The land tax was not imposed without a quarrel between the Houses.

The Commons appointed commissioners to make the assessment. These

commissioners were the principal gentlemen of every county, and were

named in the bill. The Lords thought this arrangement inconsistent with

the dignity of the peerage. They therefore inserted a clause providing

that their estates should be valued by twenty of their own order. The

Lower House indignantly rejected this amendment, and demanded an instant

conference. After some delay, which increased the ill humour of the

Commons, the conference took place. The bill was returned to the Peers

with a very concise and haughty intimation that they must not presume

to alter laws relating to money. A strong party among the Lords was

obstinate. Mulgrave spoke at great length against the pretensions of

the plebeians. He told his brethren that, if they gave way, they would

abdicate that authority which had belonged to the baronage of England

ever since the foundation of the monarchy, and that they would have

nothing left of their old greatness except their coronets and ermines.

Burnet says that this speech was the finest that he ever heard in

Parliament; and Burnet was undoubtedly a good judge of speaking, and

was neither partial to Mulgrave nor zealous for the privileges of the

aristocracy. The orator, however, though he charmed his hearers, did not

succeed in convincing them. Most of them shrank from a conflict in which

they would have had against them the Commons united as one man, and the

King, who, in case of necessity, would undoubtedly have created fifty

peers rather than have suffered the land tax bill to be lost. Two strong

protests, however, signed, the first by twenty-seven, the second by

twenty-one dissentients, show how obstinately many nobles were prepared

to contend at all hazards for the dignity of their caste. Another

conference was held; and Rochester announced that the Lords, for the

sake of the public interest, waived what they must nevertheless assert

to be their clear right, and would not insist on their amendment. [366]

The bill passed, and was followed by bills for laying additional duties

on imports, and for taxing the dividends of joint stock companies.

Still, however, the estimated revenue was not equal to the estimated

expenditure. The year 1692 had bequeathed a large deficit to the year

1693; and it seemed probable that the charge for 1693 would exceed by

about five hundred thousand pounds the charge for 1692. More than two

millions had been voted for the army and ordnance, near two millions for

the navy. [367] Only eight years before fourteen hundred thousand pounds

had defrayed the whole annual charge of government. More than four times

that sum was now required. Taxation, both direct and indirect, had been

carried to an unprecedented point; yet the income of the state still

fell short of the outlay by about a million. It was necessary to devise

something. Something was devised, something of which the effects are

felt to this day in every part of the globe.

There was indeed nothing strange or mysterious in the expedient to which

the government had recourse. It was an expedient familiar, during two

centuries, to the financiers of the Continent, and could hardly fail to

occur to any English statesman who compared the void in the Exchequer

with the overflow in the money market.

During the interval between the Restoration and the Revolution the

riches of the nation had been rapidly increasing. Thousands of busy

men found every Christmas that, after the expenses of the year's

housekeeping had been defrayed out of the year's income, a surplus

remained; and how that surplus was to be employed was a question of some

difficulty. In our time, to invest such a surplus, at something more

than three per cent., on the best security that has ever been known in

the world, is the work of a few minutes. But in the seventeenth century

a lawyer, a physician, a retired merchant, who had saved some thousands

and who wished to place them safely and profitably, was often greatly

embarrassed. Three generations earlier, a man who had accumulated wealth

in a profession generally purchased real property or lent his savings on

mortgage. But the number of acres in the kingdom had remained the same;

and the value of those acres, though it had greatly increased, had by no

means increased so fast as the quantity of capital which was seeking for

employment. Many too wished to put their money where they could find it

at an hour's notice, and looked about for some species of property which

could be more readily transferred than a house or a field. A capitalist

might lend on bottomry or on personal security; but, if he did so, he

ran a great risk of losing interest and principal. There were a few

joint stock companies, among which the East India Company held the

foremost place; but the demand for the stock of such companies was far

greater than the supply. Indeed the cry for a new East India Company

was chiefly raised by persons who had found difficulty in placing their

savings at interest on good security. So great was that difficulty that

the practice of hoarding was common. We are told that the father of Pope

the poet, who retired from business in the City about the time of the

Revolution, carried to a retreat in the country a strong box containing

near twenty thousand pounds, and took out from time to time what was

required for household expenses; and it is highly probable that this was

not a solitary case. At present the quantity of coin which is hoarded

by private persons is so small that it would, if brought forth, make no

perceptible addition to the circulation. But, in the earlier part of the

reign of William the Third, all the greatest writers on currency were of

opinion that a very considerable mass of gold and silver was hidden in

secret drawers and behind wainscots.

The natural effect of this state of things was that a crowd of

projectors, ingenious and absurd, honest and knavish, employed

themselves in devising new schemes for the employment of redundant

capital. It was about the year 1688 that the word stockjobber was first

heard in London. In the short space of four years a crowd of companies,

every one of which confidently held out to subscribers the hope of

immense gains, sprang into existence; the Insurance Company, the Paper

Company, the Lutestring Company, the Pearl Fishery Company, the

Glass Bottle Company, the Alum Company, the Blythe Coal Company, the

Swordblade Company. There was a Tapestry Company which would soon

furnish pretty hangings for all the parlours of the middle class and

for all the bedchambers of the higher. There was a Copper Company which

proposed to explore the mines of England, and held out a hope that they

would prove not less valuable than those of Potosi. There was a Diving

Company which undertook to bring up precious effects from shipwrecked

vessels, and which announced that it had laid in a stock of wonderful

machines resembling complete suits of armour. In front of the helmet was

a huge glass eye like that of a cyclop; and out of the crest went a

pipe through which the air was to be admitted. The whole process was

exhibited on the Thames. Fine gentlemen and fine ladies were invited

to the show, were hospitably regaled, and were delighted by seeing the

divers in their panoply descend into the river and return laden with

old iron, and ship's tackle. There was a Greenland Fishing Company which

could not fail to drive the Dutch whalers and herring busses out of the

Northern Ocean. There was a Tanning Company which promised to furnish

leather superior to the best that was brought from Turkey or Russia.

There was a society which undertook the office of giving gentlemen a

liberal education on low terms, and which assumed the sounding name of

the Royal Academies Company. In a pompous advertisement it was announced

that the directors of the Royal Academies Company had engaged the best

masters in every branch of knowledge, and were about to issue twenty

thousand tickets at twenty shillings each. There was to be a lottery;

two thousand prizes were to be drawn; and the fortunate holders of the

prizes were to be taught, at the charge of the Company, Latin, Greek,

Hebrew, French, Spanish, conic sections, trigonometry, heraldry,

japanning, fortification, bookkeeping and the art of playing the

theorbo. Some of these companies took large mansions and printed their

advertisements in gilded letters. Others, less ostentatious, were

content with ink, and met at coffeehouses in the neighbourhood of the

Royal Exchange. Jonathan's and Garraway's were in a constant ferment

with brokers, buyers, sellers, meetings of directors, meetings

of proprietors. Time bargains soon came into fashion. Extensive

combinations were formed, and monstrous fables were circulated, for

the purpose of raising or depressing the price of shares. Our country

witnessed for the first time those phenomena with which a long

experience has made us familiar. A mania of which the symptoms were

essentially the same with those of the mania of 1720, of the mania of

1825, of the mania of 1845, seized the public mind. An impatience to

be rich, a contempt for those slow but sure gains which are the proper

reward of industry, patience and thrift, spread through society. The

spirit of the cogging dicers of Whitefriars took possession of the grave

Senators of the City, Wardens of Trades, Deputies, Aldermen. It was

much easier and much more lucrative to put forth a lying prospectus

announcing a new stock, to persuade ignorant people that the dividends

could not fall short of twenty per cent., and to part with five thousand

pounds of this imaginary wealth for ten thousand solid guineas, than to

load a ship with a well chosen cargo for Virginia or the Levant. Every

day some new bubble was puffed into existence, rose buoyant, shone

bright, burst, and was forgotten. [368]

The new form which covetousness had taken furnished the comic poets

and satirists with an excellent subject; nor was that subject the

less welcome to them because some of the most unscrupulous and most

successful of the new race of gamesters were men in sad coloured clothes

and lank hair, men who called cards the Devil's books, men who thought

it a sin and a scandal to win or lose twopence over a backgammon board.

It was in the last drama of Shadwell that the hypocrisy and knavery of

these speculators was, for the first time, exposed to public ridicule.

He died in November 1692, just before his Stockjobbers came on the

stage; and the epilogue was spoken by an actor dressed in deep mourning.

The best scene is that in which four or five stern Nonconformists,

clad in the full Puritan costume, after discussing the prospects of

the Mousetrap Company and the Fleakilling Company, examine the question

whether the godly may lawfully hold stock in a Company for bringing over

Chinese ropedancers. "Considerable men have shares," says one austere

person in cropped hair and bands; "but verily I question whether it

be lawful or not." These doubts are removed by a stout old Roundhead

colonel who had fought at Marston Moor, and who reminds his weaker

brother that the saints need not themselves see the ropedancing, and

that, in all probability, there will be no ropedancing to see. "The

thing," he says, "is like to take; the shares will sell well; and then

we shall not care whether the dancers come over or no." It is important

to observe that this scene was exhibited and applauded before one

farthing of the national debt had been contracted. So ill informed were

the numerous writers who, at a later period, ascribed to the national

debt the existence of stockjobbing and of all the immoralities connected

with stockjobbing. The truth is that society had, in the natural course

of its growth, reached a point at which it was inevitable that there

should be stockjobbing whether there were a national debt or not, and

inevitable also that, if there were a long and costly war, there should

be a national debt.

How indeed was it possible that a debt should not have been contracted,

when one party was impelled by the strongest motives to borrow, and

another was impelled by equally strong motives to lend? A moment had

arrived at which the government found it impossible, without exciting

the most formidable discontents, to raise by taxation the supplies

necessary to defend the liberty and independence of the nation; and, at

that very moment, numerous capitalists were looking round them in vain

for some good mode of investing their savings, and, for want of such

a mode, were keeping their wealth locked up, or were lavishing it on

absurd projects. Riches sufficient to equip a navy which would sweep the

German Ocean and the Atlantic of French privateers, riches sufficient

to maintain an army which might retake Namur and avenge the disaster of

Steinkirk, were lying idle, or were passing away from the owners into

the hands of sharpers. A statesman might well think that some part of

the wealth which was daily buried or squandered might, with advantage to

the proprietor, to the taxpayer and to the State, be attracted into the

Treasury. Why meet the extraordinary charge of a year of war by seizing

the chairs, the tables, the beds of hardworking families, by compelling

one country gentleman to cut down his trees before they were ready for

the axe, another to let the cottages on his land fall to ruin, a third

to take away his hopeful son from the University, when Change Alley was

swarming with people who did not know what to do with their money and

who were pressing every body to borrow it?

