CHAPTER XVIII

Opening of the Parliament--Debates on the Salaries and Fees of Official

Men--Act excluding Papists from Public Trust in Ireland--Debates on the

East India Trade--Debates on the Bill for regulating Trials in Cases

of High Treason--Plot formed by Marlborough against the Government of

William--Marlborough's Plot disclosed by the Jacobites--Disgrace

of Marlborough; Various Reports touching the Cause of Marlborough's

Disgrace.--Rupture between Mary and Anne--Fuller's Plot--Close of

the Session; Bill for ascertaining the Salaries of the Judges

rejected--Misterial Changes in England--Ministerial Changes in

Scotland--State of the Highlands--Breadalbane employed to negotiate

with the Rebel Clans--Glencoe--William goes to the Continent; Death of

Louvois--The French Government determines to send an Expedition

against England--James believes that the English Fleet is friendly to

him--Conduct of Russell--A Daughter born to James--Preparations made

in England to repel Invasion--James goes down to his Army at La

Hogue--James's Declaration--Effect produced by James's Declaration--The

English and Dutch Fleets join; Temper of the English Fleet--Battle of La

Hogue--Rejoicings in England--Young's Plot

ON the nineteenth of October 1691, William arrived at Kensington from

the Netherlands. [144] Three days later he opened the Parliament. The

aspect of affairs was, on the whole, cheering. By land there had been

gains and losses; but the balance was in favour of England. Against the

fall of Mons might well be set off the taking of Athlone, the victory

of Aghrim, the surrender of Limerick and the pacification of Ireland. At

sea there had been no great victory; but there had been a great display

of power and of activity; and, though many were dissatisfied because

more had not been done, none could deny that there had been a change for

the better. The ruin caused by the foibles and vices of Torrington had

been repaired; the fleet had been well equipped; the rations had been

abundant and wholesome; and the health of the crews had consequently

been, for that age, wonderfully good. Russell, who commanded the naval

forces of the allies, had in vain offered battle to the French. The

white flag, which, in the preceding year, had ranged the Channel

unresisted from the Land's End to the Straits of Dover, now, as soon as

our topmasts were descried twenty leagues off, abandoned the open sea,

and retired into the depths of the harbour of Brest. The appearance of

an English squadron in the estuary of the Shannon had decided the fate

of the last fortress which had held out for King James; and a fleet

of merchantmen from the Levant, valued at four millions sterling,

had, through dangers which had caused many sleepless nights to the

underwriters of Lombard Street, been convoyed safe into the Thames.

[145] The Lords and Commons listened with signs of satisfaction to a

speech in which the King congratulated them on the event of the war

in Ireland, and expressed his confidence that they would continue to

support him in the war with France. He told them that a great naval

armament would be necessary, and that, in his opinion, the conflict

by land could not be effectually maintained with less than sixty-five

thousand men. [146]

He was thanked in affectionate terms; the force which he asked was

voted; and large supplies were granted with little difficulty. But when

the Ways and Means were taken into consideration, symptoms of discontent

began to appear. Eighteen months before, when the Commons had been

employed in settling the Civil List, many members had shown a very

natural disposition to complain of the amount of the salaries and fees

received by official men. Keen speeches had been made, and, what was

much less usual, had been printed; there had been much excitement out of

doors; but nothing had been done. The subject was now revived. A report

made by the Commissioners who had been appointed in the preceding

year to examine the public accounts disclosed some facts which excited

indignation, and others which raised grave suspicion. The House seemed

fully determined to make an extensive reform; and, in truth, nothing

could have averted such a reform except the folly and violence of the

reformers. That they should have been angry is indeed not strange. The

enormous gains, direct and indirect, of the servants of the public went

on increasing, while the gains of every body else were diminishing.

Rents were falling; trade was languishing; every man who lived either on

what his ancestors had left him or on the fruits of his own industry

was forced to retrench. The placeman alone throve amidst the general

distress. "Look," cried the incensed squires, "at the Comptroller of the

Customs. Ten years ago, he walked, and we rode. Our incomes have been

curtailed; his salary has been doubled; we have sold our horses; he has

bought them; and now we go on foot, and are splashed by his coach and

six." Lowther vainly endeavoured to stand up against the storm. He

was heard with little favour by the country gentlemen who had not long

before looked up to him as one of their leaders. He had left them; he

had become a courtier; he had two good places, one in the Treasury, the

other in the household. He had recently received from the King's own

hand a gratuity of two thousand guineas. [147] It seemed perfectly

natural that he should defend abuses by which he profited. The taunts

and reproaches with which he was assailed were insupportable to his

sensitive nature. He lost his head, almost fainted away on the floor

of the House, and talked about righting himself in another place. [148]

Unfortunately no member rose at this conjuncture to propose that the

civil establishment of the kingdom should be carefully revised, that

sinecures should be abolished, that exorbitant official incomes should

be reduced, and that no servant of the State should be allowed to exact,

under any pretence, any thing beyond his known and lawful remuneration.

In this way it would have been possible to diminish the public burdens,

and at the same time to increase the efficiency of every public

department. But unfortunately those who were loudest in clamouring

against the prevailing abuses were utterly destitute of the qualities

necessary for the work of reform. On the twelfth of December, some

foolish man, whose name has not come down to us, moved that no person

employed in any civil office, the Speaker, Judges and Ambassadors

excepted, should receive more than five hundred pounds a year; and this

motion was not only carried, but carried without one dissentient voice.

[149]

Those who were most interested in opposing it doubtless saw that

opposition would, at that moment, only irritate the majority, and

reserved themselves for a more favourable time. The more favourable

time soon came. No man of common sense could, when his blood had cooled,

remember without shame that he had voted for a resolution which made no

distinction between sinecurists and laborious public servants, between

clerks employed in copying letters and ministers on whose wisdom

and integrity the fate of the nation might depend. The salary of the

Doorkeeper of the Excise Office had been, by a scandalous job, raised

to five hundred a year. It ought to have been reduced to fifty. On the

other hand, the services of a Secretary of State who was well qualified

for his post would have been cheap at five thousand. If the resolution

of the Commons bad been carried into effect, both the salary which ought

not to have exceeded fifty pounds, and the salary which might without

impropriety have amounted to five thousand, would have been fixed at

five hundred. Such absurdity must have shocked even the roughest and

plainest foxhunter in the House. A reaction took place; and when, after

an interval of a few weeks, it was proposed to insert in a bill of

supply a clause in conformity with the resolution of the twelfth of

December, the Noes were loud; the Speaker was of opinion that they had

it; the Ayes did not venture to dispute his opinion; the senseless

plan which had been approved without a division was rejected without a

division; and the subject was not again mentioned. Thus a grievance so

scandalous that none of those who profited by it dared to defend it

was perpetuated merely by the imbecility and intemperance of those who

attacked it. [150]

Early in the Session the Treaty of Limerick became the subject of a

grave and earnest discussion. The Commons, in the exercise of that

supreme power which the English legislature possessed over all the

dependencies of England, sent up to the Lords a bill providing that no

person should sit in the Irish Parliament, should hold any Irish office,

civil, military or ecclesiastical, or should practise law or medicine

in Ireland, till he had taken the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy, and

subscribed the Declaration against Transubstantiation. The Lords were

not more inclined than the Commons to favour the Irish. No peer was

disposed to entrust Roman Catholics with political power. Nay, it seems

that no peer objected to the principle of the absurd and cruel rule

which excluded Roman Catholics from the liberal professions. But it was

thought that this rule, though unobjectionable in principle, would,

if adopted without some exceptions, be a breach of a positive compact.

Their Lordships called for the Treaty of Limerick, ordered it to be read

at the table, and proceeded to consider whether the law framed by

the Lower House was consistent with the engagements into which the

government had entered. One discrepancy was noticed. It was stipulated

by the second civil article, that every person actually residing in any

fortress occupied by an Irish garrison, should be permitted, on taking

the Oath of Allegiance, to resume any calling which he had exercised

before the Revolution. It would, beyond all doubt, have been a violation

of this covenant to require that a lawyer or a physician, who had been

within the walls of Limerick during the siege, should take the Oath

of Supremacy and subscribe the Declaration against Transubstantiation,

before he could receive fees. Holt was consulted, and was directed to

prepare clauses in conformity with the terms of the capitulation.

