenians, and from Armenians to Portuguese. The Adventure
Galley took such quantities of cotton and silk, sugar and coffee, cinnamon
and pepper, that the very foremast men received from a hundred to two
hundred pounds each, and that the captain’s share of the spoil would have
enabled him to live at home as an opulent gentleman. With the rapacity
Kidd had the cruelty of his odious calling. He burned houses; he massacred
peasantry. His prisoners were tied up and beaten with naked cutlasses in
order to extort information about their concealed hoards. One of his crew,
whom he had called a dog, was provoked into exclaiming, in an agony of
remorse, “Yes, I am a dog; but it is you that have made me so.” Kidd, in a
fury, struck the man dead.

News then travelled very slowly from the eastern seas to England. But, in
August 1698, it was known in London that the Adventure Galley from which
so much had been hoped was the terror of the merchants of Surat, and of
the villagers of the coast of Malabar. It was thought probable that Kidd
would carry his booty to some colony. Orders were therefore sent from
Whitehall to the governors of the transmarine possessions of the Crown,
directing them to be on the watch for him. He meanwhile, having burned his
ship and dismissed most of his men, who easily found berths in the sloops
of other pirates, returned to New York with the means, as he flattered
himself, of making his peace and of living in splendour. He had fabricated
a long romance to which Bellamont, naturally unwilling to believe that he
had been duped and had been the means of duping others, was at first
disposed to listen with favour. But the truth soon came out. The governor
did his duty firmly; and Kidd was placed in close confinement till orders
arrived from the Admiralty that he should be sent to England.

To an intelligent and candid judge of human actions it will not appear
that any of the persons at whose expense the Adventure Galley was fitted
out deserved serious blame. The worst that could be imputed even to
Bellamont, who had drawn in all the rest, was that he had been led into a
fault by his ardent zeal for the public service, and by the generosity of
a nature as little prone to suspect as to devise villanies. His friends in
England might surely be pardoned for giving credit to his recommendation.
It is highly probable that the motive which induced some of them to aid
his design was genuine public spirit. But, if we suppose them to have had
a view to gain, it was to legitimate gain. Their conduct was the very
opposite of corrupt. Not only had they taken no money. They had disbursed
money largely, and had disbursed it with the certainty that they should
never be reimbursed unless the outlay proved beneficial to the public.
That they meant well they proved by staking thousands on the success of
their plan; and, if they erred in judgment, the loss of those thousands
was surely a sufficient punishment for such an error. On this subject
there would probably have been no difference of opinion had not Somers
been one of the contributors. About the other patrons of Kidd the chiefs
of the opposition cared little. Bellamont was far removed from the
political scene. Romney could not, and Shrewsbury would not, play a first
part. Orford had resigned his employments. But Somers still held the Great
Seal, still presided in the House of Lords, still had constant access to
the closet. The retreat of his friends had left him the sole and
undisputed head of that party which had, in the late Parliament, been a
majority, and which was, in the present Parliament, outnumbered indeed,
disorganised and disheartened, but still numerous and respectable. His
placid courage rose higher and higher to meet the dangers which threatened
him. He provided for himself no refuge. He made no move towards flight;
and, without uttering one boastful word, gave his enemies to understand,
by the mild firmness of his demeanour, that he dared them to do their
worst.

In their eagerness to displace and destroy him they overreached
themselves. Had they been content to accuse him of lending his
countenance, with a rashness unbecoming his high place, to an illconcerted
scheme, that large part of mankind which judges of a plan simply by the
event would probably have thought the accusation well founded. But the
malice which they bore to him was not to be so satisfied. They affected to
believe that he had from the first been aware of Kidd’s character and
designs. The Great Seal had been employed to sanction a piratical
expedition. The head of the law had laid down a thousand pounds in the
hope of receiving tens of thousands when his accomplices should return,
laden with the spoils of ruined merchants. It was fortunate for the
Chancellor that the calumnies of which he was the object were too
atrocious to be mischievous.

And now the time had come at which the hoarded illhumour of six months was
at liberty to explode. On the sixteenth of November the Houses met. The
King, in his speech, assured them in gracious and affectionate language
that he was determined to do his best to merit their love by constant care
to preserve their liberty and their religion, by a pure administration of
justice, by countenancing virtue, by discouraging vice, by shrinking from
no difficulty or danger when the welfare of the nation was at stake.
“These,” he said, “are my resolutions; and I am persuaded that you are
come together with purposes on your part suitable to these on mine. Since
then our aims are only for the general good, let us act with confidence in
one another, which will not fail, by God’s blessing, to make me a happy
king, and you a great and flourishing people.”

It might have been thought that no words less likely to give offence had
ever been uttered from the English throne. But even in those words the
malevolence of faction sought and found matter for a quarrel. The gentle
exhortation, “Let us act with confidence in one another,” must mean that
such confidence did not now exist, that the King distrusted the
Parliament, or that the Parliament had shown an unwarrantable distrust of
the King. Such an exhortation was nothing less than a reproach; and such a
reproach was a bad return for the gold and the blood which England had
lavished in order to make and to keep him a great sovereign. There was a
sharp debate, in which Seymour took part. With characteristic indelicacy
and want of feeling he harangued the Commons as he had harangued the Court
of King’s Bench, about his son’s death, and about the necessity of curbing
the insolence of military men. There were loud complaints that the events
of the preceding session had been misrepresented to the public, that
emissaries of the Court, in every part of the kingdom, declaimed against
the absurd jealousies or still more absurd parsimony which had refused to
His Majesty the means of keeping up such an army as might secure the
country against invasion. Even justices of the peace, it was said, even
deputy-lieutenants, had used King James and King Lewis as bugbears, for
the purpose of stirring up the people against honest and thrifty
representatives. Angry resolutions were passed, declaring it to be the
opinion of the House that the best way to establish entire confidence
between the King and the Estates of the Realm would be to put a brand on
those evil advisers who had dared to breathe in the royal ear calumnies
against a faithful Parliament. An address founded on these resolutions was
voted; many thought that a violent rupture was inevitable. But William
returned an answer so prudent and gentle that malice itself could not
prolong the dispute. By this time, indeed, a new dispute had begun. The
address had scarcely been moved when the House called for copies of the
papers relating to Kidd’s expedition. Somers, conscious of innocence, knew
that it was wise as well as right to be perfectly ingenuous, and resolved
that there should be no concealment. His friends stood manfully by him,
and his enemies struck at him with such blind fury that their blows
injured only themselves. Howe raved like a maniac. “What is to become of
the country, plundered by land, plundered by sea? Our rulers have laid
hold on our lands, our woods, our mines, our money. And all this is not
enough. We cannot send a cargo to the farthest ends of the earth, but they
must send a gang of thieves after it.” Harley and Seymour tried to carry a
vote of censure without giving the House time to read the papers. But the
general feeling was strongly for a short delay. At length, on the sixth of
December, the subject was considered in a committee of the whole House.
Shower undertook to prove that the letters patent to which Somers had put
the Great Seal were illegal. Cowper replied to him with immense applause,
and seems to have completely refuted him. Some of the Tory orators had
employed what was then a favourite claptrap. Very great men, no doubt,
were concerned in this business. But were the Commons of England to stand
in awe of great men? Would not they have the spirit to censure corruption
and oppression in the highest places? Cowper answered finely that
assuredly the House ought not to be deterred from the discharge of any
duty by the fear of great men, but that fear was not the only base and
evil passion of which great men were the objects, and that the flatterer
who courted their favour was not a worse citizen than the envious
calumniator who took pleasure in bringing whatever was eminent down to his
own level. At length, after a debate which lasted from midday till nine at
night, and in which all the leading members took part, the committee
divided on the question that the letters patent were dishonourable to the
King, inconsistent with the law of nations, contrary to the statutes of
the realm, and destructive of property and trade. The Chancellor’s enemies
had felt confident of victory, and had made the resolution so strong in
order that it might be impossible for him to retain the Great Seal. They
soon found that it would have been wise to propose a gentler censure.
Great numbers of their adherents, convinced by Cowper’s arguments, or
unwilling to put a cruel stigma on a man of whose genius and
accomplishments the nation was proud, stole away before the door was
closed. To the general astonishment there were only one hundred and
thirty-three Ayes to one hundred and eighty-nine Noes. That the City of
London did not consider Somers as the destroyer, and his enemies as the
protectors, of trade, was proved on the following morning by the most
unequivocal of signs. As soon as the news of his triumph reached the Royal
Exchange, the price of stocks went up.

Some weeks elapsed before the Tories ventured again to attack him. In the
meantime they amused themselves by trying to worry another person whom
they hated even more bitterly. When, in a financial debate, the
arrangements of the household of the Duke of Gloucester were incidentally
mentioned, one or two members took the opportunity of throwing reflections
on Burnet. Burnet’s very name sufficed to raise among the High Churchmen a
storm of mingled merriment and anger. The Speaker in vain reminded the
orators that they were wandering from the question. The majority was
determined to have some fun with the Right Reverend Whig, and encouraged
them to proceed. Nothing appears to have been said on the other side. The
chiefs of the opposition inferred from the laughing and cheering of the
Bishop’s enemies, and from the silence of his friends, that there would be
no difficulty in driving from Court, with contumely, the prelate whom of
all prelates they most detested, as the personification of the
latitudinarian spirit, a Jack Presbyter in lawn sleeves. They, therefore,
after the lapse of a few hours, moved quite unexpectedly an address
requesting the King to remove the Bishop of Salisbury from the place of
preceptor to the young heir apparent. But it soon appeared that many who
could not help smiling at Burnet’s weaknesses did justice to his abilities
and virtues. The debate was hot. The unlucky Pastoral Letter was of course
not forgotten. It was asked whether a man who had proclaimed that England
was a conquered country, a man whose servile pages the English Commons had
ordered to be burned by the hangman, could be a fit instructor for an
English Prince. Some reviled the Bishop for being a Socinian, which he was
not, and some for being a Scotchman, which he was. His defenders fought
his battle gallantly. “Grant,” they said, “that it is possible to find,
amidst an immense mass of eloquent and learned matter published in defence
of the Protestant religion and of the English Constitution, a paragraph
which, though well intended, was not well considered, is that error of an
unguarded minute to outweigh the services of more than twenty years? If
one House of Commons, by a very small majority, censured a little tract of
which his Lordship was the author, let it be remembered that another House
of Commons unanimously voted thanks to him for a work of very different
magnitude and importance, the History of the Reformation. And, as to what
is said about his birthplace, is there not already ill humour enough in
Scotland? Has not the failure of that unhappy expedition to Darien raised
a sufficiently bitter feeling against us throughout that kingdom? Every
wise and honest man is desirous to soothe the angry passions of our
neighbours. And shall we, just at this moment, exasperate those passions
by proclaiming that to be born on the north of the Tweed is a
disqualification for all honourable trust?” The ministerial members would
gladly have permitted the motion to be withdrawn. But the opposition,
elated with hope, insisted on dividing, and were confounded by finding
that, with all the advantage of a surprise, they were only one hundred and
thirty-three to one hundred and seventy-three. Their defeat would probably
have been less complete, had not all those members who were especially
attached to the Princess of Denmark voted in the majority or absented
themselves. Marlborough used all his influence against the motion; and he
had strong reasons for doing so. He was by no means well pleased to see
the Commons engaged in discussing the characters and past lives of the
persons who were placed about the Duke of Gloucester. If the High
Churchmen, by reviving old stories, succeeded in carrying a vote against
the Preceptor, it was by no means unlikely that some malicious Whig might
retaliate on the Governor. The Governor must have been conscious that he
was not invulnerable; nor could he absolutely rely on the support of the
whole body of Tories; for it was believed that their favourite leader,
Rochester, thought himself the fittest person to superintend the education
of his grand nephew.

