THE REIGN OF JAMES II.
The great question that has been brought forward at the end of the
last chapter, concerning the right and usage of election in boroughs,
was perhaps of less practical importance in the reign of Charles the
Second than we might at first imagine, or than it might become in the
present age. Whoever might be the legal electors, it is undoubted that
a great preponderance was virtually lodged in the select body of
corporations. It was the knowledge of this that produced the
corporation act soon after the restoration, to exclude the
presbyterians, and the more violent measures of quo warranto at the
end of Charles's reign. If by placing creatures of the court in
municipal offices, or by intimidating the former corporators through
apprehensions of forfeiting their common property and lucrative
privileges, what was called a loyal parliament could be procured, the
business of government, both as to supply and enactment or repeal of
laws, would be carried on far more smoothly, and with less scandal
than by their entire disuse. Few of those who assumed the name of
tories were prepared to sacrifice the ancient fundamental forms of the
constitution. They thought it equally necessary that a parliament
should exist, and that it should have no will of its own, or none at
least, except for the preservation of that ascendancy of the
established religion which even their loyalty would not consent to
surrender.
_Designs of the king._--It is not easy to determine whether James II.
had resolved to complete his schemes of arbitrary government by
setting aside even the nominal concurrence of the two houses of
parliament in legislative enactments, and especially in levying money
on his subjects. Lord Halifax had given him much offence towards the
close of the late reign, and was considered from thenceforth as a man
unfit to be employed, because in the cabinet, on a question whether
the people of New England should be ruled in future by an assembly or
by the absolute pleasure of the Crown, he had spoken very freely
against unlimited monarchy.[75] James indeed could hardly avoid
perceiving that the constant acquiescence of an English House of
Commons in the measures proposed to it, a respectful abstinence from
all intermeddling with the administration of affairs, could never be
relied upon or obtained at all, without much of that dexterous
management and influence which he thought it both unworthy and
impolitic to exert. It seems clearly that he had determined on trying
their obedience merely as an experiment, and by no means to put his
authority in any manner within their control. Hence he took the bold
step of issuing a proclamation for the payment of customs, which by
law expired at the late king's death;[76] and Barillon mentions
several times, that he was resolved to continue in the possession of
the revenue, whether the parliament should grant it or no. He was
equally decided not to accept it for a limited time. This, as his
principal ministers told the ambassador, would be to establish the
necessity of convoking parliament from time to time, and thus to
change the form of government by rendering the king dependent upon it;
rather than which it would be better to come at once to the extremity
of a dissolution, and maintain the possession of the late king's
revenues by open force.[77] But the extraordinary conduct of this
House of Commons, so unlike any that had met in England for the last
century, rendered any exertion of violence on this score quite
unnecessary.
_Parliament of 1685._--The behaviour of that unhonoured parliament,
which held its two short sessions in 1685, though in a great measure
owing to the fickleness of the public mind and rapid ascendancy of
tory principles during the late years, as well as to a knowledge of
the king's severe and vindictive temper, seems to confirm the
assertion strongly made at the time within its walls, that many of the
members had been unduly returned.[78] The notorious facts indeed, as
to the forfeiture of corporations throughout the kingdom, and their
regrant under such restrictions as might serve the purpose of the
Crown, stand in need of no confirmation. Those who look at the debates
and votes of this assembly, their large grant of a permanent revenue
to the annual amount of two millions, rendering a frugal prince, in
time of peace, entirely out of all dependence on his people, their
timid departure from a resolution taken to address the king on the
only matter for which they were really solicitous, the enforcement of
the penal laws, on a suggestion of his displeasure,[79] their bill
entitled, for the preservation of his majesty's person, full of
dangerous innovations in the law of treason, especially one most
unconstitutional clause, that any one moving in either house of
parliament to change the descent of the Crown should incur the
penalties of that offence,[80] their supply of £700,000, after the
suppression of Monmouth's rebellion, for the support of a standing
army,[81] will be inclined to believe that, had James been as zealous
for the church of England as his father, he would have succeeded in
establishing a power so nearly despotic that neither the privileges of
parliament, nor much less those of private men, would have stood in
his way. The prejudice which the two last Stuarts had acquired in
favour of the Roman religion, so often deplored by thoughtless or
insidious writers as one of the worst consequences of their father's
ill fortune, is to be accounted rather among the most signal links in
the chain of causes through which a gracious Providence has favoured
the consolidation of our liberties and welfare. Nothing less than a
motive more universally operating than the interests of civil freedom
would have stayed the compliant spirit of this unworthy parliament, or
rallied, for a time at least, the supporters of indefinite prerogative
under a banner they abhorred.
_King's intention to repeal the test act._--We know that the king's
intention was to obtain the repeal of the habeas corpus act, a law
which he reckoned as destructive of monarchy as the test was of the
catholic religion.[82] And I see no reason to suppose that he would
have failed of this, had he not given alarm to his high-church
parliament, by a premature manifestation of his design to fill the
civil and military employments with the professors of his own mode of
faith.
It has been doubted by Mr. Fox whether James had, in this part of his
reign, conceived the projects commonly imputed to him, of
overthrowing, or injuring by any direct acts of power, the protestant
establishment of this kingdom. Neither the copious extracts from
Barillon's correspondence with his own court, published by Sir John
Dalrymple and himself, nor the king's own memoirs, seem, in his
opinion, to warrant a conclusion that anything farther was intended
than to emancipate the Roman catholics from the severe restrictions of
the penal laws, securing the public exercise of their worship from
molestation, and to replace them upon an equality as to civil offices,
by abrogating the test act of the late reign.[83] We find nevertheless
a remarkable conversation of the king himself with the French
ambassador, which leaves an impression on the mind that his projects
were already irreconcilable with that pledge of support he had rather
unadvisedly given to the Anglican church at his accession. This
interpretation of his language is confirmed by the expressions used at
the same time by Sunderland, which are more unequivocal and point at
the complete establishment of the catholic religion.[84] The
particular care displayed by James in this conversation, and indeed
in so many notorious instances, to place the army, as far as possible,
in the command of catholic officers, has very much the appearance of
his looking towards the employment of force in overthrowing the
protestant church, as well as the civil privileges of his subjects.
Yet he probably entertained confident hopes, in the outset of his
reign, that he might not be driven to this necessity, or at least
should only have occasion to restrain a fanatical populace. He would
rely on the intrinsic excellence of his own religion, and still more
on the temptations that his favour would hold out. For the repeal of
the test would not have placed the two religions on a fair level.
