(October 1838)
_Memoirs of the Life, Works, and Correspondence of Sir William Temple. By
the Right Hon. THOMAS PEREGRINE COURTENAY. Two vols. 8vo. London: 1836._
MR. COURTENAY has long been well known to politicians as an industrious
and useful official man, and as an upright and consistent member of
Parliament. He has been one of the most moderate, and, at the same time,
one of the least pliant members of the Conservative party. His conduct
has, indeed, on some questions been so Whiggish, that both those who
applauded and those who condemned it have questioned his claim to be
considered as a Tory. But his Toryism, such as it is, he has held fast
through all changes of fortune and fashion; and he has at last retired
from public life, leaving behind him, to the best of our belief, no
personal enemy, and carrying with him the respect and goodwill of many
who strongly dissent from his opinions.
This book, the fruit of Mr. Courtenay’s leisure, is introduced by a
preface in which he informs us that the assistance furnished to him
from various quarters “has taught him the superiority of literature
to politics for developing the kindlier feelings, and conducing to
an agreeable life.” We are truly glad that Mr. Courtenay is so well
satisfied with his new employment, and we heartily congratulate him on
having been driven by events to make an exchange which, advantageous as
it is, few people make while they can avoid it. He has little reason,
in our opinion, to envy any of those who are still engaged in a pursuit
from which, at most, they can only expect that, by relinquishing liberal
studies and social pleasures, by passing nights without sleep and
summers without one glimpse of the beauty of nature, they may attain
that laborious, that invidious, that closely watched slavery which is
mocked with the name of power.
The volumes before us are fairly entitled to the praise of diligence,
care, good sense, and impartiality; and these qualities are sufficient
to make a book valuable, but not quite sufficient to make it readable.
Mr. Courtenay has not sufficiently studied the arts of selection and
compression. The information with which he furnishes us, must still, we
apprehend, be considered as so much raw material. To manufacturers it
will be highly useful; but it is not yet in such a form that it can be
enjoyed by the idle consumer. To drop metaphor, we are afraid that this
work will be less acceptable to those who read for the sake of reading,
than to those who read in order to write.
We cannot help adding, though we are extremely unwilling to quarrel
with Mr. Courtenay about politics, that the book would not be at all the
worse if it contained fewer snarls against the Whigs of the present day.
Not only are these passages out of place in a historical work, but some
of them are intrinsically such that they would become the editor of a
third-rate party newspaper better than a gentleman of Mr. Courtenay’s
talents and knowledge. For example, we are told that, “it is a
remarkable circumstance, familiar to those who are acquainted with
history, but suppressed by the new Whigs, that the liberal politicians
of the seventeenth century and the greater part of the eighteenth, never
extended their liberality to the native Irish, or the professors of
the ancient religion.” What schoolboy of fourteen is ignorant of this
remarkable circumstance? What Whig, new or old, was ever such an idiot
as to think that it could be suppressed? Really we might as well say
that it is a remarkable circumstance, familiar to people well read
in history, but carefully suppressed by the Clergy of the Established
Church, that in the fifteenth century England was in communion with
Rome. We are tempted to make some remarks on another passage, which
seems to be the peroration of a speech intended to have been spoken
against the Reform Bill: but we forbear.
We doubt whether it will be found that the memory of Sir William Temple
owes much to Mr. Courtenay’s researches. Temple is one of those men whom
the world has agreed to praise highly without knowing much about them,
and who are therefore more likely to lose than to gain by a close
examination. Yet he is not without fair pretensions to the most
honourable place among the statesmen of his time. A few of them equalled
or surpassed him in talents; but they were men of no good repute for
honesty. A few may be named whose patriotism was purer, nobler, and more
disinterested than his; but they were of no eminent ability. Morally, he
was above Shaftesbury; intellectually, he was above Russell.
To say of a man that he occupied a high position in times of
misgovernment, of corruption, of civil and religious faction, that
nevertheless he contracted no great stain and bore no part in any great
crime, that he won the esteem of a profligate Court and of a turbulent
people, without being guilty of any disgraceful subserviency to either,
seems to be very high praise; and all this may with truth be said of
Temple.
Yet Temple is not a man to our taste. A temper not naturally good, but
under strict command; a constant regard to decorum; a rare caution in
playing that mixed game of skill and hazard, human life; a disposition
to be content with small and certain winnings rather than to go on
doubling the stake; these seem to us to be the most remarkable features
of his character. This sort of moderation, when united, as in him it
was, with very considerable abilities, is, under ordinary circumstances,
scarcely to be distinguished from the highest and purest integrity, and
yet may be perfectly compatible with laxity of principle, with coldness
of heart, and with the most intense selfishness. Temple, we fear, had
not sufficient warmth and elevation of sentiment to deserve the name
of a virtuous man. He did not betray or oppress his country: nay, he
rendered considerable services to her; but he risked nothing for her. No
temptation which either the King or the Opposition could hold out ever
induced him to come forward as the supporter either of arbitrary or
of factious measures. But he was most careful not to give offence by
strenuously opposing such measures. He never put himself prominently
before the public eye, except at conjunctures when he was almost certain
to gain, and could not possibly lose, at conjunctures when the interest
of the State, the views of the Court, and the passions of the multitude,
all appeared for an instant to coincide. By judiciously availing himself
of several of these rare moments, he succeeded in establishing a high
character for wisdom and patriotism. When the favourable crisis was
passed, he never risked the reputation which he had won. He avoided the
great offices of State with a caution almost pusillanimous, and confined
himself to quiet and secluded departments of public business, in which
he could enjoy moderate but certain advantages without incurring envy.
If the circumstances of the country became such that it was impossible
to take any part in politics without some danger, he retired to his
library and his orchard, and, while the nation groaned under oppression,
or resounded with tumult and with the din of civil arms, amused himself
by writing memoirs and tying up apricots. His political career bore some
resemblance to the military career of Lewis the Fourteenth. Lewis, lest
his royal dignity should be compromised by failure, never repaired to a
siege, till it had been reported to him by the most skilful officers in
his service, that nothing could prevent the fall of the place. When this
was ascertained, the monarch, in his helmet and cuirass, appeared among
the tents, held councils of war, dictated the capitulation, received the
keys, and then returned to Versailles to hear his flatterers repeat
that Turenne had been beaten at Mariendal, that Conde had been forced
to raise the siege of Arras, and that the only warrior whose glory had
never been obscured by a single check was Lewis the Great. Yet Conde and
Turenne will always be considered as captains of a very different order
from the invincible Lewis; and we must own that many statesmen who have
committed great faults, appear to us to be deserving of more esteem than
the faultless Temple. For in truth his faultlessness is chiefly to
be ascribed to his extreme dread of all responsibility, to his
determination rather to leave his country in a scrape than to run any
chance of being in a scrape himself. He seems to have been averse from
danger; and it must be admitted that the dangers to which a public man
was exposed, in those days of conflicting tyranny and sedition, were of
a most serious kind. He could not bear discomfort, bodily or mental. His
lamentations, when in the course of his diplomatic journeys he was put
a little out of his way, and forced, in the vulgar phrase, to rough it,
are quite amusing. He talks of riding a day or two on a bad Westphalian
road, of sleeping on straw for one night, of travelling in winter when
the snow lay on the ground, as if he had gone on an expedition to the
North Pole or to the source of the Nile. This kind of valetudinarian
effeminacy, this habit of coddling himself, appears in all parts of his
conduct. He loved fame, but not with the love of an exalted and generous
mind. He loved it as an end, not at all as a means; as a personal
luxury, not at all as an instrument of advantage to others. He scraped
it together and treasured it up with a timid and niggardly thrift; and
never employed the hoard in any enterprise, however virtuous and useful,
in which there was hazard of losing one particle. No wonder if such a
person did little or nothing which deserves positive blame. But much
more than this may justly be demanded of a man possessed of such
abilities, and placed in such a situation. Had Temple been brought
before Dante’s infernal tribunal, he would not have been condemned to
the deeper recesses of the abyss. He would not have been boiled with
Dundee in the crimson pool of Bulicame, or hurled with Danby into the
seething pitch of Malebolge, or congealed with Churchill in the eternal
ice of Giudecca; but he would perhaps have been placed in the dark
vestibule next to the shade of that inglorious pontiff
“Che fece per viltate il gran rifiuto.”
