_Enormous Bribery by William.—Increased Taxation.—Speech of Sir
Charles Sedley.—Wrongs of the Soldiers.—Defence of William.—Moral
Disorganization of the Country.—First Exchequer-Bill Fraud.—First
Foreign Loan.—Romantic Fraud in 1715.—Political Fraud of ’Change
Alley.—Interference of the House of Peers.—First Hoax._
The Parliamentary records of William’s reign are curious. The demands
which he made for money, the hatred to France which he encouraged,
and the frequent supplies he received, are remarkable features in his
history. Every art was employed; at one time a mild remonstrance,
at another a haughty menace, at a third the reproach that he had
ventured his life for the benefit of the country. The bribery during
this reign was the commencement of a system which has been very
injurious to the credit and character of England. The support of
the members was purchased with places, with contracts, with titles,
with promises, with portions of the loans, and with tickets in the
lottery. The famous axiom of Sir Robert Walpole was a practice and
a principle with William; he found that custom could not stale
the infinite variety of its effect, and that, so long as bribes
continued, so long would supplies be free. Exorbitant premiums were
given for money; and so low was public credit, and so great public
corruption, that, of 5 millions granted to carry on the war, only 2-½
millions reached the exchequer. Long annuities and short annuities,
lottery-tickets and irredeemable debts, made their frequent
appearance; and the duties, which principally date from this period,
were most pernicious. The hearth-tax was nearly as obnoxious as the
poll-tax. The custom and excise duties were doubled. The hawker and
the hackney-coach driver, companies and corporations, land and labor,
came under his supervision. Births, burials, and bachelors were
added to the list, and whether a wife lost a husband, or whether
a widow gained one, the effect was alike. Beer and ale, wine and
vinegar, coal and culm, all contributed to the impoverished state;
and although some who looked back with regret occasionally indulged
their spleen, the general tone of the Parliament was submissive.
Still, there were times when the truth was spoken; and truths like
the following were unpleasant:—
“We have provided,” said Sir Charles Sedley, “for the army; we have
provided for the navy; and now we must provide for the list. Truly,
Mr. Speaker, ’tis a sad reflection that some men should wallow in
wealth and places, while others pay away in taxes the fourth part of
their revenue. The courtiers and great officers feel not the terms,
while the country gentleman is shot through and through. His Majesty
sees nothing but coaches and six, and great tables, and therefore
cannot imagine the want and misery of the rest of his subjects. He is
encompassed by a company of crafty old courtiers.”
The corrupt transactions which tended so greatly to increase the
national debt are very remarkable. The assembled Commons declared in
a solemn vote, “it is notorious that many millions are unaccounted
for.” Mr. Hungerford was expelled from the lower house for accepting
a bribe of £21; and the Duke of Leeds impeached for taking one of
5,500 guineas. The price of a speaker—Sir John Trevor—was £1,005,
and the Secretary to the Treasury was sent to the Tower on suspicion
of similar practices. Money-receivers lodged great sums of public
money with the goldsmiths at the current interest. Others lent
the exchequer its own cash in other persons’ names; and out of 46
millions raised in 15 years, 25 millions were unaccounted for. The
Commissioners of Hackney-coaches were accessible, and peculation in
the army was discovered by a chance petition of the dwellers in a
country town. By this it appeared that the inhabitants of Royston in
Hertfordshire had large claims made upon them for money, by colonels,
captains, and cornets, in addition to the food and lodging which
was their due. A few independent members took up the question; the
public supported them; and at this juncture a book was delivered at
the lobby of the house, which asserted that the public embezzlement
was as enormous as it was infamous, and that the writer was prepared
to make discoveries which would astonish the world. The offer was
accepted; a searching inquiry was made, and defalcations were
discovered so great, that all wonder ceased at the increase of the
national debt, and at the decrease of the national glory. The abuses
in clothing the army were plain and palpable. The agents habitually
detained the money due to the soldiers, and used it for their own
advantage, or compelled them to pay so large a discount, that they
were in the utmost distress.
The subaltern officers were not better off. Colonel Hastings,
afterwards cashiered for the offence, made them buy their raiment
of him. If they hesitated, he threatened; if they refused, he
confined them. In 1693, an inquiry was made into the application of
the secret-service money, when great and deserved animadversion was
passed upon those through whom it circulated. The power possessed by
government under such abuses may be imagined. They were sure of the
votes of those who had places and pensions, and they were sure also
of the votes of that large class of expectants which always haunts a
profuse ministry; and thus “the courtiers,” as the ministerial party
was long designated, could baffle any bills, quash all grievances,
stifle any accounts, and raise any amount of money.
