HOME AFFAIRS.
[Sidenote: 1717--Oxford's impeachment]
Meanwhile the public seemed to have forgotten all about Lord Oxford.
"Harley, the nation's great support," as Swift had called him, had been
nearly two years in the Tower, and the nation did not seem to miss its
great support, or to care anything about him. In May, 1717, Lord
Oxford sent a petition to the House of Lords, complaining of the
hardship and injustice of this unaccountable delay in his impeachment,
and the House of Lords began at last to put on an appearance of
activity. The Commons, too, revived and enlarged their secret
committee, of which it will be remembered that Walpole was the
chairman. Times, however, had changed. Walpole was not in the
administration, and felt no anxiety to assist the ministry in any way.
He purposely absented himself from the sittings, and a new chairman had
to be chosen. Probably Walpole had always known well enough that there
was not evidence to sustain a charge of high-treason against his former
rival; perhaps, now that the rival was down in the dust, never to rise
again, he did not care to press for his punishment. At all events, he
made it clear that he felt no interest in the impeachment of Lord
Oxford. The friends of the ruined minister had recourse to an
ingenious artifice. June 24, 1717, had been appointed for the opening
of the proceedings. Westminster Hall, lately the scene of the
impeachment of Somers, and soon to be the scene of the impeachment of
Warren Hastings, was of course the place where Oxford had to come
forward and meet his accusers. The King, the Prince and the Princess
of Wales were seated in the {169} Hall; most of the foreign ambassadors
and ministers were spectators. The imposing formalities and artificial
terrors of such a ceremonial were kept up. Lord Oxford had been
brought from the Tower to Westminster by water. He was now led
bareheaded up to the bar by the Deputy Lieutenant of the Tower, having
the axe borne before him, its edge turned away from him as yet,
symbolic of the doom that might await the prisoner, but to which he had
not yet been declared responsible. When the reading of the articles of
impeachment and other opening passages of the trial had been gone
through, Lord Harcourt, Oxford's friend, interposed, and announced that
he had a motion to make. In order to hear his motion, the Peers had to
withdraw to their own House. There Lord Harcourt moved that the House
should dispose of the two articles of impeachment for high-treason
before going into any of the evidence to support the charges for high
crimes and misdemeanors. The argument for this course of proceeding
was plausible. If Oxford were convicted of high-treason he would have
to forfeit his life; and in such case, where would be the use of
convicting him of a minor offence? The plan on which the Commons
proposed to act, that of taking all the evidence in order of time, no
matter to which charge it had reference, before coming to any
conclusion, might, as Lord Harcourt put it, "draw the trial into
prodigious length," and absolutely to no purpose. Should the accused
be found guilty of high-treason he must suffer death, and there would
be an end of the whole business. Should he be acquitted of the graver
charge, he might then be impeached on the lighter accusation; and what
harm would have been done or time lost? The motion was carried by a
majority of eighty-eight to fifty-six.
Now it is hardly possible to suppose that the Peers who voted in the
majority did not know very well that the Commons would not, and could
not, submit to have their mode of conducting an impeachment, which it
was their business to manage, thus altered at the sudden {170}
dictation of the other chamber. The House of Commons was growing in
importance every day; the House of Lords was proportionately losing its
influence. The Commons determined that they would conduct the
impeachment in their own way or not at all. Doubtless some of them,
most of them, were glad to be well out of the whole affair. July 1st
was fixed for the renewal of the proceedings. Some fruitless
conferences between Lords and Commons wasted two days, and on the
evening of July 3d the Lords sat in Westminster Hall, and invited by
proclamation the accusers of Oxford to appear. No manager came forward
to conduct the impeachment on the part of the Commons. The Peers sat
for a quarter of an hour, as if waiting for a prosecutor, well knowing
that none was coming. A solemn farce was played. The Peers went back
to their chamber, and there a motion was made acquitting "Robert, Earl
of Oxford and Earl Mortimer," on the ground that no charge had been
maintained against him. A crowd without hailed the adoption of the
motion with cheers. Oxford was released from the Tower, and nothing
more was ever heard of his impeachment. The Duke of Marlborough was
furious with rage at Oxford's escape, and the duchess is described as
"almost distracted that she could not obtain her revenge." Magnanimity
was not a characteristic virtue of the early days of the Georges.