From Burnet the opposition went back to Somers. Some Crown property near
Reigate had been granted to Somers by the King. In this transaction there
was nothing that deserved blame. The Great Seal ought always to be held by
a lawyer of the highest distinction; nor can such a lawyer discharge his
duties in a perfectly efficient manner unless, with the Great Seal, he
accepts a peerage. But he may not have accumulated a fortune such as will
alone suffice to support a peerage; his peerage is permanent; and his
tenure of the Great Seal is precarious. In a few weeks he may be dismissed
from office, and may find that he has lost a lucrative profession, that he
has got nothing but a costly dignity, that he has been transformed from a
prosperous barrister into a mendicant lord. Such a risk no wise man will
run. If, therefore, the state is to be well served in the highest civil
post, it is absolutely necessary that a provision should be made for
retired Chancellors. The Sovereign is now empowered by Act of Parliament
to make such a provision out of the public revenue. In old times such a
provision was ordinarily made out of the hereditary domain of the Crown.
What had been bestowed on Somers appears to have amounted, after all
deductions, to a net income of about sixteen hundred a year, a sum which
will hardly shock us who have seen at one time five retired Chancellors
enjoying pensions of five thousand a year each. For the crime, however, of
accepting this grant the leaders of the opposition hoped that they should
be able to punish Somers with disgrace and ruin. One difficulty stood in
the way. All that he had received was but a pittance when compared with
the wealth with which some of his persecutors had been loaded by the last
two kings of the House of Stuart. It was not easy to pass any censure on
him which should not imply a still more severe censure on two generations
of Granvilles, on two generations of Hydes, and on two generations of
Finches. At last some ingenious Tory thought of a device by which it might
be possible to strike the enemy without wounding friends. The grants of
Charles and James had been made in time of peace; and William’s grant to
Somers had been made in time of war. Malice eagerly caught at this
childish distinction. It was moved that any minister who had been
concerned in passing a grant for his own benefit while the nation was
under the heavy taxes of the late war had violated his trust; as if the
expenditure which is necessary to secure to the country a good
administration of justice ought to be suspended by war; or as if it were
not criminal in a government to squander the resources of the state in
time of peace. The motion was made by James Brydges, eldest son of the
Lord Chandos, the James Brydges who afterwards became Duke of Chandos, who
raised a gigantic fortune out of war taxes, to squander it in comfortless
and tasteless ostentation, and who is still remembered as the Timon of
Pope’s keen and brilliant satire. It was remarked as extraordinary that
Brydges brought forward and defended his motion merely as the assertion of
an abstract truth, and avoided all mention of the Chancellor. It seemed
still more extraordinary that Howe, whose whole eloquence consisted in
cutting personalities, named nobody on this occasion, and contented
himself with declaiming in general terms against corruption and profusion.
It was plain that the enemies of Somers were at once urged forward by
hatred and kept back by fear. They knew that they could not carry a
resolution directly condemning him. They, therefore, cunningly brought
forward a mere speculative proposition which many members might be willing
to affirm without scrutinising it severely. But, as soon as the major
premise had been admitted, the minor would be without difficulty
established; and it would be impossible to avoid coming to the conclusion
that Somers had violated his trust. Such tactics, however, have very
seldom succeeded in English parliaments; for a little good sense and a
little straightforwardness are quite sufficient to confound them. A sturdy
Whig member, Sir Rowland Gwyn, disconcerted the whole scheme of
operations. “Why this reserve?” he said, “Everybody knows your meaning.
Everybody sees that you have not the courage to name the great man whom
you are trying to destroy.” “That is false,” cried Brydges; and a stormy
altercation followed. It soon appeared that innocence would again triumph.
The two parties seemed to have exchanged characters for one day. The
friends of the government, who in the Parliament were generally humble and
timorous, took a high tone, and spoke as it becomes men to speak who are
defending persecuted genius and virtue. The malecontents, generally so
insolent and turbulent, seemed to be completely cowed. They abased
themselves so low as to protest, what no human being could believe, that
they had no intention of attacking the Chancellor, and had framed their
resolution without any view to him. Howe, from whose lips scarcely any
thing ever dropped but gall and poison, went so far as to say: “My Lord
Somers is a man of eminent merit, of merit so eminent that, if he had made
a slip, we might well overlook it.” At a late hour the question was put;
and the motion was rejected by a majority of fifty in a house of four
hundred and nineteen members. It was long since there had been so large an
attendance at a division.

The ignominious failure of the attacks on Somers and Burnet seemed to
prove that the assembly was coming round to a better temper. But the
temper of a House of Commons left without the guidance of a ministry is
never to be trusted. “Nobody can tell today,” said an experienced
politician of that time, “what the majority may take it into their heads
to do tomorrow.” Already a storm was gathering in which the Constitution
itself was in danger of perishing, and from which none of the three
branches of the legislature escaped without serious damage.

The question of the Irish forfeitures had been raised; and about that
question the minds of men, both within and without the walls of
Parliament, were in a strangely excitable state. Candid and intelligent
men, whatever veneration they may feel for the memory of William, must
find it impossible to deny that, in his eagerness to enrich and aggrandise
his personal friends, he too often forgot what was due to his own
reputation and to the public interest. It is true that in giving away the
old domains of the Crown he did only what he had a right to do, and what
all his predecessors had done; nor could the most factious opposition
insist on resuming his grants of those domains without resuming at the
same time the grants of his uncles. But between those domains and the
estates recently forfeited in Ireland there was a distinction, which would
not indeed have been recognised by the judges, but which to a popular
assembly might well seem to be of grave importance. In the year 1690 a
Bill had been brought in for applying the Irish forfeitures to the public
service. That Bill passed the Commons, and would probably, with large
amendments, have passed the Lords, had not the King, who was under the
necessity of attending the Congress at the Hague, put an end to the
session. In bidding the Houses farewell on that occasion, he assured them
that he should not dispose of the property about which they had been
deliberating, till they should have had another opportunity of settling
that matter. He had, as he thought, strictly kept his word; for he had not
disposed of this property till the Houses had repeatedly met and separated
without presenting to him any bill on the subject. They had had the
opportunity which he had assured them that they should have. They had had
more than one such opportunity. The pledge which he had given had
therefore been amply redeemed; and he did not conceive that he was bound
to abstain longer from exercising his undoubted prerogative. But, though
it could hardly be denied that he had literally fulfilled his promise, the
general opinion was that such a promise ought to have been more than
literally fulfilled. If his Parliament, overwhelmed with business which
could not be postponed without danger to his throne and to his person, had
been forced to defer, year after year, the consideration of so large and
complex a question as that of the Irish forfeitures, it ill became him to
take advantage of such a laches with the eagerness of a shrewd attorney.
Many persons, therefore, who were sincerely attached to his government,
and who on principle disapproved of resumptions, thought the case of these
forfeitures an exception to the general rule.

The Commons had at the close of the last session tacked to the Land Tax
Bill a clause impowering seven Commissioners, who were designated by name,
to take account of the Irish forfeitures; and the Lords and the King,
afraid of losing the Land Tax Bill, had reluctantly consented to this
clause. During the recess, the commissioners had visited Ireland. They had
since returned to England. Their report was soon laid before both Houses.
By the Tories, and by their allies the republicans, it was eagerly hailed.
It had, indeed, been framed for the express purpose of flattering and of
inflaming them. Three of the commissioners had strongly objected to some
passages as indecorous, and even calumnious; but the other four had
overruled every objection. Of the four the chief was Trenchard. He was by
calling a pamphleteer, and seems not to have been aware that the sharpness
of style and of temper which may be tolerated in a pamphlet is inexcusable
in a state paper. He was certain that he should be protected and rewarded
by the party to which he owed his appointment, and was delighted to have
it in his power to publish, with perfect security and with a semblance of
official authority, bitter reflections on King and ministry, Dutch
favourites, French refugees, and Irish Papists. The consequence was that
only four names were subscribed to the report. The three dissentients
presented a separate memorial. As to the main facts, however, there was
little or no dispute. It appeared that more than a million of Irish acres,
or about seventeen hundred thousand English acres, an area equal to that
of Middlesex, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, and
Huntingdonshire together, had been forfeited during the late troubles. But
of the value of this large territory very different estimates were formed.
The commissioners acknowledged that they could obtain no certain
information. In the absence of such information they conjectured the
annual rent to be about two hundred thousand pounds, and the fee simple to
be worth thirteen years’ purchase, that is to say, about two millions six
hundred thousand pounds. They seem not to have been aware that much of the
land had been let very low on perpetual leases, and that much was burdened
with mortgages. A contemporary writer, who was evidently well acquainted
with Ireland, asserted that the authors of the report had valued the
forfeited property in Carlow at six times the real market price, and that
the two million six hundred thousand pounds, of which they talked, would
be found to shrink to about half a million, which, as the exchanges then
stood between Dublin and London, would have dwindled to four hundred
thousand pounds by the time that it reached the English Exchequer. It was
subsequently proved, beyond all dispute, that this estimate was very much
nearer the truth than that which had been formed by Trenchard and
Trenchard’s colleagues.