These discoveries inflamed the people, and murmurs that corruption
had eaten into the nation became general. Court and camp, city and
senate, were alike denounced. The pamphleteers spoke in strong
language. “Posterity,” said the author of one, termed The Price
of the Abdication, “will set an eternal brand of infamy upon
those members, who, to obtain either offices, profitable places,
or quarterly stipends, have combined to vote whatever hath been
demanded.”
It has been the fashion of a certain class to decry William because
he founded the national debt. But the war which he waged was almost
a war of necessity, and could not be supported without liberal
supplies. There was, however, with William a personal pride in the
contest. He had been taught, from his boyhood, hatred to France, and
almost in boyhood had checked the universal dominion aimed at by
Louis. With him, therefore, opposition to France was a passion; and
he who, at the age of twenty-three, bade defiance to the combined
power of the two greatest nations of the modern world, remembered,
as soon as he reached the English throne, that proud, though bitter
moment, when, surrounded by French force, his people determined to
let loose the waters which their skill had confined, and from the
homes and hearths of their fathers bear their goods, their fortunes,
and their persons, and to erect in a new land the flag they would
not see dishonored in the old. When, therefore, William of Orange
became monarch of England, his first thought was the humiliation of
France. To this point he bent the vast energies of England and his
own unconquerable will; for this only was his crown valuable, and for
this purpose was the power of England strained to the utmost tension.
The importance of France was then at its height. Louis sought to sway
the councils of Europe; and whoever else might have succumbed, the
statesmen of England had been in his power, and a monarch of England
in his pay. He saw, therefore, with dislike which was not attempted
to be concealed, the throne mounted by one who was resolved, not
merely to maintain its ancient greatness, but to quell the power of
its ancient rival. Louis sheltered the abdicated king, and encouraged
his mock court and his mock majesty. This was sufficient proof of his
feeling; nor were other indications wanting: and it is a complete
fallacy to suppose that the debt was unnecessarily incurred; in it
lay the power of William and the safety of the land.
Had the new king employed the arbitrary mode of levying supplies
of the earlier monarchs; had he made forced loans and never repaid
them; had he seized upon public money, and wrung the purses of public
men, the country might as well have been governed by a James as a
William, and would in all probability have recalled the exile of the
unfortunate House of Stuart. The evils of William’s reign were in
the facts that his power was not sufficiently established to borrow
on equitable terms; that the bribery, abuses, and corruption of men
in high places increased with their position; and, above all, that,
instead of paying his debts by terminable annuities, he made them
interminable. Lord Bolingbroke declares, that he could have raised
funds without mortgaging the resources of the nation in perpetuity,
and that it was a political movement to strengthen the power of the
crown, and to secure the adherence of that large portion of the
people by whom the money had been lent.
The war was necessary, and the contraction of the debt equally so;
for, although William engaged in the contest with something like
personal pride, it was essentially a national war. A free people
had driven away the Stuarts; a despotic king would have forced them
back. If ever, therefore, a contest directly interested both subject
and sovereign, it was that which created the national encumbrance;
and England was fortunate in the man she had chosen to champion
her rights. The contest, which dated from 1688 and ended in 1697,
which cost us 20 millions in loans and 16 millions in taxes, was
only closed because both nations were fatigued. It produced no great
results, no grand achievements, no lasting peace. It did but prove
that the strength which had departed from England during the two
previous reigns had slumbered, but was not withered. The earlier
history was, as many of England’s great wars have been, comparatively
unsuccessful. The parties into which the nation was divided prevented
the unanimity necessary to great deeds. They agreed only in robbing
the people. Public principle was with them a public jest. Incapacity
and corruption pervaded all branches. By corruption a Parliamentary
majority was procured, and through incapacity the commerce of the
country was decaying. Talent was only employed in devising its own
benefit; patriotism was perverted; national virtue was forgotten; and
the allies found that on sea and land the enemy had the advantage.
The navy was daring, but divided; the admirals were accused of
disaffection. While the foe was intercepting our merchandise in
the Channel, the vessels of England were building in the docks. On
the sea, our own peculiar boast, we were dishonored; our flag was
insulted; and English admirals retreated before French fleets. Ships
of war were burnt; merchant-vessels were sunk; and a million of
merchandise was destroyed.