Catholics, however little qualified, would have filled, as in fact
they did under the dispensing power, most of the principal stations in
the court, law, and army. The king told Barillon, he was well enough
acquainted with England to be assured, that the admissibility to
office would make more catholics than the right of saying mass
publicly. There was, on the one hand, a prevailing laxity of principle
in the higher ranks, and a corrupt devotedness to power for the sake
of the emoluments it could dispense, which encouraged the expectation
of such a nominal change in religion as had happened in the sixteenth
century. And, on the other, much was hoped by the king from the church
itself. He had separated from her communion in consequence of the
arguments which her own divines had furnished; he had conversed with
men bred in the school of Laud; and was slow to believe that the
conclusions which he had, not perhaps unreasonably, derived from the
semi-protestant theology of his father's reign, would not appear
equally irresistible to all minds, when free from the danger and
obloquy that had attended them. Thus by a voluntary return of the
clergy and nation to the bosom of the catholic church, he might both
obtain an immortal renown, and secure his prerogative against that
religious jealousy which had always been the aliment of political
factions.[85] Till this revolution however could be brought about, he
determined to court the church of England, whose boast of exclusive
and unlimited loyalty could hardly be supposed entirely hollow, in
order to obtain the repeal of the penal laws and disqualifications
which affected that of Rome. And though the maxims of religious
toleration had been always in his mouth, he did not hesitate to
propitiate her with the most acceptable sacrifice, the persecution of
nonconforming ministers. He looked upon the dissenters as men of
republican principles; and if he could have made his bargain for the
free exercise of the catholic worship, I see no reason to doubt that
he would never have announced his general indulgence to tender
consciences.[86]
_James deceived as to the disposition of his subjects._--But James
had taken too narrow a view of the mighty people whom he governed. The
laity of every class, the tory gentleman almost equally with the
presbyterian artisan, entertained an inveterate abhorrence of the
Romish superstition. Their first education, the usual tenor of
preaching, far more polemical than at present, the books most current,
the tradition of ancient cruelties and conspiracies, rendered this a
cardinal point of religion even with those who had little beside. Many
still gave credit to the popish plot; and with those who had been
compelled to admit its general falsehood, there remained, as is
frequently the case, an indefinite sense of dislike and suspicion,
like the swell of waves after a storm, which attached itself to all
the objects of that calumny.[87] This was of course enhanced by the
insolent and injudicious confidence of the Romish faction, especially
the priests, in their demeanour, their language, and their
publications. Meanwhile a considerable change had been wrought in the
doctrinal system of the Anglican church since the restoration. The men
most conspicuous in the reign of Charles II. for their writings, and
for their argumentative eloquence in the pulpit, were of the class who
had been denominated Latitudinarian divines; and while they maintained
the principles of the Remonstrants in opposition to the school of
Calvin, were powerful and unequivocal supporters of the protestant
cause against Rome. They made none of the dangerous concessions which
had shaken the faith of the Duke and Duchess of York, they regretted
the disuse of no superstitious ceremony, they denied not the one
essential characteristic of the reformation, the right of private
judgment, they avoided the mysterious jargon of a real presence in the
Lord's Supper. Thus such an agreement between the two churches as had
been projected at different times was become far more evidently
impracticable, and the separation more broad and defined.[88] These
men, as well as others who do not properly belong to the same class,
were now distinguished by their courageous and able defences of the
reformation. The victory, in the judgment of the nation, was wholly
theirs. Rome had indeed her proselytes, but such as it would have been
more honourable to have wanted. The people heard sometimes with
indignation, or rather with contempt, that an unprincipled minister, a
temporising bishop, or a licentious poet, had gone over to the side of
a monarch who made conformity with his religion the only certain path
to his favour.
_Prorogation of parliament._--The short period of a four years' reign
may be divided by several distinguishing points of time, which make so
many changes in the posture of government. From the king's accession
to the prorogation of parliament on November 30, 1685, he had acted
apparently in concurrence with the same party that had supported him
in his brother's reign, of which his own seemed the natural and almost
undistinguishable continuation. This party, which had become
incomparably stronger than the opposite, had greeted him with such
unbounded professions,[89] the temper of its representatives had been
such in the first session of parliament, that a prince less obstinate
than James might have expected to succeed in attaining an authority
which the nation seemed to offer. A rebellion speedily and decisively
quelled confirms every government; it seemed to place his own beyond
hazard. Could he have been induced to change the order of his designs,
and accustom the people to a military force, and to a prerogative of
dispensing with statutes of temporal concern, before he meddled too
ostensibly with their religion, he would possibly have gained both the
objects of his desire. Even conversions to popery might have been more
frequent, if the gross solicitations of the court had not made them
dishonourable. But, neglecting the hint of a prudent adviser, that the
death of Monmouth left a far more dangerous enemy behind, he suffered
a victory that might have ensured him success, to inspire an arrogant
confidence that led on to destruction. Master of an army, and
determined to keep it on foot, he naturally thought less of a good
understanding with parliament.[90] He had already rejected the
proposition of employing bribery among the members, an expedient very
little congenial to his presumptuous temper and notions of
government.[91] They were assembled, in his opinion, to testify the
nation's loyalty, and thankfulness to their gracious prince for not
taking away their laws and liberties. But, if a factious spirit of
opposition should once prevail, it could not be his fault if he
dismissed them till more becoming sentiments should again gain
ground.[92] Hence, he did not hesitate to prorogue, and eventually to
dissolve, the most compliant House of Commons that had been returned
since his family had sat on the throne, at the cost of £700,000, a
grant of supply which thus fell to the ground, rather than endure any
opposition on the subject of the test and penal laws. Yet, from the
strength of the court in all divisions, it must seem not improbable to
us that he might, by the usual means of management, have carried both
of those favourite measures, at least through the lower house of
parliament. For the Crown lost the most important division only by one
vote, and had in general a majority. The very address about
unqualified officers, which gave the king such offence as to bring on
a prorogation, was worded in the most timid manner; the house having
rejected unanimously the words first inserted by their committee,
requesting that his majesty would be pleased not to continue them in
their employments, for a vague petition that "he would be graciously
pleased to give such directions that no apprehensions or jealousies
may remain in the hearts of his majesty's good and faithful
subjects."[93]
The second period of this reign extends from the prorogation of
parliament to the dismissal of the Earl of Rochester from the treasury
in 1686. During this time James, exasperated at the reluctance of the
Commons to acquiesce in his measures, and the decisive opposition of
the church, threw off the half restraint he had imposed on himself;
and showed plainly that, with a bench of judges to pronounce his
commands, and an army to enforce them, he would not suffer the mockery
of constitutional limitations to stand any longer in his way. Two
important steps were made this year towards the accomplishment of his
designs, by the judgment of the court of king's bench in the case of
Sir Edward Hales, confirming the right of the Crown to dispense with
the test act, and by the establishment of the new ecclesiastical
commission.
The kings of England, if not immemorially, yet from a very early æra
in our records, had exercised a prerogative unquestioned by
parliament, and recognised by courts of justice, that of granting
dispensations from the prohibitions and penalties of particular laws.