It was often asserted at a later period by Tories, who hated the

national debt most of all things, and who hated Burnet most of all men,

that Burnet was the person who first advised the government to contract

a national debt. But this assertion is proved by no trustworthy

evidence, and seems to be disproved by the Bishop's silence. Of all men

he was the least likely to conceal the fact that an important fiscal

revolution had been his work. Nor was the Board of Treasury at that time

one which much needed, or was likely much to regard, the counsels of a

divine. At that Board sate Godolphin the most prudent and experienced,

and Montague the most daring and inventive of financiers. Neither of

these eminent men could be ignorant that it had long been the practice

of the neighbouring states to spread over many years of peace the

excessive taxation which was made necessary by one year of war. In Italy

this practice had existed through many generations. France had, during

the war which began in 1672 and ended in 1679, borrowed not less than

thirty millions of our money. Sir William Temple, in his interesting

work on the Batavian federation, had told his countrymen that, when he

was ambassador at the Hague, the single province of Holland, then ruled

by the frugal and prudent De Witt, owed about five millions sterling,

for which interest at four per cent. was always ready to the day, and

that when any part of the principal was paid off the public creditor

received his money with tears, well knowing that he could find no other

investment equally secure. The wonder is not that England should have at

length imitated the example both of her enemies and of her allies, but

that the fourth year of her arduous and exhausting struggle against

Lewis should have been drawing to a close before she resorted to an

expedient so obvious.

On the fifteenth of December 1692 the House of Commons resolved itself

into a Committee of Ways and Means. Somers took the chair. Montague

proposed to raise a million by way of loan; the proposition was

approved; and it was ordered that a bill should be brought in. The

details of the scheme were much discussed and modified; but the

principle appears to have been popular with all parties. The moneyed men

were glad to have a good opportunity of investing what they had hoarded.

The landed men, hard pressed by the load of taxation, were ready to

consent to any thing for the sake of present ease. No member ventured to

divide the House. On the twentieth of January the bill was read a third

time, carried up to the Lords by Somers, and passed by them without any

amendment. [369]

By this memorable law new duties were imposed on beer and other liquors.

These duties were to be kept in the Exchequer separate from all other

receipts, and were to form a fund on the credit of which a million was

to be raised by life annuities. As the annuitants dropped off, their

annuities were to be divided among the survivors, till the number of

survivors was reduced to seven. After that time, whatever fell in was to

go to the public. It was therefore certain that the eighteenth century

would be far advanced before the debt would be finally extinguished. The

rate of interest was to be ten per cent. till the year 1700, and after

that year seven per cent. The advantages offered to the public creditor

by this scheme may seem great, but were not more than sufficient to

compensate him for the risk which he ran. It was not impossible that

there might be a counterrevolution; and it was certain that, if there

were a counterrevolution, those who had lent money to William would lose

both interest and principal.

Such was the origin of that debt which has since become the greatest

prodigy that ever perplexed the sagacity and confounded the pride of

statesmen and philosophers. At every stage in the growth of that debt

the nation has set up the same cry of anguish and despair. At every

stage in the growth of that debt it has been seriously asserted by wise

men that bankruptcy and ruin were at hand. Yet still the debt went on

growing; and still bankruptcy and ruin were as remote as ever. When the

great contest with Lewis the Fourteenth was finally terminated by the

Peace of Utrecht, the nation owed about fifty millions; and that

debt was considered, not merely by the rude multitude, not merely by

foxhunting squires and coffeehouse orators, but by acute and profound

thinkers, as an incumbrance which would permanently cripple the body

politic; Nevertheless trade flourished; wealth increased; the nation

became richer and richer. Then came the war of the Austrian Succession;

and the debt rose to eighty millions. Pamphleteers, historians and

orators pronounced that now, at all events, our case was desperate.

Yet the signs of increasing prosperity, signs which could neither be

counterfeited nor concealed, ought to have satisfied observant and

reflecting men that a debt of eighty millions was less to the England

which was governed by Pelham than a debt of fifty millions had been to

the England which was governed by Oxford. Soon war again broke forth;

and, under the energetic and prodigal administration of the first

William Pitt, the debt rapidly swelled to a hundred and forty millions.

As soon as the first intoxication of victory was over, men of theory and

men of business almost unanimously pronounced that the fatal day had now

really arrived. The only statesman, indeed, active or speculative, who

did not share in the general delusion was Edmund Burke. David Hume,

undoubtedly one of the most profound political economists of his time,

declared that our madness had exceeded the madness of the Crusaders.

Richard Coeur de Lion and Saint Lewis had not gone in the face of

arithmetical demonstration. It was impossible to prove by figures that

the road to Paradise did not lie through the Holy Land; but it was

possible to prove by figures that the road to national ruin was through

the national debt. It was idle, however, now to talk about the road; we

had done with the road; we had reached the goal; all was over; all

the revenues of the island north of Trent and west of Reading were

mortgaged. Better for us to have been conquered by Prussia or Austria

than to be saddled with the interest of a hundred and forty millions.

[370] And yet this great philosopher--for such he was--had only to open

his eyes, and to see improvement all around him, cities increasing,

cultivation extending, marts too small for the crowd of buyers and

sellers, harbours insufficient to contain the shipping, artificial

rivers joining the chief inland seats of industry to the chief seaports,

streets better lighted, houses better furnished, richer wares exposed to

sale in statelier shops, swifter carriages rolling along smoother roads.

He had, indeed, only to compare the Edinburgh of his boyhood with

the Edinburgh of his old age. His prediction remains to posterity, a

memorable instance of the weakness from which the strongest minds

are not exempt. Adam Smith saw a little and but a little further.

He admitted that, immense as the burden was, the nation did actually

sustain it and thrive under it in a way which nobody could have

foreseen. But he warned his countrymen not to repeat so hazardous an

experiment. The limit had been reached. Even a small increase might

be fatal. [371] Not less gloomy was the view which George Grenville,

a minister eminently diligent and practical, took of our financial

situation. The nation must, he conceived, sink under a debt of a hundred

and forty millions, unless a portion of the load were borne by the

American colonies. The attempt to lay a portion of the load on the

American colonies produced another war. That war left us with an

additional hundred millions of debt, and without the colonies whose help

had been represented as indispensable. Again England was given over;

and again the strange patient persisted in becoming stronger and more

blooming in spite of all the diagnostics and prognostics of State

physicians. As she had been visibly more prosperous with a debt of a

hundred and forty millions than with a debt of fifty millions, so she,

as visibly more prosperous with a debt of two hundred and forty millions

than with a debt of a hundred and forty millions. Soon however the wars

which sprang from the French Revolution, and which far exceeded in cost

any that the world had ever seen, tasked the powers of public credit to

the utmost. When the world was again at rest the funded debt of England

amounted to eight hundred millions. If the most enlightened man had been

told, in 1792, that, in 1815, the interest on eight hundred millions

would be duly paid to the day at the Bank, he would have been as hard of

belief as if he had been told that the government would be in possession

of the lamp of Aladdin or of the purse of Fortunatus. It was in truth

a gigantic, a fabulous debt; and we can hardly wonder that the cry of

despair should have been louder than ever. But again that cry was found

to have been as unreasonable as ever. After a few years of exhaustion,

England recovered herself. Yet, like Addison's valetudinarian, who

continued to whimper that he was dying of consumption till he became so

fat that he was shamed into silence, she went on complaining that she

was sunk in poverty till her wealth showed itself by tokens which made

her complaints ridiculous. The beggared, the bankrupt society not

only proved able to meet all its obligations, but, while meeting those

obligations, grew richer and richer so fast that the growth could almost

be discerned by the eye. In every county, we saw wastes recently turned

into gardens; in every city, we saw new streets, and squares, and

markets, more brilliant lamps, more abundant supplies of water; in the

suburbs of every great seat of industry, we saw villas multiplying fast,

each embosomed in its gay little paradise of lilacs and roses. While

shallow politicians were repeating that the energies of the people were

borne down by the weight of the public burdens, the first journey was

performed by steam on a railway. Soon the island was intersected by

railways. A sum exceeding the whole amount of the national debt at the

end of the American war was, in a few years, voluntarily expended by

this ruined people in viaducts, tunnels, embankments, bridges, stations,

engines. Meanwhile taxation was almost constantly becoming lighter

and lighter; yet still the Exchequer was full. It may be now affirmed

without fear of contradiction that we find it as easy to pay the

interest of eight hundred millions as our ancestors found it, a century

ago, to pay the interest of eighty millions.

It can hardly be doubted that there must have been some great fallacy

in the notions of those who uttered and of those who believed that long

succession of confident predictions, so signally falsified by a long

succession of indisputable facts. To point out that fallacy is the

office rather of the political economist than of the historian. Here

it is sufficient to say that the prophets of evil were under a double

delusion. They erroneously imagined that there was an exact analogy

between the case of an individual who is in debt to another individual

and the case of a society which is in debt to a part of itself; and this

analogy led them into endless mistakes about the effect of the system

of funding. They were under an error not less serious touching the

resources of the country. They made no allowance for the effect produced

by the incessant progress of every experimental science, and by the

incessant efforts of every man to get on in life. They saw that the debt

grew; and they forgot that other things grew as well as the debt.

A long experience justifies us in believing that England may, in the

twentieth century, be better able to bear a debt of sixteen hundred

millions than she is at the present time to bear her present load. But

be this as it may, those who so confidently predicted that she must

sink, first under a debt of fifty millions, then under a debt of eighty

millions then under a debt of a hundred and forty millions, then under a

debt of two hundred and forty millions, and lastly under a debt of eight

hundred millions, were beyond all doubt under a twofold mistake. They

greatly overrated the pressure of the burden; they greatly underrated

the strength by which the burden was to be borne.

It may be desirable to add a few words touching the way in which the

system of funding has affected the interests of the great commonwealth

of nations. If it be true that whatever gives to intelligence an

advantage over brute force and to honesty an advantage over dishonesty

has a tendency to promote the happiness and virtue of our race, it can

scarcely be denied that, in the largest view, the effect of this system

has been salutary. For it is manifest that all credit depends on two

things, on the power of a debtor to pay debts, and on his inclination

to pay them. The power of a society to pay debts is proportioned to the

progress which that society has made in industry, in commerce, and in

all the arts and sciences which flourish under the benignant influence

of freedom and of equal law. The inclination of a society to pay

debts is proportioned to the degree in which that society respects the

obligations of plighted faith. Of the strength which consists in extent

of territory and in number of fighting men, a rude despot who knows

no law but his own childish fancies and headstrong passions, or a

convention of socialists which proclaims all property to be robbery, may

have more than falls to the lot of the best and wisest government. But

the strength which is derived from the confidence of capitalists such a

despot, such a convention, never can possess. That strength,--and it

is a strength which has decided the event of more than one great

conflict,--flies, by the law of its nature, from barbarism and fraud,

from tyranny and anarchy, to follow civilisation and virtue, liberty and

order.

While the bill which first created the funded debt of England was

passing, with general approbation, through the regular stages, the

two Houses discussed, for the first time, the great question of

Parliamentary Reform.