Of the seventeen hundred thousand acres which had been forfeited, above a
fourth part had been restored to the ancient proprietors in conformity
with the civil articles of the treaty of Limerick. About one seventh of
the remaining three fourths had been given back to unhappy families,
which, though they could not plead the letter of the treaty, had been
thought fit objects of clemency. The rest had been bestowed, partly on
persons whose seances merited all and more than all that they obtained,
but chiefly on the King’s personal friends. Romney had obtained a
considerable share of the royal bounty. But of all the grants the largest
was to Woodstock, the eldest son of Portland; the next was to Albemarle.
An admirer of William cannot relate without pain that he divided between
these two foreigners an extent of country larger than Hertfordshire.

This fact, simply reported, would have sufficed to excite a strong feeling
of indignation in a House of Commons less irritable and querulous than
that which then sate at Westminster. But Trenchard and his confederates
were not content with simply reporting the fact. They employed all their
skill to inflame the passions of the majority. They at once applied goads
to its anger and held out baits to its cupidity.

They censured that part of William’s conduct which deserved high praise
even more severely than that part of his conduct for which it is
impossible to set up any defence. They told the Parliament that the old
proprietors of the soil had been treated with pernicious indulgence; that
the capitulation of Limerick had been construed in a manner far too
favourable to the conquered race; and that the King had suffered his
compassion to lead him into the error of showing indulgence to many who
could not pretend that they were within the terms of the capitulation.
Even now, after the lapse of eight years, it might be possible, by
instituting a severe inquisition, and by giving proper encouragement to
informers, to prove that many Papists, who were still permitted to enjoy
their estates, had taken the side of James during the civil war. There
would thus be a new and plentiful harvest of confiscations. The four
bitterly complained that their task had been made more difficult by the
hostility of persons who held office in Ireland, and by the secret
influence of great men who were interested in concealing the truth. These
grave charges were made in general terms. No name was mentioned; no fact
was specified; no evidence was tendered.

Had the report stopped here, those who drew it up might justly have been
blamed for the unfair and ill natured manner in which they had discharged
their functions; but they could not have been accused of usurping
functions which did not belong to them for the purpose of insulting the
Sovereign and exasperating the nation. But these men well knew in what way
and for what purpose they might safely venture to exceed their commission.
The Act of Parliament from which they derived their powers authorised them
to report on estates forfeited during the late troubles. It contained not
a word which could be construed into an authority to report on the old
hereditary domain of the Crown. With that domain they had as little to do
as with the seignorage levied on tin in the Duchy of Cornwall, or with the
church patronage of the Duchy of Lancaster. But they had discovered that a
part of that domain had been alienated by a grant which they could not
deny themselves the pleasure of publishing to the world. It was indeed an
unfortunate grant, a grant which could not be brought to light without
much mischief and much scandal. It was long since William had ceased to be
the lover of Elisabeth Villiers, long since he had asked her counsel or
listened to her fascinating conversation except in the presence of other
persons. She had been some years married to George Hamilton, a soldier who
had distinguished himself by his courage in Ireland and Flanders, and who
probably held the courtier like doctrine that a lady is not dishonoured by
having been the paramour of a king. William was well pleased with the
marriage, bestowed on the wife a portion of the old Crown property in
Ireland, and created the husband a peer of Scotland by the title of Earl
of Orkney. Assuredly William would not have raised his character by
abandoning to poverty a woman whom he had loved, though with a criminal
love. He was undoubtedly bound, as a man of humanity and honour, to
provide liberally for her; but he should have provided for her rather by
saving from his civil list than by alienating his hereditary revenue. The
four malecontent commissioners rejoiced with spiteful joy over this
discovery. It was in vain that the other three represented that the grant
to Lady Orkney was one with which they had nothing to do, and that, if
they went out of their way to hold it up to obloquy, they might be justly
said to fly in the King’s face. “To fly in the King’s face!” said one of
the majority; “our business is to fly in the King’s face. We were sent
here to fly in the King’s face.” With this patriotic object a paragraph
about Lady Orkney’s grant was added to the report, a paragraph too in
which the value of that grant was so monstrously exaggerated that William
appeared to have surpassed the profligate extravagance of his uncle
Charles. The estate bestowed on the countess was valued at twenty-four
thousand pounds a year. The truth seems to be that the income which she
derived from the royal bounty, after making allowance for incumbrances and
for the rate of exchange, was about four thousand pounds.

The success of the report was complete. The nation and its representatives
hated taxes, hated foreign favourites, and hated Irish Papists; and here
was a document which held out the hope that England might, at the expense
of foreign courtiers and of popish Celts, be relieved from a great load of
taxes. Many, both within and without the walls of Parliament, gave entire
faith to the estimate which the commissioners had formed by a wild guess,
in the absence of trustworthy information. They gave entire faith also to
the prediction that a strict inquiry would detect many traitors who had
hitherto been permitted to escape with impunity, and that a large addition
would thus be made to the extensive territory which had already been
confiscated. It was popularly said that, if vigorous measures were taken,
the gain to the kingdom would be not less than three hundred thousand
pounds a year; and almost the whole of this sum, a sum more than
sufficient to defray the whole charge of such an army as the Commons were
disposed to keep up in time of peace, would be raised by simply taking
away what had been unjustifiably given to Dutchmen, who would still retain
immense wealth taken out of English pockets, or unjustifiably left to
Irishmen, who thought it at once the most pleasant and the most pious of
all employments to cut English throats. The Lower House went to work with
the double eagerness of rapacity and of animosity. As soon as the report
of the four and the protest of the three had been laid on the table and
read by the clerk, it was resolved that a Resumption Bill should be
brought in. It was then resolved, in opposition to the plainest principles
of justice, that no petition from any person who might think himself
aggrieved by this bill should ever be received. It was necessary to
consider how the commissioners should be remunerated for their services;
and this question was decided with impudent injustice. It was determined
that the commissioners who had signed the report should receive a thousand
pounds each. But a large party thought that the dissentient three deserved
no recompense; and two of them were merely allowed what was thought
sufficient to cover the expense of their journey to Ireland. This was
nothing less than to give notice to every man who should ever be employed
in any similar inquiry that, if he wished to be paid, he must report what
would please the assembly which held the purse of the state. In truth the
House was despotic, and was fast contracting the vices of a despot. It was
proud of its antipathy to courtiers; and it was calling into existence a
new set of courtiers who would study all its humours, who would flatter
all its weaknesses, who would prophesy to it smooth things, and who would
assuredly be, in no respect, less greedy, less faithless, or less abject
than the sycophants who bow in the antechambers of kings.

Indeed the dissentient commissioners had worse evils to apprehend than
that of being left unremunerated. One of them, Sir Richard Levinz, had
mentioned in private to his friends some disrespectful expressions which
had been used by one of his colleagues about the King. What he had
mentioned in private was, not perhaps very discreetly, repeated by
Montague in the House. The predominant party eagerly seized the
opportunity of worrying both Montague and Levinz. A resolution implying a
severe censure on Montague was carried. Levinz was brought to the bar and
examined. The four were also in attendance. They protested that he had
misrepresented them. Trenchard declared that he had always spoken of His
Majesty as a subject ought to speak of an excellent sovereign, who had
been deceived by evil counsellors, and who would be grateful to those who
should bring the truth to his knowledge. He vehemently denied that he had
called the grant to Lady Orkney villainous. It was a word that he never
used, a word that never came out of the mouth of a gentleman. These
assertions will be estimated at the proper value by those who are
acquainted with Trenchard’s pamphlets, pamphlets in which the shocking
word villainous will without difficulty be found, and which are full of
malignant reflections on William. 20 But the
House was determined not to believe Levinz. He was voted a calumniator,
and sent to the Tower, as an example to all who should be tempted to speak
truth which the Commons might not like to hear.

Meanwhile the bill had been brought in, and was proceeding easily. It
provided that all the property which had belonged to the Crown at the time
of the accession of James the Second, or which had been forfeited to the
Crown since that time, should be vested in trustees. These trustees were
named in the bill; and among them were the four commissioners who had
signed the report. All the Irish grants of William were annulled. The
legal rights of persons other than the grantees were saved. But of those
rights the trustees were to be judges, and judges without appeal. A
claimant who gave them the trouble of attending to him, and could not make
out his case, was to be heavily fined. Rewards were offered to informers
who should discover any property which was liable to confiscation, and
which had not yet been confiscated. Though eight years had elapsed since
an arm had been lifted up in the conquered island against the domination
of the Englishry, the unhappy children of the soil, who had been suffered
to live, submissive and obscure, on their hereditary fields, were
threatened with a new and severe inquisition into old offences.

Objectionable as many parts of the bill undoubtedly were, nobody who knew
the House of Commons believed it to be possible to carry any amendment.
The King flattered himself that a motion for leaving at his disposal a
third part of the forfeitures would be favourably received. There can be
little doubt that a compromise would have been willingly accepted twelve
months earlier. But the report had made all compromise impossible.
William, however, was bent on trying the experiment; and Vernon consented
to go on what he considered as a forlorn hope. He made his speech and his
motion; but the reception which he met with was such that he did not
venture to demand a division. This feeble attempt at obstruction only made
the impetuous current chafe the more. Howe immediately moved two
resolutions; one attributing the load of debts and taxes which lay on the
nation to the Irish grants; the other censuring all who had been concerned
in advising or passing those grants. Nobody was named; not because the
majority was inclined to show any tenderness to the Whig ministers, but
because some of the most objectionable grants had been sanctioned by the
Board of Treasury when Godolphin and Seymour, who had great influence with
the country party, sate at that board.

