CHAPTER XVI

ON THE STATE OF THE CONSTITUTION IN THE REIGNS OF ANNE, GEORGE I., AND

GEORGE II.

The act of settlement was the seal of our constitutional laws, the

complement of the revolution itself and the bill of rights, the last

great statute which restrains the power of the Crown, and manifests,

in any conspicuous degree, a jealousy of parliament in behalf of its

own and the subject's privileges. The battle had been fought and

gained; the statute-book, as it becomes more voluminous, is less

interesting in the history of our constitution; the voice of petition,

complaint, or remonstrance is seldom to be traced in the Journals; the

Crown in return desists altogether, not merely from the threatening or

objurgatory tone of the Stuarts, but from that dissatisfaction

sometimes apparent in the language of William; and the vessel seems

riding in smooth water, moved by other impulses, and liable perhaps to

other dangers, than those of the ocean-wave and the tempest. The

reigns, accordingly, of Anne, George I., and George II., afford rather

materials for dissertation, than consecutive facts for such a work as

the present; and may be sketched in a single chapter, though by no

means the least important, which the reader's study and reflection

must enable him to fill up. Changes of an essential nature were in

operation during the sixty years of these three reigns, as well as in

that beyond the limits of this undertaking, which in length measures

them all; some of them greatly enhancing the authority of the Crown,

or rather of the executive government, while others had so opposite a

tendency, that philosophical speculators have not been uniform in

determining on which side was the sway of the balance.

_Distinctive principles of whigs and tories._--No clear understanding

can be acquired of the political history of England without

distinguishing, with some accuracy of definition, the two great

parties of whig and tory. But this is not easy; because those

denominations being sometimes applied to factions in the state, intent

on their own aggrandisement, sometimes to the principles they

entertained or professed, have become equivocal, and do by no means,

at all periods and on all occasions, present the same sense; an

ambiguity which has been increased by the lax and incorrect use of

familiar language. We may consider the words, in the first instance,

as expressive of a political theory or principle, applicable to the

English government. They were originally employed at the time of the

bill of exclusion, though the distinction of the parties they denote

is evidently at least as old as the long parliament. Both of these

parties, it is material to observe, agreed in the maintenance of the

constitution; that is, in the administration of government by an

hereditary sovereign, and in the concurrence of that sovereign with

the two houses of parliament in legislation, as well as in those other

institutions which have been reckoned most ancient and fundamental. A

favourer of unlimited monarchy was not a tory, neither was a

republican a whig. Lord Clarendon was a tory, Hobbes was not; Bishop

Hoadley was a whig, Milton was not. But they differed mainly in this;

that to a tory the constitution, inasmuch as it was the constitution,

was an ultimate point, beyond which he never looked, and from which he

thought it altogether impossible to swerve; whereas the whig deemed

all forms of government subordinate to the public good, and therefore

liable to change when they should cease to promote that object. Within

those bounds which he, as well as his antagonist, meant not to

transgress, and rejecting all unnecessary innovation, the whig had a

natural tendency to political improvement, the tory an aversion to it.

The one loved to descant on liberty and the rights of mankind, the

other on the mischiefs of sedition and the rights of kings. Though

both, as I have said, admitted a common principle, the maintenance of

the constitution, yet this made the privileges of the subject, that

the Crown's prerogative, his peculiar care. Hence it seemed likely

that, through passion and circumstance, the tory might aid in

establishing despotism, or the whig in subverting monarchy. The former

was generally hostile to the liberty of the press, and to freedom of

enquiry, especially in religion; the latter their friend. The

principle of the one, in short, was melioration; of the other,

conservation.

But the distinctive characters of whig and tory were less plainly

seen, after the revolution and act of settlement, in relation to the

Crown, than to some other parts of our polity. The tory was ardently,

and in the first place, the supporter of the church in as much

pre-eminence and power as he could give it. For the church's sake,

when both seemed as it were on one plank, he sacrificed his loyalty;

for her he was always ready to persecute the catholic, and if the

times permitted not to persecute, yet to restrain and discountenance,

the nonconformist. He came unwillingly into the toleration, which the

whig held up as one of the great trophies of the revolution. The whig

spurned at the haughty language of the church, and treated the

dissenters with moderation, or perhaps with favour. This distinction

subsisted long after the two parties had shifted their ground as to

civil liberty and royal power. Again; a predilection for the

territorial aristocracy, and for a government chiefly conducted by

their influence, a jealousy of new men, of the mercantile interest, of

the commonalty, never failed to mark the genuine tory. It has been

common to speak of the whigs as an aristocratical faction. Doubtless

the majority of the peerage from the revolution downwards to the death

of George II. were of that denomination. But this is merely an

instance wherein the party and the principle are to be distinguished.

The natural bias of the aristocracy is towards the Crown; but, except

in most part of the reign of Anne, the Crown might be reckoned with

the whig party. No one who reflects on the motives which are likely to

influence the judgment of classes in society, would hesitate to

predict that an English House of Lords would contain a larger

proportion of men inclined to the tory principle than of the opposite

school; and we do not find that experience contradicts this

anticipation.

It will be obvious that I have given to each of these political

principles a moral character; and have considered them as they would

subsist in upright and conscientious men, not as we may find them "in

the dregs of Romulus," suffocated by selfishness or distorted by

faction. The whigs appear to have taken a far more comprehensive view

of the nature and ends of civil society; their principle is more

virtuous, more flexible to the variations of time and circumstance,

more congenial to large and masculine intellects. But it may probably

be no small advantage that the two parties, or rather the sentiments

which have been presumed to actuate them, should have been mingled, as

we find them, in the complex mass of the English nation, whether the

proportions may or not have been always such as we might desire. They

bear some analogy to the two forces which retain the planetary bodies

in their orbits; the annihilation of one would disperse them into

chaos, that of the other would drag them to a centre. And, though I

cannot reckon these old appellations by any means characteristic of

our political factions in the nineteenth century, the names whig and

tory are often well applied to individuals. Nor can it be otherwise;

since they are founded not only on our laws and history, with which

most have some acquaintance, but in the diversities of condition and

of moral temperament generally subsisting among mankind.

It is, however, one thing to prefer the whig principle, another to

justify, as an advocate, the party which bore that name. So far as

they were guided by that principle, I hold them far more friendly to

the great interests of the commonwealth than their adversaries. But,

in truth, the peculiar circumstances of these four reigns after the

revolution, the spirit of faction, prejudice, and animosity, above

all, the desire of obtaining or retaining power, which, if it be ever

sought as a means, is soon converted into an end, threw both parties

very often into a false position, and gave to each the language and

sentiments of the other; so that the two principles are rather to be

traced in writings, and those not wholly of a temporary nature, than

in the debates of parliament. In the reigns of William and Anne, the

whigs, speaking of them generally as a great party, had preserved

their original character unimpaired far more than their opponents. All

that had passed in the former reign served to humble the tories, and

to enfeeble their principle. The revolution itself, and the votes upon

which it was founded, the bill of recognition in 1690, the repeal of

the non-resisting test, the act of settlement, the oath of abjuration,

were solemn adjudications, as it were, against their creed. They took

away the old argument, that the letter of the law was on their side.

If this indeed were all usurpation, the answer was ready; but those

who did not care to make it, or by their submission put it out of

their power, were compelled to sacrifice not a little of that which

had entered into the definition of a tory. Yet even this had not a

greater effect than that systematic jealousy and dislike of the

administration, which made them encroach, according to ancient

notions, and certainly their own, on the prerogative of William. They

learned in this no unpleasing lesson to popular assemblies, to magnify

their own privileges and the rights of the people. This tone was often

assumed by the friends of the exiled family, and in them it was

without any dereliction of their object. It was natural that a

jacobite should use popular topics in order to thwart and subvert an

usurping government. His faith was to the crown, but to the crown on a

right head. In a tory who voluntarily submitted to the reigning

prince, such an opposition to the prerogative was repugnant to the

maxims of his creed, and placed him, as I have said, in a false

position. This is of course applicable to the reigns of George I. and

II., and in a greater degree in proportion as the tory and jacobite

were more separated than they had been perhaps under William.