The bill, as amended by Holt, was sent back to the Commons. They at

first rejected the amendment, and demanded a conference. The conference

was granted. Rochester, in the Painted Chamber, delivered to the

managers of the Lower House a copy of the Treaty of Limerick, and

earnestly represented the importance of preserving the public faith

inviolate. This appeal was one which no honest man, though inflamed by

national and religious animosity, could resist. The Commons reconsidered

the subject, and, after hearing the Treaty read, agreed, with some

slight modifications, to what the Lords had proposed. [151]

The bill became a law. It attracted, at the time, little notice, but

was, after the lapse of several generations, the subject of a very

acrimonious controversy. Many of us can well remember how strongly the

public mind was stirred, in the days of George the Third and George the

Fourth, by the question whether Roman Catholics should be permitted to

sit in Parliament. It may be doubted whether any dispute has produced

stranger perversions of history. The whole past was falsified for

the sake of the present. All the great events of three centuries long

appeared to us distorted and discoloured by a mist sprung from our own

theories and our own passions. Some friends of religious liberty, not

content with the advantage which they possessed in the fair conflict

of reason with reason, weakened their case by maintaining that the law

which excluded Irish Roman Catholics from Parliament was inconsistent

with the civil Treaty of Limerick. The First article of that Treaty, it

was said, guaranteed to the Irish Roman Catholic such privileges in the

exercise of his religion as he had enjoyed in the time of Charles

the Second. In the time of Charles the Second no test excluded Roman

Catholics from the Irish Parliament. Such a test could not therefore,

it was argued, be imposed without a breach of public faith. In the year

1828, especially, this argument was put forward in the House of Commons

as if it had been the main strength of a cause which stood in need of no

such support. The champions of Protestant ascendency were well pleased

to see the debate diverted from a political question about which they

were in the wrong, to a historical question about which they were in

the right. They had no difficulty in proving that the first article,

as understood by all the contracting parties, meant only that the Roman

Catholic worship should be tolerated as in time past. That article was

drawn up by Ginkell; and, just before he drew it up, he had declared

that he would rather try the chance of arms than consent that Irish

Papists should be capable of holding civil and military offices, of

exercising liberal professions, and of becoming members of municipal

corporations. How is it possible to believe that he would, of his own

accord, have promised that the House of Lords and the House of Commons

should be open to men to whom he would not open a guild of skinners or

a guild of cordwainers? How, again, is it possible to believe that the

English Peers would, while professing the most punctilious respect

for public faith, while lecturing the Commons on the duty of observing

public faith, while taking counsel with the most learned and upright

jurist of the age as to the best mode of maintaining public faith, have

committed a flagrant violation of public faith and that not a single

lord should have been so honest or so factious as to protest against

an act of monstrous perfidy aggravated by hypocrisy? Or, if we could

believe this, how can we believe that no voice would have been raised in

any part of the world against such wickedness; that the Court of Saint

Germains and the Court of Versailles would have remained profoundly

silent; that no Irish exile, no English malecontent, would have uttered

a murmur; that not a word of invective or sarcasm on so inviting a

subject would have been found in the whole compass of the Jacobite

literature; and that it would have been reserved for politicians of the

nineteenth century to discover that a treaty made in the seventeenth

century had, a few weeks after it had been signed, been outrageously

violated in the sight of all Europe? [152]

On the same day on which the Commons read for the first time the bill

which subjected Ireland to the absolute dominion of the Protestant

minority, they took into consideration another matter of high

importance. Throughout the country, but especially in the capital,

in the seaports and in the manufacturing towns, the minds of men were

greatly excited on the subject of the trade with the East Indies; a

fierce paper war had during some time been raging; and several grave

questions, both constitutional and commercial, had been raised, which

the legislature only could decide.

It has often been repeated, and ought never to be forgotten, that our

polity differs widely from those politics which have, during the last

eighty years, been methodically constructed, digested into articles, and

ratified by constituent assemblies. It grew up in a rude age. It is not

to be found entire in any formal instrument. All along the line which

separates the functions of the prince from those of the legislator there

was long a disputed territory. Encroachments were perpetually committed,

and, if not very outrageous, were often tolerated. Trespass, merely as

trespass, was commonly suffered to pass unresented. It was only when the

trespass produced some positive damage that the aggrieved party stood on

his right, and demanded that the frontier should be set out by metes

and bounds, and that the landmarks should thenceforward be punctiliously

respected.

Many of those points which had occasioned the most violent disputes

between our Sovereigns and their Parliaments had been finally decided by

the Bill of Rights. But one question, scarcely less important than

any of the questions which had been set at rest for ever, was still

undetermined. Indeed, that question was never, as far as can now be

ascertained, even mentioned in the Convention. The King had undoubtedly,

by the ancient laws of the realm, large powers for the regulation of

trade; but the ablest judge would have found it difficult to say what

was the precise extent of those powers. It was universally acknowledged

that it belonged to the King to prescribe weights and measures, and to

coin money; that no fair or market could be held without authority from

him; that no ship could unload in any bay or estuary which he had not

declared to be a port. In addition to his undoubted right to grant

special commercial privileges to particular places, he long claimed a

right to grant special commercial privileges to particular societies and

to particular individuals; and our ancestors, as usual, did not think

it worth their while to dispute this claim, till it produced serious

inconvenience. At length, in the reign of Elizabeth, the power of

creating monopolies began to be grossly abused; and, as soon as it

began to be grossly abused, it began to be questioned. The Queen wisely

declined a conflict with a House of Commons backed by the whole nation.

She frankly acknowledged that there was reason for complaint; she

cancelled the patents which had excited the public clamours; and her

people, delighted by this concession, and by the gracious manner in

which it had been made, did not require from her an express renunciation

of the disputed prerogative.

The discontents which her wisdom had appeased were revived by the

dishonest and pusillanimous policy which her successor called Kingcraft.

He readily granted oppressive patents of monopoly. When he needed the

help of his Parliament, he as readily annulled them. As soon as the

Parliament had ceased to sit, his Great Seal was put to instruments

more odious than those which he had recently cancelled. At length that

excellent House of Commons which met in 1623 determined to apply a

strong remedy to the evil. The King was forced to give his assent to a

law which declared monopolies established by royal authority to be null

and void. Some exceptions, however, were made, and, unfortunately, were

not very clearly defined. It was especially provided that every Society

of Merchants which had been instituted for the purpose of carrying on

any trade should retain all its legal privileges. [153] The question

whether a monopoly granted by the Crown to such a company were or were

not a legal privilege was left unsettled, and continued to exercise,

during many years, the ingenuity of lawyers. [154] The nation, however,

relieved at once from a multitude of impositions and vexations which

were painfully felt every day at every fireside, was in no humour to

dispute the validity of the charters under which a few companies to

London traded with distant parts of the world.

Of these companies by far the most important was that which had been, on

the last day of the sixteenth century, incorporated by Queen Elizabeth

under the name of the Governor and Company of Merchants of London

trading to the East Indies. When this celebrated body began to exist,

the Mogul monarchy was at the zenith of power and glory. Akbar, the

ablest and best of the princes of the House of Tamerlane, had just

been borne, full of years and honours, to a mausoleum surpassing in

magnificence any that Europe could show. He had bequeathed to his

posterity an empire containing more than twenty times the population and

yielding more than twenty times the revenue of the England which, under

our great Queen, held a foremost place among European powers. It is

curious and interesting to consider how little the two countries,

destined to be one day so closely connected, were then known to each

other. The most enlightened Englishmen looked on India with ignorant

admiration. The most enlightened natives of India were scarcely aware

that England existed. Our ancestors had a dim notion of endless bazaars,

swarming with buyers and sellers, and blazing with cloth of gold, with

variegated silks and with precious stones; of treasuries where diamonds

were piled in heaps and sequins in mountains; of palaces, compared with

which Whitehall and Hampton Court were hovels; of armies ten times as

numerous as that which they had seen assembled at Tilbury to repel

the Armada. On the other hand, it was probably not known to one of the

statesmen in the Durbar of Agra that there was near the setting sun a

great city of infidels, called London, where a woman reigned, and

that she had given to an association of Frank merchants the exclusive

privilege of freighting ships from her dominions to the Indian seas.