Howe’s two resolutions were laid before the King by the Speaker, in whose
train all the leaders of the opposition appeared at Kensington. Even
Seymour, with characteristic effrontery, showed himself there as one of
the chief authors of a vote which pronounced him guilty of a breach of
duty. William’s answer was that he had thought himself bound to reward out
of the forfeited property those who had served him well, and especially
those who had borne a principal part in the reduction of Ireland. The war,
he said, had undoubtedly left behind it a heavy debt; and he should be
glad to see that debt reduced by just and effectual means. This answer was
but a bad one; and, in truth, it was hardly possible for him to return a
good one. He had done what was indefensible; and, by attempting to defend
himself, he made his case worse. It was not true that the Irish
forfeitures, or one fifth part of them, had been granted to men who had
distinguished themselves in the Irish war; and it was not judicious to
hint that those forfeitures could not justly be applied to the discharge
of the public debts. The Commons murmured, and not altogether without
reason. “His Majesty tells us,” they said, “that the debts fall to us and
the forfeitures to him. We are to make good out of the purses of
Englishmen what was spent upon the war; and he is to put into the purses
of Dutchmen what was got by the war.” When the House met again, Howe moved
that whoever had advised the King to return such an answer was an enemy to
His Majesty and the kingdom; and this resolution was carried with some
slight modification.

To whatever criticism William’s answer might be open, he had said one
thing which well deserved the attention of the House. A small part of the
forfeited property had been bestowed on men whose services to the state
well deserved a much larger recompense; and that part could not be resumed
without gross injustice and ingratitude. An estate of very moderate value
had been given, with the title of Earl of Athlone, to Ginkell, whose skill
and valour had brought the war in Ireland to a triumphant close. Another
estate had been given, with the title of Earl of Galway, to Rouvigny, who,
in the crisis of the decisive battle, at the very moment when Saint Ruth
was waving his hat, and exclaiming that the English should be beaten back
to Dublin, had, at the head of a gallant body of horse, struggled through
the morass, turned the left wing of the Celtic army, and retrieved the
day. But the predominant faction, drunk with insolence and animosity, made
no distinction between courtiers who had been enriched by injudicious
partiality and warriors who had been sparingly rewarded for great exploits
achieved in defence of the liberties and the religion of our country.
Athlone was a Dutchman; Galway was a Frenchman; and it did not become a
good Englishman to say a word in favour of either.

Yet this was not the most flagrant injustice of which the Commons were
guilty. According to the plainest principles of common law and of common
sense, no man can forfeit any rights except those which he has. All the
donations which William had made he had made subject to this limitation.
But by this limitation the Commons were too angry and too rapacious to be
bound. They determined to vest in the trustees of the forfeited lands an
estate greater than had ever belonged to the forfeiting landholders. Thus
innocent persons were violently deprived of property which was theirs by
descent or by purchase, of property which had been strictly respected by
the King and by his grantees. No immunity was granted even to men who had
fought on the English side, even to men who had lined the walls of
Londonderry and rushed on the Irish guns at Newton Butler.

In some cases the Commons showed indulgence; but their indulgence was not
less unjustifiable, nor of less pernicious example, than their severity.
The ancient rule, a rule which is still strictly maintained, and which
cannot be relaxed without danger of boundless profusion and shameless
jobbery, is that whatever the Parliament grants shall be granted to the
Sovereign, and that no public bounty shall be bestowed on any private
person except by the Sovereign.

The Lower House now, contemptuously disregarding both principles and
precedents, took on itself to carve estates out of the forfeitures for
persons whom it was inclined to favour. To the Duke of Ormond especially,
who ranked among the Tories and was distinguished by his dislike of the
foreigners, marked partiality was shown. Some of his friends, indeed,
hoped that they should be able to insert in the bill a clause bestowing on
him all the confiscated estates in the county of Tipperary. But they found
that it would be prudent in them to content themselves with conferring on
him a boon smaller in amount, but equally objectionable in principle. He
had owed very large debts to persons who had forfeited to the Crown all
that belonged to them. Those debts were therefore now due from him to the
Crown. The House determined to make him a present of the whole, that very
House which would not consent to leave a single acre to the general who
had stormed Athlone, who had gained the battle of Aghrim, who had entered
Galway in triumph, and who had received the submission of Limerick.

That a bill so violent, so unjust, and so unconstitutional would pass the
Lords without considerable alteration was hardly to be expected. The
ruling demagogues, therefore, resolved to join it with the bill which
granted to the Crown a land tax of two shillings in the pound for the
service of the next year, and thus to place the Upper House under the
necessity of either passing both bills together without the change of a
word, or rejecting both together, and leaving the public creditor unpaid
and the nation defenceless.

There was great indignation among the Peers. They were not indeed more
disposed than the Commons to approve of the manner in which the Irish
forfeitures had been granted away; for the antipathy to the foreigners,
strong as it was in the nation generally, was strongest in the highest
ranks. Old barons were angry at seeing themselves preceded by new earls
from Holland and Guelders. Garters, gold keys, white staves, rangerships,
which had been considered as peculiarly belonging to the hereditary
grandees of the realm, were now intercepted by aliens. Every English
nobleman felt that his chance of obtaining a share of the favours of the
Crown was seriously diminished by the competition of Bentincks and
Keppels, Auverquerques and Zulesteins. But, though the riches and
dignities heaped on the little knot of Dutch courtiers might disgust him,
the recent proceedings of the Commons could not but disgust him still
more. The authority, the respectability, the existence of his order were
threatened with destruction. Not only,—such were the just complaints
of the Peers,—not only are we to be deprived of that coordinate
legislative power to which we are, by the constitution of the realm,
entitled. We are not to be allowed even a suspensive veto. We are not to
dare to remonstrate, to suggest an amendment, to offer a reason, to ask
for an explanation. Whenever the other House has passed a bill to which it
is known that we have strong objections, that bill is to be tacked to a
bill of supply. If we alter it, we are told that we are attacking the most
sacred privilege of the representatives of the people, and that we must
either take the whole or reject the whole. If we reject the whole, public
credit is shaken; the Royal Exchange is in confusion; the Bank stops
payment; the army is disbanded; the fleet is in mutiny; the island is
left, without one regiment, without one frigate, at the mercy of every
enemy. The danger of throwing out a bill of supply is doubtless great. Yet
it may on the whole be better that we should face that danger, once for
all, than that we should consent to be, what we are fast becoming, a body
of no more importance than the Convocation.

Animated by such feelings as these, a party in the Upper House was eager
to take the earliest opportunity of making a stand. On the fourth of
April, the second reading was moved. Near a hundred lords were present.
Somers, whose serene wisdom and persuasive eloquence had seldom been more
needed, was confined to his room by illness; and his place on the woolsack
was supplied by the Earl of Bridgewater. Several orators, both Whig and
Tory, objected to proceeding farther. But the chiefs of both parties
thought it better to try the almost hopeless experiment of committing the
bill and sending it back amended to the Commons. The second reading was
carried by seventy votes to twenty-three. It was remarked that both
Portland and Albemarle voted in the majority.

In the Committee and on the third reading several amendments were proposed
and carried. Wharton, the boldest and most active of the Whig peers, and
the Lord Privy Seal Lonsdale, one of the most moderate and reasonable of
the Tories, took the lead, and were strenuously supported by the Lord
President Pembroke, and by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who seems on this
occasion to have a little forgotten his habitual sobriety and caution. Two
natural sons of Charles the Second, Richmond and Southampton, who had
strong personal reasons for disliking resumption bills, were zealous on
the same side. No peer, however, as far as can now be discovered, ventured
to defend the way in which William had disposed of his Irish domains. The
provisions which annulled the grants of those domains were left untouched.
But the words of which the effect was to vest in the parliamentary
trustees property which had never been forfeited to the King, and had
never been given away by him, were altered; and the clauses by which
estates and sums of money were, in defiance of constitutional principle
and of immemorial practice, bestowed on persons who were favourites of the
Commons, were so far modified as to be, in form, somewhat less
exceptionable. The bill, improved by these changes, was sent down by two
judges to the Lower House.

The Lower House was all in a flame. There was now no difference of opinion
there. Even those members who thought that the Resumption Bill and the
Land Tax Bill ought not to have been tacked together, yet felt that, since
those bills had been tacked together, it was impossible to agree to the
amendments made by the Lords without surrendering one of the most precious
privileges of the Commons. The amendments were rejected without one
dissentient voice. It was resolved that a conference should be demanded;
and the gentlemen who were to manage the conference were instructed to say
merely that the Upper House had no right to alter a money bill; that the
point had long been settled and was too clear for argument; that they
should leave the bill with the Lords, and that they should leave with the
Lords also the responsibility of stopping the supplies which were
necessary for the public service. Several votes of menacing sound were
passed at the same sitting. It was Monday the eighth of April. Tuesday the
ninth was allowed to the other House for reflection and repentance. It was
resolved that on the Wednesday morning the question of the Irish
forfeitures should again be taken into consideration, and that every
member who was in town should be then in his place on peril of the highest
displeasure of the House. It was moved and carried that every Privy
Councillor who had been concerned in procuring or passing any exorbitant
grant for his own benefit had been guilty of a high crime and
misdemeanour. Lest the courtiers should flatter themselves that this was
meant to be a mere abstract proposition, it was ordered that a list of the
members of the Privy Council should be laid on the table. As it was
thought not improbable that the crisis might end in an appeal to the
constituent bodies, nothing was omitted which could excite out of doors a
feeling in favour of the bill. The Speaker was directed to print and
publish the report signed by the four Commissioners, not accompanied, as
in common justice it ought to have been, by the protest of the three
dissentients, but accompanied by several extracts from the journals which
were thought likely to produce an impression favourable to the House and
unfavourable to the Court. All these resolutions passed without any
division, and without, as far as appears, any debate. There was, indeed,
much speaking, but all on one side. Seymour, Harley, Howe, Harcourt,
Shower, Musgrave, declaimed, one after another, about the obstinacy of the
other House, the alarming state of the country, the dangers which
threatened the public peace and the public credit. If, it was said, none
but Englishmen sate in the Parliament and in the Council, we might hope
that they would relent at the thought of the calamities which impend over
England. But we have to deal with men who are not Englishmen, with men who
consider this country as their own only for evil, as their property, not
as their home; who, when they have gorged themselves with our wealth,
will, without one uneasy feeling, leave us sunk in bankruptcy, distracted
by faction, exposed without defence to invasion. “A new war,” said one of
these orators, “a new war, as long, as bloody, and as costly as the last,
would do less mischief than has been done by the introduction of that
batch of Dutchmen among the barons of the realm.” Another was so absurd as
to call on the House to declare that whoever should advise a dissolution
would be guilty of high treason. A third gave utterance to a sentiment
which it is difficult to understand how any assembly of civilised and
Christian men, even in a moment of strong excitement, should have heard
without horror. “They object to tacking; do they? Let them take care that
they do not provoke us to tack in earnest. How would they like to have
bills of supply with bills of attainder tacked to them?” This atrocious
threat, worthy of the tribune of the French Convention in the worst days
of the Jacobin tyranny, seems to have passed unreprehended. It was meant—such
at least was the impression at the Dutch embassy—to intimidate
Somers. He was confined by illness. He had been unable to take any public
part in the proceedings of the Lords; and he had privately blamed them for
engaging in a conflict in which he justly thought that they could not be
victorious. Nevertheless, the Tory leaders hoped that they might be able
to direct against him the whole force of the storm which they had raised.
Seymour, in particular, encouraged by the wild and almost savage temper of
his hearers, harangued with rancorous violence against the wisdom and the
virtue which presented the strongest contrast to his own turbulence,
insolence, faithlessness, and rapacity. No doubt, he said, the Lord
Chancellor was a man of parts. Anybody might be glad to have for counsel
so acute and eloquent an advocate. But a very good advocate might be a
very bad minister; and, of all the ministers who had brought the kingdom
into difficulties, this plausible, fair-spoken person was the most
dangerous. Nor was the old reprobate ashamed to add that he was afraid
that his Lordship was no better than a Hobbist in religion.