It is to be observed that the object of the reformers of that generation

was merely to make the representative body a more faithful interpreter

of the sense of the constituent body. It seems scarcely to have

occurred to any of them that the constituent body might be an

unfaithful interpreter of the sense of the nation. It is true that those

deformities in the structure of the constituent body, which, at length,

in our own days, raised an irresistible storm of public indignation,

were far less numerous and far less offensive in the seventeenth century

than they had become in the nineteenth. Most of the boroughs which were

disfranchised in 1832 were, if not positively, yet relatively, much more

important places in the reign of William the Third than in the reign

of William the Fourth. Of the populous and wealthy manufacturing towns,

seaports and watering places, to which the franchise was given in the

reign of William the Fourth, some were, in the reign of William the

Third, small hamlets, where a few ploughmen or fishermen lived under

thatched roofs; some were fields covered with harvests, or moors

abandoned to grouse; With the exception of Leeds and Manchester, there

was not, at the time of the Revolution, a single town of five thousand

inhabitants which did not send two representatives to the House of

Commons. Even then, however, there was no want of startling anomalies.

Looe, East and West, which contained not half the population or half the

wealth of the smallest of the hundred parishes of London, returned

as many members as London. [372] Old Sarum, a deserted ruin which the

traveller feared to enter at night lest he should find robbers lurking

there, had as much weight in the legislature as Devonshire or Yorkshire.

[373] Some eminent individuals of both parties, Clarendon, for example,

among the Tories, and Pollexfen among the Whigs, condemned this system.

Yet both parties were, for very different reasons, unwilling to alter

it. It was protected by the prejudices of one faction and by the

interests of the other. Nothing could be more repugnant to the genius of

Toryism than the thought of destroying at a blow institutions which

had stood through ages, for the purpose of building something more

symmetrical out of the ruins. The Whigs, on the other hand, could not

but know that they were much more likely to lose than to gain by a

change in this part of our polity. It would indeed be a great mistake

to imagine that a law transferring political power from small to large

constituent bodies would have operated in 1692 as it operated in 1832.

In 1832 the effect of the transfer was to increase the power of the town

population. In 1692 the effect would have been to make the power of the

rural population irresistible. Of the one hundred and forty-two members

taken away in 1832 from small boroughs more than half were given to

large and flourishing towns. But in 1692 there was hardly one large and

flourishing town which had not already as many members as it could, with

any show of reason, claim. Almost all therefore that was taken from the

small boroughs must have been given to the counties; and there can be

no doubt that whatever tended to raise the counties and to depress the

towns must on the whole have tended to raise the Tories and to depress

the Whigs. From the commencement of our civil troubles the towns had

been on the side of freedom and progress, the country gentlemen and

the country clergymen on the side of authority and prescription. If

therefore a reform bill, disfranchising small constituent bodies and

giving additional members to large constituent bodies, had become law

soon after the Revolution, there can be little doubt that a decided

majority of the House of Commons would have consisted of rustic baronets

and squires, high Churchmen, high Tories, and half Jacobites. With such

a House of Commons it is almost certain that there would have been a

persecution of the Dissenters; it is not easy to understand how there

could have been an union with Scotland; and it is not improbable that

there would have been a restoration of the Stuarts. Those parts of

our constitution therefore which, in recent times, politicians of

the liberal school have generally considered as blemishes, were, five

generations ago, regarded with complacency by the men who were most

zealous for civil and religious freedom.

But, while Whigs and Tories agreed in wishing to maintain the existing

rights of election, both Whigs and Tories were forced to admit that

the relation between the elector and the representative was not what it

ought to be. Before the civil wars the House of Commons had enjoyed

the fullest confidence of the nation. A House of Commons, distrusted,

despised, hated by the Commons, was a thing unknown. The very words

would, to Sir Peter Wentworth or Sir Edward Coke, have sounded like

a contradiction in terms. But by degrees a change took place. The

Parliament elected in 1661, during that fit of joy and fondness which

followed the return of the royal family, represented, not the deliberate

sense, but the momentary caprice of the nation. Many of the members were

men who, a few months earlier or a few months later, would have had

no chance of obtaining seats, men of broken fortunes and of dissolute

habits, men whose only claim to public confidence was the ferocious

hatred which they bore to rebels and Puritans. The people, as soon as

they had become sober, saw with dismay to what an assembly they had,

during their intoxication, confided the care of their property, their

liberty and their religion. And the choice, made in a moment of frantic

enthusiasm, might prove to be a choice for life. As the law then stood,

it depended entirely on the King's pleasure whether, during his reign,

the electors should have an opportunity of repairing their error.

Eighteen years passed away. A new generation grew up. To the fervid

loyalty with which Charles had been welcomed back to Dover succeeded

discontent and disaffection. The general cry was that the kingdom was

misgoverned, degraded, given up as a prey to worthless men and more

worthless women, that our navy had been found unequal to a contest with

Holland, that our independence had been bartered for the gold of France,

that our consciences were in danger of being again subjected to the yoke

of Rome. The people had become Roundheads; but the body which alone

was authorised to speak in the name of the people was still a body of

Cavaliers. It is true that the King occasionally found even that House

of Commons unmanageable. From the first it had contained not a few true

Englishmen; others had been introduced into it as vacancies were made by

death; and even the majority, courtly as it was, could not but feel some

sympathy with the nation. A country party grew up and became formidable.

But that party constantly found its exertions frustrated by systematic

corruption. That some members of the legislature received direct bribes

was with good reason suspected, but could not be proved. That the

patronage of the Crown was employed on an extensive scale for the

purpose of influencing votes was matter of notoriety. A large proportion

of those who gave away the public money in supplies received part of

that money back in salaries; and thus was formed a mercenary band on

which the Court might, in almost any extremity, confidently rely.

The servility of this Parliament had left a deep impression on the

public mind. It was the general opinion that England ought to be

protected against all risk of being ever again represented, during a

long course of years, by men who had forfeited her confidence, and who

were retained by a fee to vote against her wishes and interests. The

subject was mentioned in the Convention; and some members wished to deal

with it while the throne was still vacant. The cry for reform had ever

since been becoming more and more importunate. The people, heavily

pressed by taxes, were naturally disposed to regard those who lived on

the taxes with little favour. The war, it was generally acknowledged,

was just and necessary; and war could not be carried on without large

expenditure. But the larger the expenditure which was required for the

defence of the nation, the more important it was that nothing should

be squandered. The immense gains of official men moved envy and

indignation. Here a gentleman was paid to do nothing. There many

gentlemen were paid to do what would be better done by one. The coach,

the liveries, the lace cravat and diamond buckles of the placeman were

naturally seen with an evil eye by those who rose up early and lay down

late in order to furnish him with the means of indulging in splendour

and luxury. Such abuses it was the especial business of a House of

Commons to correct. What then had the existing House of Commons done in

the way of correction? Absolutely nothing. In 1690, indeed, while the

Civil List was settling, some sharp speeches had been made. In 1691,

when the Ways and Means were under consideration, a resolution had

been passed so absurdly framed that it had proved utterly abortive. The

nuisance continued, and would continue while it was a source of profit

to those whose duty was to abate it. Who could expect faithful and

vigilant stewardship from stewards who had a direct interest in

encouraging the waste which they were employed to check? The House

swarmed with placemen of all kinds, Lords of the Treasury, Lords of

the Admiralty, Commissioners of Customs, Commissioners of Excise,

Commissioners of Prizes, Tellers, Auditors, Receivers, Paymasters,

Officers of the Mint, Officers of the household, Colonels of regiments,

Captains of men of war, Governors of forts. We send up to Westminster,

it was said, one of our neighbours, an independent gentleman, in

the full confidence that his feelings and interests are in perfect

accordance with ours. We look to him to relieve us from every burden

except those burdens without which the public service cannot be

carried on, and which therefore, galling as they are, we patiently and

resolutely bear. But before he has been a session in Parliament we

learn that he is a Clerk of the Green Cloth or a Yeoman of the Removing

Wardrobe, with a comfortable salary. Nay, we sometimes learn that he has

obtained one of those places in the Exchequer of which the emoluments

rise and fall with the taxes which we pay. It would be strange indeed if

our interests were safe in the keeping of a man whose gains consist in a

percentage on our losses. The evil would be greatly diminished if we had

frequent opportunities of considering whether the powers of our agent

ought to be renewed or revoked. But, as the law stands, it is not

impossible that he may hold those powers twenty or thirty years. While

he lives, and while either the King or the Queen lives, it is not likely

that we shall ever again exercise our elective franchise, unless there

should be a dispute between the Court and the Parliament. The more

profuse and obsequious a Parliament is, the less likely it is to give

offence to the Court. The worse our representatives, therefore, the

longer we are likely to be cursed with them.

The outcry was loud. Odious nicknames were given to the Parliament.

Sometimes it was the Officers' Parliament; sometimes it was the Standing

Parliament, and was pronounced to be a greater nuisance than even a

standing army.

Two specifics for the distempers of the State were strongly recommended,

and divided the public favour. One was a law excluding placemen from

the House of Commons. The other was a law limiting the duration of

Parliaments to three years. In general the Tory reformers preferred

a Place Bill, and the Whig reformers a Triennial Bill; but not a few

zealous men of both parties were for trying both remedies.

Before Christmas a Place Bill was laid on the table of the Commons. That

bill has been vehemently praised by writers who never saw it, and who

merely guessed at what it contained. But no person who takes the trouble

to study the original parchment, which, embrowned with the dust of a

hundred and sixty years, reposes among the archives of the House of

Lords, will find much matter for eulogy.

About the manner in which such a bill should have been framed there

will, in our time, be little difference of opinion among enlightened

Englishmen. They will agree in thinking that it would be most pernicious

to open the House of Commons to all placemen, and not less pernicious to

close that House against all placemen. To draw with precision the

line between those who ought to be admitted and those who ought to be

excluded would be a task requiring much time, thought and knowledge of

details. But the general principles which ought to guide us are obvious.

The multitude of subordinate functionaries ought to be excluded. A

few functionaries who are at the head or near the head of the great

departments of the administration ought to be admitted.

The subordinate functionaries ought to be excluded, because their

admission would at once lower the character of Parliament and destroy

the efficiency of every public office. They are now excluded, and the

consequence is that the State possesses a valuable body of servants who

remain unchanged while cabinet after cabinet is formed and dissolved,

who instruct every successive minister in his duties, and with whom it

is the most sacred point of honour to give true information, sincere

advise, and strenuous assistance to their superior for the time being.

To the experience, the ability and the fidelity of this class of men is

to be attributed the ease and safety with which the direction of affairs

has been many times, within our own memory, transferred from Tories to

Whigs and from Whigs to Tories. But no such class would have existed if

persons who received salaries from the Crown had been suffered to sit

without restriction in the House of Commons. Those commissionerships,

assistant secretaryships, chief clerkships, which are now held for life

by persons who stand aloof from the strife of parties, would have been

bestowed on members of Parliament who were serviceable to the government

as voluble speakers or steady voters. As often as the ministry was

changed, all this crowd of retainers would have been ejected from

office, and would have been succeeded by another set of members of

Parliament who would probably have been ejected in their turn before

they had half learned their business. Servility and corruption in the

legislature, ignorance and incapacity in all the departments of the

executive administration, would have been the inevitable effects of such

a system.