That this association would one day rule all India, from the ocean to

the everlasting snow, would reduce to profound obedience great provinces

which had never submitted to Akbar's authority, would send Lieutenant

Governors to preside in his capital, and would dole out a monthly

pension to his heir, would have seemed to the wisest of European or

of Oriental politicians as impossible as that inhabitants of our globe

should found an empire in Venus or Jupiter.

Three generations passed away; and still nothing indicated that the East

India Company would ever become a great Asiatic potentate. The Mogul

empire, though undermined by internal causes of decay, and tottering

to its fall, still presented to distant nations the appearance of

undiminished prosperity and vigour. Aurengzebe, who, in the same

month in which Oliver Cromwell died, assumed the magnificent title of

Conqueror of the World, continued to reign till Anne had been long on

the English throne. He was the sovereign of a larger territory than

had obeyed any of his predecessors. His name was great in the farthest

regions of the West. Here he had been made by Dryden the hero of a

tragedy which would alone suffice to show how little the English of that

age knew about the vast empire which their grandchildren were to conquer

and to govern. The poet's Mussulman princes make love in the style

of Amadis, preach about the death of Socrates, and embellish their

discourse with allusions to the mythological stories of Ovid. The

Brahminical metempyschosis is represented as an article of the Mussulman

creed; and the Mussulman Sultanas burn themselves with their husbands

after the Brahminical fashion. This drama, once rapturously applauded by

crowded theatres, and known by heart to fine gentlemen and fine ladies,

is now forgotten. But one noble passage still lives, and is repeated by

thousands who know not whence it comes. [155]

Though nothing yet indicated the high political destiny of the East

India Company, that body had a great sway in the City of London. The

offices, which stood on a very small part of the ground which the

present offices cover, had escaped the ravages of the fire. The India

House of those days was a building of timber and plaster, rich with

the quaint carving and lattice-work of the Elizabethan age. Above the

windows was a painting which represented a fleet of merchantmen tossing

on the waves. The whole edifice was surmounted by a colossal wooden

seaman, who, from between two dolphins, looked down on the crowds of

Leadenhall Street. [156] In this abode, narrow and humble indeed when

compared with the vast labyrinth of passages and chambers which now

bears the same name, the Company enjoyed, during the greater part of the

reign of Charles the Second, a prosperity to which the history of trade

scarcely furnishes any parallel, and which excited the wonder, the

cupidity and the envious animosity of the whole capital. Wealth and

luxury were then rapidly increasing. The taste for the spices, the

tissues and the jewels of the East became stronger day by day. Tea,

which, at the time when Monk brought the army of Scotland to London, had

been handed round to be stared at and just touched with the lips, as a

great rarity from China, was, eight years later, a regular article of

import, and was soon consumed in such quantities that financiers began

to consider it as a fit subject for taxation. The progress which was

making in the art of war had created an unprecedented demand for the

ingredients of which gunpowder is compounded. It was calculated that all

Europe would hardly produce in a year saltpetre enough for the siege

of one town fortified on the principles of Vauban. [157] But for the

supplies from India, it was said, the English government would be unable

to equip a fleet without digging up the cellars of London in order

to collect the nitrous particles from the walls. [158] Before the

Restoration scarcely one ship from the Thames had ever visited the Delta

of the Ganges. But, during the twenty-three years which followed the

Restoration, the value of the annual imports from that rich and populous

district increased from eight thousand pounds to three hundred thousand.

The gains of the body which had the exclusive possession of this

fast growing trade were almost incredible. The capital which had been

actually paid up did not exceed three hundred and seventy thousand

pounds; but the Company could, without difficulty, borrow money at six

per cent., and the borrowed money, thrown into the trade, produced,

it was rumoured, thirty per cent. The profits were such that, in 1676,

every proprietor received as a bonus a quantity of stock equal to that

which he held. On the capital, thus doubled, were paid, during five

years, dividends amounting on an average to twenty per cent. annually.

There had been a time when a hundred pounds of the stock could be

purchased for sixty. Even in 1664 the price in the market was only

seventy. But in 1677 the price had risen to two hundred and forty-five;

in 1681 it was three hundred; it subsequently rose to three hundred and

sixty; and it is said that some sales were effected at five hundred.

[159]

The enormous gains of the Indian trade might perhaps have excited little

murmuring if they had been distributed among numerous proprietors.

But while the value of the stock went on increasing, the number of

stockholders went on diminishing. At the time when the prosperity of the

Company reached the highest point, the management was entirely in the

hands of a few merchants of enormous wealth. A proprietor then had a

vote for every five hundred pounds of stock that stood in his name. It

is asserted in the pamphlets of that age that five persons had a sixth

part, and fourteen persons a third part of the votes. [160] More than

one fortunate speculator was said to derive an annual income of ten

thousand pounds from the monopoly; and one great man was pointed out on

the Royal Exchange as having, by judicious or lucky purchases of stock,

created in no long time an estate of twenty thousand a year. This

commercial grandee, who in wealth and in the influence which attends

wealth vied with the greatest nobles of his time, was Sir Josiah Child.

There were those who still remembered him an apprentice, sweeping one

of the counting houses of the City. But from a humble position his

abilities had raised him rapidly to opulence, power and fame. At the

time of the Restoration he was highly considered in the mercantile

world. Soon after that event he published his thoughts on the philosophy

of trade. His speculations were not always sound; but they were the

speculations of an ingenious and reflecting man. Into whatever errors

he may occasionally have fallen as a theorist, it is certain that, as

a practical man of business, he had few equals. Almost as soon as he

became a member of the committee which directed the affairs of the

Company, his ascendency was felt. Soon many of the most important posts,

both in Leadenhall Street and in the factories of Bombay and Bengal,

were filled by his kinsmen and creatures. His riches, though expended

with ostentatious profusion, continued to increase and multiply. He

obtained a baronetcy; he purchased a stately seat at Wanstead; and there

he laid out immense sums in excavating fishponds, and in planting whole

square miles of barren land with walnut trees. He married his daughter

to the eldest son of the Duke of Beaufort, and paid down with her a

portion of fifty thousand pounds. [161]

But this wonderful prosperity was not uninterrupted. Towards the close

of the reign of Charles the Second the Company began to be fiercely

attacked from without, and to be at the same time distracted by internal

dissensions. The profits of the Indian trade were so tempting, that

private adventurers had often, in defiance of the royal charter, fitted

out ships for the Eastern seas. But the competition of these interlopers

did not become really formidable till the year 1680. The nation was then

violently agitated by the dispute about the Exclusion Bill. Timid men

were anticipating another civil war. The two great parties, newly named

Whigs and Tories, were fiercely contending in every county and town of

England; and the feud soon spread to every corner of the civilised world

where Englishmen were to be found.