The language of ancient statutes was usually brief and careless, with
few of those attempts to regulate prospective contingencies, which,
even with our pretended modern caution, are so often imperfect; and,
as the sessions were never regular, sometimes interrupted for several
years, there was a kind of necessity, or great convenience, in
deviating occasionally from the rigour of a general prohibition; more
often perhaps some motive of interest or partiality would induce the
Crown to infringe on the legal rule. This dispensing power, however,
grew up, as it were, collaterally to the sovereignty of the
legislature, which it sometimes appeared to overshadow. It was of
course asserted in large terms by counsellors of state, and too
frequently by the interpreters of law. Lord Coke, before he had
learned the bolder tone of his declining years, lays it down, that no
act of parliament can bind the king from any prerogative which is
inseparable from his person, so that he may not dispense with it by a
non-obtante; such is his sovereign power to command any of his
subjects to serve him for the public weal, which solely and
inseparably is annexed to his person, and cannot be restrained by any
act of parliament. Thus, although the statute 23 H. 6, c. 8, provides
that all patents to hold the office of sheriff for more than one year
shall be void, and even enacts that the king shall not dispense with
it; yet it was held by all the judges in the reign of Henry VII. that
the king may grant such a patent for a longer term on good grounds,
whereof he alone is the judge. So also the statutes which restrain the
king from granting pardons in case of murder have been held void; and
doubtless the constant practice has been to disregard them.[94]
This high and dangerous prerogative, nevertheless, was subject to
several limitations, which none but the grosser flatterers of monarchy
could deny. It was agreed among lawyers that the king could not
dispense with the common law, nor with any statute prohibiting that
which was _malum in se_, nor with any right or interest of a private
person, or corporation.[95] The rules, however, were still rather
complicated, the boundaries indefinite, and therefore varying
according to the political character of the judges. For many years
dispensations had been confined to taking away such incapacity as
either the statutes of a college, or some law of little consequence,
perhaps almost obsolete, might happen to have created. But when a
collusive action was brought against Sir Edward Hales, a Roman
catholic, in the name of his servant, to recover the penalty of £500
imposed by the test act, for accepting the commission of colonel of a
regiment, without the previous qualification of receiving the
sacrament in the church of England, the whole importance of the
alleged prerogative became visible, and the fate of the established
constitution seemed to hang upon the decision. The plaintiff's
advocate, Northey, was known to have received his fee from the other
side, and was thence suspected, perhaps unfairly, of betraying his own
cause;[96] but the chief justice Herbert showed that no arguments
against this prerogative would have swayed his determination. Not
content with treating the question as one of no difficulty, he
grounded his decision in favour of the defendant upon principles that
would extend far beyond the immediate case. He laid it down that the
kings of England were sovereign princes, that the laws of England were
the king's laws; that it was consequently an inseparable prerogative
of the Crown to dispense with penal laws in particular cases, for
reasons of which it was the sole judge. This he called the ancient
remains of the sovereign power and prerogative of the kings of
England, which never yet was taken from them, nor could be. There was
no law, he said, that might not be dispensed with by the supreme
lawgiver (meaning evidently the king, since the proposition would
otherwise be impertinent); though he made a sort of distinction as to
those which affected the subject's private right. But the general
maxims of slavish churchmen and lawyers were asserted so broadly that
a future judge would find little difficulty in making use of this
precedent to justify any stretch of arbitrary power.[97]
It is by no means evident that the decision in this particular case of
Hales, which had the approbation of eleven judges out of twelve, was
against law.[98] The course of former precedents seems rather to
furnish its justification. But the less untenable such a judgment in
favour of the dispensing power might appear, the more necessity would
men of reflection perceive of making some great change in the
relations of the people towards their sovereign. A prerogative of
setting aside the enactments of parliament, which in trifling matters,
and for the sake of conferring a benefit on individuals, might be
suffered to exist with little mischief, became intolerable when
exercised in contravention of the very principle of those statutes
which had been provided for the security of fundamental liberties or
institutions. Thus the test act, the great achievement, as it had been
reckoned, of the protestant party, for the sake of which the most
subservient of parliaments had just then ventured to lose the king's
favour, became absolutely nugatory and ineffective, by a construction
which the law itself did not reject. Nor was it easy to provide any
sufficient remedy by means of parliament; since it was the doctrine of
the judges, that the king's inseparable and sovereign prerogatives in
matters of government could not be taken away or restrained by
statute. The unadvised assertion in a court of justice of this
principle, which though not by any means novel, had never been
advanced in a business of such universal concern and interest, may be
said to have sealed the condemnation of the house of Stuart. It made
the co-existence of an hereditary line, claiming a sovereign
prerogative paramount to the liberties they had vouchsafed to
concede, incompatible with the security or probable duration of those
liberties. This incompatibility is the true basis of the revolution in
1688.
But, whatever pretext the custom of centuries or the authority of
compliant lawyers might afford for these dispensations from the test,
no legal defence could be made for the ecclesiastical commission of
1686. The high commission court of Elizabeth had been altogether taken
away by an act of the long parliament, which went on to provide that
no new court should be erected with the like power, jurisdiction, and
authority. Yet the commission issued by James II. followed very nearly
the words of that which had created the original court under
Elizabeth, omitting a few particulars of little moment.[99] It is not
known, I believe, at whose suggestion the king adopted this measure.
The pre-eminence reserved by the commission to Jefferies, whose
presence was made necessary to all their meetings, and the violence
with which he acted in all their transactions on record, seems to
point him out as its great promoter; though it is true that, at a
later period, Jefferies seems to have perceived the destructive
indiscretion of the popish counsellors. It displayed the king's change
of policy and entire separation from that high-church party, to whom
he was indebted for the throne; since the manifest design of the
ecclesiastical commission was to bridle the clergy, and silence the
voice of protestant zeal. The proceedings against the Bishop of
London, and other instances of hostility to the established religion,
are well known.
Elated by success and general submission, exasperated by the
reluctance and dissatisfaction of those on whom he had relied for an
active concurrence with his desires, the king seems at least by this
time to have formed the scheme of subverting, or impairing as far as
possible, the religious establishment. He told Barillon, alluding to
the ecclesiastical commission, that God had permitted all the statutes
which had been enacted against the catholic religion to become the
means of its re-establishment.[100] But the most remarkable evidence
of this design was the collation of Massey, a recent convert, to the
deanery of Christ Church, with a dispensation from all the statutes
of uniformity and other ecclesiastical laws, so ample that it made a
precedent, and such it was doubtless intended to be, for bestowing any
benefices upon members of the church of Rome. This dispensation seems
to have been not generally known at the time. Burnet has stated the
circumstances of Massey's promotion inaccurately; and no historian, I
believe, till the publication of the instrument after the middle of
the last century, was fully aware of the degree in which the king had
trampled upon the securities of the established church in this
transaction.[101]
_Dismissal of Lord Rochester._--A deeper impression was made by the
dismissal of Rochester from his post of lord treasurer; so nearly
consequent on his positive declaration of adherence to the protestant
religion, after the dispute held in his presence at the king's
particular command, between divines of both persuasions, that it had
much the appearance of a resolution taken at court to exclude from the
high offices of the state all those who gave no hope of
conversion.[102] Clarendon had already given way to Tyrconnel in the
government of Ireland; the privy seal was bestowed on a catholic peer,
Lord Arundel; Lord Bellasis, of the same religion, was now placed at
the head of the commission of the treasury; Sunderland, though he did
not yet cease to conform, made no secret of his pretended change of
opinion; the council board, by virtue of the dispensing power, was
filled with those who would refuse the test; a small junto of
catholics, with Father Petre, the king's confessor, at their head,
took the management of almost all affairs upon themselves;[103] men,
whose known want of principle gave reason to expect their compliance,
were raised to bishoprics; there could be no rational doubt of a
concerted scheme to depress and discountenance the established church.