Of course a man is not bound to be a politician any more than he is
bound to be a soldier; and there are perfectly honourable ways of
quitting both politics and the military profession. But neither in the
one way of life, nor in the other, is any man entitled to take all the
sweet and leave all the sour. A man who belongs to the army only in time
of peace, who appears at reviews in Hyde Park, escorts the Sovereign
with the utmost valour and fidelity to and from the House of Lords,
and retires as soon as he thinks it likely that he may be ordered on an
expedition, is justly thought to have disgraced himself. Some portion of
the censure due to, such a holiday-soldier may justly fall on the mere
holiday-politician, who flinches from his duties as soon as those
duties become difficult and disagreeable, that is to say, as soon as it
becomes peculiarly important that he should resolutely perform them.
But though we are far indeed from considering Temple as a perfect
statesman, though we place him below many statesmen who have committed
very great errors, we cannot deny that, when compared with his
contemporaries, he makes a highly respectable appearance. The reaction
which followed the victory of the popular party over Charles the First,
had produced a hurtful effect on the national character; and this effect
was most discernible in the classes and in the places which had been
most strongly excited by the recent revolution. The deterioration was
greater in London than in the country, and was greatest of all in the
courtly and official circles. Almost all that remained of what had been
good and noble in the Cavaliers and Roundheads of 1642, was now to be
found in the middling orders. The principles and feelings which prompted
the Grand Remonstrance were still strong among the sturdy yeomen, and
the decent God-fearing merchants. The spirit of Derby and Capel still
glowed in many sequestered manor-houses; but among those political
leaders who, at the time of the Restoration, were still young or in the
vigour of manhood, there was neither a Southampton nor a Vane, neither
a Falkland nor a Hampden. The pure, fervent, and constant loyalty which,
in the preceding reign, had remained unshaken on fields of disastrous
battle, in foreign garrets and cellars, and at the bar of the High Court
of Justice, was scarcely to be found among the rising courtiers. As
little, or still less, could the new chiefs of parties lay claim to the
great qualities of the statesmen who had stood at the head of the Long
Parliament. Hampden, Pym, Vane, Cromwell, are discriminated from the
ablest politicians of the succeeding generation, by all the strong
lineaments which distinguish the men who produce revolutions from the
men whom revolutions produce. The leader in a great change, the man who
stirs up a reposing community, and overthrows a deeply-rooted system,
may be a very depraved man; but he can scarcely be destitute of some
moral qualities, which extort even from enemies a reluctant admiration,
fixedness of purpose, intensity of will, enthusiasm, which is not the
less fierce or persevering because it is sometimes disguised under the
semblance of composure, and which bears down before it the force of
circumstances and the opposition of reluctant minds. These qualities,
variously combined with all sorts of virtues and vices, may be found, we
think, in most of the authors of great civil and religious movements,
in Caesar, in Mahomet, in Hildebrand, in Dominic, in Luther, in
Robespierre; and these qualities were found, in no scanty measure, among
the chiefs of the party which opposed Charles the First. The character
of the men whose minds are formed in the midst of the confusion which
follows a great revolution is generally very different. Heat, the
natural philosophers tell us, produces rarefaction of the air; and
rarefaction of the air produces cold. So zeal makes revolutions; and
revolutions make men zealous for nothing. The politicians of whom we
speak, whatever may be their natural capacity or courage, are almost
always characterised by a peculiar levity, a peculiar inconstancy,
an easy, apathetic way of looking at the most solemn questions, a
willingness to leave the direction of their course to fortune and
popular opinion, a notion that one public cause is nearly as good as
another, and a firm conviction that it is much better to be the hireling
of the worst cause than to be a martyr to the best.
This was most strikingly the case with the English statesmen of
the generation which followed the Restoration. They had neither the
enthusiasm of the Cavalier nor the enthusiasm of the Republican. They
had been early emancipated from the dominion of old usages and feelings;
yet they had not acquired a strong passion for innovation. Accustomed to
see old establishments shaking, falling, lying in ruins all around them,
accustomed to live under a succession of constitutions of which
the average duration was about a twelvemonth, they had no religious
reverence for prescription, nothing of that frame of mind which
naturally springs from the habitual contemplation of immemorial
antiquity and immovable stability. Accustomed, on the other hand, to
see change after change welcomed with eager hope and ending in
disappointment, to see shame and confusion of face follow the
extravagant hopes and predictions of rash and fanatical innovators, they
had learned to look on professions of public spirit, and on schemes of
reform, with distrust and contempt. They sometimes talked the language
of devoted subjects, sometimes that of ardent lovers of their country.
But their secret creed seems to have been, that loyalty was one
great delusion and patriotism another. If they really entertained
any predilection for the monarchical or for the popular part of the
constitution, for episcopacy or for presbyterianism, that predilection
was feeble and languid, and instead of overcoming, as in the times of
their fathers, the dread of exile, confiscation, and death, was rarely
of power to resist the slightest impulse of selfish ambition or of
selfish fear. Such was the texture of the presbyterianism of Lauderdale,
and of the speculative republicanism of Halifax. The sense of political
honour seemed to be extinct. With the great mass of mankind, the test
of integrity in a public man is consistency. This test, though very
defective, is perhaps the best that any, except very acute or very near
observers, are capable of applying; and does undoubtedly enable the
people to form an estimate of the characters of the great, which on the
whole approximates to correctness. But during the latter part of the
seventeenth century, inconsistency had necessarily ceased to be a
disgrace; and a man was no more taunted with it, than he is taunted with
being black at Timbuctoo. Nobody was ashamed of avowing what was common
between him and the whole nation. In the short space of about seven
years, the supreme power had been held by the Long Parliament, by a
Council of Officers, by Barebones’ Parliament, by a Council of Officers
again, by a Protector according to the Instrument of Government, by
a Protector according to the Humble Petition and Advice, by the Long
Parliament again, by a third Council of Officers, by the Long Parliament
a third time, by the Convention, and by the King. In such times,
consistency is so inconvenient to a man who affects it, and to all who
are connected with him, that it ceases to be regarded as a virtue, and
is considered as impracticable obstinacy and idle scrupulosity. Indeed,
in such times, a good citizen may be bound in duty to serve a succession
of Governments. Blake did so in one profession, and Hale in another; and
the conduct of both has been approved by posterity. But it is clear that
when inconsistency with respect to the most important public questions
has ceased to be a reproach, inconsistency with respect to questions
of minor importance is not likely to be regarded as dishonourable. In a
country in which many very honest people had, within the space of a few
months, supported the government of the Protector, that of the Rump, and
that of the King, a man was not likely to be ashamed of abandoning his
party for a place, or of voting for a bill which he had opposed.