But the clamor of the people reached her councils. It was said
our plans were betrayed to the enemy; treachery was justifiably
suspected; and all who were familiar with the period will join the
writer in thinking it not only possible, but probable.
During these trials the spirit of William remained unchanged; and,
rejecting all overtures from France, he exhibited to the world the
soldiership for which he was remarkable. At Namur he fought in the
trenches, ate his dinner with the soldiers, animated them with
his presence, shared their dangers, and won their hearts. Namur
capitulated, and the scene changed. The French power was shaken in
Catalonia; its coasts were assailed; its people were suffering, and
Louis, whose great general was dead, was sufficiently humbled to
renew his proposals for peace, which, after nine years’ war, costing
Europe 480 millions of money and 800,000 men, was gained by the
pacification of Ryswick.
A deep thinker of the present day has said of the war anterior to
1688,—and the argument is supported by that school of which Cobbett
was chief,—“The cost happily fell upon those who lived about the
time,—it was not transmitted to posterity, according to the clever
contrivance devised in a more enlightened and civilized age. They
spent their own money, and not that of their grandchildren. They did
as they liked with their own labor and its results; they did not
mortgage the labor of succeeding generations.”
Men do not argue thus, ordinarily. The case is very similar to that
of a land-proprietor mortgaging his estate to defend it from a
suit which endangers it. His posterity may regret, but they cannot
complain; they know it is better to have the estate partially
mortgaged than not to have an estate at all. It seems, to the writer,
similar with the national debts of the reign of William. He was
bound to defend the people who had chosen him; war was then, as
now, a popular pastime; and William is no more to be blamed that he
was not in advance of the time, than the nobles of the present day
are to blame because they bring up their younger sons to be shot at
for glory and a few shillings a day, instead of seeing, as their
successors will probably see, the anti-progressive and anti-Christian
nature of the principle thus supported.
The one great evil was, that the difficulty of getting money tempted
William to borrow on irredeemable annuities. Had he borrowed only on
annuities terminable in a century, he would have attained his money
at a little extra cost, but the pressure on the people would have
decreased year by year, the credit of the government have increased,
and the discontent of the nation been less.
If, however, any blame be attached to the government of William, how
much greater must be that which is attached to succeeding ministries.
They knew, for they felt, the evil of perpetual debts. Sir Robert
Walpole said, when the nation owed 100 millions it would be ruined;
but he, and those who preceded with those who followed him, persisted
in neglecting the only principle of action which could save the
country. It is the misfortune of governments to abide by that which
is only venerable from its antiquity, and persist in following
precedents when they should act upon principle. They forget—and the
fact cannot be urged too strongly—that government is a progressive
science, and that improvement is a law of nations as well as of
nature.
In 1696, while the gold was being recoined, exchequer-bills,
principally for £5 and £10, were introduced. Being issued on the
security of government, they supplied the place of coin, and were
found a great convenience, acting as state counters, which passed as
money, because the people knew that the government would receive them
at full value. The Lords of the Treasury were authorized to contract
with moneyed men to supply cash; and though these bills were at one
time at a discount, their credit rose daily, until they reached 1 per
cent. premium. They at first bore no interest; but when they were
reissued, £7 12_s._ per cent. per annum was paid, and they became a
favorite investment. The genius of Mr. Halifax invented them; and it
has required no genius on the part of succeeding ministers to issue
a supply whenever the wants of the government have demanded them.
When it is not convenient to pay these securities off, and they have
accumulated to an amount which attracts the notice of the Opposition,
or is calculated to depress the price, the consent of Parliament is
procured, and they are liquidated by being added to the fixed debt of
the country. They now form a regular supply to the ministry, and are
part of the floating or unfunded debt of England, bearing a premium
or discount in proportion to the credit of the nation.
The first fraud in exchequer-bills occurred within a year of their
creation; when receivers-general, members of Parliament, and deputy
accountants formed a confederacy fraudulently to indorse some of
these securities, to which their position gave them access. The
robbery was discovered; and a Mr. Reginald Marryot, one of the
accomplices, saved himself by discovering the plot. The House
of Commons expelled from its members the men whose dishonor was
increased by their position; and, as the estate of Mr. Charles
Duncombe, one of the accused, was worth £400,000, they fined him
£200,000, being the amount wrongfully circulated. In the House of
Lords it fell to the Duke of Leeds to give the casting vote. Mr.