After a long sitting the members separated; but they reassembled early on
the morning of the following day, Tuesday the ninth of April. A conference
was held; and Seymour, as chief manager for the Commons, returned the bill
and the amendments to the Peers in the manner which had been prescribed to
him. From the Painted Chamber he went back to the Lower House, and
reported what had passed. “If,” he said, “I may venture to judge by the
looks and manner of their Lordships, all will go right.” But within half
an hour evil tidings came through the Court of Requests and the lobbies.
The Lords had divided on the question whether they would adhere to their
amendments. Forty-seven had voted for adhering, and thirty-four for giving
way. The House of Commons broke up with gloomy looks, and in great
agitation. All London looked forward to the next day with painful
forebodings. The general feeling was in favour of the bill. It was
rumoured that the majority which had determined to stand by the amendments
had been swollen by several prelates, by several of the illegitimate sons
of Charles the Second, and by several needy and greedy courtiers. The cry
in all the public places of resort was that the nation would be ruined by
the three B’s, Bishops, Bastards, and Beggars. On Wednesday the tenth, at
length, the contest came to a decisive issue. Both Houses were early
crowded. The Lords demanded a conference. It was held; and Pembroke
delivered back to Seymour the bill and the amendments, together with a
paper containing a concise, but luminous and forcible, exposition of the
grounds on which the Lords conceived themselves to be acting in a
constitutional and strictly defensive manner. This paper was read at the
bar; but, whatever effect it may now produce on a dispassionate student of
history, it produced none on the thick ranks of country gentlemen. It was
instantly resolved that the bill should again be sent back to the Lords
with a peremptory announcement that the Commons’ determination was
unalterable.

The Lords again took the amendments into consideration. During the last
forty-eight hours, great exertions had been made in various quarters to
avert a complete rupture between the Houses. The statesmen of the junto
were far too wise not to see that it would be madness to continue the
struggle longer. It was indeed necessary, unless the King and the Lords
were to be of as little weight in the State as in 1648, unless the House
of Commons was not merely to exercise a general control over the
government, but to be, as in the days of the Rump, itself the whole
government, the sole legislative chamber, the fountain from which were to
flow all those favours which had hitherto been in the gift of the Crown,
that a determined stand should be made. But, in order that such a stand
might be successful, the ground must be carefully selected; for a defeat
might be fatal. The Lords must wait for some occasion on which their
privileges would be bound up with the privileges of all Englishmen, for
some occasion on which the constituent bodies would, if an appeal were
made to them, disavow the acts of the representative body; and this was
not such an occasion. The enlightened and large minded few considered
tacking as a practice so pernicious that it would be justified only by an
emergency which would justify a resort to physical force. But, in the
many, tacking, when employed for a popular end, excited little or no
disapprobation. The public, which seldom troubles itself with nice
distinctions, could not be made to understand that the question at issue
was any other than this, whether a sum which was vulgarly estimated at
millions, and which undoubtedly amounted to some hundreds of thousands,
should be employed in paying the debts of the state and alleviating the
load of taxation, or in making Dutchmen, who were already too rich, still
richer. It was evident that on that question the Lords could not hope to
have the country with them, and that, if a general election took place
while that question was unsettled, the new House of Commons would be even
more mutinous and impracticable than the present House. Somers, in his
sick chamber, had given this opinion. Orford had voted for the bill in
every stage. Montague, though no longer a minister, had obtained admission
to the royal closet, and had strongly represented to the King the dangers
which threatened the state. The King had at length consented to let it be
understood that he considered the passing of the bill as on the whole the
less of two great evils. It was soon clear that the temper of the Peers
had undergone a considerable alteration since the preceding day. Scarcely
any, indeed, changed sides. But not a few abstained from voting. Wharton,
who had at first spoken powerfully for the amendments, left town for
Newmarket. On the other hand, some Lords who had not yet taken their part
came down to give a healing vote. Among them were the two persons to whom
the education of the young heir apparent had been entrusted, Marlborough
and Burnet. Marlborough showed his usual prudence. He had remained neutral
while by taking a part he must have offended either the House of Commons
or the King. He took a part as soon as he saw that it was possible to
please both. Burnet, alarmed for the public peace, was in a state of great
excitement, and, as was usual with him when in such a state, forgot
dignity and decorum, called out “stuff” in a very audible voice while a
noble Lord was haranguing in favour of the amendments, and was in great
danger of being reprimanded at the bar or delivered over to Black Rod. The
motion on which the division took place was that the House do adhere to
the amendments. There were forty contents and thirty-seven not contents.
Proxies were called; and the numbers were found to be exactly even. In the
House of Lords there is no casting vote. When the numbers are even, the
non contents have it. The motion to adhere had therefore been negatived.
But this was not enough. It was necessary that an affirmative resolution
should be moved to the effect that the House agreed to the bill without
amendments; and, if the numbers should again be equal, this motion would
also be lost. It was an anxious moment. Fortunately the Primate’s heart
failed him. He had obstinately fought the battle down to the last stage.
But he probably felt that it was no light thing to take on himself, and to
bring on his order, the responsibility of throwing the whole kingdom into
confusion. He started up and hurried out of the House, beckoning to some
of his brethren. His brethren followed him with a prompt obedience, which,
serious as the crisis was, caused no small merriment. In consequence of
this defection, the motion to agree was carried by a majority of five.
Meanwhile the members of the other House had been impatiently waiting for
news, and had been alternately elated and depressed by the reports which
followed one another in rapid succession. At first it was confidently
expected that the Peers would yield; and there was general good humour.
Then came intelligence that the majority of the Lords present had voted
for adhering to the amendments. “I believe,” so Vernon wrote the next day,
“I believe there was not one man in the House that did not think the
nation ruined.” The lobbies were cleared; the back doors were locked; the
keys were laid on the table; the Serjeant at Arms was directed to take his
post at the front door, and to suffer no member to withdraw. An awful
interval followed, during which the angry passions of the assembly seemed
to be subdued by terror. Some of the leaders of the opposition, men of
grave character and of large property, stood aghast at finding that they
were engaged,—they scarcely knew how,—in a conflict such as
they had not at all expected, in a conflict in which they could be
victorious only at the expense of the peace and order of society. Even
Seymour was sobered by the greatness and nearness of the danger. Even Howe
thought it advisable to hold conciliatory language. It was no time, he
said, for wrangling. Court party and country party were Englishmen alike.
Their duty was to forget all past grievances, and to cooperate heartily
for the purpose of saving the country.

In a moment all was changed. A message from the Lords was announced. It
was a message which lightened many heavy hearts. The bill had been passed
without amendments.

The leading malecontents, who, a few minutes before, scared by finding
that their violence had brought on a crisis for which they were not
prepared, had talked about the duty of mutual forgiveness and close union,
instantly became again as rancorous as ever. One danger, they said, was
over. So far well. But it was the duty of the representatives of the
people to take such steps as might make it impossible that there should
ever again be such danger. Every adviser of the Crown, who had been
concerned in the procuring or passing of any exorbitant grant, ought to be
excluded from all access to the royal ear. A list of the privy
councillors, furnished in conformity with the order made two days before,
was on the table. That list the clerk was ordered to read. Prince George
of Denmark and the Archbishop of Canterbury passed without remark. But, as
soon as the Chancellor’s name had been pronounced, the rage of his enemies
broke forth. Twice already, in the course of that stormy session, they had
attempted to ruin his fame and his fortunes; and twice his innocence and
his calm fortitude had confounded all their politics. Perhaps, in the
state of excitement to which the House had been wrought up, a third attack
on him might be successful. Orator after orator declaimed against him. He
was the great offender. He was responsible for all the grievances of which
the nation complained. He had obtained exorbitant grants for himself. He
had defended the exorbitant grants obtained by others. He had not, indeed,
been able, in the late debates, to raise his own voice against the just
demands of the nation. But it might well be suspected that he had in
secret prompted the ungracious answer of the King and encouraged the
pertinacious resistance of the Lords. Sir John Levison Gower, a noisy and
acrimonious Tory, called for impeachment. But Musgrave, an abler and more
experienced politician, saw that, if the imputations which the opposition
had been in the habit of throwing on the Chancellor were exhibited with
the precision of a legal charge, their futility would excite universal
derision, and thought it more expedient to move that the House should,
without assigning any reason, request the King to remove Lord Somers from
His Majesty’s counsels and presence for ever. Cowper defended his
persecuted friend with great eloquence and effect; and he was warmly
supported by many members who had been zealous for the resumption of the
Irish grants. Only a hundred and six members went into the lobby with
Musgrave; a hundred and sixty-seven voted against him. Such a division, in
such a House of Commons, and on such a day, is sufficient evidence of the
respect which the great qualities of Somers had extorted even from his
political enemies.