The dismissal of Rochester, who had gone great lengths to preserve his
power and emoluments, and would in all probability have concurred in
the establishment of arbitrary power under a protestant
sovereign,[104] may be reckoned the most unequivocal evidence of the
king's intentions; and from thence we may date the decisive measures
that were taken to counteract them.
_Prince of Orange alarmed._--It was, I do not merely say the interest,
but the clear right and bounden duty, of the Prince of Orange, to
watch over the internal politics of England, on account of the near
connection which his own birth and his marriage with the presumptive
heir had created. He was never to be reckoned a foreigner as to this
country, which, even in the ordinary course of succession, he might be
called to govern. From the time of his union with the Princess Mary,
he was the legitimate and natural ally of the whig party; alien in all
his sentiments from his two uncles, neither of whom, especially James,
treated him with much regard, on account merely of his attachment to
religion and liberty, for he might have secured their affection by
falling into their plans. Before such differences as subsisted between
these personages, the bonds of relationship fall asunder like flax;
and William would have had at least the sanction of many precedents in
history, if he had employed his influence to excite sedition against
Charles or James, and to thwart their administration. Yet his conduct
appears to have been merely defensive; nor had he the remotest
connection with the violent and factious proceedings of Shaftesbury
and his partisans. He played a very dexterous, but apparently very
fair, game throughout the last years of Charles; never losing sight of
the popular party, through whom alone he could expect influence over
England during the life of his father-in-law, while he avoided any
direct rupture with the brothers, and every reasonable pretext for
their taking offence.
It has never been established by any reputable testimony, though
perpetually asserted, nor is it in the least degree probable, that
William took any share in prompting the invasion of Monmouth.[105] But
it is nevertheless manifest that he derived the greatest advantage
from this absurd rebellion and from its failure; not only, as it
removed a mischievous adventurer, whom the multitude's idle
predilection had elevated so high, that factious men would, under
every government, have turned to account his ambitious imbecility; but
as the cruelty with which this unhappy enterprise was punished
rendered the king odious,[106] while the success of his arms inspired
him with false confidence, and neglect of caution. Every month, as it
brought forth evidence of James's arbitrary projects, increased the
number of those who looked for deliverance to the Prince of Orange,
either in the course of succession, or by some special interference.
He had, in fact, a stronger motive for watching the councils of his
father-in-law than has generally been known. The king was, at his
accession, in his fifty-fifth year, and had no male children; nor did
the queen's health give much encouragement to expect them. Every dream
of the nation's voluntary return to the church of Rome must have
vanished, even if the consent of a parliament could be obtained, which
was nearly vain to think of; or if open force and the aid of France
should enable James to subvert the established religion, what had the
catholics to anticipate from his death, but that fearful reaction
which had ensued upon the accession of Elizabeth? This had already so
much disheartened the moderate part of their body that they were most
anxious not to urge forward a change, for which the kingdom was not
ripe, and which was so little likely to endure, and used their
influence to promote a reconciliation between the king and Prince of
Orange, contenting themselves with that free exercise of their worship
which was permitted in Holland.[107] But the ambitious priesthood who
surrounded the throne had bolder projects. A scheme was formed early
in the king's reign, to exclude the Princess of Orange from the
succession in favour of her sister Anne, in the event of the latter's
conversion to the Romish faith. The French ministers at our court,
Barillon and Bonrepos, gave ear to this hardy intrigue. They flattered
themselves that both Anne and her husband were favourably disposed.
But in this they were wholly mistaken. No one could be more
unconquerably fixed in her religion than that princess. The king
himself, when the Dutch ambassador, Van Citers, laid before him a
document, probably drawn up by some catholics of his court, in which
these audacious speculations were developed, declared his indignation
at so criminal a project. It was not even in his power, he let the
prince afterwards know by a message, or in that of parliament,
according to the principles which had been maintained in his own
behalf, to change the fundamental order of succession to the
Crown.[108] Nothing indeed can more forcibly paint the desperation of
the popish faction than their entertainment of so preposterous a
scheme. But it naturally increased the solicitude of William about the
intrigues of the English cabinet. It does not appear that any direct
overtures were made to the Prince of Orange, except by a very few
malcontents, till the embassy of Dykvelt from the States in the spring
of 1687. It was William's object to ascertain, through that minister,
the real state of parties in England. Such assurances as he carried
back to Holland gave encouragement to an enterprise that would have
been equally injudicious and unwarrantable without them.[109] Danby,
Halifax, Nottingham, and others of the tory, as well as whig factions,
entered into a secret correspondence with the Prince of Orange; some
from a real attachment to the constitutional limitations of monarchy;
some from a conviction that, without open apostasy from the protestant
faith, they could never obtain from James the prizes of their
ambition. This must have been the predominant motive with Lord
Churchill, who never gave any proof of solicitude about civil liberty;
and his influence taught the Princess Anne to distinguish her interest
from those of her father. It was about this time also that even
Sunderland entered upon a mysterious communication with the Prince of
Orange; but whether he afterwards served his present master only to
betray him, as has been generally believed, or sought rather to
propitiate, by clandestine professions, one who might in the course of
events become such, is not perhaps what the evidence already known to
the world will enable us to determine.[110] The apologists of James
have often represented Sunderland's treachery as extending back to the
commencement of this reign, as if he had entered upon the king's
service with no other aim than to put him on measures that would
naturally lead to his ruin. But the simpler hypothesis is probably
nearer the truth: a corrupt and artful statesman could have no better
prospect for his own advantage than the power and popularity of a
government which he administered; it was a conviction of the king's
incorrigible and infatuated adherence to designs which the rising
spirit of the nation rendered utterly infeasible, an apprehension
that, whenever a free parliament should be called, he might experience
the fate of Strafford as an expiation for the sins of the Crown, which
determined him to secure as far as possible his own indemnity upon a
revolution that he could not have withstood.[111]
The dismissal of Rochester was followed up at no great distance of
time, by the famous declaration for liberty of conscience, suspending
the execution of all penal laws concerning religion, and freely
pardoning all offences against them, in as full a manner as if each
individual had been named. He declared also his will and pleasure that
the oaths of supremacy and allegiance, and the several tests enjoined
by statutes of the late reign, should no longer be required of any one
before his admission to offices of trust. The motive of this
declaration was not so much to relieve the Roman catholics from penal
and incapacitating statutes (which, since the king's accession and the
judgment of the court of king's bench in favour of Hales, were
virtually at an end), as by extending to the protestant dissenters the
same full measure of toleration, to enlist under the standard of
arbitrary power those who had been its most intrepid and steadiest
adversaries. It was after the prorogation of parliament that he had
begun to caress that party, who in the first months of his reign had
endured a continuance of their persecution.[112] But the clergy in
general detested the nonconformists still more than the papists, and
had always abhorred the idea of even a parliamentary toleration. The
present declaration went much farther than the recognised prerogative
of dispensing with prohibitory statutes. Instead of removing the
disability from individuals by letters patent, it swept away at once,
in effect, the solemn ordinances of the legislature. There was,
indeed, a reference to the future concurrence of the two houses,
whenever he should think it convenient for them to meet; but so
expressed as rather to insult, than pay respect to, their
authority.[113] And no one could help considering the declaration of a
similar nature just published in Scotland, as the best commentary on
the present. In that he suspended all laws against the Roman catholics
and moderate presbyterians, "by his sovereign authority, prerogative
royal, and absolute power, which all his subjects were to obey without
reserve;" and its whole tenor spoke, in as unequivocal language as his
grandfather was accustomed to use, his contempt of all pretended
limitations on his will.[114] Though the constitution of Scotland was
not so well balanced as our own, it was notorious that the Crown did
not legally possess an absolute power in that kingdom; and men might
conclude that, when he should think it less necessary to observe some
measures with his English subjects, he would address them in the same
strain.