The Company was popularly considered as a Whig body. Among the members

of the directing committee were some of the most vehement Exclusionists

in the City. Indeed two of them, Sir Samuel Barnardistone and Thomas

Papillon, drew on themselves a severe persecution by their zeal against

Popery and arbitrary power. [162] Child had been originally brought into

the direction by these men; he had long acted in concert with them; and

he was supposed to hold their political opinions. He had, during many

years, stood high in the esteem of the chiefs of the parliamentary

opposition, and had been especially obnoxious to the Duke of York. [163]

The interlopers therefore determined to affect the character of loyal

men, who were determined to stand by the throne against the insolent

tribunes of the City. They spread, at all the factories in the East,

reports that England was in confusion, that the sword had been drawn

or would immediately be drawn, and that the Company was forward in the

rebellion against the Crown. These rumours, which, in truth, were not

improbable, easily found credit among people separated from London by

what was then a voyage of twelve months. Some servants of the Company

who were in ill humour with their employers, and others who were zealous

royalists, joined the private traders. At Bombay, the garrison and the

great body of the English inhabitants declared that they would no longer

obey any body who did not obey the King; they imprisoned the Deputy

Governor; and they proclaimed that they held the island for the Crown.

At Saint Helena there was a rising. The insurgents took the name of

King's men, and displayed the royal standard. They were, not without

difficulty, put down; and some of them were executed by martial law.

[164]

If the Company had still been a Whig Company when the news of these

commotions reached England, it is probable that the government would

have approved of the conduct of the mutineers, and that the charter on

which the monopoly depended would have had the fate which about the same

time befell so many other charters. But while the interlopers were, at

a distance of many thousands of miles, making war on the Company in the

name of the King, the Company and the King had been reconciled. When the

Oxford Parliament had been dissolved, when many signs indicated that

a strong reaction in favour of prerogative was at hand, when all the

corporations which had incurred the royal displeasure were beginning to

tremble for their franchises, a rapid and complete revolution took place

at the India House. Child, who was then Governor, or, in the modern

phrase, Chairman, separated himself from his old friends, excluded

them from the direction, and negotiated a treaty of peace and of close

alliance with the Court. [165] It is not improbable that the near

connection into which he had just entered with the great Tory house of

Beaufort may have had something to do with this change in his politics.

Papillon, Barnardistone, and their adherents, sold their stock; their

places in the committee were supplied by persons devoted to Child; and

he was thenceforth the autocrat of the Company. The treasures of the

Company were absolutely at his disposal. The most important papers

of the Company were kept, not in the muniment room of the office in

Leadenhall Street, but in his desk at Wanstead. The boundless power

which he exercised at the India House enabled him to become a favourite

at Whitehall; and the favour which he enjoyed at Whitehall confirmed

his power at the India House. A present of ten thousand guineas was

graciously received from him by Charles. Ten thousand more were accepted

by James, who readily consented to become a holder of stock. All who

could help or hurt at Court, ministers, mistresses, priests, were kept

in good humour by presents of shawls and silks, birds' nests and atar

of roses, bulses of diamonds and bags of guineas. [166] Of what the

Dictator expended no account was asked by his colleagues; and in truth

he seems to have deserved the confidence which they reposed in him.

His bribes, distributed with judicious prodigality, speedily produced a

large return. Just when the Court became all powerful in the State,

he became all powerful at the Court. Jeffreys pronounced a decision in

favour of the monopoly, and of the strongest acts which had been done

in defence of the monopoly. James ordered his seal to be put to a new

charter which confirmed and extended all the privileges bestowed on

the Company by his predecessors. All captains of Indiamen received

commissions from the Crown, and were permitted to hoist the royal

ensigns. [167] John Child, brother of Sir Josiah, and Governor of

Bombay, was created a baronet by the style of Sir John Child of Surat:

he was declared General of all the English forces in the East; and he

was authorised to assume the title of Excellency. The Company, on the

other hand, distinguished itself among many servile corporations by

obsequious homage to the throne, and set to all the merchants of the

kingdom the example of readily and even eagerly paying those customs

which James, at the commencement of his reign, exacted without the

authority of Parliament. [168]

It seemed that the private trade would now be utterly crushed, and that

the monopoly, protected by the whole strength of the royal prerogative,

would be more profitable than ever. But unfortunately just at this

moment a quarrel arose between the agents of the Company in India

and the Mogul Government. Where the fault lay is a question which was

vehemently disputed at the time, and which it is now impossible to

decide. The interlopers threw all the blame on the Company. The Governor

of Bombay, they affirmed, had always been grasping and violent; but his

baronetcy and his military commission had completely turned his head.

The very natives who were employed about the factory had noticed the

change, and had muttered, in their broken English, that there must be

some strange curse attending the word Excellency; for that, ever since

the chief of the strangers was called Excellency, every thing had gone

to ruin. Meanwhile, it was said, the brother in England had sanctioned

all the unjust and impolitic acts of the brother in India, till at

length insolence and rapine, disgraceful to the English nation and to

the Christian religion, had roused the just resentment of the native

authorities. The Company warmly recriminated. The story told at

the India House was that the quarrel was entirely the work of the

interlopers, who were now designated not only as interlopers but as

traitors. They had, it was alleged, by flattery, by presents, and by

false accusations, induced the viceroys of the Mogul to oppress and

persecute the body which in Asia represented the English Crown. And

indeed this charge seems not to have been altogether without foundation.

It is certain that one of the most pertinacious enemies of the Childs

went up to the Court of Aurengzebe, took his station at the palace gate,

stopped the Great King who was in the act of mounting on horseback, and,

lifting a petition high in the air, demanded justice in the name of the

common God of Christians and Mussulmans. [169] Whether Aurengzebe paid

much attention to the charges brought by infidel Franks against each

other may be doubted. But it is certain that a complete rupture took

place between his deputies and the servants of the Company. On the

sea the ships of his subjects were seized by the English. On land the

English settlements were taken and plundered. The trade was suspended;

and, though great annual dividends were still paid in London, they were

no longer paid out of annual profits.

Just at this conjuncture, while every Indiaman that arrived in the

Thames was bringing unwelcome news from the East, all the politics of

Sir Josiah were utterly confounded by the Revolution. He had flattered

himself that he had secured the body of which he was the chief against

the machinations of interlopers, by uniting it closely with the

strongest government that had existed within his memory. That government

had fallen; and whatever had leaned on the ruined fabric began to

totter. The bribes had been thrown away. The connections which had been

the strength and boast of the corporation were now its weakness and its

shame. The King who had been one of its members was an exile. The

judge by whom all its most exorbitant pretensions had been pronounced

legitimate was a prisoner. All the old enemies of the Company,

reinforced by those great Whig merchants whom Child had expelled from

the direction, demanded justice and vengeance from the Whig House of

Commons, which had just placed William and Mary on the throne. No voice

was louder in accusation than that of Papillon, who had, some years

before, been more zealous for the charter than any man in London. [170]

The Commons censured in severe terms the persons who had inflicted death

by martial law at Saint Helena, and even resolved that some of those

offenders should be excluded from the Act of Indemnity. [171] The great

question, how the trade with the East should for the future be carried

on, was referred to a Committee. The report was to have been made on

the twenty-seventh of January 1690; but on that very day the Parliament

ceased to exist.

The first two sessions of the succeeding Parliament were so short and

so busy that little was said about India in either House. But, out

of Parliament, all the arts both of controversy and of intrigue were

employed on both sides. Almost as many pamphlets were published about

the India trade as about the oaths. The despot of Leadenhall Street was

libelled in prose and verse. Wretched puns were made on his name. He was

compared to Cromwell, to the King of France, to Goliath of Gath, to the

Devil. It was vehemently declared to be necessary that, in any Act which

might be passed for the regulation of our traffic with the Eastern seas,

Sir Josiah should be by name excluded from all trust. [172]

There were, however, great differences of opinion among those who agreed

in hating Child and the body of which he was the head. The manufacturers

of Spitalfields, of Norwich, of Yorkshire, and of the Western counties,

considered the trade with the Eastern seas as rather injurious than

beneficial to the kingdom. The importation of Indian spices, indeed, was

admitted to be harmless, and the importation of Indian saltpetre to be

necessary. But the importation of silks and of Bengals, as shawls were

then called, was pronounced to be a curse to the country. The effect of

the growing taste for such frippery was that our gold and silver went

abroad, and that much excellent English drapery lay in our warehouses

till it was devoured by the moths. Those, it was said, were happy days

for the inhabitants both of our pasture lands and of our manufacturing

towns, when every gown, every hanging, every bed, was made of materials

which our own flocks had furnished to our own looms. Where were now

the brave old hangings of arras which had adorned the walls of lordly

mansions in the days of Elizabeth? And was it not a shame to see a

gentleman, whose ancestors had worn nothing but stuffs made by English

workmen out of English fleeces, flaunting in a calico shirt and a pair

of silk stockings? Clamours such as these had, a few years before,

extorted from Parliament the Act which required that the dead should

be wrapped in woollen; and some sanguine clothiers hoped that the

legislature would, by excluding all Indian textures from our ports,

impose the same necessity on the living. [173]

But this feeling was confined to a minority. The public was, indeed,

inclined rather to overrate than to underrate the benefits which might

be derived by England from the Indian trade. What was the most effectual

mode of extending that trade was a question which excited general

interest, and which was answered in very different ways.