The public men of the times which followed the Restoration were by no
means deficient in courage or ability; and some kinds of talent appear
to have been developed amongst them to a remarkable, we might almost
say, to a morbid and unnatural degree. Neither Theramenes in ancient,
nor Talleyrand in modern times, had a finer perception of all the
peculiarities of character, and of all the indications of coming change,
than some of our countrymen in that age. Their power of reading
things of high import, in signs which to others were invisible or
unintelligible, resembled magic. But the curse of Reuben was upon them
all: “Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel.”
This character is susceptible of innumerable modifications, according
to the innumerable varieties of intellect and temper in which it may be
found. Men of unquiet minds and violent ambition followed a fearfully
eccentric course, darted wildly from one extreme to another, served
and betrayed all parties in turn, showed their unblushing foreheads
alternately in the van of the most corrupt administrations and of the
most factious oppositions, were privy to the most guilty mysteries,
first of the Cabal, and then of the Rye-House Plot, abjured their
religion to win their sovereign’s favour while they were secretly
planning his overthrow, shrived themselves to Jesuits, with letters in
cypher from the Prince of Orange in their pockets, corresponded with
the Hague whilst in office under James, and began to correspond with St.
Germain’s as soon as they had kissed hands for office under William. But
Temple was not one of these. He was not destitute of ambition. But his
was not one of those souls in which unsatisfied ambition anticipates the
tortures of hell, gnaws like the worm which dieth not, and burns like
the fire which is not quenched. His principle was to make sure of safety
and comfort, and to let greatness come if it would. It came: he enjoyed
it: and, in the very first moment in which it could no longer be enjoyed
without danger and vexation, he contentedly let it go. He was not
exempt, we think, from the prevailing political immorality. His mind
took the contagion, but took it ad modum recipientis, in a form so mild
that an undiscerning judge might doubt whether it were indeed the same
fierce pestilence that was raging all around. The malady partook of the
constitutional languor of the patient. The general corruption, mitigated
by his calm and unadventurous temperament, showed itself in omissions
and desertions, not in positive crimes; and his inactivity, though
sometimes timorous and selfish, becomes respectable when compared
with the malevolent and perfidious restlessness of Shaftesbury and
Sunderland.
Temple sprang from a family which, though ancient and honourable, had,
before his time, been scarcely mentioned in our history, but which,
long after his death, produced so many eminent men, and formed
such distinguished alliances, that it exercised, in a regular and
constitutional manner, an influence in the state scarcely inferior to
that which, in widely different times, and by widely different arts, the
house of Neville attained in England, and that of Douglas in Scotland.
During the latter years of George the Second, and through the whole
reign of George the Third, members of that widely spread and powerful
connection were almost constantly at the head either of the Government
or of the Opposition. There were times when the cousinhood, as it was
once nicknamed, would of itself have furnished almost all the materials
necessary for the construction of an efficient Cabinet. Within the space
of fifty years, three First Lords of the Treasury, three Secretaries
of State, two Keepers of the Privy Seal, and four First Lords of the
Admiralty were appointed from among the sons and grandsons of the
Countess Temple.
So splendid have been the fortunes of the main stock of the Temple
family, continued by female succession. William Temple, the first of
the line who attained to any great historical eminence, was of a younger
branch. His father, Sir John Temple, was Master of the Rolls in Ireland,
and distinguished himself among the Privy Councillors of that kingdom
by the zeal with which, at the commencement of the struggle between the
Crown and the Long Parliament, he supported the popular cause. He was
arrested by order of the Duke of Ormond, but regained his liberty by an
exchange, repaired to England, and there sate in the House of Commons as
burgess for Chichester. He attached himself to the Presbyterian party,
and was one of those moderate members who, at the close of the year
1648, voted for treating with Charles on the basis to which that Prince
had himself agreed, and who were, in consequence, turned out of the
House, with small ceremony, by Colonel Pride. Sir John seems, however,
to have made his peace with the victorious Independents; for, in 1653,
he resumed his office in Ireland.
Sir John Temple was married to a sister of the celebrated Henry Hammond,
a learned and pious divine, who took the side of the King with
very conspicuous zeal during the Civil War, and was deprived of his
preferment in the church after the victory of the Parliament. On account
of the loss which Hammond sustained on this occasion, he has the honour
of being designated, in the cant of that new brood of Oxonian sectaries
who unite the worst parts of the Jesuit to the worst parts of the
Orangeman, as Hammond, Presbyter, Doctor, and Confessor.
William Temple, Sir John’s eldest son, was born in London in the year
1628. He received his early education under his maternal uncle, was
subsequently sent to school at Bishop-Stortford, and, at seventeen,
began to reside at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where the celebrated
Cudworth was his tutor. The times were not favourable to study. The
Civil War disturbed even the quiet cloisters and bowling-greens of
Cambridge, produced violent revolutions in the government and discipline
of the colleges, and unsettled the minds of the students. Temple
forgot at Emmanuel all the little Greek which he had brought from
Bishop-Stortford, and never retrieved the loss; a circumstance which
would hardly be worth noticing but for the almost incredible fact that,
fifty years later, he was so absurd as to set up his own authority
against that of Bentley on questions of Greek history and philology. He
made no proficiency either in the old philosophy which still lingered in
the schools of Cambridge, or in the new philosophy of which Lord Bacon
was the founder. But to the end of his life he continued to speak of the
former with ignorant admiration, and of the latter with equally ignorant
contempt.
After residing at Cambridge two years, he departed without taking a
degree, and set out upon his travels. He seems to have been then a
lively, agreeable young man of fashion, not by any means deeply read,
but versed in all the superficial accomplishments of a gentleman, and
acceptable in all polite societies. In politics he professed himself a
Royalist. His opinions on religious subjects seem to have been such as
might be expected from a young man of quick parts, who had received a
rambling education, who had not thought deeply, who had been disgusted
by the morose austerity of the Puritans, and who, surrounded from
childhood by the hubbub of conflicting sects, might easily learn to feel
an impartial contempt for them all.
On his road to France he fell in with the son and daughter of Sir Peter
Osborne. Sir Peter held Guernsey for the King, and the young people
were, like their father, warm for the royal cause. At an inn where they
stopped in the Isle of Wight, the brother amused himself with inscribing
on the windows his opinion of the ruling powers. For this instance
of malignancy the whole party were arrested, and brought before the
governor. The sister, trusting to the tenderness which, even in those
troubled times, scarcely any gentleman of any party ever failed to
show where a woman was concerned, took the crime on herself, and was
immediately set at liberty with her fellow-travellers.
This incident, as was natural, made a deep impression on Temple. He was
only twenty. Dorothy Osborne was twenty-one. She is said to have been
handsome; and there remains abundant proof that she possessed an ample
share of the dexterity, the vivacity, and the tenderness of her sex.
Temple soon became, in the phrase of that time, her servant, and she
returned his regard. But difficulties, as great as ever expanded a novel
to the fifth volume, opposed their wishes. When the courtship commenced,
the father of the hero was sitting in the Long Parliament; the father of
the heroine was commanding in Guernsey for King Charles. Even when the
war ended, and Sir Peter Osborne returned to his seat at Chicksands, the
prospects of the lovers were scarcely less gloomy. Sir John Temple had
a more advantageous alliance in view for his son. Dorothy Osborne was in
the meantime besieged by as many suitors as were drawn to Belmont by the
fame of Portia. The most distinguished on the list was Henry Cromwell.