The clerk then went on with the list. The Lord President and the Lord
Privy Seal, who were well known to have stood up strongly for the
privileges of the Lords, were reviled by some angry members; but no motion
was made against either. And soon the Tories became uneasy in their turn;
for the name of the Duke of Leeds was read. He was one of themselves. They
were very unwilling to put a stigma on him. Yet how could they, just after
declaiming against the Chancellor for accepting a very moderate and well
earned provision, undertake the defence of a statesman who had, out of
grants, pardons and bribes, accumulated a princely fortune? There was
actually on the table evidence that His Grace was receiving from the
bounty of the Crown more than thrice as much as had been bestowed on
Somers; and nobody could doubt that His Grace’s secret gains had very far
exceeded those of which there was evidence on the table. It was
accordingly moved that the House, which had indeed been sitting massy
hours, should adjourn. The motion was lost; but neither party was disposed
to move that the consideration of the list should be resumed. It was
however resolved, without a division, that an address should be presented
to the King, requesting that no person not a native of his dominions,
Prince George excepted, might be admitted to the Privy Council either of
England or of Ireland. The evening was now far spent. The candles had been
some time lighted; and the House rose. So ended one of the most anxious,
turbulent, and variously eventful days in the long Parliamentary History
of England.

What the morrow would have produced if time had been allowed for a renewal
of hostilities can only be guessed. The supplies had been voted. The King
was determined not to receive the address which requested him to disgrace
his dearest and most trusty friends. Indeed he would have prevented the
passing of that address by proroguing Parliament on the preceding day, had
not the Lords risen the moment after they had agreed to the Resumption
Bill. He had actually come from Kensington to the Treasury for that
purpose; and his robes and crown were in readiness. He now took care to be
at Westminster in good time. The Commons had scarcely met when the knock
of Black Rod was heard. They repaired to the other House. The bills were
passed; and Bridgewater, by the royal command, prorogued the Parliament.
For the first time since the Revolution the session closed without a
speech from the throne. William was too angry to thank the Commons, and
too prudent to reprimand them.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The health of James had been during some years declining and he had at
length, on Good Friday, 1701, suffered a shock from which he had never
recovered. While he was listening in his chapel to the solemn service of
the day, he fell down in a fit, and remained long insensible. Some people
imagined that the words of the anthem which his choristers were chanting
had produced in him emotions too violent to be borne by an enfeebled body
and mind. For that anthem was taken from the plaintive elegy in which a
servant of the true God, chastened by many sorrows and humiliations,
banished, homesick, and living on the bounty of strangers, bewailed the
fallen throne and the desolate Temple of Sion: “Remember, O Lord, what is
come upon us; consider and behold our reproach. Our inheritance is turned
to strangers, our houses to aliens; the crown is fallen from our head.
Wherefore dose thou forget us for ever?”

The King’s malady proved to be paralytic. Fagon, the first physician of
the French Court, and, on medical questions, the oracle of all Europe,
prescribed the waters of Bourbon. Lewis, with all his usual generosity,
sent to Saint Germains ten thousand crowns in gold for the charges of the
journey, and gave orders that every town along the road should receive his
good brother with all the honours due to royalty. 21

James, after passing some time at Bourbon, returned to the neighbourhood
of Paris with health so far reestablished that he was able to take
exercise on horseback, but with judgment and memory evidently impaired. On
the thirteenth of September, he had a second fit in his chapel; and it
soon became clear that this was a final stroke. He rallied the last
energies of his failing body and mind to testify his firm belief in the
religion for which he had sacrificed so much. He received the last
sacraments with every mark of devotion, exhorted his son to hold fast to
the true faith in spite of all temptations, and entreated Middleton, who,
almost alone among the courtiers assembled in the bedchamber, professed
himself a Protestant, to take refuge from doubt and error in the bosom of
the one infallible Church. After the extreme unction had been
administered, James declared that he pardoned all his enemies, and named
particularly the Prince of Orange, the Princess of Denmark, and the
Emperor. The Emperor’s name he repeated with peculiar emphasis: “Take
notice, father,” he said to the confessor, “that I forgive the Emperor
with all my heart.” It may perhaps seem strange that he should have found
this the hardest of all exercises of Christian charity. But it must be
remembered that the Emperor was the only Roman Catholic Prince still
living who had been accessory to the Revolution, and that James might not
unnaturally consider Roman Catholics who had been accessory to the
Revolution as more inexcusably guilty than heretics who might have deluded
themselves into the belief that, in violating their duty to him, they were
discharging their duty to God.

While James was still able to understand what was said to him, and make
intelligible answers, Lewis visited him twice. The English exiles observed
that the Most Christian King was to the last considerate and kind in the
very slightest matters which concerned his unfortunate guest. He would not
allow his coach to enter the court of Saint Germains, lest the noise of
the wheels should be heard in the sick room. In both interviews he was
gracious, friendly, and even tender. But he carefully abstained from
saying anything about the future position of the family which was about to
lose its head. Indeed he could say nothing, for he had not yet made up his
own mind. Soon, however, it became necessary for him to form some
resolution. On the sixteenth James sank into a stupor which indicated the
near approach of death. While he lay in this helpless state, Madame de
Maintenon visited his consort. To this visit many persons who were likely
to be well informed attributed a long series of great events. We cannot
wonder that a woman should have been moved to pity by the misery of a
woman; that a devout Roman Catholic should have taken a deep interest in
the fate of a family persecuted, as she conceived, solely for being Roman
Catholics; or that the pride of the widow of Scarron should have been
intensely gratified by the supplications of a daughter of Este and a Queen
of England. From mixed motives, probably, the wife of Lewis promised her
powerful protection to the wife of James.

Madame de Maintenon was just leaving Saint Germains when, on the brow of
the hill which overlooks the valley of the Seine, she met her husband, who
had come to ask after his guest. It was probable at this moment that he
was persuaded to form a resolution, of which neither he nor she by whom he
was governed foresaw the consequences. Before he announced that
resolution, however, he observed all the decent forms of deliberation. A
council was held that evening at Marli, and was attended by the princes of
the blood and by the ministers of state. The question was propounded,
whether, when God should take James the Second of England to himself,
France should recognise the Pretender as King James the Third?

The ministers were, one and all, against the recognition. Indeed, it seems
difficult to understand how any person who had any pretensions to the name
of statesman should have been of a different opinion. Torcy took his stand
on the ground that to recognise the Prince of Wales would be to violate
the Treaty of Ryswick. This was indeed an impregnable position. By that
treaty His Most Christian Majesty had bound himself to do nothing which
could, directly or indirectly, disturb the existing order of things in
England. And in what way, except by an actual invasion, could he do more
to disturb the existing order of things in England than by solemnly
declaring, in the face of the whole world, that he did not consider that
order of things as legitimate, that he regarded the Bill of Rights and the
Act of Settlement as nullities, and the King in possession as an usurper?
The recognition would then be a breach of faith; and, even if all
considerations of morality were set aside, it was plain that it would, at
that moment, be wise in the French government to avoid every thing which
could with plausibility be represented as a breach of faith. The crisis
was a very peculiar one. The great diplomatic victory won by France in the
preceding year had excited the fear and hatred of her neighbours.
Nevertheless there was, as yet, no great coalition against her. The House
of Austria, indeed, had appealed to arms. But with the House of Austria
alone the House of Bourbon could easily deal. Other powers were still
looking in doubt to England for the signal; and England, though her aspect
was sullen and menacing, still preserved neutrality. That neutrality would
not have lasted so long, if William could have relied on the support of
his Parliament and of his people. In his Parliament there were agents of
France, who, though few, had obtained so much influence by clamouring
against standing armies, profuse grants, and Dutch favourites, that they
were often blindly followed by the majority; and his people, distracted by
domestic factions, unaccustomed to busy themselves about continental
politics, and remembering with bitterness the disasters and burdens of the
last war, the carnage of Landen, the loss of the Smyrna fleet, the land
tax at four shillings in the pound, hesitated about engaging in another
contest, and would probably continue to hesitate while he continued to
live. He could not live long. It had, indeed, often been prophesied that
his death was at hand; and the prophets had hitherto been mistaken. But
there was now no possibility of mistake. His cough was more violent than
ever; his legs were swollen; his eyes, once bright and clear as those of a
falcon, had grown dim; he who, on the day of the Boyne, had been sixteen
hours on the backs of different horses, could now with great difficulty
creep into his state coach. 22 The vigorous intellect, and the
intrepid spirit, remained; but on the body fifty years had done the work
of ninety. In a few months the vaults of Westminster would receive the
emaciated and shattered frame which was animated by the most far-sighted,
the most daring, the most commanding of souls. In a few months the British
throne would be filled by a woman whose understanding was well known to be
feeble, and who was believed to lean towards the party which was averse
from war. To get over those few months without an open and violent rupture
should have been the first object of the French government. Every
engagement should have been punctually fulfilled; every occasion of
quarrel should have been studiously avoided. Nothing should have been
spared which could quiet the alarms and soothe the wounded pride of
neighbouring nations.

The House of Bourbon was so situated that one year of moderation might not
improbably be rewarded by thirty years of undisputed ascendency. Was it
possible the politic and experienced Lewis would at such a conjuncture
offer a new and most galling provocation, not only to William, whose
animosity was already as great as it could be, but to the people whom
William had hitherto been vainly endeavouring to inspire with animosity
resembling his own? How often, since the Revolution of 1688, had it seemed
that the English were thoroughly weary of the new government. And how
often had the detection of a Jacobite plot, or the approach of a French
armament, changed the whole face of things. All at once the grumbling had
ceased, the grumblers had crowded to sign loyal addresses to the usurper,
had formed associations in support of his authority, had appeared in arms
at the head of the militia, crying God save King William. So it would be
now. Most of those who had taken a pleasure in crossing him on the
question of his Dutch guards, on the question of his Irish grants, would
be moved to vehement resentment when they learned that Lewis had, in
direct violation of a treaty, determined to force on England a king of his
own religion, a king bred in his own dominions, a king who would be at
Westminster what Philip was at Madrid, a great feudatory of France.