Those, indeed, who knew by what course his favour was to be sought,
did not hesitate to go before, and light him, as it were, to the altar
on which their country's liberty was to be the victim. Many of the
addresses which fill the columns of the _London Gazette_ in 1687, on
occasion of the declaration of indulgence, flatter the king with
assertions of his dispensing power. The benchers and barristers of the
Middle Temple, under the direction of the prostitute Shower, were
again foremost in the race of infamy. They thank him "for asserting
his own royal prerogatives, the very life of the law, and of their
profession; which prerogatives, as they were given by God himself, so
no power upon earth could diminish them, but they must always remain
entire and inseparable from his royal person; which prerogatives as
the addressers had studied to know, so they were resolved to defend,
by asserting with their lives and fortunes that divine maxim, _à Deo
rex, à lege rex_."[115]
These addresses, which, to the number of some hundreds, were sent up
from every description of persons, the clergy, the nonconformists of
all denominations, the grand juries, the justices of the peace, the
corporations, the inhabitants of towns, in consequence of the
declaration, afford a singular contrast to what we know of the
prevailing dispositions of the people in that year, and of their
general abandonment of the king's cause before the end of the next.
Those from the clergy, indeed, disclose their ill-humour at the
unconstitutional indulgence, limiting their thanks to some promises of
favour the king had used towards the established church. But as to the
rest, we should have cause to blush for the servile hypocrisy of our
ancestors, if there were not good reason to believe that these
addresses were sometimes the work of a small minority in the name of
the rest, and that the grand juries and the magistracy in general had
been so garbled for the king's purposes in this year that they formed
a very inadequate representation of that great class from which they
ought to have been taken.[116] It was however very natural that they
should deceive the court. The catholics were eager for that security
which nothing but an act of the legislature could afford; and James,
who, as well as his minister, had a strong aversion to the measure,
seems about the latter end of the summer of 1687 to have made a sudden
change in his scheme of government, and resolved once more to try the
disposition of a parliament. For this purpose, having dissolved that
from which he could expect nothing hostile to the church, he set
himself to manage the election of another in such a manner as to
ensure his main object, the security of the Romish religion.[117]
"His first care," says his biographer Innes, "was to purge the
corporations from that leaven which was in danger of corrupting the
whole kingdom; so he appointed certain regulators to inspect the
conduct of several borough towns, to correct abuses where it was
practicable, and where not, by forfeiting their charters, to turn out
such rotten members as infected the rest. But in this, as in most
other cases, the king had the fortune to choose persons not too well
qualified for such an employment, and extremely disagreeable to the
people; it was a sort of motley council made up of catholics and
presbyterians, a composition which was sure never to hold long
together, or that could probably unite in any method suitable to both
their interests; it served therefore only to increase the public odium
by their too arbitrary ways of turning out and putting in; and yet
those who were thus intruded, as it were, by force, being of the
presbyterian party, were by this time become as little inclinable to
favour the king's intentions as the excluded members."[118]
This endeavour to violate the legal rights of electors as well as to
take away other vested franchises, by new modelling corporations
through commissions granted to regulators, was the most capital
delinquency of the king's government; because it tended to preclude
any reparation for the rest, and directly attacked the fundamental
constitution of the state.[119] But, like all his other measures, it
displayed not more ill-will to the liberties of the nation than
inability to overthrow them. The catholics were so small a body, and
so weak, especially in corporate towns, that the whole effect produced
by the regulators was to place municipal power and trust in the hands
of the nonconformists, those precarious and unfaithful allies of the
court, whose resentment of past oppression, hereditary attachment to
popular principles of government, and inveterate abhorrence of popery,
were not to be effaced by an unnatural coalition. Hence, though they
availed themselves, and surely without reproach, of the toleration
held out to them, and even took the benefit of the scheme of
regulation, so as to fill the corporation of London and many others,
they were, as is confessed above, too much of Englishmen and
protestants for the purposes of the court. The wiser part of the
churchmen made secret overtures to their party; and by assurances of a
toleration, if not also of a comprehension within the Anglican pale,
won them over to a hearty concurrence in the great project that was on
foot.[120] The king found it necessary to descend so much from the
haughty attitude he had taken at the outset of his reign, as personally
to solicit men of rank and local influence for their votes on the two
great measures of repealing the test and penal laws. The country
gentlemen, in their different counties, were tried with circular
questions, whether they would comply with the king in their elections,
or, if themselves chosen, in parliament. Those who refused such a promise
were erased from the lists of justices and deputy-lieutenants.[121]
Yet his biographer admits that he received little encouragement to
proceed in the experiment of a parliament;[122] and it is said by the
French ambassador that evasive answers were returned to these
questions, with such uniformity of expression as indicated an alarming
degree of concert.[123]
_Affair of Magdalen College._--It is unnecessary to dwell on
circumstances so well known as the expulsion of the fellows of
Magdalen College.[124] It was less extensively mischievous than the
new-modelling of corporations, but perhaps a more glaring act of
despotism. For though the Crown had been accustomed from the time of
the reformation to send very peremptory commands to ecclesiastical
foundations, and even to dispense with their statutes at discretion,
with so little resistance that few seemed to doubt of its prerogative;
though Elizabeth would probably have treated the fellows of any
college much in the same manner as James II., if they had proceeded to
an election in defiance of her recommendation; yet the right was not
the less clearly theirs, and the struggles of a century would have
been thrown away, if James II. was to govern as the Tudors, or even as
his father and grandfather had done before him. And though Parker,
Bishop of Oxford, the first president whom the ecclesiastical
commissioners obtruded on the college, was still nominally a
protestant,[125] his successor Gifford was an avowed member of the
church of Rome. The college was filled with persons of the same
persuasion; mass was said in the chapel, and the established religion
was excluded with a degree of open force which entirely took away all
security for its preservation in any other place. This latter act,