A small party, consisting chiefly of merchants resident at Bristol and

other provincial seaports, maintained that the best way to extend trade

was to leave it free. They urged the well known arguments which prove

that monopoly is injurious to commerce; and, having fully established

the general law, they asked why the commerce between England and India

was to be considered as an exception to that law. Any trader ought, they

said, to be permitted to send from any port a cargo to Surat or Canton

as freely as he now sent a cargo to Hamburg or Lisbon. [174] In our time

these doctrines may probably be considered, not only as sound, but

as trite and obvious. In the seventeenth century, however, they were

thought paradoxical. It was then generally held to be a certain, and

indeed an almost selfevident truth, that our trade with the countries

lying beyond the Cape of Good Hope could be advantageously carried on

only by means of a great Joint Stock Company. There was no analogy,

it was said, between our European trade and our Indian trade. Our

government had diplomatic relations with the European States. If

necessary, a maritime force could easily be sent from hence to the mouth

of the Elbe or of the Tagus. But the English Kings had no envoy at the

Court of Agra or Pekin. There was seldom a single English man of war

within ten thousand miles of the Bay of Bengal or of the Gulf of Siam.

As our merchants could not, in those remote seas, be protected by

their Sovereign, they must protect themselves, and must, for that

end, exercise some of the rights of sovereignty. They must have forts,

garrisons and armed ships. They must have power to send and receive

embassies, to make a treaty of alliance with one Asiatic prince, to wage

war on another. It was evidently impossible that every merchant should

have this power independently of the rest. The merchants trading to

India must therefore be joined together in a corporation which could act

as one man. In support of these arguments the example of the Dutch was

cited, and was generally considered as decisive. For in that age the

immense prosperity of Holland was every where regarded with admiration,

not the less earnest because it was largely mingled with envy and

hatred. In all that related to trade, her statesmen were considered as

oracles, and her institutions as models.

The great majority, therefore, of those who assailed the Company

assailed it, not because it traded on joint funds and possessed

exclusive privileges, but because it was ruled by one man, and because

his rule had been mischievous to the public, and beneficial only to

himself and his creatures. The obvious remedy, it was said, for the

evils which his maladministration had produced was to transfer the

monopoly to a new corporation so constituted as to be in no danger of

falling under the dominion either of a despot or of a narrow oligarchy.

Many persons who were desirous to be members of such a corporation,

formed themselves into a society, signed an engagement, and entrusted

the care of their interests to a committee which contained some of the

chief traders of the City. This society, though it had, in the eye of

the law, no personality, was early designated, in popular speech, as

the New Company; and the hostilities between the New Company and the Old

Company soon caused almost as much excitement and anxiety, at least

in that busy hive of which the Royal Exchange was the centre, as the

hostilities between the Allies and the French King. The headquarters of

the younger association were in Dowgate; the Skinners lent their stately

hall; and the meetings were held in a parlour renowned for the fragrance

which exhaled from a magnificent wainscot of cedar. [175]

While the contention was hottest, important news arrived from India,

and was announced in the London Gazette as in the highest degree

satisfactory. Peace had been concluded between the great Mogul and the

English. That mighty potentate had not only withdrawn his troops from

the factories, but had bestowed on the Company privileges such as it had

never before enjoyed. Soon, however, appeared a very different version

of the story. The enemies of Child had, before this time, accused him

of systematically publishing false intelligence. He had now, they said,

outlied himself. They had obtained a true copy of the Firman which had

put an end to the war; and they printed a translation of it. It

appeared that Aurengzebe had contemptuously granted to the English, in

consideration of their penitence and of a large tribute, his forgiveness

for their past delinquency, had charged them to behave themselves better

for the future, and had, in the tone of a master, laid on them his

commands to remove the principal offender, Sir John Child, from power

and trust. The death of Sir John occurred so seasonably that these

commands could not be obeyed. But it was only too evident that the

pacification which the rulers of the India House had represented

as advantageous and honourable had really been effected on terms

disgraceful to the English name. [176]

During the summer of 1691, the controversy which raged on this subject

between the Leadenhall Street Company and the Dowgate Company kept the

City in constant agitation. In the autumn, the Parliament had no sooner

met than both the contending parties presented petitions to the House

of Commons. [177] The petitions were immediately taken into serious

consideration, and resolutions of grave importance were passed. The

first resolution was that the trade with the East Indies was beneficial

to the kingdom; the second was that the trade with the East Indies

would be best carried on by a joint stock company possessed of

exclusive privileges. [178] It was plain, therefore, that neither those

manufacturers who wished to prohibit the trade, nor those merchants at

the outports who wished to throw it open, had the smallest chance of

attaining their objects. The only question left was the question

between the Old and the New Company. Seventeen years elapsed before that

question ceased to disturb both political and commercial circles. It was

fatal to the honour and power of one great minister, and to the peace

and prosperity of many private families. The tracts which the rival

bodies put forth against each other were innumerable. If the drama of

that age may be trusted, the feud between the India House and Skinners'

Hall was sometimes as serious an impediment to the course of true love

in London as the feud of the Capulets and Montagues had been at Verona.

[179] Which of the two contending parties was the stronger it is not

easy to say. The New Company was supported by the Whigs, the Old Company

by the Tories. The New Company was popular; for it promised largely,

and could not be accused of having broken its promises; it made no

dividends, and therefore was not envied; it had no power to oppress,

and had therefore been guilty of no oppression. The Old Company, though

generally regarded with little favour by the public, had the immense

advantage of being in possession, and of having only to stand on the

defensive. The burden of framing a plan for the regulation of the India

trade, and of proving that plan to be better than the plan hitherto

followed, lay on the New Company. The Old Company had merely to find

objections to every change that was proposed; and such objections there

was little difficulty in finding. The members of the New Company were

ill provided with the means of purchasing support at Court and in

Parliament. They had no corporate existence, no common treasury. If

any of them gave a bribe, he gave it out of his own pocket, with little

chance of being reimbursed. But the Old Company, though surrounded

by dangers, still held its exclusive privileges, and still made its

enormous profits. Its stock had indeed gone down greatly in value since

the golden days of Charles the Second; but a hundred pounds still sold

for a hundred and twenty-two. [180] After a large dividend had been paid

to the proprietors, a surplus remained amply sufficient, in those

days, to corrupt half a cabinet; and this surplus was absolutely at the

disposal of one able, determined and unscrupulous man, who maintained

the fight with wonderful art and pertinacity.