[Sidenote: 1718--Disabilities of dissenters]
This was what has sometimes been called the honorable acquittal of
Oxford. An English judge once spoke humorously of a prisoner having
been "honorably acquitted on a flaw in the indictment." Harley's was
like this: it was not an acquittal, and it was not honorable to the man
impeached, the House that forebore to press the impeachment, or the
House that contrived his escape from trial. Oxford had been committed
to the Tower and impeached for reasons that had little to do with his
guilt or innocence, or with true public policy; he was released from
prison and relieved from further proceedings in just the same way.
There was not evidence against {171} him on which he could be convicted
of high-treason, and this was well known to his enemies when they first
consigned him to the Tower. But there could not be the slightest moral
doubt on the mind of any man that Oxford had intrigued with the
Stuarts, and had endeavored to procure their restoration, and that he
had done this even since his committal to the Tower. His guilt,
whatever it was, had been increased by him, and not diminished, since
the beginning of the proceedings taken against him. But he had only
done what most other statesmen of that day had been doing, or would
have done if they had seen advantage in it. He was not more guilty
than some of his bitterest opponents, the Duke of Marlborough among
others. All but the very bitterest opponents were glad to be done with
the whole business. It must have come to a more or less farcical end
sooner or later, and sensible men were of opinion that the sooner the
better. Of Harley, "Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer," as his titles
ran, we shall not hear any more; we have already foreshadowed the
remainder of his life and his death. This short account of his sham
impeachment is introduced here merely as a part of the historic
continuity of the narrative. History has few characters less
interesting than that of Oxford. He held a position of greatness
without being great; he fell, and even his fall could not invest him
with tragic dignity.
On December 13, 1718, Lord Stanhope, who had been raised to the
peerage, first as Viscount and then as Earl Stanhope, introduced into
the House of Lords a measure ingeniously entitled "A Bill for
Strengthening the Protestant Interest in these Kingdoms." The title of
the Bill was strictly appropriate according to our present ideas, and
according to the ideas of enlightened men in Stanhope's days also; but
it must at first have misled some of Stanhope's audience. Most
Churchmen are now ready to admit that the interests of the Church of
England are strengthened by every measure which tends to secure
religious equality; but most Churchmen were not quite so {172} sure of
this in the reign of George the First. The Bill brought in by Stanhope
was really a measure intended to relieve Dissenters from some of the
penalties and disabilities imposed on them in the reign of Queen Anne.
[Sidenote: 1719--Catholic emancipation foreshadowed]
The second reading of the Bill was the occasion of a long and animated
debate. Several noble lords appealed to the opinion of the bishops,
and the bishops spoke in answer to the appeal. The Archbishop of
Canterbury, the Archbishop of York, the Bishop of London, the Bishop of
Bristol, the Bishop of Rochester (Atterbury), the Bishop of Chester,
and other prelates, spoke against the Bill. The Bishop of Bangor, the
Bishop of Gloucester, the Bishop of Lincoln, the Bishop of Norwich, and
the Bishop of Peterborough spoke in its favor. The Bishop of
Peterborough's was a strenuous and an eloquent argument in favor of the
principle of the Bill. "The words 'Church' and 'Church's danger,'"
said the Bishop of Peterborough, "had often been made use of to carry
on sinister designs; and then these words made a mighty noise in the
mouth of silly women and children;" but in his opinion the Church,
which he defined to be a scriptural institution upon a legal
establishment, was founded upon a rock, and "could not be in danger as
long as we enjoyed the light of the Gospel and our excellent
constitution." The argument would have been perfect if the eloquent
bishop had only left out the proviso about "our excellent
constitution;" for the opponents of the measure were contending, as was
but natural, that the Bill, if passed into law, would not leave to the
Church the constitutional protection which it had previously enjoyed.
The Bill passed the House of Lords on December 23d, and was sent down
to the Commons next day. It was read there a first time at once, was
read a second time after a debate of some nine hours, and was passed
without amendment by a majority of 221 against 170 on January 10, 1719.