The tories gave a striking proof how far they might be brought to

abandon their theories, in supporting an address to the queen that she

would invite the Princess Sophia to take up her residence in England;

a measure so unnatural as well as imprudent that some have ascribed it

to a subtlety of politics which I do not comprehend. But we need not,

perhaps, look farther than to the blind rage of a party just

discarded, who, out of pique towards their sovereign, made her more

irreconcilably their enemy, and while they hoped to brand their

opponents with inconsistency, forgot that the imputation would redound

with tenfold force on themselves. The whigs justly resisted a proposal

so little called for at that time; but it led to an act for the

security of the succession, designating a regency in the event of the

queen's decease, and providing that the actual parliament, or the

last, if none were in being, should meet immediately, and continue for

six months, unless dissolved by the successor.[294]

In the conduct of this party, generally speaking, we do not, I think,

find any abandonment of the cause of liberty. The whigs appear to have

been zealous for bills excluding placemen from the house, or limiting

their numbers in it; and the abolition of the Scots privy council, an

odious and despotic tribunal, was owing in a great measure to the

authority of Lord Somers.[295] In these measures however the tories

generally co-operated, and it is certainly difficult in the history of

any nation, to separate the influence of sincere patriotism from that

of animosity and thirst of power. But one memorable event in the reign

of Anne gave an opportunity for bringing the two theories of

government into collision, to the signal advantage of that which the

Whigs professed; I mean, the impeachment of Dr. Sacheverell. Though

with a view to the interests of their ministry, this prosecution was

very unadvised, and has been deservedly censured, it was of high

importance in a constitutional light, and is not only the most

authentic exposition, but the most authoritative ratification, of the

principles upon which the revolution is to be defended.[296]

The charge against Sacheverell was, not for impugning what was done at

the revolution, which he affected to vindicate, but for maintaining

that it was not a case of resistance to the supreme power, and

consequently no exception to his tenet of an unlimited passive

obedience. The managers of the impeachment had therefore not only to

prove that there was resistance in the revolution, which could not of

course be sincerely disputed, but to assert the lawfulness, in great

emergencies, or what is called in politics necessity, of taking arms

against the law--a delicate matter to treat of at any time, and not

least so by ministers of state and law officers of the Crown, in the

very presence, as they knew, of their sovereign.[297] We cannot praise

too highly their speeches upon this charge; some shades, rather of

discretion than discordance, may be perceptible; and we may

distinguish the warmth of Lechmere, or the openness of Stanhope, from

the caution of Walpole, who betrays more anxiety than his colleagues

to give no offence in the highest quarter; but in every one the same

fundamental principles of the whig creed, except on which indeed the

impeachment could not rest, are unambiguously proclaimed. "Since we

must give up our right to the laws and liberties of this kingdom,"

says Sir Joseph Jekyll, "or, which is all one, be precarious in the

enjoyment of them, and hold them only during pleasure, if this

doctrine of unlimited non-resistance prevails, the Commons have been

content to undertake this prosecution."[298]--"The doctrine of

unlimited, unconditional, passive obedience," says Mr. Walpole, "was

first invented to support arbitrary and despotic power, and was never

promoted or countenanced by any government that had not designs some

time or other of making use of it."[299] And thus General Stanhope

still more vigorously: "As to the doctrine itself of absolute

non-resistance, it should seem needless to prove by arguments that it

is inconsistent with the law of reason, with the law of nature, and

with the practice of all ages and countries. Nor is it very material

what the opinions of some particular divines, or even the doctrine

generally preached in some particular reigns, may have been concerning

it. It is sufficient for us to know what the practice of the church of

England has been, when it found itself oppressed. And indeed one may

appeal to the practice of all churches, of all states, and of all

nations in the world, how they behaved themselves when they found

their civil and religious constitutions invaded and oppressed by

tyranny. I believe we may further venture to say, that there is not at

this day subsisting any nation or government in the world, whose first

original did not receive its foundation either from resistance or

compact; and as to our purpose, it is equal if the latter be admitted.

For wherever compact is admitted, there must be admitted likewise a

right to defend the rights accruing by such compact. To argue the

municipal laws of a country in this case is idle. Those laws were only

made for the common course of things, and can never be understood to

have been designed to defeat the end of all laws whatsoever; which

would be the consequence of a nation's tamely submitting to a

violation of all their divine and human rights."[300] Mr. Lechmere

argues to the same purpose in yet stronger terms.[301]

But, if these managers for the commons were explicit in their

assertion of the whig principle, the counsel for Sacheverell by no

means unfurled the opposite banner with equal courage. In this was

chiefly manifested the success of the former. His advocates had

recourse to the petty chicane of arguing that he had laid down a

general rule of obedience without mentioning its exceptions, that the

revolution was a case of necessity, and that they fully approved what

was done therein. They set up a distinction, which, though at that

time perhaps novel, has sometimes since been adopted by tory writers;

that resistance to the supreme power was indeed utterly illegal on any

pretence whatever, but that the supreme power in this kingdom was the

legislature, not the king; and that the revolution took effect by the

concurrence of the Lords and Commons.[302] This is of itself a descent

from the high ground of toryism, and would not have been held by the

sincere bigots of that creed. Though specious, however, the argument

is a sophism, and does not meet the case of the revolution. For,

though the supreme power may be said to reside in the legislature, yet

the prerogative within its due limits is just as much part of the

constitution, and the question of resistance to lawful authority

remains as before. Even if this resistance had been made by the two

houses of parliament, it was but the case of the civil war, which had

been explicitly condemned by more than one statute of Charles II. But,

as Mr. Lechmere said in reply, it was undeniable that the Lords and

Commons did not join in that resistance at the revolution as part of

the legislative and supreme power, but as part of the collective body

of the nation.[303] And Sir John Holland had before observed, "that

there was a resistance at the revolution was most plain, if taking up

arms in Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Cheshire, and almost all the

counties of England; if the desertion of a prince's own troops to an

invading prince, and turning their arms against their sovereign, be

resistance."[304] It might in fact have been asked whether the Dukes

of Leeds and Shrewsbury, then sitting in judgment on Sacheverell (and

who afterwards voted him not guilty) might not have been convicted of

treason, if the Prince of Orange had failed of success?[305] The

advocates indeed of the prisoner made so many concessions as amounted

to an abandonment of all the general question. They relied chiefly on

numerous passages in the homilies, and most approved writers of the

Anglican church, asserting the duty of unbounded passive obedience.

But the managers eluded these in their reply with decent respect.[306]

The Lords voted Sacheverell guilty by a majority of 67 to 59; several

voting on each side rather according to their present faction than

their own principles. They passed a slight sentence, interdicting him

only from preaching for three years. This was deemed a sort of triumph

by his adherents; but a severe punishment on a wretch so insignificant

would have been misplaced; and the sentence may be compared to the

nominal damages sometimes given in a suit instituted for the trial of

a great right.

_Revolution in the ministry under Anne._--The shifting combinations of

party in the reign of Anne, which affected the original distinctions

of whig and tory, though generally known, must be shortly noticed. The

queen, whose understanding and fitness for government were below

mediocrity, had been attached to the tories, and bore an antipathy to

her predecessor. Her first ministry, her first parliament, gave

presage of a government to be wholly conducted by that party. But this

prejudice was counteracted by the persuasions of that celebrated

favourite, the wife of Marlborough, who, probably from some personal

resentments, had thrown her influence into the scale of the whigs. The

well known records of their conversation and correspondence present a

strange picture of good-natured feebleness on one side, and of

ungrateful insolence on the other. But the interior of a court will

rarely endure daylight. Though Godolphin and Marlborough, in whom the

queen reposed her entire confidence, had been thought tories, they

became gradually alienated from that party, and communicated their own

feelings to the queen. The House of Commons very reasonably declined

to make an hereditary grant to the latter out of the revenues of the

post-office in 1702, when he had performed no extraordinary services;

though they acceded to it without hesitation after the battle of

Blenheim.[307] This gave some offence to Anne; and the chief tory

leaders in the cabinet, Rochester, Nottingham, and Buckingham,

displaying a reluctance to carry on the war with such vigour as

Marlborough knew to be necessary, were soon removed from office. Their

revengeful attack on the queen, in the address to invite the Princess

Sophia, made a return to power hopeless for several years. Anne

however entertained a desire very natural to an English sovereign, yet

in which none but a weak one will expect to succeed, of excluding

chiefs of parties from her councils. Disgusted with the tories, she

was loth to admit the whigs; and thus Godolphin's administration, from

1704 to 1708, was rather suddenly supported, sometimes indeed

thwarted, by that party. Cowper was made chancellor against the

queen's wishes;[308] but the junto, as it was called, of five eminent

whig peers, Somers, Halifax, Wharton, Orford, and Sunderland, were

kept out through the queen's dislike, and in some measure, no

question, through Godolphin's jealousy. They forced themselves into

the cabinet about 1708; and effected the dismissal of Harley and St.