Still more noxious, if possible, would be the effects of a system

under which all the servants of the Crown, without exception, should be

excluded from the House of Commons. Aristotle has, in that treatise on

government which is perhaps the most judicious and instructive of all

his writings, left us a warning against a class of laws artfully framed

to delude the vulgar, democratic in seeming, but oligarchic in effect.

[374] Had he had an opportunity of studying the history of the English

constitution, he might easily have enlarged his list of such laws. That

men who are in the service and pay of the Crown ought not to sit in

an assembly specially charged with the duty of guarding the rights and

interests of the community against all aggression on the part of the

Crown is a plausible and a popular doctrine. Yet it is certain that if

those who, five generations ago, held that doctrine, had been able to

mould the constitution according to their wishes, the effect would have

been the depression of that branch of the legislature which springs from

the people and is accountable to the people, and the ascendency of the

monarchical and aristocratical elements of our polity. The government

would have been entirely in patrician hands. The House of Lords,

constantly drawing to itself the first abilities in the realm, would

have become the most august of senates, while the House of Commons would

have sunk almost to the rank of a vestry. From time to time undoubtedly

men of commanding genius and of aspiring temper would have made their

appearance among the representatives of the counties and boroughs. But

every such man would have considered the elective chamber merely as a

lobby through which he must pass to the hereditary chamber. The first

object of his ambition would have been that coronet without which he

could not be powerful in the state. As soon as he had shown that he

could be a formidable enemy and a valuable friend to the government, he

would have made haste to quit what would then have been in every sense

the Lower House for what would then have been in every sense the Upper.

The conflict between Walpole and Pulteney, the conflict between Pitt and

Fox, would have been transferred from the popular to the aristocratic

part of the legislature. On every great question, foreign, domestic or

colonial, the debates of the nobles would have been impatiently expected

and eagerly devoured. The report of the proceedings of an assembly

containing no person empowered to speak in the name of the government,

no person who had ever been in high political trust, would have been

thrown aside with contempt. Even the control of the purse of the nation

must have passed, not perhaps in form, but in substance, to that body in

which would have been found every man who was qualified to bring forward

a budget or explain an estimate. The country would have been governed by

Peers; and the chief business of the Commons would have been to wrangle

about bills for the inclosing of moors and the lighting of towns.

These considerations were altogether overlooked in 1692. Nobody thought

of drawing a line between the few functionaries who ought to be allowed

to sit in the House of Commons and the crowd of functionaries who ought

to be shut out. The only line which the legislators of that day took

pains to draw was between themselves and their successors. Their own

interest they guarded with a care of which it seems strange that they

should not have been ashamed. Every one of them was allowed to keep

the places which he had got, and to get as many more places as he could

before the next dissolution of Parliament, an event which might not

happen for many years. But a member who should be chosen after the first

of February 1693 was not to be permitted to accept any place whatever.

[375]

In the House of Commons the bill passed through all its stages rapidly

and without a single division. But in the Lords the contest was sharp

and obstinate. Several amendments were proposed in committee; but all

were rejected. The motion that the bill should pass was supported by

Mulgrave in a lively and poignant speech, which has been preserved, and

which proves that his reputation for eloquence was not unmerited. The

Lords who took the other side did not, it should seem, venture to deny

that there was an evil which required a remedy; but they maintained

that the proposed remedy would only aggravate the evil. The patriotic

representatives of the people had devised a reform which might perhaps

benefit the next generation; but they had carefully reserved to

themselves the privilege of plundering the present generation. If this

bill passed, it was clear that, while the existing Parliament lasted,

the number of placemen in the House of Commons would be little, if at

all, diminished; and, if this bill passed, it was highly probable that

the existing Parliament would last till both King William and Queen Mary

were dead. For as, under this bill, Their Majesties would be able to

exercise a much greater influence over the existing Parliament than

over any future Parliament, they would naturally wish to put off a

dissolution as long as possible. The complaint of the electors of

England was that now, in 1692, they were unfairly represented. It was

not redress, but mockery, to tell them that their children should be

fairly represented in 1710 or 1720. The relief ought to be immediate;

and the way to give immediate relief was to limit the duration of

Parliaments, and to begin with that Parliament which, in the opinion of

the country, had already held power too long.

The forces were so evenly balanced that a very slight accident might

have turned the scale. When the question was put that the bill do pass,

eighty-two peers were present. Of these forty-two were for the bill, and

forty against it. Proxies were then called. There were only two proxies

for the bill; there were seven against it; but of the seven three were

questioned, and were with difficulty admitted. The result was that the

bill was lost by three votes.

The majority appears to have been composed of moderate Whigs and

moderate Tories. Twenty of the minority protested, and among them

were the most violent and intolerant members of both parties, such as

Warrington, who had narrowly escaped the block for conspiring against

James, and Aylesbury, who afterwards narrowly escaped the block for

conspiring against William. Marlborough, who, since his imprisonment,

had gone all lengths in opposition to the government, not only put his

own name to the protest, but made the Prince of Denmark sign what it

was altogether beyond the faculties of His Royal Highness to comprehend.

[376]

It is a remarkable circumstance that neither Caermarthen, the first in

power as well as in abilities of the Tory ministers, nor Shrewsbury, the

most distinguished of those Whigs who were then on bad terms with the

Court, was present on this important occasion. Their absence was in all

probability the effect of design; for both of them were in the House no

long time before and no long time after the division.

A few days later Shrewsbury laid on the table of the Lord a bill for

limiting the duration of Parliaments. By this bill it was provided

that the Parliament then sitting should cease to exist on the first

of January 1694, and that no future Parliament should last longer than

three years.

Among the Lords there seems to have been almost perfect unanimity on

this subject. William in vain endeavoured to induce those peers in whom

he placed the greatest confidence to support his prerogative. Some of

them thought the proposed change salutary; others hoped to quiet the

public mind by a liberal concession; and others had held such language

when they were opposing the Place Bill that they could not, without

gross inconsistency, oppose the Triennial Bill. The whole House too bore

a grudge to the other House, and had a pleasure in putting the other

House in a most disagreeable dilemma. Burnet, Pembroke, nay, even

Caermarthen, who was very little in the habit of siding with the people

against the throne, supported Shrewsbury. "My Lord," said the King to

Caermarthen, with bitter displeasure, "you will live to repent the part

which you are taking in this matter." [377] The warning was disregarded;

and the bill, having passed the Lords smoothly and rapidly, was carried

with great solemnity by two judges to the Commons.

Of what took place in the Commons we have but very meagre accounts; but

from those accounts it is clear that the Whigs, as a body, supported the

bill, and that the opposition came chiefly from Tories. Old Titus, who

had been a politician in the days of the Commonwealth, entertained the

House with a speech in the style which had been fashionable in those

days. Parliaments, he said, resembled the manna which God bestowed on

the chosen people. They were excellent while they were fresh; but if

kept too long they became noisome; and foul worms were engendered by

the corruption of that which had been sweeter than honey. Littleton

and other leading Whigs spoke on the same side. Seymour, Finch, and

Tredenham, all stanch Tories, were vehement against the bill; and even

Sir John Lowther on this point dissented from his friend and patron

Caermarthen. Several Tory orators appealed to a feeling which was strong

in the House, and which had, since the Revolution, prevented many

laws from passing. Whatever, they said, comes from the Peers is to be

received with suspicion; and the present bill is of such a nature that,

even if it were in itself good, it ought to be at once rejected merely

because it has been brought down from them. If their Lordships were to

send us the most judicious of all money bills, should we not kick it to

the door? Yet to send us a money bill would hardly be a grosser affront

than to send us such a bill as this. They have taken an initiative

which, by every rule of parliamentary courtesy, ought to have been left

to us. They have sate in judgment on us, convicted us, condemned us to

dissolution, and fixed the first of January for the execution. Are we

to submit patiently to so degrading a sentence, a sentence too passed by

men who have not so conducted themselves as to have acquired any right

to censure others? Have they ever made any sacrifice of their own

interest, of their own dignity, to the general welfare? Have not

excellent bills been lost because we would not consent to insert in them

clauses conferring new privileges on the nobility? And now that their

Lordships are bent on obtaining popularity, do they propose to

purchase it by relinquishing even the smallest of their own oppressive

privileges? No; they offer to their country that which will cost them

nothing, but which will cost us and will cost the Crown dear. In such

circumstances it is our duty to repel the insult which has been offered

to us, and, by doing so, to vindicate the lawful prerogative of the

King.

Such topics as these were doubtless well qualified to inflame the

passions of the House of Commons. The near prospect of a dissolution

could not be very agreeable to a member whose election was likely to be

contested. He must go through all the miseries of a canvass, must shake

hands with crowds of freeholders or freemen, must ask after their wives

and children, must hire conveyances for outvoters, must open alehouses,

must provide mountains of beef, must set rivers of ale running, and

might perhaps, after all the drudgery and all the expense, after being

lampooned, hustled, pelted, find himself at the bottom of the poll, see

his antagonists chaired, and sink half ruined into obscurity. All this

evil he was now invited to bring on himself, and invited by men whose

own seats in the legislature were permanent, who gave up neither dignity

nor quiet, neither power nor money, but gained the praise of patriotism

by forcing him to abdicate a high station, to undergo harassing labour

and anxiety, to mortgage his cornfields and to hew down his woods. There

was naturally much irritation, more probably than is indicated by the

divisions. For the constituent bodies were generally delighted with the

bill; and many members who disliked it were afraid to oppose it. The

House yielded to the pressure of public opinion, but not without a

pang and a struggle. The discussions in the committee seem to have been

acrimonious. Such sharp words passed between Seymour and one of the Whig

members that it was necessary to put the Speaker in the chair and the

mace on the table for the purpose of restoring order. One amendment was

made. The respite which the Lords had granted to the existing Parliament

was extended from the first of January to Lady Day, in order that there

might be full time for another session. The third reading was carried

by two hundred votes to a hundred and sixty-one. The Lords agreed to the

bill as amended; and nothing was wanting but the royal assent. Whether

that assent would or would not be given was a question which remained in

suspense till the last day of the session. [378]

One strange inconsistency in the conduct of the reformers of that

generation deserves notice. It never occurred to any one of those who

were zealous for the Triennial Bill that every argument which could be

urged in favour of that bill was an argument against the rules which

had been framed in old times for the purpose of keeping parliamentary

deliberations and divisions strictly secret. It is quite natural that

a government which withholds political privileges from the commonalty

should withhold also political information. But nothing can be more

irrational than to give power, and not to give the knowledge without

which there is the greatest risk that power will be abused. What could

be more absurd than to call constituent bodies frequently together that

they might decide whether their representative had done his duty by

them, and yet strictly to interdict them from learning, on trustworthy

authority, what he had said or how he had voted? The absurdity however

appears to have passed altogether unchallenged. It is highly probable

that among the two hundred members of the House of Commons who voted for

the third reading of the Triennial Bill there was not one who would have

hesitated about sending to Newgate any person who had dared to publish

a report of the debate on that bill, or a list of the Ayes and the Noes.