especially, of the Magdalen drama, in a still greater degree than the
nomination of Massey to the deanery of Christ Church, seems a decisive
proof that the king's repeated promises of contenting himself with a
toleration of his own religion would have yielded to his insuperable
bigotry and the zeal of his confessor. We may perhaps add to these
encroachments upon the act of uniformity, the design imputed to him of
conferring the archbishopric of York on Father Petre; yet there would
have been difficulties that seem insurmountable in the way of this,
since the validity of Anglican orders not being acknowledged by the
church of Rome, Petre would not have sought consecration at the hands
of Sancroft; nor, had he done so, would the latter have conferred it
on him, even if the chapter of York had gone through the indispensable
form of an election.[126]
The infatuated monarch was irritated by that which he should have
taken as a terrible warning, this resistance to his will from the
university of Oxford. That sanctuary of pure unspotted loyalty, as
some would say, that sink of all that was most abject in servility, as
less courtly tongues might murmur, the university of Oxford, which had
but four short years back, by a solemn decree in convocation, poured
forth anathemas on all who had doubted the divine right of monarchy,
or asserted the privileges of subjects against their sovereigns, which
had boasted in its addresses of an obedience without any restrictions
or limitations, which but recently had seen a known convert to popery,
and a person disqualified in other ways, installed by the chapter
without any remonstrance in the deanery of Christ Church, was now the
scene of a firm though temperate opposition to the king's positive
command, and soon after the willing instrument of his ruin. In vain
the pamphleteers, on the side of the court, upbraided the clergy with
their apostacy from the principles they had so much vaunted. The
imputation it was hard to repel; but, if they could not retract their
course without shame, they could not continue in it without
destruction.[127] They were driven to extremity by the order of May 4,
1688, to read the declaration of indulgence in their churches.[128]
This, as is well known, met with great resistance, and, by inducing
the primate and six other bishops to present a petition to the king
against it, brought on that famous persecution, which, more perhaps
than all his former actions, cost him the allegiance of the Anglican
church. The proceedings upon the trial of those prelates are so
familiar as to require no particular notice.[129] What is most worthy
of remark is, that the very party who had most extolled the royal
prerogative, and often in such terms as if all limitations of it were
only to subsist at pleasure, became now the instruments of bringing it
down within the compass and control of the law. If the king had a
right to suspend the execution of statutes by proclamation, the
bishops' petition might not indeed be libellous, but their
disobedience and that of the clergy could not be warranted; and the
principal argument both of the bar and the bench rested on the great
question of that prerogative.
The king, meantime, was blindly hurrying on at the instigation of his
own pride and bigotry, and of some ignorant priests, confident in the
fancied obedience of the church, and in the hollow support of the
dissenters; after all his wiser counsellors, the catholic peers, the
nuncio, perhaps the queen herself, had grown sensible of the danger,
and solicitous for temporising measures. He had good reason to
perceive that neither the fleet nor the army could be relied upon; to
cashier the most rigidly protestant officers, to draft Irish troops
into the regiments, to place all important commands in the hands of
catholics, were difficult and even desperate measures, which rendered
his designs more notorious, without rendering them more feasible. It
is among the most astonishing parts of this unhappy sovereign's
impolicy, that he sometimes neglected, even offended, never steadily
and sufficiently courted, the sole ally that could by possibility have
co-operated in his scheme of government. In his brother's reign, James
had been the most obsequious and unhesitating servant of the French
king. Before his own accession, his first step was to implore, through
Barillon, a continuance of that support and protection, without which
he could undertake nothing which he had designed in favour of the
catholics. He received a present of 500,000 livres with tears of
gratitude; and telling the ambassador he had not disclosed his real
designs to his ministers, pressed for a strict alliance with Louis, as
the means of accomplishing them.[130] Yet with a strange
inconsistency, he drew off gradually from these professions, and not
only kept on rather cool terms with France during part of his reign,
but sometimes played a double game by treating of a league with Spain.
_James's coldness towards Louis._--The secret of this uncertain
policy, which has not been well known till very lately, is to be found
in the king's character. James had a real sense of the dignity
pertaining to a king of England, and much of the national pride as
well as that of his rank. He felt the degradation of importuning an
equal sovereign for money, which Louis gave less frequently and in
smaller measure than it was demanded. It is natural for a proud man
not to love those before whom he has abased himself. James, of frugal
habits and master of a great revenue, soon became more indifferent to
a French pension. Nor was he insensible to the reproach of Europe,
that he was grown the vassal of France and had tarnished the lustre of
the English Crown.[131] Had he been himself protestant, or his
subjects catholic, he would probably have given the reins to that
jealousy of his ambitious neighbour, which, even in his peculiar
circumstances, restrained him from the most expedient course; I mean
expedient, on the hypothesis that to overthrow the civil and religious
institutions of his people was to be the main object of his reign. For
it was idle to attempt this without the steady co-operation of France;
and those sentiments of dignity and independence, which at first sight
appear to do him honour, being without any consistent magnanimity of
character, served only to accelerate his ruin, and confirm the
persuasion of his incapacity.[132] Even in the memorable year 1688,
though the veil was at length torn from his eyes on the verge of the
precipice, and he sought in trembling the assistance he had slighted,
his silly pride made him half unwilling to be rescued; and, when the
French ambassador at the Hague, by a bold manœuvre of diplomacy,
asserted to the States that an alliance already subsisted between his
master and the king of England, the latter took offence at the
unauthorised declaration, and complained privately that Louis treated
him as an inferior.[133] It is probable that a more ingenuous policy
in the court of Whitehall, by determining the king of France to
declare war sooner on Holland, would have prevented the expedition of
the Prince of Orange.[134]
The latter continued to receive strong assurances of attachment from
men of rank in England; but wanted that direct invitation to enter the
kingdom with force, which he required both for his security and his
justification. No men who thought much about their country's interests
or their own would be hasty in venturing on so awful an enterprise.