John, who, though not of the regular tory school in connection or

principle, had already gone along with that faction in the late reign,

and were now reduced by their dismissal to unite with it.[309] The

whig ministry of Queen Anne, so often talked of, cannot in fact be

said to have existed more than two years, from 1708 to 1710; her

previous administration having been at first tory, and afterwards of a

motley complexion, though depending for existence on the great whig

interest which it in some degree proscribed. Every one knows that this

ministry was precipitated from power through the favourite's abuse of

her ascendancy, become at length intolerable to the most forbearing of

queens and mistresses, conspiring with another intrigue of the

bedchamber, and the popular clamour against Sacheverell's impeachment.

It seems rather an humiliating proof of the sway which the feeblest

prince enjoys even in a limited monarchy, that the fortunes of Europe

should have been changed by nothing more noble than the insolence of

one waiting-woman and the cunning of another. It is true that this was

effected by throwing the weight of the Crown into the scale of a

powerful faction; yet the house of Bourbon would probably not have

reigned beyond the Pyrenees, but for Sarah and Abigail at Queen Anne's

toilet.

_War of the succession._--The object of the war, as it is commonly

called, of the Grand Alliance, commenced in 1702, was, as expressed in

an address of the House of Commons, for preserving the liberties of

Europe and reducing the exorbitant power of France.[310] The

occupation of the Spanish dominions by the Duke of Anjou, on the

authority of the late king's will, was assigned as its justification,

together with the acknowledgment of the pretended Prince of Wales as

successor to his father James. Charles, Archduke of Austria, was

recognised as King of Spain; and as early as 1705 the restoration of

that monarchy to his house is declared in a speech from the throne to

be not only safe and advantageous, but glorious to England.[311] Louis

XIV. had perhaps at no time much hope of retaining for his grandson

the whole inheritance he claimed; and on several occasions made

overtures for negotiation, but such as indicated his design of rather

sacrificing the detached possessions of Italy and the Netherlands than

Spain itself and the Indies.[312] After the battle of Oudenarde,

however, and the loss of Lille in the campaign of 1708, the exhausted

state of France and discouragement of his court induced him to

acquiesce in the cession of the Spanish monarchy as a basis of treaty.

In the conferences of the Hague in 1709, he struggled for a time to

preserve Naples and Sicily; but ultimately admitted the terms imposed

by the allies, with the exception of the famous thirty-seventh article

of the preliminaries, binding him to procure by force or persuasion

the resignation of the Spanish crown by his grandson within two

months. This proposition he declared to be both dishonourable and

impracticable; and, the allies refusing to give way, the negotiation

was broken off. It was renewed the next year at Gertruydenburg; but

the same obstacle still proved insurmountable.[313]

It has been the prevailing opinion in modern times that the English

ministry, rather against the judgment of their allies of Holland,

insisted upon a condition not indispensable to their security, and too

ignominious for their fallen enemy to accept. Some may perhaps incline

to think that, even had Philip of Anjou been suffered to reign in

Naples, a possession rather honourable than important, the balance of

power would not have been seriously affected, and the probability of

durable peace been increased. This, however, it was not necessary to

discuss. The main question is as to the power which the allies

possessed of securing the Spanish monarchy for the archduke, if they

had consented to waive the thirty-seventh article of the

preliminaries. If indeed they could have been considered as a single

potentate, it was doubtless possible, by means of keeping up great

armies on the frontier, and by the delivery of cautionary towns, to

have prevented the King of France from lending assistance to his

grandson. But, self-interested and disunited as confederacies

generally are, and as the grand alliance had long since become, this

appeared a very dangerous course of policy, if Louis should be playing

an underhand game against his engagements. And this it was not then

unreasonable to suspect, even if we should believe, in despite of some

plausible authorities, that he was really sincere in abandoning so

favourite an interest. The obstinate adherence of Godolphin and Somers

to the preliminaries may possibly have been erroneous; but it by no

means deserves the reproach that has been unfairly bestowed on it;

nor can the whigs be justly charged with protracting the war to enrich

Marlborough, or to secure themselves in power.[314]

_Treaty of peace broken off._--The conferences at Gertruydenburg were

broken off in July 1710, because an absolute security for the

evacuation of Spain by Philip appeared to be wanting; and within six

months a fresh negotiation was secretly on foot, the basis of which

was his retention of that kingdom. For the administration presided

over by Godolphin had fallen meanwhile; new counsellors, a new

parliament, new principles of government. The tories had from the

beginning come very reluctantly into the schemes of the grand

alliance; though no opposition to the war had ever been shown in

parliament, it was very soon perceived that the majority of that

denomination had their hearts bent on peace.[315] But instead of

renewing the negotiation in concert with the allies (which indeed

might have been impracticable), the new ministers fell upon the course

of a clandestine arrangement, in exclusion of all the other powers,

which led to the signature of preliminaries in September 1711, and

afterwards to the public congress of Utrecht, and the celebrated

treaty named from that town. Its chief provisions are too well known

to be repeated.

_Arguments for and against the treaty of Utrecht._--The arguments in

favour of a treaty of pacification, which should abandon the great

point of contest, and leave Philip in possession of Spain and America,

were neither few nor inconsiderable. 1. The kingdom had been

impoverished by twenty years of uninterruptedly augmented taxation;

the annual burthens being triple in amount of those paid before the

revolution. Yet, amidst these sacrifices, we had the mortification of

finding a debt rapidly increasing, whereof the mere interest far

exceeded the ancient revenues of the Crown, to be bequeathed, like an

hereditary curse, to unborn ages. Though the supplies had been raised

with less difficulty than in the late reign, and the condition of

trade was less unsatisfactory, the landed proprietors saw with

indignation the silent transfer of their wealth to new men, and hated

the glory that was bought by their own degradation. Was it not to be

feared that they might hate also the revolution, and the protestant

succession that depended on it, when they tasted these fruits it had

borne? Even the army had been recruited by violent means unknown to

our constitution, yet such as the continual loss of men, with a

population at the best stationary, had perhaps rendered

necessary.[316]

2. The prospect of reducing Spain to the archduke's obedience was

grown unfavourable. It was at best an odious work, and not very

defensible on any maxims of national justice, to impose a sovereign

on a great people in despite of their own repugnance, and what they

deemed their loyal obligation. Heaven itself might shield their

righteous cause, and baffle the selfish rapacity of human politics.

But what was the state of the war at the close of 1710? The surrender

of 7000 English under Stanhope at Brihuega had ruined the affairs of

Charles, which in fact had at no time been truly prosperous, and

confined him to the single province sincerely attached to him,

Catalonia. As it was certain that Philip had spirit enough to continue

the war, even if abandoned by his grandfather, and would have the

support of almost the entire nation, what remained but to carry on a

very doubtful contest for the subjugation of that extensive kingdom?

In Flanders, no doubt, the genius of Marlborough kept still the

ascendant; yet France had her Fabius in Villars; and the capture of

three or four small fortresses in a whole campaign did not presage a

rapid destruction of the enemy's power.

3. It was acknowledged that the near connection of the monarchs on the

thrones of France and Spain could not be desired from Europe. Yet the

experience of ages had shown how little such ties of blood determined

the policy of courts; a Bourbon on the throne of Spain could not but

assert the honour, and even imbibe the prejudices, of his subjects;

and as the two nations were in all things opposite, and must clash in

their public interests, there was little reason to fear a subserviency

in the cabinet of Madrid, which, even in that absolute monarchy, could

not be displayed against the general sentiment.

4. The death of the Emperor Joseph, and election of the Archduke

Charles in his room, which took place in the spring of 1711, changed

in no small degree the circumstances of Europe. It was now a struggle

to unite the Spanish and Austrian monarchies under one head. Even if

England might have little interest to prevent this, could it be

indifferent to the smaller states of Europe that a family not less

ambitious and encroaching than that of Bourbon should be so enormously

aggrandised? France had long been to us the only source of

apprehension; but to some states, to Savoy, to Switzerland, to Venice,

to the principalities of the empire, she might justly appear a very

necessary bulwark against the aggressions of Austria. The alliance

could not be expected to continue faithful and unanimous, after so

important an alteration in the balance of power.

5. The advocates of peace and adherents of the new ministry stimulated

the national passions of England by vehement reproaches of the allies.