The test majority, however, by which the Bill had been decisively
carried, on the motion to go into committee, was but small--243 against
202--and this {173} majority was mainly due to the vote of the Scottish
members. Stanhope, it is well known, would have made the measure more
liberal than it was, and was dissuaded from this intention by
Sunderland, who insisted that if it were too liberal it would not pass
the House of Commons. The result seems to prove that Sunderland was
right. Walpole spoke against the Bill, limited as its concessions
were. It would be interesting to know what sort of argument a man of
Walpole's principles could have offered against a measure embodying the
very spirit and sense of Whig policy. Unfortunately we have no means
of knowing. The galleries of the House of Commons were rigidly closed
against strangers on the day of the debate, and all we are allowed to
hear concerning Walpole's part in the discussion is that "Mr. Robert
Walpole made a warm speech, chiefly levelled against a great man in the
present administration." There is something characteristic of Walpole
in this. He was never very particular about principle, or even about
seeming consistency; but still, when opposing a measure which he might
have been expected to support, he would have probably found it more
expedient, as well as more agreeable, to confine himself chiefly to the
task of attacking some "great man in the present administration."
It ought to be said of Stanhope that he was distinctly in advance of
his age as regarded the recognition of the principle of religious
equality. He was not only anxious to put the Protestant Dissenters as
much as possible on a level with Churchmen in all the privileges of
citizenship, but he was even strongly in favor of mitigating the
severity of the laws against the Roman Catholics. In his "History of
England, from the Peace of Utrecht to the Peace of Versailles," Lord
Stanhope, the descendant of the minister whose career and character
have done so much honor to a name and a family, claims for him the
credit of having put on paper a scheme "not undeserving of attention as
the earliest germ of Roman Catholic emancipation." Stanhope's life was
too soon and too {174} suddenly cut short to allow him to push forward
his scheme to anything like a practical position, and it is not
probable that he could in any case have done much with it at such a
time. Still, though fate cut short the life, it ought not to cut short
the praise.
[Sidenote: 1719--The Peerage Bill]
The Peerage Bill raised a question of some constitutional importance.
The principal object of this measure, which was introduced on February
28, 1719, in the House of Lords, by the Duke of Somerset, and was
believed to have Lord Sunderland for its actual author, was to limit
the prerogative of the Crown in the creation of English peerages to a
number not exceeding six, in addition to those already existing.
According to the provisions of the Bill, the Crown might still create
new Peers on the extinction of old titles for want of male heirs; but
with this exception the power of adding new peerages would be limited
to the number of six. It was also proposed that, instead of the
sixteen elective Peers from Scotland, twenty-five hereditary Peers
should be created. This part of the Bill was that which at the time
gave rise to most of the debate, in the House of Lords at least; but
the really important constitutional question was that which involved
the limitation of the privilege of the Sovereign. The Sovereign
himself sent a special message to the House of Lords, informing them
that "he has so much at heart the settling the Peerage of the whole
kingdom upon such a foundation as may secure the freedom and
constitution of Parliament in all future ages, that he is willing that
his prerogative stand not in the way of so great and necessary a work."
The ostensible motive for the proposed legislation was to get rid of
difficulties caused by the over-increase of the numbers of the peerage
since the union of England and Scotland; the real object was to guard
against such a _coup-d'état_ as that accomplished in Anne's later days
by the creation of the twelve Peers, of whom Mrs. Masham's husband was
one. Nothing could be more generous and liberal, it might have been
thought, than the expressed willingness of the {175} King to surrender
a part of his prerogative. This very readiness, however, expressed as
it was by anticipation, and before the measure had yet made any
progress, set a great many persons in and out of Parliament thinking.
A vehement dispute soon sprang up, in which the pamphleteer, as usual,
bore an important part. Addison, in one of his latest political and
literary efforts, defended the proposed change. He described his
pamphlet as the work of an "Old Whig." It was written as a reply to a
pamphlet by Steele condemning the Bill, and signed "A Plebeian."
Reply, retort, and rejoinder followed in more and more heated and
personal style. The excitement created caused the measure to be
dropped for the session, but it was brought in again in the session
following, and it passed through all its stages in the Lords without
trouble and with much rapidity.