The majority of the Commons wished to effect a compromise, to retain the

Old Company, but to remodel it, to impose on it new conditions, and to

incorporate with it the members of the New Company. With this view it

was, after long and vehement debates and close divisions, resolved that

the capital should be increased to a million and a half. In order to

prevent a single person or a small junto from domineering over the whole

society, it was determined that five thousand pounds of stock should

be the largest quantity that any single proprietor could hold, and that

those who held more should be required to sell the overplus at any price

not below par. In return for the exclusive privilege of trading to the

Eastern seas, the Company was to be required to furnish annually five

hundred tons of saltpetre to the Crown at a low price, and to export

annually English manufactures to the value of two hundred thousand

pounds. [181]

A bill founded on these resolutions was brought in, read twice, and

committed, but was suffered to drop in consequence of the positive

refusal of Child and his associates to accept the offered terms. He

objected to every part of the plan; and his objections are highly

curious and amusing. The great monopolist took his stand on the

principles of free trade. In a luminous and powerfully written paper he

exposed the absurdity of the expedients which the House of Commons had

devised. To limit the amount of stock which might stand in a single name

would, he said, be most unreasonable. Surely a proprietor whose whole

fortune was staked on the success of the Indian trade was far more

likely to exert all his faculties vigorously for the promotion of that

trade than a proprietor who had risked only what it would be no great

disaster to lose. The demand that saltpetre should be furnished to the

Crown for a fixed sum Child met by those arguments, familiar to our

generation, which prove that prices should be left to settle themselves.

To the demand that the Company should bind itself to export annually two

hundred thousand pounds' worth of English manufactures he very properly

replied that the Company would most gladly export two millions' worth

if the market required such a supply, and that, if the market were

overstocked, it would be mere folly to send good cloth half round the

world to be eaten by white ants. It was never, he declared with much

spirit, found politic to put trade into straitlaced bodices, which,

instead of making it grow upright and thrive, must either kill it or

force it awry.

The Commons, irritated by Child's obstinacy, presented an address

requesting the King to dissolve the Old Company, and to grant a charter

to a new Company on such terms as to His Majesty's wisdom might seem

fit. [182] It is plainly implied in the terms of this address that

the Commons thought the King constitutionally competent to grant an

exclusive privilege of trading to the East Indies.

The King replied that the subject was most important, that he would

consider it maturely, and that he would, at a future time, give the

House a more precise answer. [183] In Parliament nothing more was said

on the subject during that session; but out of Parliament the war was

fiercer than ever; and the belligerents were by no means scrupulous

about the means which they employed. The chief weapons of the New

Company were libels; the chief weapons of the Old Company were bribes.

In the same week in which the bill for the regulation of the Indian

trade was suffered to drop, another bill which had produced great

excitement and had called forth an almost unprecedented display of

parliamentary ability, underwent the same fate.

During the eight years which preceded the Revolution, the Whigs had

complained bitterly, and not more bitterly than justly, of the hard

measure dealt out to persons accused of political offences. Was it not

monstrous, they asked, that a culprit should be denied a sight of his

indictment? Often an unhappy prisoner had not known of what he was

accused till he had held up his hand at the bar. The crime imputed to

him might be plotting to shoot the King; it might be plotting to poison

the King. The more innocent the defendant was, the less likely he was

to guess the nature of the charge on which he was to be tried; and how

could he have evidence ready to rebut a charge the nature of which

he could not guess? The Crown had power to compel the attendance of

witnesses. The prisoner had no such power. If witnesses voluntarily came

forward to speak in his favour, they could not be sworn. Their testimony

therefore made less impression on a jury than the testimony of the

witnesses for the prosecution, whose veracity was guaranteed by the most

solemn sanctions of law and of religion. The juries, carefully selected

by Sheriffs whom the Crown had named, were men animated by the fiercest

party spirit, men who had as little tenderness for an Exclusionist of a

Dissenter as for a mad dog. The government was served by a band of able,

experienced and unprincipled lawyers, who could, by merely glancing over

a brief, distinguish every weak and every strong point of a case,

whose presence of mind never failed them, whose flow of speech was

inexhaustible, and who had passed their lives in dressing up the worse

reason so as to make it appear the better. Was it not horrible to see

three or four of these shrewd, learned and callous orators arrayed

against one poor wretch who had never in his life uttered a word in

public, who was ignorant of the legal definition of treason and of the

first principles of the law of evidence, and whose intellect, unequal

at best to a fencing match with professional gladiators, was confused by

the near prospect of a cruel and ignominious death? Such however was the

rule; and even for a man so much stupefied by sickness that he could not

hold up his hand or make his voice heard, even for a poor old woman who

understood nothing of what was passing except that she was going to be

roasted alive for doing an act of charity, no advocate was suffered to

utter a word. That a state trial so conducted was little better than a

judicial murder had been, during the proscription of the Whig party, a

fundamental article of the Whig creed. The Tories, on the other

hand, though they could not deny that there had been some hard cases,

maintained that, on the whole, substantial justice had been done.

Perhaps a few seditious persons who had gone very near to the frontier

of treason, but had not actually passed that frontier, might have

suffered as traitors. But was that a sufficient reason for enabling the

chiefs of the Rye House Plot and of the Western Insurrection to elude,

by mere chicanery, the punishment of their guilt? On what principle

was the traitor to have chances of escape which were not allowed to the

felon? The culprit who was accused of larceny was subject to all the

same disadvantages which, in the case of regicides and rebels, were

thought so unjust; ye nobody pitied him. Nobody thought it monstrous

that he should not have time to study a copy of his indictment, that his

witnesses should be examined without being sworn, that he should be

left to defend himself, without the help of counsel against the best

abilities which the Inns of Court could furnish. The Whigs, it seemed,

reserved all their compassion for those crimes which subvert government

and dissolve the whole frame of human society. Guy Faux was to be

treated with an indulgence which was not to be extended to a shoplifter.

Bradshaw was to have privileges which were refused to a boy who had

robbed a henroost.

The Revolution produced, as was natural, some change in the sentiments

of both the great parties. In the days when none but Roundheads and

Nonconformists were accused of treason, even the most humane and upright

Cavaliers were disposed to think that the laws which were the safeguard

of the throne could hardly be too severe. But, as soon as loyal Tory

gentlemen and venerable fathers of the Church were in danger of being

called in question for corresponding with Saint Germains, a new light

flashed on many understandings which had been unable to discover the

smallest injustice in the proceedings against Algernon Sidney and Alice

Lisle. It was no longer thought utterly absurd to maintain that some

advantages which were withheld from a man accused of felony might

reasonably be allowed to a man accused of treason. What probability

was there that any sheriff would pack a jury, that any barrister would

employ all the arts of sophistry and rhetoric, that any judge would

strain law and misrepresent evidence, in order to convict an innocent

person of burglary or sheep stealing? But on a trial for high treason

a verdict of acquittal must always be considered as a defeat of

the government; and there was but too much reason to fear that many

sheriffs, barristers and judges might be impelled by party spirit, or by

some baser motive, to do any thing which might save the government from

the inconvenience and shame of a defeat. The cry of the whole body

of Tories was that the lives of good Englishmen who happened to be

obnoxious to the ruling powers were not sufficiently protected; and

this cry was swelled by the voices of some lawyers who had distinguished

themselves by the malignant zeal and dishonest ingenuity with which they

had conducted State prosecutions in the days of Charles and James.

The feeling of the Whigs, though it had not, like the feeling of the

Tories, undergone a complete change, was yet not quite what it had been.

Some, who had thought it most unjust that Russell should have no counsel

and that Cornish should have no copy of his indictment, now began to

mutter that the times had changed; that the dangers of the State were

extreme; that liberty, property, religion, national independence, were

all at stake; that many Englishmen were engaged in schemes of which the

object was to make England the slave of France and of Rome; and that

it would be most unwise to relax, at such a moment, the laws against

political offences. It was true that the injustice with which, in the

late reigns, State trials had been conducted, had given great scandal.

But this injustice was to be ascribed to the bad kings and bad judges

with whom the nation had been cursed. William was now on the throne;

Holt was seated for life on the bench; and William would never exact,

nor would Holt ever perform, services so shameful and wicked as those

for which the banished tyrant had rewarded Jeffreys with riches and

titles. This language however was at first held but by few. The Whigs,

as a party, seem to have felt that they could not honourably defend, in

the season of their prosperity, what, in the time of their adversity,

they had always designated as a crying grievance. A bill for regulating

trials in cases of high treason was brought into the House of Commons,

and was received with general applause. Treby had the courage to make

some objections; but no division took place. The chief enactments were

that no person should be convicted of high treason committed more than

three years before the indictment was found; that every person indicted

for high treason should be allowed to avail himself of the assistance of

counsel, and should be furnished, ten days before the trial, with a copy

of the indictment, and with a list of the freeholders from among whom

the jury was to be taken; that his witnesses should be sworn, and that

they should be cited by the same process by which the attendance of the

witnesses against him was secured.