Destitute of the capacity, the energy, the magnanimity of his
illustrious father, destitute also of the meek and placid virtues of
his elder brother, this young man was perhaps a more formidable rival in
love than either of them would have been. Mrs. Hutchinson, speaking the
sentiments of the grave and aged, describes him as an “insolent foole,”
and a “debauched ungodly cavalier.” These expressions probably mean that
he was one who, among young and dissipated people, would pass for a fine
gentleman. Dorothy was fond of dogs of larger and more formidable breed
than those which lie on modern hearth-rugs; and Henry Cromwell promised
that the highest functionaries at Dublin should be set to work
to procure her a fine Irish greyhound. She seems to have felt his
attentions as very flattering, though his father was then only
Lord-General, and not yet Protector. Love, however, triumphed over
ambition, and the young lady appears never to have regretted her
decision; though, in a letter written just at the time when all England
was ringing with the news of the violent dissolution of the Long
Parliament, she could not refrain from reminding Temple, with pardonable
vanity, “how great she might have been, if she had been so wise as to
have taken hold of the offer of H. C.”
Nor was it only the influence of rivals that Temple had to dread. The
relations of his mistress regarded him with personal dislike, and spoke
of him as an unprincipled adventurer, without honour or religion, ready
to render service to any party for the sake of preferment. This is,
indeed, a very distorted view of Temple’s character. Yet a character,
even in the most distorted view taken of it by the most angry and
prejudiced minds, generally retains something of its outline. No
caricaturist ever represented Mr. Pitt as a Falstaff, or Mr. Fox as a
skeleton; nor did any libeller ever impute parsimony to Sheridan, or
profusion to Marlborough. It must be allowed that the turn of mind
which the eulogists of Temple have dignified with the appellation of
philosophical indifference, and which, however becoming it may be in an
old and experienced statesman, has a somewhat ungraceful appearance in
youth, might easily appear shocking to a family who were ready to
fight or to suffer martyrdom for their exiled King and their persecuted
church. The poor girl was exceedingly hurt and irritated by these
imputations on her lover, defended him warmly behind his back, and
addressed to himself some very tender and anxious admonitions, mingled
with assurances of her confidence in his honour and virtue. On one
occasion she was most highly provoked by the way in which one of her
brothers spoke of Temple. “We talked ourselves weary,” she says; “he
renounced me, and I defied him.”
Near seven years did this arduous wooing continue. We are not accurately
informed respecting Temple’s movements during that time. But he seems
to have led a rambling life, sometimes on the Continent, sometimes in
Ireland, sometimes in London. He made himself master of the French and
Spanish languages, and amused himself by writing essays and romances, an
employment which at least served the purpose of forming his style. The
specimen which Mr. Courtenay has preserved of these early compositions
is by no means contemptible: indeed, there is one passage on Like
and Dislike which could have been produced only by a mind habituated
carefully to reflect on its own operations, and which reminds us of the
best things in Montaigne.
Temple appears to have kept up a very active correspondence with his
mistress. His letters are lost, but hers have been preserved; and many
of them appear in these volumes. Mr. Courtenay expresses some doubt
whether his readers will think him justified in inserting so large a
number of these epistles. We only wish that there were twice as many.
Very little indeed of the diplomatic correspondence of that generation
is so well worth reading. There is a vile phrase of which bad historians
are exceedingly fond, “the dignity of history.” One writer is in
possession of some anecdotes which would illustrate most strikingly the
operation of the Mississippi scheme on the manners and morals of the
Parisians. But he suppresses those anecdotes, because they are too low
for the dignity of history. Another is strongly tempted to mention
some facts indicating the horrible state of the prisons of England two
hundred years ago. But he hardly thinks that the sufferings of a dozen
felons, pigging together on bare bricks in a hole fifteen feet square,
would form a subject suited to the dignity of history. Another, from
respect for the dignity of history, publishes an account of the reign
of George the Second, without ever mentioning Whitefield’s preaching
in Moorfields. How should a writer, who can talk about senates, and
congresses of sovereigns, and pragmatic sanctions, and ravelines, and
counterscarps, and battles where ten thousand men are killed, and six
thousand men with fifty stand of colours and eighty guns taken, stoop to
the Stock Exchange, to Newgate, to the theatre, to the tabernacle?
Tragedy has its dignity as well as history; and how much the tragic art
has owed to that dignity any man may judge who will compare the majestic
Alexandrines in which the Seigneur Oreste and Madame Andromaque utter
their complaints, with the chattering of the fool in Lear and of the
nurse in Romeo and Juliet.
That a historian should not record trifles, that he should confine
himself to what is important, is perfectly true. But many writers seem
never to have considered on what the historical importance of an event
depends. They seem not to be aware that the importance of a fact, when
that fact is considered with reference to its immediate effects, and the
importance of the same fact, when that fact is considered as part of
the materials for the construction of a science, are two very different
things. The quantity of good or evil which a transaction produces is by
no means necessarily proportioned to the quantity of light which that
transaction affords, as to the way in which good or evil may hereafter
be produced. The poisoning of an emperor is in one sense a far more
serious matter than the poisoning of a rat. But the poisoning of a
rat may be an era in chemistry; and an emperor may be poisoned by such
ordinary means, and with such ordinary symptoms, that no scientific
journal would notice the occurrence. An action for a hundred thousand
pounds is in one sense a more momentous affair than an action for fifty
pounds. But it by no means follows that the learned gentlemen who report
the proceedings of the courts of law ought to give a fuller account of
an action for a hundred thousand pounds, than of an action for fifty
pounds. For a cause in which a large sum is at stake may be important
only to the particular plaintiff and the particular defendant. A cause,
on the other hand, in which a small sum is at stake, may establish some
great principle interesting to half the families in the kingdom. The
case is exactly the same with that class of subjects of which historians
treat. To an Athenian, in the time of the Peloponnesian war, the result
of the battle of Delium was far more important than the fate of the
comedy of The Knights. But to us the fact that the comedy of The Knights
was brought on the Athenian stage with success is far more important
than the fact that the Athenian phalanx gave way at Delium. Neither the
one event nor the other has now any intrinsic importance. We are in
no danger of being speared by the Thebans. We are not quizzed in The
Knights. To us the importance of both events consists in the value of
the general truth which is to be learned from them. What general truth
do we learn from the accounts which have come down to us of the battle
of Delium? Very little more than this, that when two armies fight, it
is not improbable that one of them will be very soundly beaten, a truth
which it would not, we apprehend, be difficult to establish, even if
all memory of the battle of Delium were lost among men. But a man who
becomes acquainted with the comedy of The Knights, and with the history
of that comedy, at once feels his mind enlarged. Society is presented to
him under a new aspect. He may have read and travelled much. He may have
visited all the countries of Europe, and the civilised nations of the
East. He may have observed the manners of many barbarous races. But here
is something altogether different from everything which he has seen,
either among polished men or among savages. Here is a community
politically, intellectually, and morally unlike any other community
of which he has the means of forming an opinion. This is the really
precious part of history, the corn which some threshers carefully sever
from the chaff, for the purpose of gathering the chaff into the garner,
and flinging the corn into the fire.