When it came down to the House of Commons, however, a very different
fate awaited it. Walpole assailed it with powerful eloquence and with
unanswerable argument. The true nature of the scheme now came out. It
would have simply rendered the representative chamber powerless against
a majority of the chamber which did not represent. This will be
readily apparent to any one who considers the subject for a moment by
the light of our more modern experience. A majority of the House of
Commons, representing, it may be, a vast majority of the people, agree
to a certain measure. It goes up to the House of Lords, and is
rejected there. What means in the end have the Commons, who represent
the nation, of giving effect to the wishes of the nation? They have
none but the privilege of the Crown to create, under the advice of
ministers, a sufficient number of new Peers to outvote the opponents of
the measure. No alternative but revolution and civil war would be left
if this were taken away. It is true that the power might be again
abused by the Sovereign, as it was abused in Anne's days on the advice
of the Tories; but we know that, as a matter of fact, it is hardly ever
abused--hardly ever even used. {176} Why is it hardly ever used? For
the good reason that all men know it is existing, and can be used
should the need arise. Even were it to be misused, the misuse would
happen under responsible ministers, who could be challenged to answer
for it, and who would have to make good their defence. But if the
House of Lords were made supreme over the House of Commons in every
instance, by abolishing the unlimited prerogative which alone keeps it
in check, who could then be held responsible for abuse--and before
whom? Who could call the House of Lords to account? Before what
tribunal could it be summoned to answer? The Peers are now independent
of the people, and would then be also independent of the Crown. There
is hardly a great political reform known to modern England which, if
the Peerage Bill had become law, would not have been absolutely
rejected or else carried by a popular revolution.
[Sidenote: 1720--The Irish House of Lords]
Walpole attacked the Bill on every side. Such legislation, he
insisted, "would in time bring back the Commons into the state of
servile dependency they were in when they wore the badges of the
Lords." It would, he contended, take away "one of the most powerful
incentives to virtue, . . . since there would be no coming to honor but
through the winding-sheet of an old decrepit lord and the grave of an
extinct noble family." Walpole knew well his public and his time. He
dwelt most strongly on this last consideration--that the Bill if passed
into law would shut the gates of the Peerage against deserving
Commoners. He asked indignantly how the House of Lords could expect
the Commons to give their concurrence to a measure "by which they and
their posterities are to be excluded from the Peerage." The commoner
who, after this way of putting the matter, assented to the Bill, must
either have been an unambitious bachelor, or have been blessed in a
singularly unambitious wife. Steele, who, as we have seen, had fought
gallantly against the Bill with his pen, now made a very effective
speech against it. He showed that the {177} measure would, alter the
whole constitutional position of the House of Lords, whether as a
legislative chamber or a court of appeal. "The restraint of the Peers
to a certain number will make the most powerful of them have all the
rest under their direction, . . . and judges so made by the blind order
of birth will be capable of no other way of decision." The
prerogative, as Steele put it very clearly, "can do no hurt when
ministers do their duty; but a settled number of Peers may abuse their
power when no man is answerable for them, or can call them to account
for their encroachments." The Bill was rejected by a majority of 269
votes against 177.