They had thrown, it was contended, in despite of all treaties, an

unreasonable proportion of expense upon a country not directly

concerned in their quarrel, and rendered a negligent or criminal

administration their dupes or accomplices. We were exhausting our

blood and treasure to gain kingdoms for the house of Austria which

insulted, and the best towns of Flanders for the states-general who

cheated us. The barrier treaty of Lord Townshend was so extravagant,

that one might wonder at the presumption of Holland in suggesting its

articles, much more at the folly of our government in acceding to

them. It laid the foundation of endless dissatisfaction on the side of

Austria, thus reduced to act as the vassal of a little republic in her

own territories, and to keep up fortresses at her own expense, which

others were to occupy. It might be anticipated that, at some time, a

sovereign of that house would be found more sensible to ignominy than

to danger, who would remove this badge of humiliation by dismantling

the fortifications which were thus to be defended. Whatever

exaggeration might be in these clamours, they were sure to pass for

undeniable truths with a people jealous of foreigners, and prone to

believe itself imposed upon, from a consciousness of general ignorance

and credulity.

These arguments were met by answers not less confident, though less

successful at the moment, than they had been deemed convincing by the

majority of politicians in later ages. It was denied that the

resources of the kingdom were so much enfeebled; the supplies were

still raised without difficulty; commerce had not declined; public

credit stood high under the Godolphin ministry; and it was especially

remarkable that the change of administration, notwithstanding the

prospect of peace, was attended by a great fall in the price of

stocks. France, on the other hand, was notoriously reduced to the

utmost distress; and, though it were absurd to allege the misfortunes

of our enemy by way of consolation for our own, yet the more exhausted

of the two combatants was naturally that which ought to yield; and it

was not for the honour of our free government that we should be

outdone in magnanimous endurance for the sake of the great interests

of ourselves and our posterity by the despotism we so boastfully

scorned.[317] The King of France had now for half a century been

pursuing a system of encroachment on the neighbouring states, which

the weakness of the two branches of the Austrian house, and the

perfidiousness of the Stuarts, not less than the valour of his troops

and skill of his generals, had long rendered successful. The tide had

turned for the first time in the present war; victories more splendid

than were recorded in modern warfare had illustrated the English name.

Were we spontaneously to relinquish these great advantages, and two

years after Louis had himself consented to withdraw his forces from

Spain, our own arms having been in the meantime still successful on

the most important scene of the contest, to throw up the game in

despair, and leave him far more the gainer at the termination of this

calamitous war, than he had been after those triumphant campaigns

which his vaunting medals commemorate? Spain of herself could not

resist the confederates, even if united in support of Philip; which

was denied as to the provinces composing the kingdom of Arragon, and

certainly as to Catalonia; it was in Flanders that Castile was to be

conquered; it was France that we were to overcome; and now that her

iron barrier had been broken through, when Marlborough was preparing

to pour his troops upon the defenceless plains of Picardy, could we

doubt that Louis must in good earnest abandon the cause of his

grandson, as he had already pledged himself in the conferences of

Gertruydenburg?

2. It was easy to slight the influence which the ties of blood exert

over kings. Doubtless they are often torn asunder by ambition or

wounded pride. But it does not follow that they have no efficacy; and

the practice of courts in cementing alliances by intermarriage seems

to show that they are not reckoned indifferent. It might, however, be

admitted that a king of Spain, such as she had been a hundred years

before, would probably be led by the tendency of his ambition into a

course of policy hostile to France. But that monarchy had long been

declining; great rather in name and extent of dominion than intrinsic

resources, she might perhaps rally for a short period under an

enterprising minister; but with such inveterate abuses of government,

and so little progressive energy among the people, she must gradually

sink lower in the scale of Europe, till it might become the chief

pride of her sovereigns that they were the younger branches of the

house of Bourbon. To cherish this connection would be the policy of

the court of Versailles; there would result from it a dependent

relation, an habitual subserviency of the weaker power, a family

compact of perpetual union, always opposed to Great Britain. In

distant ages, and after fresh combinations of the European

commonwealth should have seemed almost to efface the recollection of

Louis XIV. and the war of the succession, the Bourbons on the French

throne might still claim a sort of primogenitary right to protect the

dignity of the junior branch by interference with the affairs of

Spain; and a late posterity of those who witnessed the peace of

Utrecht might be entangled by its improvident concessions.

3. That the accession of Charles to the empire rendered his possession

of the Spanish monarchy in some degree less desirable, need not be

disputed; though it would not be easy to prove that it could endanger

England, or even the smaller states, since it was agreed on all hands

that he was to be master of Milan and Naples. But against this,

perhaps imaginary, mischief the opponents of the treaty set the risk

of seeing the crowns of France and Spain united on the head of Philip.

In the years 1711 and 1712 the dauphin, the Duke of Burgundy, and the

Duke of Berry, were swept away. An infant stood alone between the King

of Spain and the French succession. The latter was induced, with some

unwillingness, to sign a renunciation of this contingent inheritance.

But it was notoriously the doctrine of the French court that such

renunciations were invalid; and the sufferings of Europe were chiefly

due to this tenet of indefeasible royalty. It was very possible that

Spain would never consent to this union, and that a fresh league of

the great powers might be formed to prevent it; but, if we had the

means of permanently separating the two kingdoms in our hands, it was

strange policy to leave open this door for a renewal of the quarrel.

But whatever judgment we may be disposed to form as to the political

necessity of leaving Spain and America in the possession of Philip, it

is impossible to justify the course of that negotiation which ended in

the peace of Utrecht. It was at best a dangerous and inauspicious

concession, demanding every compensation that could be devised, and

which the circumstances of the war entitled us to require. France was

still our formidable enemy; the ambition of Louis was still to be

dreaded, his intrigues to be suspected. That an English minister

should have thrown himself into the arms of this enemy at the first

overture of negotiation; that he should have renounced advantages upon

which he might have insisted; that he should have restored Lille, and

almost attempted to procure the sacrifice of Tournay; that throughout

the whole correspondence and in all personal interviews with Torcy he

should have shown the triumphant Queen of Great Britain more eager for

peace than her vanquished adversary; that the two courts should have

been virtually conspiring against those allies, without whom we had

bound ourselves to enter on no treaty; that we should have withdrawn

our troops in the midst of a campaign, and even seized upon the towns

of our confederates while we left them exposed to be overcome by a

superior force; that we should have first deceived those confederates

by the most direct falsehood in denying our clandestine treaty, and

then dictated to them its acceptance, are facts so disgraceful to

Bolingbroke, and in somewhat a less degree to Oxford, that they can

hardly be palliated by establishing the expediency of the treaty

itself.

_Intrigues of the Jacobites._--For several years after the treaty of

Ryswick the intrigues of ambitious and discontented statesmen, and of

a misled faction in favour of the exiled family, grew much colder; the

old age of James and the infancy of his son being alike incompatible

with their success. The jacobites yielded a sort of provisional

allegiance to the daughter of their king, deeming her, as it were, a

regent in the heir's minority, and willing to defer the consideration

of his claim till he should be competent to make it, or to acquiesce

in her continuance upon the throne, if she could be induced to secure

his reversion.[318] Meanwhile, under the name of tories and

high-church men, they carried on a more dangerous war by sapping the

bulwarks of the revolution settlement. The disaffected clergy poured

forth sermons and libels, to impugn the principles of the whigs or

traduce their characters. Twice a year especially, on the 30th of

January and 29th of May, they took care that every stroke upon

rebellion and usurpation should tell against the expulsion of the

Stuarts and the Hanover succession. They inveighed against the

dissenters and the toleration. They set up pretences of loyalty

towards the queen, descanting sometimes on her hereditary right, in

order to throw a slur on the settlement. They drew a transparent veil

over their designs, which might screen them from prosecution, but

could not impose, nor was meant to impose, on the reader. Among these

the most distinguished was Leslie, author of a periodical sheet called

the _Rehearsal_, printed weekly from 1704 to 1708; and as he, though

a non-juror, and unquestionable jacobite, held only the same language

as Sacheverell, and others who affected obedience to the government,

we cannot much be deceived in assuming that their views were entirely

the same.[319]

The court of St. Germains, in the first years of the queen, preserved

a secret connection with Godolphin and Marlborough, though justly

distrustful of their sincerity; nor is it by any means clear that they

made any strong professions.[320] Their evident determination to

reduce the power of France, their approximation towards the whigs, the

averseness of the duchess to jacobite principles, taught at length

that unfortunate court how little it had to expect from such ancient

friends. The Scotch jacobites, on the other hand, were eager for the

young king's immediate restoration; and their assurances finally

produced his unsuccessful expedition to the coast in 1708.[321] This

alarmed the queen, who at least had no thoughts of giving up any part

of her dominions, and probably exasperated the two ministers.[322]

Though Godolphin's partiality to the Stuart cause was always

suspected, the proofs of his intercourse with their emissaries are not

so strong as against Marlborough; who, so late as 1711, declared

himself more positively than he seems hitherto to have done in favour

of their restoration.[323] But the extreme selfishness and treachery

of his character makes it difficult to believe that he had any further

view than to secure himself in the event of a revolution which he

judged probable. His interest, which was always his deity, did not lie

in that direction; and his great sagacity must have perceived it.