Thinking thus, we are glad to learn so much, and would willingly
learn more, about the loves of Sir William and his mistress. In the
seventeenth century, to be sure, Lewis the Fourteenth was a much more
important person than Temple’s sweetheart. But death and time equalise
all things. Neither the great King, nor the beauty of Bedfordshire,
neither the gorgeous paradise of Marli nor Mistress Osborne’s favourite
walk “in the common that lay hard by the house, where a great many young
wenches used to keep sheep and cows and sit in the shade singing
of ballads,” is anything to us. Lewis and Dorothy are alike dust. A
cotton-mill stands on the ruins of Marli; and the Osbornes have ceased
to dwell under the ancient roof of Chicksands. But of that information
for the sake of which alone it is worth while to study remote events, we
find so much in the love letters which Mr. Courtenay has published,
that we would gladly purchase equally interesting billets with ten times
their weight in state-papers taken at random. To us surely it is as
useful to know how the young ladies of England employed themselves a
hundred and eighty years ago, how far their minds were cultivated, what
were their favourite studies, what degree of liberty was allowed to
them, what use they made of that liberty, what accomplishments they most
valued in men, and what proofs of tenderness delicacy permitted them to
give to favoured suitors, as to know all about the seizure of Franche
Comté and the treaty of Nimeguen. The mutual relations of the two sexes
seem to us to be at least as important as the mutual relations of any
two governments in the world; and a series of letters written by a
virtuous, amiable, and sensible girl, and intended for the eye of her
lover alone, can scarcely fail to throw some light on the relations of
the sexes; whereas it is perfectly possible, as all who have made any
historical researches can attest, to read bale after bale of despatches
and protocols, without catching one glimpse of light about the relations
of governments.
Mr. Courtenay proclaims that he is one of Dorothy Osborne’s devoted
servants, and expresses a hope that the publication of her letters will
add to the number. We must declare ourselves his rivals. She really
seems to have been a very charming young woman, modest, generous,
affectionate, intelligent, and sprightly; a royalist, as was to be
expected from her connections, without any of that political asperity
which is as unwomanly as a long beard; religious, and occasionally
gliding into a very pretty and endearing sort of preaching, yet not
too good to partake of such diversions as London afforded under the
melancholy rule of the Puritans, or to giggle a little at a ridiculous
sermon from a divine who was thought to be one of the great lights of
the Assembly at Westminster; with a little turn of coquetry, which was
yet perfectly compatible with warm and disinterested attachment, and
a little turn for satire, which yet seldom passed the bounds of
good-nature. She loved reading; but her studies were not those of Queen
Elizabeth and Lady Jane Grey. She read the verses of Cowley and Lord
Broghill, French Memoirs recommended by her lover, and the Travels of
Fernando Mendez Pinto. But her favourite books were those ponderous
French romances which modern readers know chiefly from the pleasant
satire of Charlotte Lennox. She could not, however, help laughing at
the vile English into which they were translated. Her own style is very
agreeable; nor are her letters at all the worse for some passages in
which raillery and tenderness are mixed in a very engaging namby-pamby.
When at last the constancy of the lovers had triumphed over all the
obstacles which kinsmen and rivals could oppose to their union, a yet
more serious calamity befell them. Poor Mistress Osborne fell ill of the
small-pox, and, though she escaped with life, lost all her beauty. To
this most severe trial the affection and honour of the lovers of that
age was not unfrequently subjected. Our readers probably remember what
Mrs. Hutchinson tells of herself. The lofty Cornelia-like spirit of
the aged matron seems to melt into a long-forgotten softness when she
relates how her beloved Colonel “married her as soon as she was able to
quit the chamber, when the priest and all that saw her were affrighted
to look on her. But God,” she adds, with a not ungraceful vanity,
“recompensed his justice and constancy, by restoring her as well as
before.” Temple showed on this occasion the same justice and constancy
which did so much honour to Colonel Hutchinson. The date of the marriage
is not exactly known. But Mr. Courtenay supposes it to have taken place
about the end of the year 1654. From this time we lose sight of Dorothy,
and are reduced to form our opinion of the terms on which she and her
husband were from very slight indications which may easily mislead us.
Temple soon went to Ireland, and resided with his father, partly at
Dublin, partly in the county of Carlow. Ireland was probably then a more
agreeable residence for the higher classes, as compared with England,
than it has ever been before or since. In no part of the empire were the
superiority of Cromwell’s abilities and the force of his character
so signally displayed. He had not the power, and probably had not the
inclination, to govern that island in the best way. The rebellion of the
aboriginal race had excited in England a strong religious and national
aversion to them; nor is there any reason to believe that the Protector
was so far beyond his age as to be free from the prevailing sentiment.
He had vanquished them; he knew that they were in his power; and
he regarded them as a band of malefactors and idolaters, who were
mercifully treated if they were not smitten with the edge of the sword.
On those who resisted he had made war as the Hebrews made war on the
Canaanites. Drogheda was as Jericho; and Wexford as Ai. To the remains
of the old population the conqueror granted a peace, such as that
which Israel granted to the Gibeonites. He made them hewers of wood
and drawers of water. But, good or bad, he could not be otherwise than
great. Under favourable circumstances, Ireland would have found in him
a most just and beneficent ruler. She found in him a tyrant; not a small
teasing tyrant, such as those who have so long been her curse and her
shame, but one of those awful tyrants who, at long intervals, seem to
be sent on earth, like avenging angels, with some high commission of
destruction and renovation. He was no man of half measures, of mean
affronts and ungracious concessions. His Protestant ascendency was not
an ascendency of ribands, and fiddles, and statues, and processions. He
would never have dreamed of abolishing the penal code and withholding
from Catholics the elective franchise, of giving them the elective
franchise and excluding them from Parliament, of admitting them to
Parliament, and refusing to them a full and equal participation in all
the blessings of society and government. The thing most alien from his
clear intellect and his commanding spirit was petty persecution. He
knew how to tolerate; and he knew how to destroy. His administration in
Ireland was an administration on what are now called Orange principles,
followed out most ably, most steadily, most undauntedly, most
unrelentingly, to every extreme consequence to which those principles
lead; and it would, if continued, inevitably have produced the effect
which he contemplated, an entire decomposition and reconstruction of
society. He had a great and definite object in view, to make Ireland
thoroughly English, to make Ireland another Yorkshire or Norfolk. Thinly
peopled as Ireland then was, this end was not unattainable; and there
is every reason to believe that, if his policy had been followed
during fifty years, this end would have been attained. Instead of an
emigration, such as we now see from Ireland to England, there was, under
his government, a constant and large emigration from England to Ireland.
This tide of population ran almost as strongly as that which now runs
from Massachusetts and Connecticut to the states behind the Ohio. The
native race was driven back before the advancing van of the Anglo-Saxon
population, as the American Indians or the tribes of Southern Africa
are now driven back before the white settlers. Those fearful phaenomena
which have almost invariably attended the planting of civilised colonies
in uncivilised countries, and which had been known to the nations
of Europe only by distant and questionable rumour, were now publicly
exhibited in their sight. The words “extirpation,” “eradication,”
were often in the mouths of the English back-settlers of Leinster and
Munster, cruel words, yet, in their cruelty, containing more mercy than
much softer expressions which have since been sanctioned by universities
and cheered by Parliaments. For it is in truth more merciful to
extirpate a hundred thousand human beings at once and to fill the void
with a well-governed population, than to misgovern millions through
a long succession of generations. We can much more easily pardon
tremendous severities inflicted for a great object, than an endless
series of paltry vexations and oppressions inflicted for no rational
object at all.