In March, 1720, was passed an Act with a pompous and even portentous
title: it was called "An Act for the better securing the Dependency of
the Kingdom of Ireland upon the Crown of Great Britain." The preamble
recited that "attempts have been lately made to shake off the
subjection of Ireland unto and dependence upon the Imperial Crown of
this realm, which will be of dangerous consequence to Great Britain and
Ireland." The reader would naturally assume that some fresh designs of
the Stuarts had been discovered, having for their theatre the Catholic
provinces of Ireland. Was James Stuart about to land at Kinsale? Had
Alberoni got hold of the Irish Catholics? Was Atterbury plotting with
Swift for an armed insurrection in Munster and Connaught? No; nothing
of the kind was expected. The preamble of the alarming Act went on to
set forth that the House of Lords in Ireland had lately, "against law,
assumed to themselves a power and jurisdiction to examine, correct, and
amend the judgments and decrees of the courts of justice in the kingdom
of Ireland;" and this alleged trespass of the Irish House of Lords was
the whole cause of the new measure. The Act declared that the Irish
House of Lords had no jurisdiction "to judge of, affirm, or reverse any
judgment, sentence, or decree given or made in any court within the
said kingdom." This was an enactment of the most serious {178} moment
in a constitutional sense. It made the Parliament of Ireland
subordinate to the Parliament of England; it reduced the Irish House of
Lords from a position in Ireland equal to that of the House of Lords in
England, down to the level of a mere provincial assembly. The occasion
of the passing of this Act was the decision given by the Irish House of
Lords in the celebrated cause of Sherlock against Annesley. It is not
necessary for us to go into the story of the case at any length. It
was a question of disputed property. The defendant had obtained a
decree in the Irish Court of Exchequer, which decree was reversed on an
appeal to the Irish House of Lords. The defendant appealed to the
English House of Lords, who confirmed the judgment of the Irish Court
of Exchequer, and ordered him to be put in possession of the disputed
property. The Irish House of Lords stood by their authority, and
actually ordered the Irish Barons of Exchequer to be taken into custody
by Black Rod for having offended against the privileges of the Peers
and the rights and liberties of Ireland. The Act was passed to settle
the question and reduce the Irish House of Lords to submission and
subordinate rank. It was settled merely, of course, by the strength of
a majority in the English Parliament. The Duke of Leeds recorded a
sensible and a manly protest against the vote of the majority of his
brother Peers. One or two of the reasons he gives for his protest are
worth reading even now. The eleventh reason is, "Because it is the
glory of the English laws and the blessing attending Englishmen, that
they have justice administered at their doors, and not to be drawn, as
formerly, to Rome by appeals;" "and by this order the people of Ireland
must be drawn from Ireland hither whensoever they receive any injustice
from the Chancery there, by which means poor men must be trampled on,
as not being able to come over to seek for justice." The thirteenth
reason is still more concise: "Because this taking away the
jurisdiction of the Lords' House in Ireland may be a means to {179}
disquiet the Lords there and disappoint the King's affairs."
[Sidenote: 1718--Death of William Penn]
The protest, it need hardly be said, received little or no attention.
More than sixty years after, when England was perplexed in foreign and
colonial troubles, the spirit of the protest walked abroad and animated
Grattan and the Irish Volunteers. But in 1720 the Parliament at
Westminster was free to do as it pleased with the Parliament in Dublin.
To the vast majority of the Irish people it might have been a matter of
absolute indifference which Parliament reigned supreme; they had as
little to expect from Dublin as from Westminster. The Irish Parliament
was quite as ready to promote legislation for the further persecution
of Catholics as any English Parliament could be. The Parliament in
Dublin was merely an assembly of English and Protestant colonists. Yet
it is worthy of remark, that, then and after, the sympathies of the
people, when they had any means of showing them, went with the Irish
Parliament simply because of the name it bore. It was, at all events,
the so-called Parliament of Ireland; it represented, at least in name,
the authority of the Irish people. So long as it existed there was
some recognition of the fact that Ireland was something more than a
merely conquered country, held by the title of the sword, and governed
by arbitrary proclamation, secret warrant, and drum-head court-martial.