These arguments were concisely but clearly and strongly urged by Torcy in
a paper which is still extant, and which it is difficult to believe that
his master can have read without great misgivings. 23 On one
side were the faith of treaties, the peace of Europe, the welfare of
France, nay the selfish interest of the House of Bourbon. On the other
side were the influence of an artful woman, and the promptings of vanity
which, we must in candour acknowledge, was ennobled by a mixture of
compassion and chivalrous generosity. The King determined to act in direct
opposition to the advice of all his ablest servants; and the princes of
the blood applauded his decision, as they would have applauded any
decision which he had announced. Nowhere was he regarded with a more
timorous, a more slavish, respect than in his own family.

On the following day he went again to Saint Germains, and, attended by a
splendid retinue, entered James’s bedchamber. The dying man scarcely
opened his heavy eyes, and then closed them again. “I have something,”
said Lewis, “of great moment to communicate to Your Majesty.” The
courtiers who filled the room took this as a signal to retire, and were
crowding towards the door, when they were stopped by that commanding
voice: “Let nobody withdraw. I come to tell Your Majesty that, whenever it
shall please God to take you from us, I will be to your son what I have
been to you, and will acknowledge him as King of England, Scotland and
Ireland.” The English exiles who were standing round the couch fell on
their knees. Some burst into tears. Some poured forth praises and
blessings with clamour such as, was scarcely becoming in such a place and
at such a time. Some indistinct murmurs which James uttered, and which
were drowned by the noisy gratitude of his attendants, were interpreted to
mean thanks. But from the most trustworthy accounts it appears that he was
insensible to all that was passing around him. 24

As soon as Lewis was again at Marli, he repeated to the Court assembled
there the announcement which he had made at Saint Germains. The whole
circle broke forth into exclamations of delight and admiration. What
piety! What humanity! What magnanimity! Nor was this enthusiasm altogether
feigned. For, in the estimation of the greater part of that brilliant
crowd, nations were nothing and princes every thing. What could be more
generous, more amiable, than to protect an innocent boy, who was kept out
of his rightful inheritance by an ambitious kinsman? The fine gentlemen
and fine ladies who talked thus forgot that, besides the innocent boy and
that ambitious kinsman, five millions and a half of Englishmen were
concerned, who were little disposed to consider themselves as the absolute
property of any master, and who were still less disposed to accept a
master chosen for them by the French King.

James lingered three days longer. He was occasionally sensible during a
few minutes, and, during one of these lucid intervals, faintly expressed
his gratitude to Lewis. On the sixteenth he died. His Queen retired that
evening to the nunnery of Chaillot, where she could weep and pray
undisturbed. She left Saint Germains in joyous agitation. A herald made
his appearance before the palace gate, and, with sound of trumpet,
proclaimed, in Latin, French and English, King James the Third of England
and Eighth of Scotland. The streets, in consequence doubtless of orders
from the government, were illuminated; and the townsmen with loud shouts
wished a long reign to their illustrious neighbour. The poor lad received
from his ministers, and delivered back to them, the seals of their
offices, and held out his hand to be kissed. One of the first acts of his
mock reign was to bestow some mock peerages in conformity with directions
which he found in his father’s will. Middleton, who had as yet no English
title, was created Earl of Monmouth. Perth, who had stood high in the
favour of his late master, both as an apostate from the Protestant
religion, and as the author of the last improvements on the thumb screw,
took the title of Duke.

Meanwhile the remains of James were escorted, in the dusk of the evening,
by a slender retinue to the Chapel of the English Benedictines at Paris,
and deposited there in the vain hope that, at some future time, they would
be laid with kingly pomp at Westminster among the graves of the
Plantagenets and Tudors.

Three days after these humble obsequies Lewis visited Saint Germains in
form. On the morrow the visit was returned. The French Court was now at
Versailles; and the Pretender was received there, in all points, as his
father would have been, sate in his father’s arm chair, took, as his
father had always done, the right hand of the great monarch, and wore the
long violet coloured mantle which was by ancient usage the mourning garb
of the Kings of France. There was on that day a great concourse of
ambassadors and envoys; but one well known figure was wanting. Manchester
had sent off to Loo intelligence of the affront which had been offered to
his country and his master, had solicited instructions, and had determined
that, till these instructions should arrive, he would live in strict
seclusion. He did not think that he should be justified in quitting his
post without express orders; but his earnest hope was that he should be
directed to turn his back in contemptuous defiance on the Court which had
dared to treat England as a subject province.

As soon as the fault into which Lewis had been hurried by pity, by the
desire of applause, and by female influence was complete and irreparable,
he began to feel serious uneasiness. His ministers were directed to
declare everywhere that their master had no intention of affronting the
English government, that he had not violated the Treaty of Ryswick, that
he had no intention of violating it, that he had merely meant to gratify
an unfortunate family nearly related to himself by using names and
observing forms which really meant nothing, and that he was resolved not
to countenance any attempt to subvert the throne of William. Torcy, who
had, a few days before, proved by irrefragable arguments that his master
could not, without a gross breach of contract, recognise the Pretender,
imagined that sophisms which had not imposed on himself might possibly
impose on others. He visited the English embassy, obtained admittance,
and, as was his duty, did his best to excuse the fatal act which he had
done his best to prevent. Manchester’s answer to this attempt at
explanation was as strong and plain as it could be in the absence of
precise instructions. The instructions speedily arrived. The courier who
carried the news of the recognition to Loo arrived there when William was
at table with some of his nobles and some princes of the German Empire who
had visited him in his retreat. The King said not a word; but his pale
cheek flushed; and he pulled his hat over his eyes to conceal the changes
of his countenance. He hastened to send off several messengers. One
carried a letter commanding Manchester to quit France without taking
leave. Another started for London with a despatch which directed the Lords
Justices to send Poussin instantly out of England.

England was already in a flame when it was first known there that James
was dying. Some of his eager partisans formed plans and made preparations
for a great public manifestation of feeling in different parts of the
island. But the insolence of Lewis produced a burst of public indignation
which scarcely any malecontent had the courage to face.

In the city of London, indeed, some zealots, who had probably swallowed
too many bumpers to their new Sovereign, played one of those senseless
pranks which were characteristic of their party. They dressed themselves
in coats bearing some resemblance to the tabards of heralds, rode through
the streets, halted at some places, and muttered something which nobody
could understand. It was at first supposed that they were merely a company
of prize fighters from Hockley in the Hole who had taken this way of
advertising their performances with back sword, sword and buckler, and
single falchion. But it was soon discovered that these gaudily dressed
horsemen were proclaiming James the Third. In an instant the pageant was
at an end. The mock kings at arms and pursuivants threw away their finery
and fled for their lives in all directions, followed by yells and showers
of stones. 25
Already the Common Council of London had met, and had voted, without one
dissentient voice, an address expressing the highest resentment at the
insult which France had offered to the King and the kingdom. A few hours
after this address had been presented to the Regents, the Livery assembled
to choose a Lord Mayor. Duncombe, the Tory candidate, lately the popular
favourite, was rejected, and a Whig alderman placed in the chair. All over
the kingdom, corporations, grand juries, meetings of magistrates, meetings
of freeholders, were passing resolutions breathing affection to William,
and defiance to Lewis. It was necessary to enlarge the “London Gazette”
from four columns to twelve; and even twelve were too few to hold the
multitude of loyal and patriotic addresses. In some of those addresses
severe reflections were thrown on the House of Commons. Our deliverer had
been ungratefully requited, thwarted, mortified, denied the means of
making the country respected and feared by neighbouring states. The
factious wrangling, the penny wise economy, of three disgraceful years had
produced the effect which might have been expected. His Majesty would
never have been so grossly affronted abroad, if he had not first been
affronted at home. But the eyes of his people were opened. He had only to
appeal from the representatives to the constituents; and he would find
that the nation was still sound at heart.

Poussin had been directed to offer to the Lords Justices explanations
similar to those with which Torcy had attempted to appease Manchester. A
memorial was accordingly drawn up and presented to Vernon; but Vernon
refused to look at it. Soon a courier arrived from Loo with the letter in
which William directed his vicegerents to send the French agent out of the
kingdom. An officer of the royal household was charged with the execution
of the order. He repaired to Poussin’s lodgings; but Poussin was not at
home; he was supping at the Blue Posts, a tavern much frequented by
Jacobites, the very tavern indeed at which Charnock and his gang had
breakfasted on the day fixed for the murderous ambuscade of Turnham Green.
To this house the messenger went; and there he found Poussin at table with
three of the most virulent Tory members of the House of Commons,
Tredenham, who returned himself for Saint Mawes; Hammond, who had been
sent to Parliament by the high churchmen of the University of Cambridge;
and Davenant, who had recently, at Poussin’s suggestion, been rewarded by
Lewis for some savage invectives against the Whigs with a diamond ring
worth three thousand pistoles. This supper party was, during some weeks,
the chief topic of conversation. The exultation of the Whigs was
boundless. These then were the true English patriots, the men who could
not endure a foreigner, the men who would not suffer His Majesty to bestow
a moderate reward on the foreigners who had stormed Athlone, and turned
the flank of the Celtic army at Aghrim. It now appeared they could be on
excellent terms with a foreigner, provided only that he was the emissary
of a tyrant hostile to the liberty, the independence, and the religion of
their country. The Tories, vexed and abashed, heartily wished that, on
that unlucky day, their friends had been supping somewhere else. Even the
bronze of Davenant’s forehead was not proof to the general reproach. He
defended himself by pretending that Poussin, with whom he had passed whole
days, who had corrected his scurrilous pamphlets, and who had paid him his
shameful wages, was a stranger to him, and that the meeting at the Blue
Posts was purely accidental. If his word was doubted, he was willing to
repeat his assertion on oath. The public, however, which had formed a very
correct notion of his character, thought that his word was worth as much
as his oath, and that his oath was worth nothing.