Ireland was fast becoming English. Civilisation and wealth were making
rapid progress in almost every part of the island. The effects of
that iron despotism are described to us by a hostile witness in very
remarkable language. “Which is more wonderful,” says Lord Clarendon,
“all this was done and settled within little more than two years, to
that degree of perfection that there were many buildings raised for
beauty as well as use, orderly and regular plantations of trees, and
fences and inclosures raised throughout the kingdom, purchases made
by one from another at very valuable rates, and jointures made upon
marriages, and all other conveyances and settlements executed, as in a
kingdom at peace within itself, and where no doubt could be made of the
validity of titles.”
All Temple’s feelings about Irish questions were those of a colonist and
a member of the dominant caste. He troubled himself as little about
the welfare of the remains of the old Celtic population, as an English
farmer on the Swan River troubles himself about the New Hollanders, or
a Dutch boor at the Cape about the Caffres. The years which he passed in
Ireland, while the Cromwellian system was in full operation, he always
described as “years of great satisfaction.” Farming, gardening, county
business, and studies rather entertaining than profound, occupied his
time. In politics he took no part, and many years later he attributed
this inaction to his love of the ancient constitution, which, he said,
“would not suffer him to enter into public affairs till the way was
plain for the King’s happy restoration.” It does not appear, indeed,
that any offer of employment was made to him. If he really did refuse
any preferment, we may, without much breach of charity, attribute the
refusal rather to the caution which, during his whole life, prevented
him from running any risk, than to the fervour of his loyalty.
In 1660 he made his first appearance in public life. He sat in the
convention which, in the midst of the general confusion that preceded
the Restoration, was summoned by the chiefs of the army of Ireland
to meet in Dublin. After the King’s return an Irish parliament was
regularly convoked, in which Temple represented the county of Carlow.
The details of his conduct in this situation are not known to us. But we
are told in general terms, and can easily believe, that he showed great
moderation, and great aptitude for business. It is probable that he also
distinguished himself in debate; for many years afterwards he remarked
that “his friends in Ireland used to think that, if he had any talent at
all, it lay in that way.”
In May, 1663, the Irish parliament was prorogued, and Temple repaired to
England with his wife. His income amounted to about five hundred pounds
a-year, a sum which was then sufficient for the wants of a family mixing
in fashionable circles, He passed two years in London, where he seems to
have led that easy, lounging life which was best suited to his temper.
He was not, however, unmindful of his interest. He had brought with him
letters of introduction from the Duke of Ormond, then Lord-Lieutenant
of Ireland, to Clarendon, and to Henry Bennet, Lord Arlington, who was
Secretary of State. Clarendon was at the head of affairs. But his power
was visibly declining, and was certain to decline more and more every
day. An observer much less discerning than Temple might easily perceive
that the Chancellor was a man who belonged to a by-gone world, a
representative of a past age, of obsolete modes of thinking, of
unfashionable vices, and of more unfashionable virtues. His long exile
had made him a stranger in the country of his birth. His mind, heated by
conflict and by personal suffering, was far more set against popular and
tolerant courses than it had been at the time of the breaking out of the
civil war. He pined for the decorous tyranny of the old Whitehall; for
the days of that sainted king who deprived his people of their money and
their ears, but let their wives and daughters alone; and could scarcely
reconcile himself to a court with a seraglio and without a Star-Chamber.
By taking this course he made himself every day more odious, both to
the sovereign, who loved pleasure much more than prerogative, and to the
people, who dreaded royal prerogatives much more than royal pleasures;
and thus he was at last more detested by the Court than any chief of the
Opposition, and more detested by the Parliament than any pandar of the
Court.
Temple, whose great maxim was to offend no party, was not likely to
cling to the falling fortunes of a minister the study of whose life was
to offend all parties. Arlington, whose influence was gradually rising
as that of Clarendon diminished, was the most useful patron to whom a
young adventurer could attach himself. This statesman, without virtue,
wisdom, or strength of mind, had raised himself to greatness by
superficial qualities, and was the mere creature of the time, the
circumstances, and the company. The dignified reserve of manners which
he had acquired during a residence in Spain provoked the ridicule of
those who considered the usages of the French court as the only standard
of good breeding, but served to impress the crowd with a favourable
opinion of his sagacity and gravity. In situations where the solemnity
of the Escurial would have been out of place, he threw it aside without
difficulty, and conversed with great humour and vivacity. While the
multitude were talking of “Bennet’s grave looks,” [“Bennet’s grave looks
were a pretence” is a line in one of the best political poems of that
age,] his mirth made his presence always welcome in the royal closet.
While Buckingham, in the antechamber, was mimicking the pompous
Castilian strut of the Secretary, for the diversion of Mistress Stuart,
this stately Don was ridiculing Clarendon’s sober counsels to the King
within, till his Majesty cried with laughter, and the Chancellor with
vexation. There perhaps never was a man whose outward demeanour made
such different impressions on different people. Count Hamilton,
for example, describes him as a stupid formalist, who had been made
secretary solely on account of his mysterious and important looks.
Clarendon, on the other hand, represents him as a man whose “best
faculty was raillery,” and who was “for his pleasant and agreeable
humour acceptable unto the King.” The truth seems to be that, destitute
as Bennet was of all the higher qualifications of a minister, he had a
wonderful talent for becoming, in outward semblance, all things to all
men. He had two aspects, a busy and serious one for the public, whom he
wished to awe into respect, and a gay one for Charles, who thought that
the greatest service which could be rendered to a prince was to amuse
him. Yet both these were masks which he laid aside when they had
served their turn. Long after, when he had retired to his deer-park and
fish-ponds in Suffolk, and had no motive to act the part either of the
hidalgo or of the buffoon, Evelyn, who was neither an unpractised nor an
undiscerning judge, conversed much with him, and pronounced him to be a
man of singularly polished manners and of great colloquial powers.
Clarendon, proud and imperious by nature, soured by age and disease, and
relying on his great talents and services, sought out no new allies. He
seems to have taken a sort of morose pleasure in slighting and provoking
all the rising talent of the kingdom. His connections were almost
entirely confined to the small circle, every day becoming smaller, of
old cavaliers who had been friends of his youth or companions of his
exile. Arlington, on the other hand, beat up everywhere for recruits. No
man had a greater personal following, and no man exerted himself more
to serve his adherents. It was a kind of habit with him to push up his
dependants to his own level, and then to complain bitterly of their
ingratitude because they did not choose to be his dependants any longer.
It was thus that he quarrelled with two successive Treasurers, Gifford
and Danby. To Arlington Temple attached himself, and was not sparing of
warm professions of affection, or even, we grieve to say, of gross and
almost profane adulation. In no long time he obtained his reward.
England was in a very different situation with respect to foreign powers
from that which she had occupied during the splendid administration of
the Protector. She was engaged in war with the United Provinces, then
governed with almost regal power by the Grand Pensionary, John de Witt;
and though no war had ever cost the kingdom so much, none had ever been
more feebly and meanly conducted. France had espoused the interests of
the States-General. Denmark seemed likely to take the same side. Spain,
indignant at the close political and matrimonial alliance which Charles
had formed with the House of Braganza, was not disposed to lend him
any assistance. The great plague of London had suspended trade, had
scattered the ministers and nobles, had paralysed every department
of the public service, and had increased the gloomy discontent which
misgovernment had begun to excite throughout the nation. One continental
ally England possessed, the Bishop of Munster, a restless and ambitious
prelate, bred a soldier, and still a soldier in all his tastes and
passions. He hated the Dutch for interfering in the affairs of his see,
and declared himself willing to risk his little dominions for the
chance of revenge. He sent, accordingly, a strange kind of ambassador to
London, a Benedictine monk, who spoke bad English, and looked, says
Lord Clarendon, “like a carter.” This person brought a letter from the
Bishop, offering to make an attack by land on the Dutch territory. The
English ministers eagerly caught at the proposal, and promised a subsidy
of 500,000 rix-dollars to their new ally. It was determined to send
an English agent to Munster; and Arlington, to whose department the
business belonged, fixed on Temple for this post.