The Bill went to the Upper House, and came back with an important

amendment. The Lords had long complained of the anomalous and iniquitous

constitution of that tribunal which had jurisdiction over them in cases

of life and death. When a grand jury has found a bill of indictment

against a temporal peer for any offence higher than a misdemeanour, the

Crown appoints a Lord High Steward; and in the Lord High Steward's

Court the case is tried. This Court was anciently composed in two very

different ways. It consisted, if Parliament happened to be sitting, of

all the members of the Upper House. When Parliament was not sitting, the

Lord High Steward summoned any twelve or more peers at his discretion

to form a jury. The consequence was that a peer accused of high treason

during a recess was tried by a jury which his prosecutors had packed.

The Lords now demanded that, during a recess as well as during a

session, every peer accused of high treason should be tried by the whole

body of the peerage.

The demand was resisted by the House of Commons with a vehemence and

obstinacy which men of the present generation may find it difficult to

understand. The truth is that some invidious privileges of peerage

which have since been abolished, and others which have since fallen

into entire desuetude, were then in full force, and were daily used.

No gentleman who had had a dispute with a nobleman could think, without

indignation, of the advantages enjoyed by the favoured caste. If His

Lordship were sued at law, his privilege enabled him to impede the

course of justice. If a rude word were spoken of him, such a word as

he might himself utter with perfect impunity, he might vindicate his

insulted dignity both by civil and criminal proceedings. If a barrister,

in the discharge of his duty to a client, spoke with severity of the

conduct of a noble seducer, if an honest squire on the racecourse

applied the proper epithets to the tricks of a noble swindler, the

affronted patrician had only to complain to the proud and powerful body

of which he was a member. His brethren made his cause their own. The

offender was taken into custody by Black Rod, brought to the bar, flung

into prison, and kept there till he was glad to obtain forgiveness by

the most degrading submissions. Nothing could therefore be more natural

than that an attempt of the Peers to obtain any new advantage for their

order should be regarded by the Commons with extreme jealousy. There is

strong reason to suspect that some able Whig politicians, who thought it

dangerous to relax, at that moment, the laws against political offences,

but who could not, without incurring the charge of inconsistency,

declare themselves adverse to any relaxation, had conceived a hope that

they might, by fomenting the dispute about the Court of the Lord High

Steward, defer for at least a year the passing of a bill which they

disliked, and yet could not decently oppose. If this really was their

plan, it succeeded perfectly. The Lower House rejected the amendment;

the Upper House persisted; a free conference was held; and the question

was argued with great force and ingenuity on both sides.

The reasons in favour of the amendment are obvious, and indeed at first

sight seem unanswerable. It was surely difficult to defend a system

under which the Sovereign nominated a conclave of his own creatures to

decide the fate of men whom he regarded as his mortal enemies. And could

any thing be more absurd than that a nobleman accused of high treason

should be entitled to be tried by the whole body of his peers if his

indictment happened to be brought into the House of Lords the minute

before a prorogation, but that, if the indictment arrived a minute after

the prorogation, he should be at the mercy of a small junto named by the

very authority which prosecuted him? That any thing could have been said

on the other side seems strange; but those who managed the conference

for the Commons were not ordinary men, and seem on this occasion to have

put forth all their powers. Conspicuous among them was Charles Montague,

who was rapidly attaining a foremost rank among the orators of that age.

To him the lead seems on this occasion to have been left; and to his pen

we owe an account of the discussion, which gives a very high notion

of his talents for debate. "We have framed"--such was in substance his

reasoning,--"we have framed a law which has in it nothing exclusive,

a law which will be a blessing to every class, from the highest to

the lowest. The new securities, which we propose to give to innocence

oppressed by power, are common between the premier peer and the humblest

day labourer. The clause which establishes a time of limitation for

prosecutions protects us all alike. To every Englishman accused of

the highest crime against the state, whatever be his rank, we give the

privilege of seeing his indictment, the privilege of being defended

by counsel, the privilege of having his witnesses summoned by writ of

subpoena and sworn on the Holy Gospels. Such is the bill which we sent

up to your Lordships; and you return it to us with a clause of which the

effect is to give certain advantages to your noble order at the expense

of the ancient prerogatives of the Crown. Surely before we consent to

take away from the King any power which his predecessors have possessed

for ages, and to give it to your Lordships, we ought to be satisfied

that you are more likely to use it well than he. Something we must risk;

somebody we must trust; and; since we are forced, much against our will,

to institute what is necessarily an invidious comparison, we must own

ourselves unable to discover any reason for believing that a prince is

less to be trusted than an aristocracy.

"Is it reasonable, you ask, that you should be tried for your lives

before a few members of your House, selected by the Crown? Is it

reasonable, we ask in our turn, that you should have the privilege of

being tried by all the members of your House, that is to say, by your

brothers, your uncles, your first cousins, your second cousins, your

fathers in law, your brothers in law, your most intimate friends? You

marry so much into each other's families, you live so much in each

other's society, that there is scarcely a nobleman who is not connected

by consanguinity or affinity with several others, and who is not on

terms of friendship with several more. There have been great men

whose death put a third or fourth part of the baronage of England into

mourning. Nor is there much danger that even those peers who may be

unconnected with an accused lord will be disposed to send him to the

block if they can with decency say 'Not Guilty, upon my honour.' For

the ignominious death of a single member of a small aristocratical body

necessarily leaves a stain on the reputation of his fellows. If, indeed,

your Lordships proposed that every one of your body should be compelled

to attend and vote, the Crown might have some chance of obtaining

justice against a guilty peer, however strongly connected. But you

propose that attendance shall be voluntary. Is it possible to doubt what

the consequence will be? All the prisoner's relations and friends will

be in their places to vote for him. Good nature and the fear of making

powerful enemies will keep away many who, if they voted at all, would

be forced by conscience and honour to vote against him. The new system

which you propose would therefore evidently be unfair to the Crown; and

you do not show any reason for believing that the old system has been

found in practice unfair to yourselves. We may confidently affirm that,

even under a government less just and merciful than that under which we

have the happiness to live, an innocent peer has little to fear from

any set of peers that can be brought together in Westminster Hall to

try him. How stands the fact? In what single case has a guiltless head

fallen by the verdict of this packed jury? It would be easy to make out

a long list of squires, merchants, lawyers, surgeons, yeomen, artisans,

ploughmen, whose blood, barbarously shed during the late evil times,

cries for vengeance to heaven. But what single member of your House,

in our days, or in the days of our fathers, or in the days of our

grandfathers, suffered death unjustly by sentence of the Court of

the Lord High Steward? Hundreds of the common people were sent to

the gallows by common juries for the Rye House Plot and the Western

Insurrection. One peer, and one alone, my Lord Delamere, was brought

at that time before the Court of the Lord High Steward; and he was

acquitted. But, it is said, the evidence against him was legally

insufficient. Be it so. So was the evidence against Sidney, against

Cornish, against Alice Lisle; yet it sufficed to destroy them. But,

it is said, the peers before whom my Lord Delamere was brought were

selected with shameless unfairness by King James and by Jeffreys. Be it

so. But this only proves that, under the worst possible King, and under

the worst possible High Steward, a lord tried by lords has a better

chance for life than a commoner who puts himself on his country. We

cannot, therefore, under the mild government which we now possess, feel

much apprehension for the safety of any innocent peer. Would that we

felt as little apprehension for the safety of that government! But it is

notorious that the settlement with which our liberties are inseparably

bound up is attacked at once by foreign and by domestic enemies. We

cannot consent at such a crisis to relax the restraints which have, it

may well be feared, already proved too feeble to prevent some men of

high rank from plotting the ruin of their country. To sum up the whole,

what is asked of us is that we will consent to transfer a certain power

from their Majesties to your Lordships. Our answer is that, at this

time, in our opinion, their Majesties have not too much power, and your

Lordships have quite power enough."