The truth is that the secrecy of parliamentary debates, a secrecy which

would now be thought a grievance more intolerable than the Shipmoney

or the Star Chamber, was then inseparably associated, even in the most

honest and intelligent minds, with constitutional freedom. A few old

men still living could remember times when a gentleman who was known at

Whitehall to have let fall a sharp word against a court favourite would

have been brought before the Privy Council and sent to the Tower. Those

times were gone, never to return. There was no longer any danger that

the King would oppress the members of the legislature; and there was

much danger that the members of the legislature might oppress the

people. Nevertheless the words Privilege of Parliament, those words

which the stern senators of the preceding generation had murmured when a

tyrant filled their chamber with his guards, those words which a hundred

thousand Londoners had shouted in his ears when he ventured for the last

time within the walls of their city; still retained a magical influence

over all who loved liberty. It was long before even the most enlightened

men became sensible that the precautions which had been originally

devised for the purpose of protecting patriots against the displeasure

of the Court now served only to protect sycophants against the

displeasure of the nation.

It is also to be observed that few of those who showed at this time the

greatest desire to increase the political power of the people were as

yet prepared to emancipate the press from the control of the government.

The Licensing Act, which had passed, as a matter of course, in 1685,

expired in 1693, and was renewed, not however without an opposition,

which, though feeble when compared with the magnitude of the object in

dispute, proved that the public mind was beginning dimly to perceive

how closely civil freedom and freedom of conscience are connected with

freedom of discussion.

On the history of the Licensing Act no preceding writer has thought it

worth while to expend any care or labour. Yet surely the events which

led to the establishment of the liberty of the press in England, and in

all the countries peopled by the English race, may be thought to have

as much interest for the present generation as any of those battles and

sieges of which the most minute details have been carefully recorded.

During the first three years of William's reign scarcely a voice seems

to have been raised against the restrictions which the law imposed on

literature. Those restrictions were in perfect harmony with the theory

of government held by the Tories, and were not, in practice, galling

to the Whigs. Roger Lestrange, who had been licenser under the last two

Kings of the House of Stuart, and who had shown as little tenderness

to Exclusionists and Presbyterians in that character as in his other

character of Observator, was turned out of office at the Revolution, and

was succeeded by a Scotch gentleman, who, on account of his passion for

rare books, and his habit of attending all sales of libraries, was known

in the shops and coffeehouses near Saint Paul's by the name of Catalogue

Fraser. Fraser was a zealous Whig. By Whig authors and publishers he

was extolled as a most impartial and humane man. But the conduct which

obtained their applause drew on him the abuse of the Tories, and was

not altogether pleasing to his official superior Nottingham. [379] No

serious difference however seems to have arisen till the year 1692. In

that year an honest old clergyman named Walker, who had, in the time of

the Commonwealth, been Gauden's curate, wrote a book which convinced

all sensible and dispassionate readers that Gauden, and not Charles the

First, was the author of the Icon Basilike. This book Fraser suffered to

be printed. If he had authorised the publication of a work in which the

Gospel of Saint John or the Epistle to the Romans had been represented

as spurious, the indignation of the High Church party could hardly have

been greater. The question was not literary, but religious. Doubt was

impiety. In truth the Icon was to many fervent Royalists a supplementary

revelation. One of them indeed had gone so far as to propose that

lessons taken out of the inestimable little volume should be read in

the churches. [380] Fraser found it necessary to resign his place; and

Nottingham appointed a gentleman of good blood and scanty fortune named

Edmund Bohun. This change of men produced an immediate and total change

of system; for Bohun was as strong a Tory as a conscientious man who

had taken the oaths could possibly be. He had been conspicuous as a

persecutor of nonconformists and a champion of the doctrine of passive

obedience. He had edited Filmer's absurd treatise on the origin of

government, and had written an answer to the paper which Algernon Sidney

had delivered to the Sheriffs on Tower Hill. Nor did Bohun admit that,

in swearing allegiance to William and Mary, he had done any thing

inconsistent with his old creed. For he had succeeded in convincing

himself that they reigned by right of conquest, and that it was the duty

of an Englishman to serve them as faithfully as Daniel had served Darius

or as Nehemiah had served Artaxerxes. This doctrine, whatever peace it

might bring to his own conscience, found little favour with any

party. The Whigs loathed it as servile; the Jacobites loathed it as

revolutionary. Great numbers of Tories had doubtless submitted to

William on the ground that he was, rightfully or wrongfully, King

in possession; but very few of them were disposed to allow that his

possession had originated in conquest. Indeed the plea which had

satisfied the weak and narrow mind of Bohun was a mere fiction, and, had

it been a truth, would have been a truth not to be uttered by Englishmen

without agonies of shame and mortification. [381] He however clung to

his favourite whimsy with a tenacity which the general disapprobation

only made more intense. His old friends, the stedfast adherents

of indefeasible hereditary right, grew cold and reserved. He asked

Sancroft's blessing, and got only a sharp word, and a black look.

He asked Ken's blessing; and Ken, though not much in the habit of

transgressing the rules of Christian charity and courtesy, murmured

something about a little scribbler. Thus cast out by one faction, Bohun

was not received by any other. He formed indeed a class apart; for he

was at once a zealous Filmerite and a zealous Williamite. He held that

pure monarchy, not limited by any law or contract, was the form of

government which had been divinely ordained. But he held that William

was now the absolute monarch, who might annul the Great Charter, abolish

trial by jury, or impose taxes by royal proclamation, without forfeiting

the right to be implicitly obeyed by Christian men. As to the rest,

Bohun was a man of some learning, mean understanding and unpopular

manners. He had no sooner entered on his functions than all Paternoster

Row and Little Britain were in a ferment. The Whigs had, under Fraser's

administration, enjoyed almost as entire a liberty as if there had been

no censorship. But they were now as severely treated as in the days of

Lestrange. A History of the Bloody Assizes was about to be published,

and was expected to have as great a run as the Pilgrim's Progress. But

the new licenser refused his Imprimatur. The book, he said, represented

rebels and schismatics as heroes and martyrs; and he would not sanction

it for its weight in gold. A charge delivered by Lord Warrington to the

grand jury of Cheshire was not permitted to appear, because His Lordship

had spoken contemptuously of divine right and passive obedience.

Julian Johnson found that, if he wished to promulgate his notions of

government, he must again have recourse, as in the evil times of King

James, to a secret press. [382] Such restraint as this, coming

after several years of unbounded freedom, naturally produced violent

exasperation. Some Whigs began to think that the censorship itself was a

grievance; all Whigs agreed in pronouncing the new censor unfit for his

post, and were prepared to join in an effort to get rid of him.

Of the transactions which terminated in Bohun's dismission, and which

produced the first parliamentary struggle for the liberty of unlicensed

printing, we have accounts written by Bohun himself and by others; but

there are strong reasons for believing that in none of those accounts is

the whole truth to be found. It may perhaps not be impossible, even at

this distance of time, to put together dispersed fragments of evidence

in such a manner as to produce an authentic narrative which would have

astonished the unfortunate licenser himself.

There was then about town a man of good family, of some reading, and of

some small literary talent, named Charles Blount. [383] In politics he

belonged to the extreme section of the Whig party. In the days of the

Exclusion Bill he had been one of Shaftesbury's brisk boys, and had,

under the signature of Junius Brutus, magnified the virtues and public

services of Titus Oates, and exhorted the Protestants to take signal

vengeance on the Papists for the fire of London and for the murder

of Godfrey. [384] As to the theological questions which were in issue

between Protestants and Papists, Blount was perfectly impartial. He was

an infidel, and the head of a small school of infidels who were troubled

with a morbid desire to make converts. He translated from the Latin

translation part of the Life of Apollonius of Tyana, and appended to it

notes of which the flippant profaneness called forth the severe censure

of an unbeliever of a very different order, the illustrious Bayle. [385]

Blount also attacked Christianity in several original treatises, or

rather in several treatises purporting to be original; for he was

the most audacious of literary thieves, and transcribed, without

acknowledgment, whole pages from authors who had preceded him. His

delight was to worry the priests by asking them how light existed

before the sun was made, how Paradise could be bounded by Pison, Gihon,

Hiddekel and Euphrates, how serpents moved before they were condemned

to crawl, and where Eve found thread to stitch her figleaves. To his

speculations on these subjects he gave the lofty name of the Oracles of

Reason; and indeed whatever he said or wrote was considered as oracular

by his disciples. Of those disciples the most noted was a bad writer

named Gildon, who lived to pester another generation with doggrel and

slander, and whose memory is still preserved, not by his own voluminous

works, but by two or three lines in which his stupidity and venality

have been contemptuously mentioned by Pope. [386]

Little as either the intellectual or the moral character of Blount may

seem to deserve respect, it is in a great measure to him that we must

attribute the emancipation of the English press. Between him and the

licensers there was a feud of long standing. Before the Revolution one

of his heterodox treatises had been grievously mutilated by Lestrange,

and at last suppressed by orders from Lestrange's superior the Bishop

of London. [387] Bohun was a scarcely less severe critic than Lestrange.

Blount therefore began to make war on the censorship and the censor.

The hostilities were commenced by a tract which came forth without any

license, and which is entitled A Just Vindication of Learning and of the

Liberty of the Press, by Philopatris. [388] Whoever reads this piece,

and is not aware that Blount was one of the most unscrupulous plagiaries

that ever lived, will be surprised to find, mingled with the poor

thoughts and poor words of a thirdrate pamphleteer, passages so elevated

in sentiment and style that they would be worthy of the greatest name

in letters. The truth is that the just Vindication consists chiefly of

garbled extracts from the Areopagitica of Milton. That noble discourse

had been neglected by the generation to which it was addressed, had

sunk into oblivion, and was at the mercy of every pilferer. The literary

workmanship of Blount resembled the architectural workmanship of those

barbarians who used the Coliseum and the Theatre of Pompey as quarries,

who built hovels out of Ionian friezes and propped cowhouses on pillars

of lazulite. Blount concluded, as Milton had done, by recommending that

any book might be printed without a license, provided that the name of

the author or publisher were registered. [389] The Just Vindication was

well received. The blow was speedily followed up. There still remained

in the Areopagitica many fine passages which Blount had not used in his

first pamphlet. Out of these passages he constructed a second pamphlet

entitled Reasons for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing. [390] To these

Reasons he appended a postscript entitled A Just and True Character

of Edmund Bohun. This character was written with extreme bitterness.

Passages were quoted from the licenser's writings to prove that he held

the doctrines of passive obedience and nonresistance. He was accused of

using his power systematically for the purpose of favouring the enemies

and silencing the friends of the Sovereigns whose bread he ate; and it

was asserted that he was the friend and the pupil of his predecessor Sir

Roger.

Blount's Character of Bohun could not be publicly sold; but it was

widely circulated. While it was passing from hand to hand, and while

the Whigs were every where exclaiming against the new censor as a second

Lestrange, he was requested to authorise the publication of an anonymous

work entitled King William and Queen Mary Conquerors. [391] He readily

and indeed eagerly complied. For in truth there was between the

doctrines which he had long professed and the doctrines which were

propounded in this treatise a coincidence so exact that many suspected

him of being the author; nor was this suspicion weakened by a passage

to which a compliment was paid to his political writings. But the real

author was that very Blount who was, at that very time, labouring to

inflame the public both against the Licensing Act and the licenser.