Temple accepted the commission, and acquitted himself to the
satisfaction of his employers, though the whole plan ended in nothing,
and the Bishop, finding that France had joined Holland, made haste,
after pocketing an instalment of his subsidy, to conclude a separate
peace. Temple, at a later period, looked back with no great satisfaction
to this part of his life; and excused himself for undertaking a
negotiation from which little good could result, by saying that he was
then young and very new to business. In truth, he could hardly have
been placed in a situation where the eminent diplomatic talents which he
possessed could have appeared to less advantage. He was ignorant of the
German language, and did not easily accommodate himself to the manners
of the people. He could not bear much wine; and none but a hard drinker
had any chance of success in Westphalian society. Under all these
disadvantages, however, he gave so much satisfaction that he was created
a Baronet, and appointed resident at the vice-regal court of Brussels.
Brussels suited Temple far better than the palaces of the boar-hunting
and wine-bibbing princes of Germany. He now occupied one of the
most important posts of observation in which a diplomatist could be
stationed. He was placed in the territory of a great neutral power,
between the territories of two great powers which were at war with
England. From this excellent school he soon came forth the most
accomplished negotiator of his age.
In the meantime the government of Charles had suffered a succession of
humiliating disasters. The extravagance of the court had dissipated all
the means which Parliament had supplied for the purpose of carrying on
offensive hostilities.
It was determined to wage only a defensive war; and even for defensive
war the vast resources of England, managed by triflers and public
robbers, were found insufficient. The Dutch insulted the British coasts,
sailed up the Thames, took Sheerness, and carried their ravages to
Chatham. The blaze of the ships burning in the river was seen at
London: it was rumoured that a foreign army had landed at Gravesend; and
military men seriously proposed to abandon the Tower. To such a depth
of infamy had a bad administration reduced that proud and victorious
country, which a few years before had dictated its pleasure to Mazarine,
to the States-General, and to the Vatican. Humbled by the events of the
war, and dreading the just anger of Parliament, the English Ministry
hastened to huddle up a peace with France and Holland at Breda.
But a new scheme was about to open. It had already been for some
time apparent to discerning observers, that England and Holland were
threatened by a common danger, much more formidable than any which
they had reason to apprehend from each other. The old enemy of their
independence and of their religion was no longer to be dreaded. The
sceptre had passed away from Spain. That mighty empire, on which the sun
never set, which had crushed the liberties of Italy and Germany, which
had occupied Paris with its armies, and covered the British seas with
its sails, was at the mercy of every spoiler; and Europe observed with
dismay the rapid growth of a new and more formidable power. Men looked
to Spain and saw only weakness disguised and increased by pride,
dominions of vast bulk and little strength, tempting, unwieldy, and
defenceless, an empty treasury, a sullen and torpid nation, a child
on the throne, factions in the council, ministers who served only
themselves, and soldiers who were terrible only to their countrymen. Men
looked to France, and saw a large and compact territory, a rich soil, a
central situation, a bold, alert, and ingenious people, large revenues,
numerous and well-disciplined troops, an active and ambitious prince, in
the flower of his age, surrounded by generals of unrivalled skill. The
projects of Lewis could be counteracted only by ability, vigour, and
union on the part of his neighbours. Ability and vigour had hitherto
been found in the councils of Holland alone, and of union there was no
appearance in Europe. The question of Portuguese independence
separated England from Spain. Old grudges, recent hostilities, maritime
pretensions, commercial competition separated England as widely from the
United Provinces.
The great object of Lewis, from the beginning to the end of his reign,
was the acquisition of those large and valuable provinces of the Spanish
monarchy, which lay contiguous to the eastern frontier of France.
Already, before the conclusion of the treaty of Breda, he had invaded
those provinces. He now pushed on his conquest with scarcely any
resistance. Fortress after fortress was taken. Brussels itself was in
danger; and Temple thought it wise to send his wife and children to
England. But his sister, Lady Giffard, who had been some time his
inmate, and who seems to have been a more important personage in his
family than his wife, still remained with him.
De Witt saw the progress of the French arms with painful anxiety. But
it was not in the power of Holland alone to save Flanders; and the
difficulty of forming an extensive coalition for that purpose appeared
almost insuperable. Lewis, indeed, affected moderation. He declared
himself willing to agree to a compromise with Spain. But these offers
were undoubtedly mere professions, intended to quiet the apprehensions
of the neighbouring powers; and, as his position became every day more
and more advantageous, it was to be expected that he would rise in his
demands.
Such was the state of affairs when Temple obtained from the English
Ministry permission to make a tour in Holland incognito. In company with
Lady Giffard he arrived at the Hague.
He was not charged with any public commission, but he availed himself of
this opportunity of introducing himself to De Witt. “My only business,
sir,” he said, “is to see the things which are most considerable in your
country, and I should execute my design very imperfectly if I went away
without seeing you.” De Witt, who from report had formed a high opinion
of Temple, was pleased by the compliment, and replied with a frankness
and cordiality which at once led to intimacy. The two statesmen talked
calmly over the causes which had estranged England from Holland,
congratulated each other on the peace, and then began to discuss the new
dangers which menaced Europe. Temple, who had no authority to say
any thing on behalf of the English Government, expressed himself very
guardedly. De Witt, who was himself the Dutch Government, had no reason
to be reserved. He openly declared that his wish was to see a general
coalition formed for the preservation of Flanders. His simplicity
and openness amazed Temple, who had been accustomed to the affected
solemnity of his patron, the Secretary, and to the eternal doublings and
evasions which passed for great feats of statesmanship among the Spanish
politicians at Brussels. “Whoever,” he wrote to Arlington, “deals
with M. de Witt must go the same plain way that he pretends to in his
negotiations, without refining or colouring or offering shadow for
substance.” Temple was scarcely less struck by the modest dwelling and
frugal table of the first citizen of the richest state in the world.
While Clarendon was amazing London with a dwelling more sumptuous than
the palace of his master, while Arlington was lavishing his ill-gotten
wealth on the decoys and orange-gardens and interminable conservatories
of Euston, the great statesman who had frustrated all their plans of
conquest, and the roar of whose guns they had heard with terror even in
the galleries of Whitehall, kept only a single servant, walked about the
streets in the plainest garb, and never used a coach except for visits
of ceremony.
Temple sent a full account of his interview with De Witt to Arlington,
who, in consequence of the fall of the Chancellor, now shared with the
Duke of Buckingham the principal direction of affairs. Arlington showed
no disposition to meet the advances of the Dutch minister. Indeed,
as was amply proved a few years later, both he and his masters were
perfectly willing to purchase the means of misgoverning England by
giving up, not only Flanders, but the whole Continent to France. Temple,
who distinctly saw that a moment had arrived at which it was possible
to reconcile his country with Holland, to reconcile Charles with the
Parliament, to bridle the power of Lewis, to efface the shame of the
late ignominious war, to restore England to the same place in Europe
which she had occupied under Cromwell, became more and more urgent in
his representations. Arlington’s replies were for some time couched in
cold and ambiguous terms. But the events which followed the meeting of
Parliament, in the autumn of 1667, appear to have produced an entire
change in his views. The discontent of the nation was deep and general.