_Just alarm for the Hanover succession._--A more promising overture

had by this time been made to the young claimant from an opposite

quarter. Mr. Harley, about the end of 1710, sent the Abbé Gaultier to

Marshal Berwick (natural son of James II. by Marlborough's sister),

with authority to treat about the restoration; Anne of course

retaining the Crown for her life, and securities being given for the

national religion and liberties. The conclusion of peace was a

necessary condition. The jacobites in the English parliament were

directed in consequence to fall in with the court, which rendered it

decidedly superior. Harley promised to send over in the next year a

plan for carrying that design into effect. But neither at that time,

nor during the remainder of the queen's life, did this dissembling

minister take any further measures, though still in strict connection

with that party at home, and with the court of St. Germains.[324] It

was necessary, he said, to proceed gently, to make the army their own,

to avoid suspicions which would be fatal. It was manifest that the

course of his administration was wholly inconsistent with his

professions; the friends of the house of Stuart felt that he betrayed,

though he did not delude them; but it was the misfortune of this

minister, or rather the just and natural reward of crooked counsels,

that those he meant to serve could neither believe in his friendship,

nor forgive his appearances of enmity. It is doubtless not easy to

pronounce on the real intentions of men so destitute of sincerity as

Harley and Marlborough; but, in believing the former favourable to the

protestant succession, which he had so eminently contributed to

establish, we accede to the judgment of those contemporaries who were

best able to form one, and especially of the very jacobites with whom

he tampered. And this is so powerfully confirmed by most of his public

measures, his averseness to the high tories, and their consequent

hatred of him, his irreconcilable disagreement with those of his

colleagues who looked most to St. Germains, his frequent attempts to

renew a connection with the whigs, his contempt of the jacobite creed

of government, and the little prospect he could have had of retaining

power on such a revolution, that, so far at least as may be presumed

from what has hitherto become public, there seems no reason for

counting the Earl of Oxford among those from whom the house of Hanover

had any enmity to apprehend.[325]

The pretender, meanwhile, had friends in the tory government more

sincere probably and zealous than Oxford. In the year 1712 Lord

Bolingbroke, the Duke of Buckingham, president of the council, and the

Duke of Ormond, were engaged in this connection.[326] The last of

these, being in the command of the army, little glory as that brought

him, might become an important auxiliary. Harcourt, the chancellor,

though the proofs are not, I believe, so direct, has always been

reckoned in the same interest. Several of the leading Scots peers,

with little disguise, avowed their adherence to it; especially the

Duke of Hamilton, who, luckily perhaps for the kingdom, lost his life

in a duel, at the moment when he was setting out on an embassy to

France. The rage expressed by that faction at his death betrays the

hopes they had entertained from him. A strong phalanx of tory members,

called the October Club, though by no means entirely jacobite, were

chiefly influenced by those who were such. In the new parliament of

1713, the queen's precarious health excited the Stuart partisans to

press forward with more zeal. The masque was more than half drawn

aside; and, vainly urging the ministry to fulfil their promises while

yet in time, they cursed the insidious cunning of Harley and the

selfish cowardice of the queen. Upon her they had for some years

relied. Lady Masham, the bosom favourite, was entirely theirs; and

every word, every look of the sovereign, had been anxiously observed,

in the hope of some indication that she would take the road which

affection and conscience, as they fondly argued, must dictate. But,

whatever may have been the sentiments of Anne, her secret was never

divulged, nor is there, as I apprehend, however positively the

contrary is sometimes asserted, any decisive evidence whence we may

infer that she even intended her brother's restoration.[327] The

weakest of mankind have generally an instinct of self-preservation

which leads them right, and perhaps more than stronger minds possess;

and Anne could scarcely help perceiving that her own deposition from

the throne would be the natural consequence of once admitting the

reversionary right of one whose claim was equally good to the

possession. The assertors of hereditary descent could acquiesce in her

usurpation no longer than they found it necessary for their object; if

her life should be protracted to an ordinary duration, it was almost

certain that Scotland first, and afterwards England, would be wrested

from her impotent grasp. Yet, though I believe the queen to have been

sensible of this, it is impossible to pronounce with certainty that

either through pique against the house of Hanover, or inability to

resist her own counsellors, she might not have come into the scheme of

altering the succession.

But, if neither the queen nor her lord treasurer were inclined to take

that vigorous course which one party demanded, they at least did

enough to raise just alarm in the other; and it seems strange to deny

that the protestant succession was in danger. As Lord Oxford's

ascendancy diminished, the signs of impending revolution became less

equivocal. Adherents of the house of Stuart were placed in civil and

military trust; an Irish agent of the pretender was received in the

character of envoy from the court of Spain; the most audacious

manifestations of disaffection were overlooked.[328] Several even in

parliament spoke with contempt and aversion of the house of

Hanover.[329] It was surely not unreasonable in the whig party to meet

these assaults of the enemy with something beyond the ordinary weapons

of an opposition. They affected no apprehensions that it was absurd to

entertain. Those of the opposite faction, who wished well to the

protestant interest, and were called Hanoverian tories, came over to

their side, and joined them on motions that the succession was in

danger.[330] No one hardly, who either hoped or dreaded the

consequences, had any doubts upon this score; and it is only a few

moderns who have assumed the privilege of setting aside the persuasion

of contemporaries upon a subject which contemporaries were best able

to understand.[331] Are we then to censure the whigs for urging on the

elector of Hanover, who, by a strange apathy or indifference, seemed

negligent of the great prize reserved for him; or is the bold step of

demanding a writ of summons for the electoral prince as Duke of

Cambridge to pass for a factious insult on the queen, because, in her

imbecility, she was leaving the Crown to be snatched at by the first

comer, even if she were not, as they suspected, in some conspiracy to

bestow it on a proscribed heir?[332] I am much inclined to believe,

that the great majority of the nation were in favour of the protestant

succession; but, if the princes of the house of Brunswick had seemed

to retire from the contest, it might have been impracticable to resist

a predominant faction in the council and in parliament; especially if

the son of James, listening to the remonstrances of his English

adherents, could have been induced to renounce a faith which, in the

eyes of too many, was the sole pretext for his exclusion.[333]

_Accession of George I._--The queen's death, which came at last

perhaps rather more quickly than was foreseen, broke for ever the fair

prospects of her family. George I., unknown and absent, was proclaimed

without a single murmur, as if the Crown had passed in the most

regular descent. But this was a momentary calm. The jacobite party,

recovering from the first consternation, availed itself of its usual

arms, and of those with which the new king injudiciously supplied it.

Many of the tories who would have acquiesced in the act of settlement,

seem to have looked on a leading share in the administration as

belonging of right to what was called the church party, and complained

of the formation of a ministry on the whig principle. In later times

also, it has been not uncommon to censure George I. for governing, as

it is called, by a faction. Nothing can be more unreasonable than this

reproach. Was he to select those as his advisers, who had been, as we

know and as he believed, in a conspiracy with his competitor? Was Lord

Oxford, even if the king thought him faithful, capable of uniting with

any public men, hated as he was on each side? Were not the tories as

truly a faction as their adversaries, and as intolerant during their

own power?[334] Was there not, above all, a danger that, if some of

one denomination were drawn by pique and disappointment into the

ranks of the jacobites, the whigs, on the other hand, so ungratefully

and perfidiously recompensed for their arduous services to the house

of Hanover, might think all royalty irreconcilable with the principles

of freedom, and raise up a republican party, of which the scattered

elements were sufficiently discernible in the nation?[335] The

exclusion indeed of the whigs would have been so monstrous both in

honour and policy, that the censure has generally fallen on their

alleged monopoly of public offices. But the mischiefs of a disunited,

hybrid ministry had been sufficiently manifest in the two last reigns;

nor could George, a stranger to his people and their constitution,

have undertaken without ruin that most difficult task of balancing

parties and persons, to which the great mind of William had proved

unequal. Nor is it true that the tories, as such, were proscribed;

those who chose to serve the court met with court favour; and in the

very outset the few men of sufficient eminence, who had testified

their attachment to the succession, received equitable rewards; but,

most happily for himself and the kingdom, most reasonably according to

the principles on which alone his throne could rest, the first prince

of the house of Brunswick gave a decisive preponderance in his favour

to Walpole and Townshend above Harcourt and Bolingbroke.