Blount's motives may easily be divined. His own opinions were

diametrically opposed to those which, on this occasion, he put forward

in the most offensive manner. It is therefore impossible to doubt that

his object was to ensnare and to ruin Bohun. It was a base and wicked

scheme. But it cannot be denied that the trap was laid and baited with

much skill. The republican succeeded in personating a high Tory.

The atheist succeeded in personating a high Churchman. The pamphlet

concluded with a devout prayer that the God of light and love would open

the understanding and govern the will of Englishmen, so that they

might see the things which belonged to their peace. The censor was in

raptures. In every page he found his own thoughts expressed more plainly

than he had ever expressed them. Never before, in his opinion, had the

true claim of their Majesties to obedience been so clearly stated. Every

Jacobite who read this admirable tract must inevitably be converted. The

nonjurors would flock to take the oaths. The nation, so long divided,

would at length be united. From these pleasing dreams Bohun was awakened

by learning, a few hours after the appearance of the discourse which had

charmed him, that the titlepage had set all London in a flame, and that

the odious words, King William and Queen Mary Conquerors, had moved the

indignation of multitudes who had never read further. Only four days

after the publication he heard that the House of Commons had taken the

matter up, that the book had been called by some members a rascally

book, and that, as the author was unknown, the Serjeant at Arms was in

search of the licenser. [392] Bohun's mind had never been strong; and he

was entirely unnerved and bewildered by the fury and suddenness of

the storm which had burst upon him. He went to the House. Most of the

members whom he met in the passages and lobbies frowned on him. When he

was put to the bar, and, after three profound obeisances, ventured to

lift his head and look round him, he could read his doom in the angry

and contemptuous looks which were cast on him from every side. He

hesitated, blundered, contradicted himself, called the Speaker My Lord,

and, by his confused way of speaking, raised a tempest of rude laughter

which confused him still more. As soon as he had withdrawn, it was

unanimously resolved that the obnoxious treatise should be burned in

Palace Yard by the common hangman. It was also resolved, without a

division, that the King should be requested to remove Bohun from the

office of licenser. The poor man, ready to faint with grief and fear,

was conducted by the officers of the House to a place of confinement.

[393]

But scarcely was he in his prison when a large body of members

clamorously demanded a more important victim. Burnet had, shortly after

he became Bishop of Salisbury, addressed to the clergy of his diocese a

Pastoral Letter, exhorting them to take the oaths. In one paragraph of

this letter he had held language bearing some resemblance to that of the

pamphlet which had just been sentenced to the flames. There were indeed

distinctions which a judicious and impartial tribunal would not have

failed to notice. But the tribunal before which Burnet was arraigned was

neither judicious nor impartial. His faults had made him many enemies,

and his virtues many more. The discontented Whigs complained that he

leaned towards the Court, the High Churchmen that he leaned towards the

Dissenters; nor can it be supposed that a man of so much boldness and so

little tact, a man so indiscreetly frank and so restlessly active,

had passed through life without crossing the schemes and wounding the

feelings of some whose opinions agreed with his. He was regarded with

peculiar malevolence by Howe. Howe had never, even while he was in

office, been in the habit of restraining his bitter and petulant tongue;

and he had recently been turned out of office in a way which had

made him ungovernably ferocious. The history of his dismission is not

accurately known, but it was certainly accompanied by some circumstances

which had cruelly galled his temper. If rumour could be trusted, he had

fancied that Mary was in love with him, and had availed himself of an

opportunity which offered itself while he was in attendance on her

as Vice Chamberlain to make some advances which had justly moved her

indignation. Soon after he was discarded, he was prosecuted for having,

in a fit of passion, beaten one of his servants savagely within the

verge of the palace. He had pleaded guilty, and had been pardoned; but

from this time he showed, on every occasion, the most rancorous personal

hatred of his royal mistress, of her husband, and of all who were

favoured by either. It was known that the Queen frequently consulted

Burnet; and Howe was possessed with the belief that her severity was to

be imputed to Burnet's influence. [394] Now was the time to be revenged.

In a long and elaborate speech the spiteful Whig--for such he still

affected to be--represented Burnet as a Tory of the worst class. "There

should be a law," he said, "making it penal for the clergy to introduce

politics into their discourses. Formerly they sought to enslave us by

crying up the divine and indefeasible right of the hereditary prince.

Now they try to arrive at the same result by telling us that we are a

conquered people." It was moved that the Bishop should be impeached.

To this motion there was an unanswerable objection, which the Speaker

pointed out. The Pastoral Letter had been written in 1689, and was

therefore covered by the Act of Grace which had been passed in 1690. Yet

a member was not ashamed to say, "No matter: impeach him; and force

him to plead the Act." Few, however, were disposed to take a course so

unworthy of a House of Commons. Some wag cried out, "Burn it; burn it;"

and this bad pun ran along the benches, and was received with shouts of

laughter. It was moved that the Pastoral Letter should be burned by the

common hangman. A long and vehement debate followed. For Burnet was

a man warmly loved as well as warmly hated. The great majority of the

Whigs stood firmly by him; and his goodnature and generosity had made

him friends even among the Tories. The contest lasted two days. Montague

and Finch, men of widely different opinions, appear to have been

foremost among the Bishop's champions. An attempt to get rid of the

subject by moving the previous question failed. At length the main

question was put; and the Pastoral Letter was condemned to the flames by

a small majority in a full house. The Ayes were a hundred and sixty-two;

the Noes a hundred and fifty-five. [395] The general opinion, at least

of the capital, seems to have been that Burnet was cruelly treated.

[396]

He was not naturally a man of fine feelings; and the life which he had

led had not tended to make them finer. He had been during many years

a mark for theological and political animosity. Grave doctors had

anathematized him; ribald poets had lampooned him; princes and ministers

had laid snares for his life; he had been long a wanderer and an exile,

in constant peril of being kidnapped, struck in the boots, hanged and

quartered. Yet none of these things had ever seemed to move him. His

selfconceit had been proof against ridicule, and his dauntless temper

against danger. But on this occasion his fortitude seems to have failed

him. To be stigmatized by the popular branch of the legislature as a

teacher of doctrines so servile that they disgusted even Tories, to be

joined in one sentence of condemnation with the editor of Filmer, was

too much. How deeply Burnet was wounded appeared many years later, when,

after his death, his History of his Life and Times was given to the

world. In that work he is ordinarily garrulous even to minuteness

about all that concerns himself, and sometimes relates with amusing

ingenuousness his own mistakes and the censures which those mistakes

brought upon him. But about the ignominious judgment passed by the House

of Commons on his Pastoral Letter he has preserved a most significant

silence. [397]

The plot which ruined Bohun, though it did no honour to those who

contrived it, produced important and salutary effects. Before the

conduct of the unlucky licenser had been brought under the consideration

of Parliament, the Commons had resolved, without any division, and, as

far as appears, without any discussion, that the Act which subjected

literature to a censorship should be continued. But the question had

now assumed a new aspect; and the continuation of the Act was no longer

regarded as a matter of course. A feeling in favour of the liberty of

the press, a feeling not yet, it is true, of wide extent or formidable

intensity, began to show itself. The existing system, it was said, was

prejudicial both to commerce and to learning. Could it be expected that

any capitalist would advance the funds necessary for a great literary

undertaking, or that any scholar would expend years of toil and research

on such an undertaking, while it was possible that, at the last moment,

the caprice, the malice, the folly of one man might frustrate the whole

design? And was it certain that the law which so grievously restricted

both the freedom of trade and the freedom of thought had really added

to the security of the State? Had not recent experience proved that the

licenser might himself be an enemy of their Majesties, or, worse still,

an absurd and perverse friend; that he might suppress a book of which it

would be for their interest that every house in the country should have

a copy, and that he might readily give his sanction to a libel which

tended to make them hateful to their people, and which deserved to be

torn and burned by the hand of Ketch? Had the government gained much by

establishing a literary police which prevented Englishmen from

having the History of the Bloody Circuit, and allowed them, by way of

compensation, to read tracts which represented King William and Queen

Mary as conquerors?

In that age persons who were not specially interested in a public

bill very seldom petitioned Parliament against it or for it. The only

petitions therefore which were at this conjuncture presented to the two

Houses against the censorship came from booksellers, bookbinders and

printers. [398] But the opinion which these classes expressed was

certainly not confined to them.

The law which was about to expire had lasted eight years. It was renewed

for only two years. It appears, from an entry in the journals of the

Commons which unfortunately is defective, that a division took place on

an amendment about the nature of which we are left entirely in the dark.

The votes were ninety-nine to eighty. In the Lords it was proposed,

according to the suggestion offered fifty years before by Milton and

stolen from him by Blount, to exempt from the authority of the licenser

every book which bore the name of an author or publisher. This amendment

was rejected; and the bill passed, but not without a protest signed by

eleven peers who declared that they could not think it for the public

interest to subject all learning and true information to the arbitrary

will and pleasure of a mercenary and perhaps ignorant licenser. Among

those who protested were Halifax, Shrewsbury and Mulgrave, three

noblemen belonging to different political parties, but all distinguished

by their literary attainments. It is to be lamented that the signatures

of Tillotson and Burnet, who were both present on that day, should be

wanting. Dorset was absent. [399]

Blount, by whose exertions and machinations the opposition to the

censorship had been raised, did not live to see that opposition

successful. Though not a very young man, he was possessed by an insane

passion for the sister of his deceased wife. Having long laboured in

vain to convince the object of his love that she might lawfully marry

him, he at last, whether from weariness of life, or in the hope of

touching her heart, inflicted on himself a wound of which, after

languishing long, he died. He has often been mentioned as a blasphemer

and selfmurderer. But the important service which, by means doubtless

most immoral and dishonourable, he rendered to his country, has passed

almost unnoticed. [400]

Late in this busy and eventful session the attention of the Houses was

called to the state of Ireland. The government of that kingdom had,

during the six months which followed the surrender of Limerick, been

in an unsettled state. It was not till the Irish troops who adhered to

Sarsfield had sailed for France, and till the Irish troops who had made

their election to remain at home had been disbanded, that William at

length put forth a proclamation solemnly announcing the termination

of the civil war. From the hostility of the aboriginal inhabitants,

destitute as they now were of chiefs, of arms and of organization,

nothing was to be apprehended beyond occasional robberies and murders.

But the war cry of the Irishry had scarcely died away when the first

faint murmurs of the Englishry began to be heard. Coningsby was during

some months at the head of the administration. He soon made himself in

the highest degree odious to the dominant caste. He was an unprincipled

man; he was insatiable of riches; and he was in a situation in which

riches were easily to be obtained by an unprincipled man. Immense sums

of money, immense quantities of military stores had been sent over

from England. Immense confiscations were taking place in Ireland. The

rapacious governor had daily opportunities of embezzling and extorting;

and of those opportunities he availed himself without scruple or shame.