The punishment and ignominy of treason, the reproach of history, too
often the sworn slave of fortune, awaited its failure. Thus Halifax
and Nottingham found their conscience or their courage unequal to the
crisis, and drew back from the hardy conspiracy that produced the
revolution.[135] Nor, perhaps, would the seven eminent persons, whose
names are subscribed to the invitation addressed on the 30th of June
1688, to the Prince of Orange, the Earls of Danby, Shrewsbury, and
Devonshire, Lords Delamere and Lumley, the Bishop of London, and
Admiral Russell, have committed themselves so far, if the recent birth
of a Prince of Wales had not made some measures of force absolutely
necessary for the common interests of the nation and the Prince of
Orange.[136] It cannot be said without absurdity, that James was
guilty of any offence in becoming father of this child; yet it was
evidently that which rendered his other offence inexpiable. He was now
considerably advanced in life; and the decided resistance of his
subjects made it improbable that he could do much essential injury to
the established constitution during the remainder of it. The mere
certainty of all reverting to a protestant heir would be an effectual
guarantee of the Anglican church. But the birth of a son to be nursed
in the obnoxious bigotry of Rome, the prospect of a regency under the
queen, so deeply implicated, according to common report, in the
schemes of this reign, made every danger appear more terrible. From
the moment that the queen's pregnancy was announced, the catholics
gave way to enthusiastic unrepressed exultation; and by the confidence
with which they prophesied the birth of an heir, furnished a pretext
for the suspicions which a disappointed people began to
entertain.[137] These suspicions were very general; they extended to
the highest ranks, and are a conspicuous instance of that prejudice
which is chiefly founded on our wishes. Lord Danby, in a letter to
William, of March 27, insinuates his doubt of the queen's pregnancy.
After the child's birth, the seven subscribers to the association
inviting the prince to come over, and pledging themselves to join him,
say that not one in a thousand believe it to be the queen's; Lord
Devonshire separately held language to the same effect.[138] The
Princess Anne talked with little restraint of her suspicions, and made
no scruple of imparting them to her sister.[139] Though no one can
hesitate at present to acknowledge that the Prince of Wales's
legitimacy is out of all question, there was enough to raise a
reasonable apprehension in the presumptive heir, that a party not
really very scrupulous, and through religious animosity supposed to be
still less so, had been induced by the undoubted prospect of advantage
to draw the king, who had been wholly their slave, into one of those
frauds which bigotry might call pious.[140]
_Justice and necessity of the Revolution._--The great event however of
what has been emphatically denominated in the language of our public
acts the Glorious Revolution stands in need of no vulgar credulity, no
mistaken prejudice, for its support. It can only rest on the basis of
a liberal theory of government, which looks to the public good as the
great end for which positive laws and the constitutional order of
states have been instituted. It cannot be defended without rejecting
the slavish principles of absolute obedience, or even that pretended
modification of them which imagines some extreme cases of intolerable
tyranny, some, as it were, lunacy of despotism, as the only plea and
palliation of resistance. Doubtless the administration of James II.
was not of this nature. Doubtless he was not a Caligula, or a
Commodus, or an Ezzelin, or a Galeazzo Sforza, or a Christiern II. of
Denmark, or a Charles IX. of France, or one of those almost
innumerable tyrants whom men have endured in the wantonness of
unlimited power. No man had been deprived of his liberty by any
illegal warrant. No man, except in the single though very important
instance of Magdalen College, had been despoiled of his property. I
must also add that the government of James II. will lose little by
comparison with that of his father. The judgment in favour of his
prerogative to dispense with the test, was far more according to
received notions of law, far less injurious and unconstitutional, than
that which gave a sanction to ship-money. The injunction to read the
declaration of indulgence in churches was less offensive to scrupulous
men than the similar command to read the declaration of Sunday sports
in the time of Charles I. Nor was any one punished for a refusal to
comply with the one; while the prisons had been filled with those who
had disobeyed the other. Nay, what is more, there are much stronger
presumptions of the father's than of the son's intention to lay aside
parliaments, and set up an avowed despotism. It is indeed amusing to
observe that many, who scarcely put bounds to their eulogies of
Charles I., have been content to abandon the cause of one who had no
faults in his public conduct but such as seemed to have come by
inheritance. The characters of the father and son were very closely
similar: both proud of their judgment as well as their station, and
still more obstinate in their understanding than in their purpose;
both scrupulously conscientious in certain great points of conduct, to
the sacrifice of that power which they had preferred to everything
else; the one far superior in relish for the arts and for polite
letters, the other more diligent and indefatigable in business; the
father exempt from those vices of a court to which the son was too
long addicted; not so harsh perhaps or prone to severity in his
temper, but inferior in general sincerity and adherence to his word.
They were both equally unfitted for the condition in which they were
meant to stand--the limited kings of a wise and free people, the
chiefs of the English commonwealth.
The most plausible argument against the necessity of so violent a
remedy for public grievances as the abjuration of allegiance to a
reigning sovereign, was one that misled half the nation in that age,
and is still sometimes insinuated by those whose pity for the
misfortunes of the house of Stuart appears to predominate over every
other sentiment which the history of the revolution should excite. It
was alleged that the constitutional mode of redress by parliament was
not taken away; that the king's attempts to obtain promises of support
from the electors and probable representatives showed his intention of
calling one; that the writs were in fact ordered before the Prince of
Orange's expedition; that after the invader had reached London, James
still offered to refer the terms of reconciliation with his people to
a free parliament, though he could have no hope of evading any that
might be proposed; that by reversing illegal judgments, by annulling
unconstitutional dispensations, by reinstating those who had been
unjustly dispossessed, by punishing wicked advisers, above all, by
passing statutes to restrain the excesses and cut off the dangerous
prerogatives of the monarchy (as efficacious, or more so, than the
bill of rights and other measures that followed the revolution), all
risk of arbitrary power, or of injury to the established religion,
might have been prevented without a violation of that hereditary right
which was as fundamental in the constitution as any of the subject's
privileges. It was not necessary to enter upon the delicate problem of
absolute non-resistance, or to deny that the conservation of the whole
was paramount to all positive laws. The question to be proved was,
that a regard to this general safety exacted the means employed in the
revolution, and constituted that extremity which could alone justify
such a deviation from the standard rules of law and religion.
It is evidently true that James had made very little progress, or
rather experienced a signal defeat, in his endeavour to place the
professors of his own religion on a firm and honourable basis. There
seems the strongest reason to believe that far from reaching his end
through the new parliament, he would have experienced those warm
assaults on the administration, which generally distinguished the
House of Commons under his father and brother. But, as he was in no
want of money, and had not the temper to endure what he thought the
language of republican faction, we may be equally sure that a short
and angry session would have ended with a more decided resolution on
his side to govern in future without such impracticable counsellors.
The doctrine imputed of old to Lord Strafford, that, after trying the
good-will of parliament in vain, a king was absolved from the legal
maxims of government, was always at the heart of the Stuarts. His army
was numerous, according at least to English notions; he had already
begun to fill it with popish officers and soldiers; the militia,
though less to be depended on, was under the command of lord and
deputy lieutenants carefully selected; above all, he would at the last
have recourse to France; and though the experiment of bringing over
French troops was very hazardous, it is difficult to say that he might
not have succeeded, with all these means, in preventing or putting
down any concerted insurrection. But at least the renewal of civil
bloodshed and the anarchy of rebellion seemed to be the alternative of
slavery, if William had never earned the just title of our deliverer.