_Great disaffection in the kingdom._--The strong symptoms of

disaffection which broke out in a few months after the king's

accession, and which can be ascribed to no grievance, unless the

formation of a whig ministry was to be termed one, prove the taint of

the late times to have been deep seated and extensive.[336] The

clergy, in very many instances, were a curse rather than a blessing to

those over whom they were set; and the people, while they trusted that

from those polluted fountains they could draw the living waters of

truth, became the dupes of factious lies and sophistry. Thus

encouraged, the heir of the Stuarts landed in Scotland; and the spirit

of that people being in a great measure jacobite, and very generally

averse to the union, he met with such success as, had their

independence subsisted, would probably have established him on the

throne. But Scotland was now doomed to wait on the fortunes of her

more powerful ally; and, on his invasion of England, the noisy

partisans of hereditary right discredited their faction by its

cowardice. Few rose in arms to support the rebellion, compared with

those who desired its success, and did not blush to see the gallant

savages of the Highlands shed their blood that a supine herd of

priests and country gentlemen might enjoy the victory. The severity of

the new government after the rebellion has been often blamed; but I

know not whether, according to the usual rules of policy, it can be

proved that the execution of two peers and thirty other persons, taken

with arms in flagrant rebellion, was an unwarrantable excess of

punishment. There seems a latent insinuation in those who have argued

on the other side, as if the jacobite rebellion, being founded on an

opinion of right, was more excusable than an ordinary treason--a

proposition which it would not have been quite safe for the reigning

dynasty to acknowledge. Clemency however is the standing policy of

constitutional governments, as severity is of despotism; and, if the

ministers of George I. might have extended it to part of the inferior

sufferers (for surely those of higher rank were the first to be

selected) with safety to their master, they would have done well in

sparing him the odium that attends all political punishments.[337]

_Impeachment of tory ministers._--It will be admitted on all hands, at

the present day, that the charge of high treason in the impeachments

against Oxford and Bolingbroke was an intemperate excess of resentment

at their scandalous dereliction of the public honour and interest. The

danger of a sanguinary revenge inflamed by party spirit is so

tremendous that the worst of men ought perhaps to escape rather than

suffer by a retrospective, or, what is no better, a constructive,

extension of the law. The particular charge of treason was, that in

the negotiation for peace they had endeavoured to procure the city of

Tournay for the King of France; which was maintained to be an adhering

to the queen's enemies within the statute of Edward III.[338] But, as

this construction could hardly be brought within the spirit of that

law, and the motive was certainly not treasonable or rebellious, it

would have been incomparably more constitutional to treat so gross a

breach of duty as a misdemeanour of the highest kind. This angry

temper of the Commons led ultimately to the abandonment of the whole

impeachment against Lord Oxford; the upper house, though it had

committed Oxford to the Tower, which seemed to prejudge the question

as to the treasonable character of the imputed offence, having two

years afterwards resolved that the charge of treason should be first

determined, before they would enter on the articles of less

importance; a decision with which the Commons were so ill satisfied

that they declined to go forward with the prosecution. The resolution

of the Peers was hardly conformable to precedent, to analogy, or to

the dignity of the House of Commons, nor will it perhaps be deemed

binding on any future occasion; but the ministers prudently suffered

themselves to be beaten rather than aggravate the fever of the people

by a prosecution so full of delicate and hazardous questions.[339]

One of these questions, and by no means the least important, would

doubtless have arisen upon a mode of defence alleged by the Earl of

Oxford in the house, when the articles of impeachment were brought up.

"My lords," he said, "if ministers of state, acting by the immediate

commands of their sovereign, are afterwards to be made accountable for

their proceedings, it may, one day or other, be the case of all the

members of this august assembly."[340] It was indeed undeniable that

the queen had been very desirous of peace, and a party, as it were, to

all the counsels that tended to it. Though it was made a charge

against the impeached lords, that the instructions to sign the secret

preliminaries of 1711 with M. Mesnager, on the part of France, were

not under the great seal, nor countersigned by any minister, they were

certainly under the queen's signet, and had all the authority of her

personal command. This must have brought on the yet unsettled and very

delicate question of ministerial responsibility in matters where the

sovereign has interposed his own command; a question better reserved,

it might then appear, for the loose generalities of debate than to be

determined with the precision of criminal law. Each party, in fact,

had in its turn made use of the queen's personal authority as a

shield; the whigs availed themselves of it to parry the attack made on

their ministry, after its fall, for an alleged mismanagement of the

war in Spain before the battle of Almanza;[341] and the modern

constitutional theory was by no means so established in public opinion

as to bear the rude brunt of a legal argument. Anne herself, like all

her predecessors, kept in her own hands the reins of power; jealous,

as such feeble characters usually are, of those in whom she was forced

to confide (especially after the ungrateful return of the Duchess of

Marlborough for the most affectionate condescension), and obstinate in

her judgment, from the very consciousness of its weakness, she took a

share in all business, frequently presided in meetings of the cabinet,

and sometimes gave directions without their advice.[342] The defence

set up by Lord Oxford would undoubtedly not be tolerated at present,

if alleged in direct terms, by either house of parliament; however it

may sometimes be deemed a sufficient apology for a minister, by those

whose bias is towards a compliance with power, to insinuate that he

must either obey against his conscience, or resign against his will.

_Bill for septennial parliaments._--Upon this prevalent disaffection,

and the general dangers of the established government, was founded

that measure so frequently arraigned in later times, the substitution

of septennial for triennial parliaments. The ministry deemed it too

perilous for their master, certainly for themselves, to encounter a

general election in 1717; but the arguments adduced for the

alteration, as it was meant to be permanent, were drawn from its

permanent expediency. Nothing can be more extravagant than what is

sometimes confidently pretended by the ignorant, that the legislature

exceeded its rights by this enactment; or, if that cannot legally be

advanced, that it at least violated the trust of the people, and broke

in upon the ancient constitution. The law for triennial parliaments

was of little more than twenty years' continuance. It was an

experiment which, as was argued, had proved unsuccessful; it was

subject, like every other law, to be repealed entirely, or to be

modified at discretion. As a question of constitutional expediency,

the septennial bill was doubtless open at the time to one serious

objection. Every one admitted that a parliament subsisting

indefinitely during a king's life, but exposed at all times to be

dissolved at his pleasure, would become far too little independent of

the people, and far too much so upon the Crown. But, if the period of

its continuance should thus be extended from three to seven years, the

natural course of encroachment, or some momentous circumstances like

the present, might lead to fresh prolongations, and gradually to an

entire repeal of what had been thought so important a safeguard of its

purity. Time has happily put an end to apprehensions which are not on

that account to be reckoned unreasonable.[343]

Many attempts have been made to obtain a return to triennial

parliaments; the most considerable of which was in 1733, when the

powerful talents of Walpole and his opponents were arrayed on this

great question. It has been less debated in modern times than some

others connected with parliamentary reformation. So long indeed as the

sacred duties of choosing the representatives of a free nation shall

be perpetually disgraced by tumultuary excess, or, what is far worse,

by gross corruption and ruinous profusion (evils which no effectual

pains are taken to redress, and which some apparently desire to

perpetuate, were it only to throw discredit upon the popular part of

the constitution), it would be evidently inexpedient to curtail the

present duration of parliament. But even, independently of this not

insuperable objection, it may well be doubted whether triennial

elections would make much perceptible difference in the course of

government, and whether that difference would on the whole be

beneficial. It will be found, I believe, on a retrospect of the last

hundred years, that the House of Commons would have acted, in the

main, on the same principles, had the elections been more frequent;

and certainly the effects of a dissolution, when it has occurred in

the regular order, have seldom been very important. It is also to be

considered whether an assembly which so much takes to itself the

character of a deliberative council on all matters of policy, ought to

follow with the precision of a weather-glass the unstable prejudices

of the multitude. There are many who look too exclusively at the

functions of parliament, as the protector of civil liberty against the

Crown; functions, it is true, most important, yet not more

indispensable than those of steering a firm course in domestic and

external affairs, with a circumspectness and providence for the

future, which no wholly democratical government has ever yet

displayed. It is by a middle position between an oligarchical senate,

and a popular assembly, that the House of Commons is best preserved

both in its dignity and usefulness, subject indeed to swerve towards

either character by that continual variation of forces which act upon

the vast machine of our commonwealth. But what seems more important

than the usual term of duration, is that this should be permitted to

take its course, except in cases where some great change of national

policy may perhaps justify its abridgment. The Crown would obtain a

very serious advantage over the House of Commons, if it should become

an ordinary thing to dissolve parliament for some petty ministerial

interest, or to avert some unpalatable resolution. Custom appears to

have established, and with some convenience, the substitution of six

for seven years as the natural life of a House of Commons; but an

habitual irregularity in this respect might lead in time to

consequences that most men would deprecate. And it may here be

permitted to express a hope that the necessary dissolution of

parliament within six months of a demise of the Crown will not long be

thought congenial to the spirit of our modern government.