Duncombe’s estate was saved, but the Duke’s credit suffered, for he
gave his decision in favor of the defaulter; and it was said that Mr.
Duncombe paid no inconsiderable sum for the benefit he received at
the hands of his Grace. The charge was never brought home; but the
Duke’s after-conduct gave a sufficient coloring to the suspicion.
The first foreign loan was negotiated in ’Change Alley in 1706. The
victories of the Duke of Marlborough had raised the pride of the
English people; and even ’Change Alley possessed a somewhat similar
feeling. When, therefore, his Grace proposed a loan of £500,000 to
the Emperor, for eight years, at 8 per cent., on the security of the
Silesian revenue, it was received with acclamation, and was filled in
a few days by the first commercial names of England.
During that period, which, now a romantic, was then a terrible
reality, when it was known, in 1715, that the best families in
the North of England had assembled in arms to change the dynasty,
no pains were spared by the jobbers to procure correct and to
disseminate false intelligence: and it was with mingled feelings of
alarm and pity that the inhabitants of a small town between Perth
and the seaport of Montrose—where James embarked after his unhappy
expedition—saw a carriage and six, travelling with all the rapidity
which the road would allow. It was known that the rebel army was
dispersed; that its chiefs were scattered; and that the unfortunate
Stuart was wandering through the country, with life and liberty alike
endangered. It excited, therefore, no surprise in the village when
the carriage was surrounded, and the apparent prize conveyed with
great ostentation towards London. Letters soon reached the city that
the fugitive Stuart was taken, and the letters were confirmed by the
story related, which quickly reached London. The funds of course
rose, and the inventors of the trick laughed in their sleeves as
they divided the profit. By this time the jobbers must have reached
a somewhat high position, as, the same year, one Quare, a Quaker
and a celebrated watchmaker in ’Change Alley, having successfully
speculated in the shares and funds with which it abounded, was
of sufficient importance to invite to the marriage-feast of his
daughter, Sarah Jennings, Duchess of Marlborough, and the Princess
of Wales, who, with three hundred guests of distinction, graced the
wedding entertainment.
But ’Change Alley was notorious for other dealings than those in
the funds. When that desperate struggle for power occurred between
the old and new East India Company; when their varying claims
were on every man’s tongue, and their bribes in every man’s hand;
the election of a member of Parliament was an affair of moment.
The partisans of each Company sided with their friends; bought
boroughs; shed their money lavishly and largely; used every art that
self-interest could devise; and so extensive was the interference
of the brokers, that the only question heard in ’Change Alley was,
“Is he for the New or the Old Company?” It was the touchstone of
a principle more sacred than the Hanoverian succession, and more
important than England and Hanover united. It was probably found
profitable; and it was said in 1720, that elections for members
of Parliament came to market in ’Change Alley as currently as
lottery-tickets.
The first political hoax on record occurred in the reign of Anne.
Down the Queen’s Road, riding at a furious rate, ordering turnpikes
to be thrown open, and loudly proclaiming the sudden death of the
queen, rode a well-dressed man, sparing neither spur nor steed. From
west to east, and from north to south, the news spread. Like wildfire
it passed through the desolate fields where palaces now abound, till
it reached the city. The train-bands desisted from their exercise,
furled their colors, and returned home with their arms reversed.
The funds fell with a suddenness which marked the importance of the
intelligence; and it was remarked that, while the Christian jobbers
stood aloof, almost paralyzed with the information, Manasseh Lopez
and the Jew interest bought eagerly at the reduced price. There is no
positive information to fix the deception upon any one in particular,
but suspicion pointed at those who gained by the fraud so publicly
perpetrated.
The invasion of 1715, as it caused extra expenses, demanded extra
grants. The House of Commons voted them; but the House of Peers, a
portion of which possessed strong Jacobite feeling, attempted to
modify without mending it. Though they did not reject the bill, the
lower house resented the mere interference. At an early hour on
the morning of the 13th February, Lord Harcourt went to the House
of Peers, and made an anxious search for precedents of amendments
to money bills. The search proved unsuccessful, as, since the
Restoration, the Commons had defended their right of not allowing
the Lords to make any alterations in these acts. A committee was
appointed, and the Peers fought bravely for their claim; but though
the court was willing to support them, money was so immediately
necessary, that, at the request of the government, they yielded under
protest.