These arguments, though eminently ingenious, and not without real force,

failed to convince the Upper House. The Lords insisted that every peer

should be entitled to be a Trier. The Commons were with difficulty

induced to consent that the number of Triers should never be less than

thirty-six, and positively refused to make any further concession. The

bill was therefore suffered to drop. [184]

It is certain that those who in the conference on this bill represented

the Commons, did not exaggerate the dangers to which the government was

exposed. While the constitution of the Court which was to try peers for

treason was under discussion, a treason planned with rare skill by a

peer was all but carried into execution.

Marlborough had never ceased to assure the Court of Saint Germains that

the great crime which he had committed was constantly present to his

thoughts, and that he lived only for the purpose of repentance and

reparation. Not only had he been himself converted; he had also

converted the Princess Anne. In 1688, the Churchills had, with little

difficulty, induced her to fly from her father's palace. In 1691, they,

with as little difficulty, induced her to copy out and sign a letter

expressing her deep concern for his misfortunes and her earnest wish to

atone for her breach of duty. [185] At the same time Marlborough held

out hopes that it might be in his power to effect the restoration of

his old master in the best possible way, without the help of a single

foreign soldier or sailor, by the votes of the English Lords and

Commons, and by the support of the English army. We are not fully

informed as to all the details of his plan. But the outline is known to

us from a most interesting paper written by James, of which one copy is

in the Bodleian Library, and another among the archives of the French

Foreign Office.

The jealousy with which the English regarded the Dutch was at this time

intense. There had never been a hearty friendship between the nations.

They were indeed near of kin to each other. They spoke two dialects of

one widespread language. Both boasted of their political freedom. Both

were attached to the reformed faith. Both were threatened by the same

enemy, and would be safe only while they were united. Yet there was no

cordial feeling between them. They would probably have loved each other

more, if they had, in some respects, resembled each other less. They

were the two great commercial nations, the two great maritime nations.

In every sea their flags were found together, in the Baltic and in the

Mediterranean, in the Gulf of Mexico and in the Straits of Malacca.

Every where the merchant of London and the merchant of Amsterdam were

trying to forestall each other and to undersell each other. In Europe

the contest was not sanguinary. But too often, in barbarous countries,

where there was no law but force, the competitors had met, burning with

cupidity, burning with animosity, armed for battle, each suspecting

the other of hostile designs and each resolved to give the other no

advantage. In such circumstances it is not strange that many violent

and cruel acts should have been perpetrated. What had been done in those

distant regions could seldom be exactly known in Europe. Every thing

was exaggerated and distorted by vague report and by national prejudice.

Here it was the popular belief that the English were always blameless,

and that every quarrel was to be ascribed to the avarice and inhumanity

of the Dutch. Lamentable events which had taken place in the Spice

Islands were repeatedly brought on our stage. The Englishmen were

all saints and heroes; the Dutchmen all fiends in human shape, lying,

robbing, ravishing, murdering, torturing. The angry passions which these

pieces indicated had more than once found vent in war. Thrice in the

lifetime of one generation the two nations had contended, with equal

courage and with various fortune, for the sovereignty of the German

Ocean. The tyranny of James, as it had reconciled Tories to Whigs and

Churchmen to Nonconformists, had also reconciled the English to the

Dutch. While our ancestors were looking to the Hague for deliverance,

the massacre of Amboyna and the great humiliation of Chatham had seemed

to be forgotten. But since the Revolution the old feeling had revived.

Though England and Holland were now closely bound together by treaty,

they were as far as ever from being bound together by affection. Once,

just after the battle of Beachy Head, our countrymen had seemed disposed

to be just; but a violent reaction speedily followed. Torrington, who

deserved to be shot, became a popular favourite; and the allies whom

he had shamefully abandoned were accused of persecuting him without a

cause. The partiality shown by the King to the companions of his youth

was the favourite theme of the sewers of sedition. The most lucrative

posts in his household, it was said, were held by Dutchmen; the House

of Lords was fast filling with Dutchmen; the finest manors of the Crown

were given to Dutchmen; the army was commanded by Dutchmen. That it

would have been wise in William to exhibit somewhat less obtrusively his

laudable fondness for his native country, and to remunerate his early

friends somewhat more sparingly, is perfectly true. But it will not be

easy to prove that, on any important occasion during his whole reign,

he sacrificed the interests of our island to the interests of the United

Provinces. The English, however, were on this subject prone to fits of

jealousy which made them quite incapable of listening to reason. One of

the sharpest of those fits came on in the autumn of 1691. The antipathy

to the Dutch was at that time strong in all classes, and nowhere

stronger than in the Parliament and in the army. [186]

Of that antipathy Marlborough determined to avail himself for the

purpose, as he assured James and James's adherents, of effecting a

restoration. The temper of both Houses was such that they might not

improbably be induced by skilful management to present a joint address

requesting that all foreigners might be dismissed from the service of

their Majesties. Marlborough undertook to move such an address in the

Lords; and there would have been no difficulty in finding some gentleman

of great weight to make a similar motion in the Commons.

If the address should be carried, what could William do? Would he yield?

Would he discard all his dearest, his oldest, his most trusty friends?

It was hardly possible to believe that he would make so painful, so

humiliating a concession. If he did not yield, there would be a rupture

between him and the Parliament; and the Parliament would be backed by

the people. Even a King reigning by a hereditary title might well shrink

from such a contest with the Estates of the Realm. But to a King whose

title rested on a resolution of the Estates of the Realm such a contest

must almost necessarily be fatal. The last hope of William would be in

the army. The army Marlborough undertook to manage; and it is highly

probable that what he undertook he could have performed. His courage,

his abilities, his noble and winning manners, the splendid success which

had attended him on every occasion on which he had been in command, had

made him, in spite of his sordid vices, a favourite with his brethren

in arms. They were proud of having one countryman who had shown that he

wanted nothing but opportunity to vie with the ablest Marshal of France.

The Dutch were even more disliked by the English troops than by the

English nation generally. Had Marlborough therefore, after securing the

cooperation of some distinguished officers, presented himself at the

critical moment to those regiments which he had led to victory in

Flanders and in Ireland, had he called on them to rally round him, to

protect the Parliament, and to drive out the aliens, there is strong

reason to think that the call would have been obeyed. He would then have

had it in his power to fulfil the promises which he had so solemnly made

to his old master.

Of all the schemes ever formed for the restoration of James or of his

descendants, this scheme promised the fairest. That national pride, that

hatred of arbitrary power, which had hitherto been on William's side,

would now be turned against him. Hundreds of thousands who would have

put their lives in jeopardy to prevent a French army from imposing a

government on the English, would have felt no disposition to prevent an

English army from driving out the Dutch. Even the Whigs could scarcely,

without renouncing their old doctrines, support a prince who obstinately

refused to comply with the general wish of his people signified to him

by his Parliament. The plot looked well. An active canvass was made.

Many members of the House of Commons, who did not at all suspect that

there was any ulterior design, promised to vote against the foreigners.

Marlborough was indefatigable in inflaming the discontents of the army.

His house was constantly filled with officers who heated each other into

fury by talking against the Dutch. But, before the preparations

were complete, a strange suspicion rose in the minds of some of the

Jacobites. That the author of this bold and artful scheme wished to pull

down the existing government there could be little doubt. But was it

quite certain what government he meant to set up? Might he not depose

William without restoring James? Was it not possible that a man so wise,

so aspiring, and so wicked, might be meditating a double treason, such

as would have been thought a masterpiece of statecraft by the great

Italian politicians of the fifteenth century, such as Borgia would have

envied, such as Machiavel would have extolled to the skies?