This however was not, in the estimation of the colonists, his greatest

offence. They might have pardoned his covetousness; but they could not

pardon the clemency which he showed to their vanquished and enslaved

enemies. His clemency indeed amounted merely to this, that he loved

money more than he hated Papists, and that he was not unwilling to sell

for a high price a scanty measure of justice to some of the oppressed

class. Unhappily, to the ruling minority, sore from recent conflict and

drunk with recent victory, the subjugated majority was as a drove of

cattle, or rather as a pack of wolves. Man acknowledges in the inferior

animals no rights inconsistent with his own convenience; and as man

deals with the inferior animals the Cromwellian thought himself at

liberty to deal with the Roman Catholic. Coningsby therefore drew on

himself a greater storm of obloquy by his few good acts than by his many

bad acts. The clamour against him was so violent that he was removed;

and Sidney went over, with the full power and dignity of Lord

Lieutenant, to hold a Parliament at Dublin. [401]

But the easy temper and graceful manners of Sidney failed to produce a

conciliatory effect. He does not indeed appear to have been greedy of

unlawful gain. But he did not restrain with a sufficiently firm hand

the crowd of subordinate functionaries whom Coningsby's example and

protection had encouraged to plunder the public and to sell their good

offices to suitors. Nor was the new Viceroy of a temper to bear hard

on the feeble remains of the native aristocracy. He therefore speedily

became an object of suspicion and aversion to the Anglosaxon settlers.

His first act was to send out the writs for a general election. The

Roman Catholics had been excluded from every municipal corporation; but

no law had yet deprived them of the county franchise. It is probable

however that not a single Roman Catholic freeholder ventured to approach

the hustings. The members chosen were, with few exceptions, men animated

by the spirit of Enniskillen and Londonderry, a spirit eminently heroic

in times of distress and peril, but too often cruel and imperious in

the season of prosperity and power. They detested the civil treaty of

Limerick, and were indignant when they learned that the Lord Lieutenant

fully expected from them a parliamentary ratification of that odious

contract, a contract which gave a licence to the idolatry of the

mass, and which prevented good Protestants from ruining their Popish

neighbours by bringing civil actions for injuries done during the war.

[402]

On the fifth of October 1692 the Parliament met at Dublin in Chichester

House. It was very differently composed from the assembly which had

borne the same title in 1689. Scarcely one peer, not one member of the

House of Commons, who had sate at the King's Inns, was to be seen. To

the crowd of O's and Macs, descendants of the old princes of the island,

had succeeded men whose names indicated a Saxon origin. A single O,

an apostate from the faith of his fathers, and three Macs, evidently

emigrants from Scotland, and probably Presbyterians, had seats in the

assembly.

The Parliament, thus composed, had then less than the powers of the

Assembly of Jamaica or of the Assembly of Virginia. Not merely was the

Legislature which sate at Dublin subject to the absolute control of the

Legislature which sate at Westminster: but a law passed in the fifteenth

century, during the administration of the Lord Deputy Poynings, and

called by his name, had provided that no bill which had not been

considered and approved by the Privy Council of England should be

brought into either House in Ireland, and that every bill so considered

and approved should be either passed without amendment or rejected.

[403]

The session opened with a solemn recognition of the paramount authority

of the mother country. The Commons ordered their clerk to read to them

the English Act which required them to take the Oath of Supremacy and to

subscribe the Declaration against Transubstantiation. Having heard the

Act read, they immediately proceeded to obey it. Addresses were then

voted which expressed the warmest gratitude and attachment to the King.

Two members, who had been untrue to the Protestant and English interest

during the troubles, were expelled. Supplies, liberal when compared with

the resources of a country devastated by years of predatory war, were

voted with eagerness. But the bill for confirming the Act of Settlement

was thought to be too favourable to the native gentry, and, as it could

not be amended, was with little ceremony rejected. A committee of the

whole House resolved that the unjustifiable indulgence with which the

Irish had been treated since the battle of the Boyne was one of the

chief causes of the misery of the kingdom. A Committee of Grievances

sate daily till eleven in the evening; and the proceedings of this

inquest greatly alarmed the Castle. Many instances of gross venality

and knavery on the part of men high in office were brought to light, and

many instances also of what was then thought a criminal lenity towards

the subject nation. This Papist had been allowed to enlist in the army;

that Papist had been allowed to keep a gun; a third had too good a

horse; a fourth had been protected against Protestants who wished to

bring actions against him for wrongs committed during the years of

confusion. The Lord Lieutenant, having obtained nearly as much money as

he could expect, determined to put an end to these unpleasant inquiries.

He knew, however, that if he quarrelled with the Parliament for treating

either peculators or Papists with severity, he should have little

support in England. He therefore looked out for a pretext, and was

fortunate enough to find one. The Commons had passed a vote which might

with some plausibility be represented as inconsistent with the

Poynings statute. Any thing which looked like a violation of that great

fundamental law was likely to excite strong disapprobation on the other

side of Saint George's Channel. The Viceroy saw his advantage, and

availed himself of it. He went to the chamber of the Lords at Chichester

House, sent for the Commons, reprimanded them in strong language,

charged them with undutifully and ungratefully encroaching on the rights

of the mother country, and put an end to the session. [404]

Those whom he had lectured withdrew full of resentment. The imputation

which he had thrown on them was unjust. They had a strong feeling of

love and reverence for the land from which they sprang, and looked with

confidence for redress to the supreme Parliament. Several of them went

to London for the purpose of vindicating themselves and of accusing the

Lord Lieutenant. They were favoured with a long and attentive audience,

both by the Lords and by the Commons, and were requested to put the

substance of what had been said into writing. The humble language of

the petitioners, and their protestations that they had never intended to

violate the Poynings statute, or to dispute the paramount authority of

England, effaced the impression which Sidney's accusations had made.

Both Houses addressed the King on the state of Ireland. They censured

no delinquent by name; but they expressed an opinion that there had been

gross maladministration, that the public had been plundered, and that

Roman Catholics had been treated with unjustifiable tenderness. William

in reply promised that what was amiss should be corrected. His friend

Sidney was soon recalled, and consoled for the loss of the viceregal

dignity with the lucrative place of Master of the Ordnance. The

government of Ireland was for a time entrusted to Lords justices, among

whom Sir Henry Capel, a zealous Whig, very little disposed to show

indulgence to Papists, had the foremost place.

The prorogation drew nigh; and still the fate of the Triennial Bill was

uncertain. Some of the ablest ministers thought the bill a good one;

and, even had they thought it a bad one, they would probably have tried

to dissuade their master from rejecting it. It was impossible, however,

to remove from his mind the impression that a concession on this point

would seriously impair his authority. Not relying on the judgment of his

ordinary advisers, he sent Portland to ask the opinion of Sir William

Temple. Temple had made a retreat for himself at a place called Moor

Park, in the neighbourhood of Farnham. The country round his dwelling

was almost a wilderness. His amusement during some years had been to

create in the waste what those Dutch burgomasters among whom he had

passed some of the best years of his life, would have considered as a

paradise. His hermitage had been occasionally honoured by the presence

of the King, who had from a boy known and esteemed the author of the

Triple Alliance, and who was well pleased to find, among the heath and

furze of the wilds of Surrey, a spot which seemed to be part of Holland,

a straight canal, a terrace, rows of clipped trees, and rectangular beds

of flowers and potherbs.

Portland now repaired to this secluded abode and consulted the oracle.

Temple was decidedly of opinion that the bill ought to pass. He was

apprehensive that the reasons which led him to form this opinion might

not be fully and correctly reported to the King by Portland, who was

indeed as brave a soldier and as trusty a friend as ever lived, whose

natural abilities were not inconsiderable, and who, in some departments

of business, had great experience, but who was very imperfectly

acquainted with the history and constitution of England. As the state

of Sir William's health made it impossible for him to go himself to

Kensington, he determined to send his secretary thither. The secretary

was a poor scholar of four or five and twenty, under whose plain garb

and ungainly deportment were concealed some of the choicest gifts that

have ever been bestowed on any of the children of men; rare powers of

observation, brilliant wit, grotesque invention, humour of the most

austere flavour, yet exquisitely delicious, eloquence singularly pure,

manly and perspicuous. This young man was named Jonathan Swift. He was

born in Ireland, but would have thought himself insulted if he had been

called an Irishman. He was of unmixed English blood, and, through life,

regarded the aboriginal population of the island in which he first drew

breath as an alien and a servile caste. He had in the late reign kept

terms at the University of Dublin, but had been distinguished there only

by his irregularities, and had with difficulty obtained his degree. At

the time of the Revolution, he had, with many thousands of his fellow

colonists, taken refuge in the mother country from the violence of

Tyrconnel, and had thought himself fortunate in being able to obtain

shelter at Moor Park. [405] For that shelter, however, he had to pay

a heavy price. He was thought to be sufficiently remunerated for his

services with twenty pounds a year and his board. He dined at the second

table. Sometimes, indeed, when better company was not to be had, he was

honoured by being invited to play at cards with his patron; and on such

occasions Sir William was so generous as to give his antagonist a little

silver to begin with. [406] The humble student would not have dared to

raise his eyes to a lady of family; but, when he had become a clergyman,

he began, after the fashion of the clergymen of that generation, to make

love to a pretty waitingmaid who was the chief ornament of the servants'

hall, and whose name is inseparably associated with his in a sad and

mysterious history.

Swift many years later confessed some part of what he felt when he found

himself on his way to Court. His spirit had been bowed down, and might

seem to have been broken, by calamities and humiliations. The language

which he was in the habit of holding to his patron, as far as we can

judge from the specimens which still remain, was that of a lacquey,

or rather of a beggar. [407] A sharp word or a cold look of the master

sufficed to make the servant miserable during several days. [408] But

this tameness was merely the tameness with which a tiger, caught, caged

and starved, submits to the keeper who brings him food. The humble

menial was at heart the haughtiest, the most aspiring, the most

vindictive, the most despotic of men. And now at length a great, a

boundless prospect was opening before him. To William he was already

slightly known. At Moor Park the King had sometimes, when his host was

confined by gout to an easy chair, been attended by the secretary about

the grounds. His Majesty had condescended to teach his companion the

Dutch way of cutting and eating asparagus, and had graciously asked

whether Mr. Swift would like to have a captain's commission in a cavalry

regiment. But now for the first time the young man was to stand in

the royal presence as a counsellor. He was admitted into the closet,

delivered a letter from Temple, and explained and enforced the arguments

which that letter contained, concisely, but doubtless with clearness and

ability. There was, he said, no reason to think that short Parliaments

would be more disposed than long Parliaments to encroach on the just

prerogatives of the Crown. In fact the Parliament which had, in the

preceding generation, waged war against a king, led him captive, sent

him to the prison, to the bar, to the scaffold, was known in our annals

as emphatically the Long Parliament. Never would such disasters have

befallen the monarchy but for the fatal law which secured that assembly

from dissolution. [409] There was, it must be owned, a flaw in this

reasoning which a man less shrewd than William might easily detect. That

one restriction of the royal prerogative had been mischievous did

not prove that another restriction would be salutary. It by no means

followed because one sovereign had been ruined by being unable to get

rid of a hostile Parliament that another sovereign might not be ruined

by being forced to part with a friendly Parliament. To the great

mortification of the ambassador, his arguments failed to shake the

King's resolution. On the fourteenth of March the Commons were summoned

to the Upper House; the title of the Triennial Bill was read; and it was

announced, after the ancient form, that the King and Queen would take

the matter into their consideration. The Parliament was then prorogued.