The administration was attacked in all its parts. The King and the
ministers laboured, not unsuccessfully, to throw on Clarendon the blame
of past miscarriages; but though the Commons were resolved that the late
Chancellor should be the first victim, it was by no means clear that
he would be the last. The Secretary was personally attacked with great
bitterness in the course of the debates. One of the resolutions of the
Lower House against Clarendon was in truth a censure of the foreign
policy of the Government, as too favourable to France. To these events
chiefly we are inclined to attribute the change which at this crisis
took place in the measures of England. The Ministry seem to have felt
that, if they wished to derive any advantage from Clarendon’s downfall,
it was necessary for them to abandon what was supposed to be Clarendon’s
system, and by some splendid and popular measure to win the confidence
of the nation. Accordingly, in December 1667, Temple received a despatch
containing instructions of the highest importance. The plan which he had
so strongly recommended was approved; and he was directed to visit De
Witt as speedily as possible, and to ascertain whether the States were
willing to enter into an offensive and defensive league with England
against the projects of France. Temple, accompanied by his sister,
instantly set out for the Hague, and laid the propositions of the
English Government before the Grand Pensionary. The Dutch statesman
answered with characteristic straightforwardness, that he was fully
ready to agree to a defensive confederacy, but that it was the
fundamental principle of the foreign policy of the States to make no
offensive alliance under any circumstances whatever. With this answer
Temple hastened from the Hague to London, had an audience of the King,
related what had passed between himself and De Witt, exerted himself to
remove the unfavourable opinion which had been conceived of the Grand
Pensionary at the English Court, and had the satisfaction of succeeding
in all his objects. On the evening of the first of January, 1668, a
council was held, at which Charles declared his resolution to unite
with the Dutch on their own terms. Temple and his indefatigable sister
immediately sailed again for the Hague, and, after weathering a violent
storm in which they were very nearly lost, arrived in safety at the
place of their destination.
On this occasion, as on every other, the dealings between Temple and
De Witt were singularly fair and open. When they met, Temple began by
recapitulating what had passed at their last interview. De Witt, who was
as little given to lying with his face as with his tongue, marked his
assent by his looks while the recapitulation proceeded, and, when it
was concluded, answered that Temple’s memory was perfectly correct, and
thanked him for proceeding in so exact and sincere a manner. Temple then
informed the Grand Pensionary that the King of England had determined
to close with the proposal of a defensive alliance. De Witt had not
expected so speedy a resolution, and his countenance indicated surprise
as well as pleasure. But he did not retract; and it was speedily
arranged that England and Holland should unite for the purpose of
compelling Lewis to abide by the compromise which he had formerly
offered. The next object of the two statesmen was to induce another
government to become a party to their league. The victories of Gustavus
and Torstenson, and the political talents of Oxenstiern, had obtained
for Sweden a consideration in Europe, disproportioned to her real power:
the princes of Northern Germany stood in great awe of her; and De Witt
and Temple agreed that if she could be induced to accede to the league,
“it would be too strong a bar for France to venture on.” Temple went
that same evening to Count Dona, the Swedish Minister at the Hague, took
a seat in the most unceremonious manner, and, with that air of frankness
and goodwill by which he often succeeded in rendering his diplomatic
overtures acceptable, explained the scheme which was in agitation.
Dona was greatly pleased and flattered. He had not powers which would
authorise him to conclude a treaty of such importance. But he strongly
advised Temple and De Witt to do their part without delay, and seemed
confident that Sweden would accede. The ordinary course of public
business in Holland was too slow for the present emergency; and De Witt
appeared to have some scruples about breaking through the established
forms. But the urgency and dexterity of Temple prevailed. The
States-General took the responsibility of executing the treaty with
a celerity unprecedented in the annals of the federation, and indeed
inconsistent with its fundamental laws. The state of public feeling
was, however, such in all the provinces, that this irregularity was not
merely pardoned but applauded. When the instrument had been formally
signed, the Dutch Commissioners embraced the English Plenipotentiary
with the warmest expressions of kindness and confidence. “At Breda,”
exclaimed Temple, “we embraced as friends, here as brothers.”
This memorable negotiation occupied only five days. De Witt complimented
Temple in high terms on having effected in so short a time what must,
under other management, have been the work of months; and Temple, in his
despatches, spoke in equally high terms of De Witt. “I must add these
words, to do M. de Witt right, that I found him as plain, as direct and
square in the course of this business as any man could be, though often
stiff in points where he thought any advantage could accrue to his
country; and have all the reason in the world to be satisfied with him;
and for his industry, no man had ever more I am sure. For these five
days at least, neither of us spent any idle hours, neither day nor
night.”
Sweden willingly acceded to the league, which is known in history by the
name of the Triple Alliance; and, after some signs of ill-humour on the
part of France, a general pacification was the result.
The Triple Alliance may be viewed in two lights; as a measure of foreign
policy, and as a measure of domestic policy; and under both aspects it
seems to us deserving of all the praise which has been bestowed upon it.
Dr. Lingard, who is undoubtedly a very able and well-informed writer,
but whose great fundamental rule of judging seems to be that the popular
opinion on a historical question cannot possibly be correct, speaks
very slightingly of this celebrated treaty; and Mr. Courtenay, who by
no means regards Temple with that profound veneration which is generally
found in biographers, has conceded, in our opinion, far too much to Dr.
Lingard.
The reasoning of Dr. Lingard is simply this. The Triple Alliance only
compelled Lewis to make peace on the terms on which, before the alliance
was formed, he had offered to make peace. How can it then be said
that this alliance arrested his career, and preserved Europe from his
ambition? Now, this reasoning is evidently of no force at all, except on
the supposition that Lewis would have held himself bound by his former
offers, if the alliance had not been formed; and, if Dr. Lingard thinks
this is a reasonable supposition, we should be disposed to say to him,
in the words of that, great politician, Mrs. Western: “Indeed, brother,
you would make a fine plenipo to negotiate with the French. They
would soon persuade you that they take towns out of mere defensive
principles.” Our own impression is that Lewis made his offer only in
order to avert some such measure as the Triple Alliance, and adhered
to his offer only in consequence of that alliance. He had refused to
consent to an armistice. He had made all his arrangements for a winter
campaign. In the very week in which Temple and the States concluded
their agreement at the Hague, Franche Comte was attacked by the French
armies, and in three weeks the whole province was conquered. This prey
Lewis was compelled to disgorge. And what compelled him? Did the object
seem to him small or contemptible? On the contrary, the annexation of
Franche Comte to his kingdom was one of the favourite projects of his
life. Was he withheld by regard for his word? Did he, who never in any
other transaction of his reign showed the smallest respect for the
most solemn obligations of public faith, who violated the Treaty of the
Pyrenees, who violated the Treaty of Aix, who violated the Treaty of
Nimeguen, who violated the Partition Treaty, who violated the Treaty of
Utrecht, feel himself restrained by his word on this single occasion?
Can any person who is acquainted with his character and with his whole
policy doubt that, if the neighbouring powers would have looked quietly
on, he would instantly have risen in his demands? How then stands the
case? He wished to keep Franche Comte It was not from regard to his
word that he ceded Franche Comte. Why then did he cede Franche Comte?
We answer, as all Europe answered at the time, from fear of the Triple
Alliance.