It is still more evident that, after the invasion had taken place, and
a general defection had exhibited the king's inability to resist,
there could have been no such compromise as the Tories fondly
expected, no legal and peaceable settlement in what they called a free
parliament, leaving James in the real and recognised possession of his
constitutional prerogatives. Those who have grudged William III. the
laurels that he won for our service are ever prone to insinuate, that
his unnatural ambition would be content with nothing less than the
Crown, instead of returning to his country after he had convinced the
king of the error of his counsels, and obtained securities for the
religion and liberties of England. The hazard of the enterprise, and
most hazardous it truly was, was to have been his; the profit and
advantage our own. I do not know that William absolutely expected to
place himself on the throne; because he could hardly anticipate that
James would so precipitately abandon a kingdom wherein he was
acknowledged, and had still many adherents. But undoubtedly he must,
in consistency with his magnanimous designs, have determined to place
England in its natural station, as a party in the great alliance
against the power of Louis XIV. To this one object of securing the
liberties of Europe, and chiefly of his own country, the whole of his
heroic life was directed with undeviating, undisheartened firmness. He
had in view no distant prospect, when the entire succession of the
Spanish monarchy would be claimed by that insatiable prince, whose
renunciation at the treaty of the Pyrenees was already maintained to
be invalid. Against the present aggressions and future schemes of this
neighbour the league of Augsburg had just been concluded. England, a
free, a protestant, a maritime kingdom, would, in her natural
position, as a rival of France, and deeply concerned in the
independence of the Netherlands, become a leading member of this
confederacy. But the sinister attachments of the house of Stuarts had
long diverted her from her true interests, and rendered her councils
disgracefully and treacherously subservient to those of Louis. It was
therefore the main object of the Prince of Orange to strengthen the
alliance by the vigorous co-operation of this kingdom; and with no
other view, the emperor, and even the pope, had abetted his
undertaking. But it was impossible to imagine that James would have
come with sincerity into measures so repugnant to his predilections
and interests. What better could be expected than a recurrence of that
false and hollow system which had betrayed Europe and dishonoured
England under Charles II.; or rather, would not the sense of injury
and thraldom have inspired still more deadly aversion to the cause of
those to whom he must have ascribed his humiliation? There was as
little reason to hope that he would abandon the long-cherished schemes
of arbitrary power, and the sacred interests of his own faith. We must
remember that, when the adherents or apologists of James II. have
spoken of him as an unfortunately misguided prince, they have
insinuated what neither the notorious history of those times, nor the
more secret information since brought to light, will in any degree
confirm. It was indeed a strange excuse for a king of such mature
years, and so trained in the most diligent attention to business. That
in some particular instances he acted under the influence of his
confessor, Petre, is not unlikely; but the general temper of his
administration, his notions of government, the objects he had in view,
were perfectly his own, and were pursued rather in spite of much
dissuasion and many warnings, than through the suggestions of any
treacherous counsellors.
Both with respect therefore to the Prince of Orange and to the English
nation, James II. was to be considered as an enemy whose resentment
could never be appeased, and whose power consequently must be wholly
taken away. It is true that, if he had remained in England, it would
have been extremely difficult to deprive him of the nominal
sovereignty. But in this case, the Prince of Orange must have been
invested, by some course or other, with all its real attributes. He
undoubtedly intended to remain in this country; and could not
otherwise have preserved that entire ascendancy which was necessary
for his ultimate purposes. The king could not have been permitted,
with any common prudence, to retain the choice of his ministers, or
the command of his army, or his negative voice in laws, or even his
personal liberty; by which I mean, that his guards must have been
either Dutch, or at least appointed by the prince and parliament. Less
than this it would have been childish to require; and this would not
have been endured by any man even of James's spirit, or by the nation,
when the re-action of loyalty should return, without continued efforts
to get rid of an arrangement far more revolutionary and subversive of
the established monarchy than the king's deposition.
_Favourable circumstances attending the revolution._--In the
revolution of 1688 there was an unusual combination of favouring
circumstances, and some of the most important, such as the king's
sudden flight, not within prior calculation, which render it no
precedent for other times and occasions in point of expediency,
whatever it may be in point of justice. Resistance to tyranny by overt
rebellion incurs not only the risks of failure, but those of national
impoverishment and confusion, of vindictive retaliation, and such
aggressions (perhaps inevitable) on private right and liberty as
render the name of revolution and its adherents odious. Those, on the
other hand, who call in a powerful neighbour to protect them from
domestic oppression, may too often expect to realise the horse of the
fable, and endure a subjection more severe, permanent, and
ignominious, than what they shake off. But the revolution effected by
William III. united the independent character of a national act with
the regularity and the coercion of anarchy which belong to a military
invasion. The United Provinces were not such a foreign potentate as
could put in jeopardy the independence of England; nor could his army
have maintained itself against the inclinations of the kingdom, though
it was sufficient to repress any turbulence that would naturally
attend so extraordinary a crisis. Nothing was done by the multitude;
no new men, soldiers, or demagogues, had their talents brought forward
by this rapid and pacific revolution; it cost no blood, it violated no
right, it was hardly to be traced in the course of justice; the formal
and exterior character of the monarchy remained nearly the same in so
complete a regeneration of its spirit. Few nations can hope to ascend
up to the sphere of a just and honourable liberty, especially when
long use has made the track of obedience familiar, and they have
learned to move as it were only by the clank of the chain, with so
little toil and hardship. We reason too exclusively from this peculiar
instance of 1688, when we hail the fearful struggles of other
revolutions with a sanguine and confident sympathy. Nor is the only
error upon this side. For, as if the inveterate and cankerous ills of
a commonwealth could be extirpated with no loss and suffering, we are
often prone to abandon the popular cause in agitated nations with as
much fickleness as we embraced it, when we find that intemperance,
irregularity, and confusion, from which great revolutions are very
seldom exempt. These are indeed so much their usual attendants, the
re-action of a self-deceived multitude is so probable a consequence,
the general prospect of success in most cases so precarious, that
wise and good men are more likely to hesitate too long, than to rush
forward too eagerly. Yet, "whatever be the cost of this noble liberty,
we must be content to pay it to Heaven."[141]
It is unnecessary even to mention those circumstances of this great
event, which are minutely known to almost all my readers. They were
all eminently favourable in their effect to the regeneration of our
constitution; even one of temporary inconvenience, namely, the return
of James to London, after his detention by the fishermen near
Feversham. This, as Burnet has observed, and as is easily demonstrated
by the writings of that time, gave a different colour to the state of
affairs, and raised up a party which did not before exist, or at least
was too disheartened to show itself.[142] His first desertion of the
kingdom had disgusted every one, and might be construed into a
voluntary cession. But his return to assume again the government put
William under the necessity of using that intimidation which awakened
the mistaken sympathy of a generous people. It made his subsequent
flight, though certainly not what a man of courage enough to give his
better judgment free play would have chosen, appear excusable and
defensive. It brought out too glaringly, I mean for the satisfaction
of prejudiced minds, the undeniable fact, that the two houses of
convention deposed and expelled their sovereign. Thus the great schism
of the Jacobites, though it must otherwise have existed, gained its
chief strength; and the revolution, to which at the outset a coalition
of whigs and tories had conspired, became in its final result, in the
settlement of the Crown upon William and Mary, almost entirely the
work of the former party.