Death had been busy among eminent men for some few years. The Duke of
Shrewsbury, the "king of hearts," the statesman whose appointment as
Lord Treasurer secured the throne of Great Britain for the Hanoverian
family, died on February 18, 1717. William Penn, the founder of the
great American State of Pennyslvania, closed his long active and
fruitful life in 1718. We have here only to record his death; the
history of his deeds belongs to an earlier time. Controversy has now
quite ceased to busy itself about his noble character, and his life of
splendid unostentatious beneficence. His name, which without his
consent and against his wishes was {180} made part of the name of the
State which he founded, will be remembered in connection with its
history while the Delaware and the Schuylkill flow. Of his famous
treaty with the Indians nothing, perhaps, was ever better said than the
comment of Voltaire, that it was the only league between savages and
white men which was never sworn to and never broken. Addison died,
still comparatively young, on June 17, 1719. He had reached the
highest point of his political career but a short time before, when, on
one of the changes of office between Stanhope and Sunderland, he became
one of the principal secretaries of State. His health, however, was
breaking down, and he never had indeed the slightest gift or taste for
political life. "Pity," said Mrs. Manley, the authoress of "The New
Atlantis," speaking of Addison, "that politics and sordid interest
should have carried him out of the road of Helicon and snatched him
from the embraces of the Muses." But it seems quite unjust to ascribe
Addison's divergence into political ways to any sordid interest. He
had political friends who loved him, and he went with them into
politics as he might have travelled in company with them, and for the
sake of their company, although caring nothing for travel himself. No
man was better aware of his incapacity for the real business of public
life. Addison had himself pointed out all the objections to his
political advancement before that advancement was pressed upon him. He
was not a statesman; he was not an administrator; he could not do any
genuine service as head of a department; he was not even a good clerk;
he was a wretched speaker; he was consumed by a morbid shyness, almost
as oppressive as that of the poet Cowper in a later day, or of
Nathaniel Hawthorne, the American novelist, later still. His whole
public career was at best but a harmless mistake. It has done no harm
to his literary fame. The world has almost forgotten it. Even lovers
of Addison might have to be reminded now that the creator of Sir Roger
de Coverley was once a diplomatic agent and a secretary of State, {181}
and a member of the House of Commons. Some of the essays which Addison
contributed to the _Spectator_ are like enough to outlive the system of
government by party, and perhaps even the whole system of
representative government. Sir Roger de Coverley will not be forgotten
until men forget Parson Adams and Robinson Crusoe and Gil Blas, and for
that matter, Sir John Falstaff and Don Quixote.
[Sidenote: 1720--The King and the Prince reconciled]
For some time things were looking well at home and abroad. The policy
of the Government appeared to have been completely successful on the
Continent. The confederations that had been threatening England were
dissolved or broken up; the Jacobite conspiracies seemed to have been
made hopeless and powerless. The friendship established between
England and the Regent of France had to all seeming robbed the Stuarts
of their last chance. James the Chevalier had no longer a home on
French soil. Paris could not any more be the head-quarters of his
organization and the scene of his mock Court. The Regent had kept his
promises to the English Government. It was well known that, so far
from encouraging or permitting the designs of the exiled family against
England, he would do all in his power to frustrate them; as, indeed, he
had an opportunity of doing not long after. Never before, perhaps
never since, was there so cordial an understanding between England and
France. Never could there have been a time when such an understanding
was of greater importance to England.
At home the prospect seemed equally bright. Walpole had contrived to
ingratiate himself more and more with the Prince of Wales, and had
become his confidential adviser. Acting on his counsel, the Prince
made his submission to the King; and acting on Stanhope's counsel, the
King accepted it. The Sovereign and his heir had a meeting and were
reconciled; for the time, at least. Walpole consented to join the
administration, content for the present to fill the humble place of
paymaster to the forces, without a seat in the Cabinet. He returned,
in {182} fact, to the ministerial position which he had first occupied,
and from which he had been promoted, and must have seemed to himself
somewhat in the position of a boy who, after having got high in his
class, has got down very low again, and is well content to mount up a
step or two from the humblest position. Walpole knew what he was
doing, and must have been quite satisfied in his own mind that he was
not likely to remain very long paymaster to the forces, although he
could not, by any possibility, have anticipated the strange succession
of events by which he was destined soon to be left without a rival.
For the present he was in the administration, but he took little part
in its actual work. He did not even appear to have any real concern in
it. He spent as much of his time as he could at Houghton, his pleasant
country-seat in Norfolk. Townshend, too, had been induced to join the
administration. To him was assigned the position of president of the
council.
Thus there appeared to be a truce to quarrels, and to enmities abroad
and at home. There was no dispute with any of the great Continental
powers; there was no dread of the Stuarts. Ministerial rivalries had
been reduced to concordance and quiet; the traditional quarrel between
the Sovereign and the heir-apparent had been composed. It might have
been thought that a time of peace and national prosperity had been
assured. In the history of nations, however, we commonly find that
nothing more certainly bodes unsettlement than a general conviction
that everything is settled forever.
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