Meanwhile the arrival of William was impatiently expected. From Loo he had
gone to Breda, where he had passed some time in reviewing his troops, and
in conferring with Marlborough and Heinsius. He had hoped to be in England
early in October. But adverse winds detained him three weeks at the Hague.
At length, in the afternoon of the fourth of November, it was known in
London that he had landed early that morning at Margate. Great
preparations were made for welcoming him to his capital on the following
day, the thirteenth anniversary of his landing in Devonshire. But a
journey across the bridge, and along Cornhill and Cheapside, Fleet Street,
and the Strand, would have been too great an effort for his enfeebled
frame. He accordingly slept at Greenwich, and thence proceeded to Hampton
Court without entering London. His return was, however, celebrated by the
populace with every sign of joy and attachment. The bonfires blazed, and
the gunpowder roared, all night. In every parish from Mile End to Saint
James’s was to be seen enthroned on the shoulders of stout Protestant
porters a pope, gorgeous in robes of tinsel and triple crown of
pasteboard; and close to the ear of His Holiness stood a devil with horns,
cloven hoof, and a snaky tail.

Even in his country house the king could find no refuge from the
importunate loyalty of his people. Reputations from cities, counties,
universities, besieged him all day. He was, he wrote to Heinsius, quite
exhausted by the labour of hearing harangues and returning answers. The
whole kingdom meanwhile was looking anxiously towards Hampton Court. Most
of the ministers were assembled there. The most eminent men of the party
which was out of power had repaired thither, to pay their duty to their
sovereign, and to congratulate him on his safe return. It was remarked
that Somers and Halifax, so malignantly persecuted a few months ago by the
House of Commons, were received with such marks of esteem and kindness as
William was little in the habit of vouchsafing to his English courtiers.
The lower ranks of both the great factions were violently agitated. The
Whigs, lately vanquished and dispirited, were full of hope and ardour. The
Tories, lately triumphant and secure, were exasperated and alarmed. Both
Whigs and Tories waited with intense anxiety for the decision of one
momentous and pressing question. Would there be a dissolution? On the
seventh of November the King propounded that question to his Privy
Council. It was rumoured, and is highly probable, that Jersey, Wright and
Hedges advised him to keep the existing Parliament. But they were not men
whose opinion was likely to have much weight with him; and Rochester,
whose opinion might have had some weight, had set out to take possession
of his Viceroyalty just before the death of James, and was still at
Dublin. William, however, had, as he owned to Heinsius, some difficulty in
making up his mind. He had no doubt that a general election would give him
a better House of Commons; but a general election would cause delay; and
delay might cause much mischief. After balancing these considerations,
during some hours, he determined to dissolve.

The writs were sent out with all expedition; and in three days the whole
kingdom was up. Never—such was the intelligence sent from the Dutch
Embassy to the Hague—had there been more intriguing, more
canvassing, more virulence of party feeling. It was in the capital that
the first great contests took place. The decisions of the Metropolitan
constituent bodies were impatiently expected as auguries of the general
result. All the pens of Grub Street, all the presses of Little Britain,
were hard at work. Handbills for and against every candidate were sent to
every voter. The popular slogans on both sides were indefatigably
repeated. Presbyterian, Papist, Tool of Holland, Pensioner of France, were
the appellations interchanged between the contending factions. The Whig
cry was that the Tory members of the last two Parliaments had, from a
malignant desire to mortify the King, left the kingdom exposed to danger
and insult, had unconstitutionally encroached both on the legislature and
on the judicial functions of the House of Lords, had turned the House of
Commons into a new Star Chamber, had used as instruments of capricious
tyranny those privileges which ought never to be employed but in defence
of freedom, had persecuted, without regard to law, to natural justice, or
to decorum, the great Commander who had saved the state at La Hogue, the
great Financier who had restored the currency and reestablished public
credit, the great judge whom all persons not blinded by prejudice
acknowledged to be, in virtue, in prudence, in learning and eloquence, the
first of living English jurists and statesmen. The Tories answered that
they had been only too moderate, only too merciful; that they had used the
Speaker’s warrant and the power of tacking only too sparingly; and that,
if they ever again had a majority, the three Whig leaders who now imagined
themselves secure should be impeached, not for high misdemeanours, but for
high treason. It soon appeared that these threats were not likely to be
very speedily executed. Four Whig and four Tory candidates contested the
City of London. The show of hands was for the Whigs. A poll was demanded;
and the Whigs polled nearly two votes to one. Sir John Levison Gower, who
was supposed to have ingratiated himself with the whole body of
shopkeepers by some parts of his parliamentary conduct, was put up for
Westminster on the Tory interest; and the electors were reminded by puffs
in the newspapers of the services which he had rendered to trade. But the
dread of the French King, the Pope, and the Pretender, prevailed; and Sir
John was at the bottom of the poll. Southwark not only returned Whigs, but
gave them instructions of the most Whiggish character.

In the country, parties were more nearly balanced than in the capital. Yet
the news from every quarter was that the Whigs had recovered part at least
of the ground which they had lost. Wharton had regained his ascendency in
Buckinghamshire. Musgrave was rejected by Westmoreland. Nothing did more
harm to the Tory candidates than the story of Poussin’s farewell supper.
We learn from their own acrimonious invectives that the unlucky discovery
of the three members of Parliament at the Blue Posts cost thirty honest
gentlemen their seats. One of the criminals, Tredenham, escaped with
impunity. For the dominion of his family over the borough of St. Mawes was
absolute even to a proverb. The other two had the fate which they
deserved. Davenant ceased to sit for Bedwin. Hammond, who had lately stood
high in the favour of the University of Cambridge, was defeated by a great
majority, and was succeeded by the glory of the Whig party, Isaac Newton.

There was one district to which the eyes of hundreds of thousands were
turned with anxious interest, Gloucestershire. Would the patriotic and
high spirited gentry and yeomanry of that great county again confide their
dearest interests to the Impudent Scandal of parliaments, the renegade,
the slanderer, the mountebank, who had been, during thirteen years,
railing at his betters of every party with a spite restrained by nothing
but the craven fear of corporal chastisement, and who had in the last
Parliament made himself conspicuous by the abject court which he had paid
to Lewis and by the impertinence with which he had spoken of William.

The Gloucestershire election became a national affair. Portmanteaus full
of pamphlets and broadsides were sent down from London. Every freeholder
in the county had several tracts left at his door. In every market place,
on the market day, papers about the brazen forehead, the viperous tongue,
and the white liver of Jack Howe, the French King’s buffoon, flew about
like flakes in a snow storm. Clowns from the Cotswold Hills and the forest
of Dean, who had votes, but who did not know their letters, were invited
to hear these satires read, and were asked whether they were prepared to
endure the two great evils which were then considered by the common people
of England as the inseparable concomitants of despotism, to wear wooden
shoes, and to live on frogs. The dissenting preachers and the clothiers
were peculiarly zealous. For Howe was considered as the enemy both of
conventicles and of factories. Outvoters were brought up to Gloucester in
extraordinary numbers. In the city of London the traders who frequented
Blackwell Hall, then the great emporium for woollen goods, canvassed
actively on the Whig side.

[Here the revised part ends.—EDITOR.]

Meanwhile reports about the state of the King’s health were constantly
becoming more and more alarming. His medical advisers, both English and
Dutch, were at the end of their resources. He had consulted by letter all
the most eminent physicians of Europe; and, as he was apprehensive that
they might return flattering answers if they knew who he was, he had
written under feigned names. To Fagon he had described himself as a parish
priest. Fagon replied, somewhat bluntly, that such symptoms could have
only one meaning, and that the only advice which he had to give to the
sick man was to prepare himself for death. Having obtained this plain
answer, William consulted Fagon again without disguise, and obtained some
prescriptions which were thought to have a little retarded the approach of
the inevitable hour. But the great King’s days were numbered. Headaches
and shivering fits returned on him almost daily. He still rode and even
hunted; 26
but he had no longer that firm seat or that perfect command of the bridle
for which he had once been renowned. Still all his care was for the
future. The filial respect and tenderness of Albemarle had been almost a
necessary of life to him. But it was of importance that Heinsius should be
fully informed both as to the whole plan of the next campaign and as to
the state of the preparations. Albemarle was in full possession of the
King’s views on these subjects. He was therefore sent to the Hague.
Heinsius was at that time suffering from indisposition, which was indeed a
trifle when compared with the maladies under which William was sinking.
But in the nature of William there was none of that selfishness which is
the too common vice of invalids. On the twentieth of February he sent to
Heinsius a letter in which he did not even allude to his own sufferings
and infirmities. “I am,” he said, “infinitely concerned to learn that your
health is not yet quite reestablished. May God be pleased to grant you a
speedy recovery. I am unalterably your good friend, William.” Those were
the last lines of that long correspondence.

On the twentieth of February William was ambling on a favourite horse,
named Sorrel, through the park of Hampton Court. He urged his horse to
strike into a gallop just at the spot where a mole had been at work.
Sorrel stumbled on the mole-hill, and went down on his knees. The King
fell off, and broke his collar bone. The bone was set; and he returned to
Kensington in his coach. The jolting of the rough roads of that time made
it necessary to reduce the fracture again. To a young and vigorous man
such an accident would have been a trifle. But the frame of William was
not in a condition to bear even the slightest shock. He felt that his time
was short, and grieved, with a grief such as only noble spirits feel, to
think that he must leave his work but half finished. It was possible that
he might still live until one of his plans should be carried into
execution. He had long known that the relation in which England and
Scotland stood to each other was at best precarious, and often unfriendly,
and that it might be doubted whether, in an estimate of the British power,
the resources of the smaller country ought not to be deducted from those
of the larger. Recent events had proved that, without doubt, the two
kingdoms could not possibly continue for another year to be on the terms
on which they had been during the preceding century, and that there must
be between them either absolute union or deadly enmity. Their enmity would
bring frightful calamities, not on themselves alone, but on all the
civilised world. Their union would be the best security for the prosperity
of both, for the internal tranquillity of the island, for the just balance
of power among European states, and for the immunities of all Protestant
countries. On the twenty-eighth of February the Commons listened with
uncovered heads to the last message that bore William’s sign manual. An
unhappy accident, he told them, had forced him to make to them in writing
a communication which he would gladly have made from the throne. He had,
in the first year of his reign, expressed his desire to see an union
accomplished between England and Scotland. He was convinced that nothing
could more conduce to the safety and happiness of both. He should think it
his peculiar felicity if, before the close of his reign, some happy
expedient could be devised for making the two kingdoms one; and he, in the
most earnest manner, recommended the question to the consideration of the
Houses. It was resolved that the message should betaken into consideration
on Saturday, the seventh of March.