_Peerage bill._--A far more unanimous sentence has been pronounced by

posterity upon another great constitutional question, that arose under

George I. Lord Sunderland persuaded the king to renounce his important

prerogative of making peers; and a bill was supported by the ministry,

limiting the House of Lords, after the creation of a very few more, to

its actual numbers. The Scots were to have twenty-five hereditary,

instead of sixteen elective, members of the house; a provision neither

easily reconciled to the union, nor required by the general tenor of

the bill. This measure was carried with no difficulty through the

upper house, whose interests were so manifestly concerned in it. But

a similar motive, concurring with the efforts of a powerful malcontent

party, caused its rejection by the Commons.[344] It was justly thought

a proof of the king's ignorance or indifference in everything that

concerned his English Crown, that he should have consented to so

momentous a sacrifice; and Sunderland was reproached for so audacious

an endeavour to strengthen his private faction at the expense of the

fundamental laws of the monarchy. Those who maintained the expediency

of limiting the peerage, had recourse to uncertain theories as to the

ancient constitution, and denied this prerogative to have been

originally vested in the Crown. A more plausible argument was derived

from the abuse, as it was then generally accounted, of creating at

once twelve peers in the late reign, for the sole end of establishing

a majority for the court; a resource which would be always at the

command of successive factions, till the British nobility might become

as numerous and venal as that of some European states. It was argued

that there was a fallacy in concluding the collective power of the

House of Lords to be augmented by its limitation, because every single

peer would evidently become of more weight in the kingdom; that the

wealth of the whole body must bear a less proportion to that of the

nation, and would possibly not exceed that of the lower house, while

on the other hand it might be indefinitely multiplied by fresh

creations; that the Crown would lose one great engine of corrupt

influence over the Commons, which could never be truly independent,

while its principal members were looking on it as a stepping-stone to

hereditary honours.[345]

Though these reasonings however are not destitute of considerable

weight, and the unlimited prerogative of augmenting the peerage is

liable to such abuses, at least in theory, as might overthrow our form

of government; while, in the opinion of some, whether erroneous or

not, it has actually been exerted with too little discretion, the

arguments against any legal limitation seem more decisive. The Crown

has been carefully restrained by statutes, and by the responsibility

of its advisers; the Commons, if they transgress their boundaries, are

annihilated by a proclamation; but against the ambition, or, what is

much more likely, the perverse haughtiness of the aristocracy, the

constitution has not furnished such direct securities. And, as this

would be prodigiously enhanced by a consciousness of their power, and

by a sense of self-importance which every peer would derive from it

after the limitation of their numbers, it might break out in

pretensions very galling to the people, and in an oppressive extension

of privileges which were already sufficiently obnoxious and arbitrary.

It is true that the resource of subduing an aristocratical faction by

the creation of new peers could never be constitutionally employed,

except in the case of a nearly equal balance; but it might usefully

hang over the heads of the whole body, and deter them from any gross

excesses of faction or oligarchical spirit. The nature of our

government requires a general harmony between the two houses of

parliament; and indeed any systematic opposition between them would of

necessity bring on the subordination of one to the other in too marked

a manner; nor had there been wanting within the memory of man, several

instances of such jealous and even hostile sentiments as could only be

allayed by the inconvenient remedies of a prorogation or a

dissolution. These animosities were likely to revive with more

bitterness, when the country gentlemen and leaders of the commons

should come to look on the nobility as a class into which they could

not enter, and the latter should forget more and more, in their

inaccessible dignity, the near approach of that gentry to themselves

in respectability of birth and extent of possessions.[346]

These innovations on the part of the new government were maintained on

the score of its unsettled state, and want of hold on the national

sentiment. It may seem a reproach to the house of Hanover that,

connected as it ought to have been with the names most dear to English

hearts, the protestant religion and civil liberty, it should have been

driven to try the resources of tyranny, and to demand more authority,

to exercise more control, than had been necessary for the worst of

their predecessors. Much of this disaffection was owing to the cold

reserve of George I., ignorant of the language, alien from the

prejudices of his people, and continually absent in his electoral

dominions, to which he seemed to sacrifice the nation's interest and

the security of his own crown. It is certain that the acquisition of

the duchies of Bremen and Verden for Hanover in 1716 exposed Great

Britain to a very serious danger, by provoking the King of Sweden to

join in a league for the restoration of the Pretender.[347] It might

have been impossible (such was the precariousness of our revolution

settlement) to have made the abdication of the electorate a condition

of the house of Brunswick's succession; but the consequences of that

connection, though much exaggerated by the factious and disaffected,

were in various manners detrimental to English interests during these

two reigns; and not the least in that they estranged the affections of

the people from sovereigns whom they regarded as still foreign.

_Jacobitism among the clergy._--The tory and jacobite factions, as I

have observed, were powerful in the church. This had been the case

ever since the revolution. The avowed non-jurors were busy with the

press; and poured forth, especially during the encouragement they

received in part of Anne's reign, a multitude of pamphlets, sometimes

argumentative, more often virulently libellous. Their idle cry that

the church was in danger, which both houses in 1704 thought fit to

deny by a formal vote, alarmed a senseless multitude. Those who took

the oaths were frequently known partisans of the exiled family; and

those who affected to disclaim that cause, defended the new settlement

with such timid or faithless arms as served only to give a triumph to

the adversary. About the end of William's reign grew up the

distinction of high and low churchmen; the first distinguished by

great pretensions to sacerdotal power, both spiritual and temporal, by

a repugnance to toleration, and by a firm adherence to the tory

principle in the state; the latter by the opposite characteristics.

These were pitched against each other in the two houses of

convocation, an assembly which virtually ceased to exist under George I.

_Convocation._--The convocation of the province of Canterbury (for

that of York seems never to have been important) is summoned by the

archbishop's writ, under the king's direction, along with every

parliament, to which it bears analogy both in its constituent parts

and in its primary functions. It consists (since the reformation) of

the suffragan bishops, forming the upper house; of the deans,

archdeacons, a proctor or proxy for each chapter, and two from each

diocese, elected by the parochial clergy, who together constitute the

lower house. In this assembly subsidies were granted, and

ecclesiastical canons enacted. In a few instances under Henry VIII.

and Elizabeth, they were consulted as to momentous questions affecting

the national religion; the supremacy of the former was approved in

1533, the articles of faith were confirmed in 1562, by the convocation.

But their power to enact fresh canons without the king's licence, was

expressly taken away by a statute of Henry VIII.; and, even subject to

this condition, is limited by several later acts of parliament (such

as the acts of uniformity under Elizabeth and Charles II., that

confirming, and therefore rendering unalterable, the thirty-nine

articles, those relating to non-residence and other church matters),

and still more perhaps by the doctrine gradually established in

Westminster Hall, that new ecclesiastical canons are not binding on

the laity, so greatly that it will ever be impossible to exercise it

in any effectual manner. The convocation accordingly, with the

exception of 1603, when they established some regulations, and of 1640

(an unfortunate precedent), when they attempted some more, had little

business but to grant subsidies, which, however, were from the time of

Henry VIII. always confirmed by an act of parliament; an intimation,

no doubt, that the legislature did not wholly acquiesce in their power

even of binding the clergy in a matter of property. This practice of

ecclesiastical taxation was silently discontinued in 1664; at a time

when the authority and pre-eminence of the church stood very high, so

that it could not then have seemed the abandonment of an important

privilege. From this time the clergy have been taxed at the same rate

and in the same manner with the laity.[348]