Soon after the prorogation William set out for the Continent. It was

necessary that, before his departure, he should make some important

changes. He was resolved not to discard Nottingham, on whose integrity,

a virtue rare among English statesmen, he placed a well founded

reliance. Yet, if Nottingham remained Secretary of State, it was

impossible to employ Russell at sea. Russell, though much mortified,

was induced to accept a lucrative post in the household; and two naval

officers of great note in their profession, Killegrew and Delaval, were

placed at the Board of Admiralty and entrusted with the command of the

Channel Fleet. [410] These arrangements caused much murmuring among the

Whigs; for Killegrew and Delaval were certainly Tories, and were by many

suspected of being Jacobites. But other promotions which took place at

the same time proved that the King wished to bear himself evenly between

the hostile factions. Nottingham had, during a year, been the sole

Secretary of State. He was now joined with a colleague in whose society

he must have felt himself very ill at ease, John Trenchard. Trenchard

belonged to the extreme section of the Whig party. He was a Taunton man,

animated by that spirit which had, during two generations, peculiarly

distinguished Taunton. He had, in the days of Popeburnings and of

Protestant flails, been one of the renowned Green Riband Club; he had

been an active member of several stormy Parliaments; he had brought

in the first Exclusion Bill; he had been deeply concerned in the plots

formed by the chiefs of the opposition; he had fled to the Continent;

he had been long an exile; and he had been excepted by name from the

general pardon of 1686. Though his life had been passed in turmoil, his

temper was naturally calm; but he was closely connected with a set of

men whose passions were far fiercer than his own. He had married the

sister of Hugh Speke, one of the falsest and most malignant of the

libellers who brought disgrace on the cause of constitutional freedom.

Aaron Smith, the solicitor of the Treasury, a man in whom the fanatic

and the pettifogger were strangely united, possessed too much influence

over the new Secretary, with whom he had, ten years before, discussed

plans of rebellion at the Rose. Why Trenchard was selected in preference

to many men of higher rank and greater ability for a post of the first

dignity and importance, it is difficult to say. It seems however that,

though he bore the title and drew the salary of Secretary of State, he

was not trusted with any of the graver secrets of State, and that he was

little more than a superintendent of police, charged to look after the

printers of unlicensed books, the pastors of nonjuring congregations,

and the haunters of treason taverns. [411]

Another Whig of far higher character was called at the same time to a

far higher place in the administration. The Great Seal had now been four

years in commission. Since Maynard's retirement, the constitution of

the Court of Chancery had commanded little respect. Trevor, who was the

First Commissioner, wanted neither parts nor learning; but his integrity

was with good reason suspected; and the duties which, as Speaker of the

House of Commons, he had to perform during four or five months in

the busiest part of every year, made it impossible for him to be an

efficient judge in equity. Every suitor complained that he had to wait

a most unreasonable time for a judgment, and that, when at length a

judgment had been pronounced, it was very likely to be reversed on

appeal. Meanwhile there was no efficient minister of justice, no great

functionary to whom it especially belonged to advise the King touching

the appointment of judges, of Counsel for the Crown, of Justices of the

Peace. [412] It was known that William was sensible of the inconvenience

of this state of things; and, during several months, there had been

flying rumours that a Lord Keeper or a Lord Chancellor would soon

be appointed. [413] The name most frequently mentioned was that of

Nottingham. But the same reasons which had prevented him from accepting

the Great Seal in 1689 had, since that year, rather gained than lost

strength. William at length fixed his choice on Somers.

Somers was only in his forty-second year; and five years had not elapsed

since, on the great day of the trial of the Bishops, his powers had

first been made known to the world. From that time his fame had been

steadily and rapidly rising. Neither in forensic nor in parliamentary

eloquence had he any superior. The consistency of his public conduct had

gained for him the entire confidence of the Whigs; and the urbanity

of his manners had conciliated the Tories. It was not without great

reluctance that he consented to quit an assembly over which he exercised

an immense influence for an assembly where it would be necessary for him

to sit in silence. He had been but a short time in great practice. His

savings were small. Not having the means of supporting a hereditary

title, he must, if he accepted the high dignity which was offered to

him, preside during some years in the Upper House without taking part in

the debates. The opinion of others, however, was that he would be more

useful as head of the law than as head of the Whig party in the Commons.

He was sent for to Kensington, and called into the Council Chamber.

Caermarthen spoke in the name of the King. "Sir John," he said, "it is

necessary for the public service that you should take this charge upon

you; and I have it in command from His Majesty to say that he can admit

of no excuse." Somers submitted. The seal was delivered to him, with a

patent which entitled him to a pension of two thousand a year from the

day on which he should quit his office; and he was immediately sworn in

a Privy Councillor and Lord Keeper. [414]

The Gazette which announced these changes in the administration,

announced also the King's departure. He set out for Holland on the

twenty-fourth of March.

He left orders that the Estates of Scotland should, after a recess of

more than two years and a half, be again called together. Hamilton, who

had lived many months in retirement, had, since the fall of Melville,

been reconciled to the Court, and now consented to quit his retreat,

and to occupy Holyrood House as Lord High Commissioner. It was

necessary that one of the Secretaries of State for Scotland should be

in attendance on the King. The Master of Stair had therefore gone to the

Continent. His colleague, Johnstone, was chief manager for the Crown at

Edinburgh, and was charged to correspond regularly with Carstairs, who

never quitted William. [415]

It might naturally have been expected that the session would be

turbulent. The Parliament was that very Parliament which had in 1689

passed, by overwhelming majorities, all the most violent resolutions

which Montgomery and his club could frame, which had refused supplies,

which had proscribed the ministers of the Crown, which had closed the

Courts of justice, which had seemed bent on turning Scotland into an

oligarchical republic. In 1690 the Estates had been in a better temper.

Yet, even in 1690, they had, when the ecclesiastical polity of the realm

was under consideration, paid little deference to what was well known to

be the royal wish. They had abolished patronage; they had sanctioned the

rabbling of the episcopal clergy; they had refused to pass a Toleration

Act. It seemed likely that they would still be found unmanageable when

questions touching religion came before them; and such questions it

was unfortunately necessary to bring forward. William had, during the

recess, attempted to persuade the General Assembly of the Church to

receive into communion such of the old curates as should subscribe the

Confession of Faith and should submit to the government of Synods. But

the attempt had failed; and the Assembly had consequently been dissolved

by the Lord Commissioner. Unhappily, the Act which established the

Presbyterian polity had not defined the extent of the power which was

to be exercised by the Sovereign over the Spiritual Courts. No sooner

therefore had the dissolution been announced than the Moderator

requested permission to speak. He was told that he was now merely

a private person. As a private person he requested a hearing, and

protested, in the name of his brethren, against the royal mandate.

The right, he said, of the office bearers of the Church to meet and

deliberate touching her interests was derived from her Divine Head,

and was not dependent on the pleasure of the temporal magistrate.

His brethren stood up, and by an approving murmur signified their

concurrence in what their President had said. Before they retired they

fixed a day for their next meeting. [416] It was indeed a very distant

day; and when it came neither minister nor elder attended; for even the

boldest members shrank from a complete rupture with the civil

power. But, though there was not open war between the Church and the

Government, they were estranged from each other, jealous of each

other, and afraid of each other. No progress had been made towards a

reconciliation when the Estates met; and which side the Estates would

take might well be doubted.

But the proceedings of this strange Parliament, in almost every one of

its sessions, falsified all the predictions of politicians. It had once

been the most unmanageable of senates. It was now the most obsequious.

Yet the old men had again met in the old hall. There were all the most

noisy agitators of the club, with the exception of Montgomery, who was

dying of want and of a broken heart in a garret far from his native

land. There was the canting Ross and the perfidious Annandale. There

was Sir Patrick Hume, lately created a peer, and henceforth to be

called Lord Polwarth, but still as eloquent as when his interminable

declamations and dissertations ruined the expedition of Argyle. But

the whole spirit of the assembly had undergone a change. The members

listened with profound respect to the royal letter, and returned an

answer in reverential and affectionate language. An extraordinary aid

of a hundred and fourteen thousand pounds sterling was granted to the

Crown. Severe laws were enacted against the Jacobites. The legislation

on ecclesiastical matters was as Erastian as William himself could have

desired. An Act was passed requiring all ministers of the Established

Church to swear fealty to their Majesties, and directing the General

Assembly to receive into communion those Episcopalian ministers, not

yet deprived, who should declare that they conformed to the Presbyterian

doctrine and discipline. [417] Nay, the Estates carried adulation so far

as to make it their humble request to the King that he would be pleased

to confer a Scotch peerage on his favourite Portland. This was

indeed their chief petition. They did not ask for redress of a single

grievance. They contented themselves with hinting in general terms that

there were abuses which required correction, and with referring the King

for fuller information to his own Ministers, the Lord High Commissioner

and the Secretary of State. [418]

There was one subject on which it may seem strange that even the most

servile of Scottish Parliaments should have kept silence. More than a

year had elapsed since the massacre of Glencoe; and it might have

been expected that the whole assembly, peers, commissioners of shires,

commissioners of burghs, would with one voice have demanded a strict

investigation into that great crime. It is certain, however, that no

motion for investigation was made. The state of the Gaelic clans was

indeed taken into consideration. A law was passed for the more effectual

suppressing of depredations and outrages beyond the Highland line; and

in that law was inserted a special proviso reserving to Mac Callum More

his hereditary jurisdiction. But it does not appear, either from the

public records of the proceedings of the Estates, or from those private

letters in which Johnstone regularly gave Carstairs an account of what

had passed, that any speaker made any allusion to the fate of Mac

Ian and his kinsmen. [419] The only explanation of this extraordinary

silence seems to be that the public men who were assembled in the

capital of Scotland knew little and cared little about the fate of a

thieving tribe of Celts. The injured clan, bowed down by fear of

the allpowerful Campbells, and little accustomed to resort to the

constituted authorities of the kingdom for protection or redress,

presented no petition to the Estates. The story of the butchery had

been told at coffeehouses, but had been told in different ways. Very

recently, one or two books, in which the facts were but too truly

related, had come forth from the secret presses of London. But those

books were not publicly exposed to sale. They bore the name of no

responsible author. The Jacobite writers were, as a class, savagely

malignant and utterly regardless of truth. Since the Macdonalds did

not complain, a prudent man might naturally be unwilling to incur the

displeasure of the King, of the ministers, and of the most powerful

family in Scotland, by bringing forward an accusation grounded on

nothing but reports wandering from mouth to mouth, or pamphlets which no

licenser had approved, to which no author had put his name, and which no

bookseller ventured to place in his shop-window. But whether this be

or be not the true solution, it is certain that the Estates separated

quietly after a session of two months, during which, as far as can

now be discovered, the name of Glencoe was not once uttered in the

Parliament House.