It was the natural consequence of this cessation of all business, that

the convocation, after a few formalities, either adjourned itself or

was prorogued by a royal writ; nor had it ever, with the few

exceptions above noticed, sat for more than a few days, till its

supply could be voted. But, about the time of the revolution, the

party most adverse to the new order sedulously propagated a doctrine

that the convocation ought to be advised with upon all questions

affecting the church, and ought even to watch over its interests as

the parliament did over those of the kingdom.[349] The Commons had so

far encouraged this faction as to refer to the convocation the great

question of a reform in the liturgy for the sake of comprehension, as

has been mentioned in the last chapter; and thus put a stop to the

king's design. It was not suffered to sit much during the rest of that

reign, to the great discontent of its ambitious leaders. The most

celebrated of these, Atterbury, published a book, entitled _The Rights

and Privileges of an English Convocation_, in answer to one by Wake,

afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. The speciousness of the former,

sprinkled with competent learning on the subject, a graceful style,

and an artful employment of topics, might easily delude, at least, the

willing reader. Nothing indeed could, on reflection, appear more

inconclusive than Atterbury's arguments. Were we even to admit the

perfect analogy of a convocation to a parliament, it could not be

doubted that the king may, legally speaking, prorogue the latter at

his pleasure; and that, if neither money were required to be granted

nor laws to be enacted, a session would be very short. The church had

by prescription a right to be summoned in convocation; but no

prescription could be set up for its longer continuance than the Crown

thought expedient; and it was too much to expect that William III. was

to gratify his half-avowed enemies, with a privilege of remonstrance

and interposition they had never enjoyed. In the year 1701 the lower

house of convocation pretended to a right of adjourning to a different

day from that fixed by the upper, and consequently of holding separate

sessions. They set up other unprecedented claims to independence,

which were checked by a prorogation.[350] Their aim was in all

respects to assimilate themselves to the House of Commons, and thus

both to set up the convocation itself as an assembly collateral to

parliament, and in the main independent of it, and to maintain their

co-ordinate power and equality in synodical dignity to the prelates'

house. The succeeding reign, however, began under tory auspices; and

the convocation was in more activity for some years than at any former

period. The lower house of that assembly still distinguished itself by

the most factious spirit, and especially by insolence towards the

bishops, who passed in general for whigs, and whom, while pretending

to assert the divine rights of episcopacy, they laboured to deprive of

that pre-eminence in the Anglican synod which the ecclesiastical

constitution of the kingdom had bestowed on them.[351] None was more

prominent in their debates than Atterbury himself, whom, in the zenith

of tory influence, at the close of her reign, the queen reluctantly

promoted to the see of Rochester.

The new government at first permitted the convocation to hold its

sittings. But they soon excited a flame which consumed themselves by

an attack on Hoadley, Bishop of Bangor, who had preached a sermon

abounding with those principles concerning religious liberty, of which

he had long been the courageous and powerful assertor.[352] The lower

house of convocation thought fit to denounce, through the report of a

committee, the dangerous tenets of this discourse, and of a work not

long before published by the bishop. A long and celebrated war of pens

instantly commenced, known by the name of the Bangorian controversy;

managed, perhaps on both sides, with all the chicanery of polemical

writers, and disgusting both from its tediousness, and from the

manifest unwillingness of the disputants to speak ingenuously what

they meant.[353] But, as the principles of Hoadley and his advocates

appeared, in the main, little else than those of protestantism and

toleration, the sentence of the laity, in the temper that was then

gaining ground as to ecclesiastical subjects, was soon pronounced in

their favour; and the high-church party discredited themselves by an

opposition to what now pass for the incontrovertible truisms of

religious liberty. In the ferment of that age, it was expedient for

the state to scatter a little dust over the angry insects; the

convocation was accordingly prorogued in 1717, and has never again sat

for any business.[354] Those who are imbued with high notions of

sacerdotal power have sometimes deplored this extinction of the

Anglican great council; and though its necessity, as I have already

observed, cannot possibly be defended as an ancient part of the

constitution, there are not wanting specious arguments for the

expediency of such a synod. It might be urged that the church,

considered only as an integral member of the commonwealth, and the

greatest corporation within it, might justly claim that right of

managing its own affairs which belongs to every other association;

that the argument from abuse is not sufficient, and is rejected with

indignation when applied, as historically it might be, to

representative governments and to civil liberty; that in the present

state of things, no reformation even of secondary importance can be

effected without difficulty, nor any looked for in greater matters,

both from the indifference of the legislature, and the reluctance of

the clergy to admit its interposition.

It is answered to these suggestions, that we must take experience when

we possess it, rather than analogy, for our guide; that ecclesiastical

assemblies have in all ages and countries been mischievous, where they

have been powerful, which that of our wealthy and numerous clergy must

always be; that, notwithstanding, if the convocation could be brought

under the management of the state (which by the nature of its

component parts might seem not unlikely), it must lead to the

promotion of servile men, and the exclusion of merit still more than

at present; that the severe remark of Clarendon, who observes that of

all mankind none form so bad an estimate of human affairs as

churchmen, is abundantly confirmed by experience; that the

representation of the church in the House of Lords is sufficient for

the protection of its interests; that the clergy have an influence

which no other corporation enjoys over the bulk of the nation, and are

apt to abuse it for the purposes of undue ascendancy, unjust

restraint, or factious ambition; that the hope of any real good in

reformation of the Church by its own assemblies to whatever sort of

reform we may look, is utterly chimerical; finally, that as the laws

now stand, which few would incline to alter, the ratification of

parliament must be indispensable for any material change. It seems to

admit of no doubt that these reasonings ought much to outweigh those

on the opposite side.

_Infringements of the toleration by statutes under Anne._--In the last

four years of the queen's reign, some inroads had been made on the

toleration granted to dissenters, whom the high-church party held in

abhorrence. They had for a long time inveighed against what was called

occasional conformity, or the compliance of dissenters with the

provisions of the test act in order merely to qualify themselves for

holding office, or entering into corporations. Nothing could, in the

eyes of sensible men, be more advantageous to the church, if a

re-union of those who had separated from it were advantageous, than

this practice. Admitting even that the motive was self-interested,

has an established government, in church or state, any better ally

than the self-interestedness of mankind? Was it not what a

presbyterian or independent minister would denounce as a base and

worldly sacrifice? and if so, was not the interest of the Anglican

clergy exactly in an inverse proportion to this? Any one competent to

judge of human affairs would predict, what has turned out to be the

case, that when the barrier was once taken down for the sake of

convenience, it would not be raised again for conscience; that the

most latitudinarian theory, the most lukewarm dispositions in

religion, must be prodigiously favourable to the reigning sect; and

that the dissenting clergy, though they might retain, or even extend,

their influence over the multitude, would gradually lose it with those

classes who could be affected by the test. But, even if the tory

faction had been cool-headed enough for such reflections, it has,

unfortunately, been sometimes less the aim of the clergy to reconcile

those who differ from them than to keep them in a state of dishonour

and depression. Hence, in the first parliament of Anne, a bill to

prevent occasional conformity more than once passed the Commons; and,

on its being rejected by the Lords, a great majority of William's

bishops voting against the measure, it was sent up again in a very

reprehensible manner, tacked, as it was called, to a grant of money;

so that, according to the pretension of the Commons in respect to such

bills, the upper house must either refuse the supply, or consent to

what they disapproved.[355] This however having miscarried, and the

next parliament being of better principles, nothing farther was done

till 1711, when Lord Nottingham, a vehement high-churchman, having

united with the whigs against the treaty of peace, they were

injudicious enough to gratify him by concurring in a bill to prevent

occasional conformity.[356] This was followed up by the ministry in a

more decisive attack on the toleration, an act for preventing the

growth of schism, which extended and confirmed one of Charles II.,

enforcing on all schoolmasters, and even on all teachers in private

families, a declaration of conformity to the established church, to be

made before the bishop, from whom a licence for exercising that

profession was also to be obtained.[357] It is impossible to doubt for

an instant, that if the queen's life had preserved the tory

government for a few years, every vestige of the toleration would have

been effaced.

These statutes, records of their adversaries' power, the whigs, now

lords of the ascendant, determined to abrogate. The dissenters were

unanimously zealous for the house of Hanover and for the ministry; the

church of very doubtful loyalty to the Crown, and still less affection

to the whig name. In the session of 1719, accordingly, the act against

occasional conformity, and that restraining education, were

repealed.[358] It had been the intention to have also repealed the

test act; but the disunion then prevailing among the whigs had caused

so formidable an opposition even to the former measures, that it was

found necessary to abandon that project. Walpole, more cautious and

moderate than the ministry of 1719, perceived the advantage of

reconciling the church as far as possible to the royal family and to

his own government; and it seems to have been an article in the tacit

compromise with the bishops, who were not backward in exerting their

influence for the Crown, that he should make no attempt to abrogate

the laws which gave a monopoly of power to the Anglican communion. We

may presume also that the prelates undertook not to obstruct the acts

of indemnity passed from time to time in favour of those who had not

duly qualified themselves for the offices they held; and which, after

some time becoming regular, have in effect thrown open the gates to

protestant dissenters, though still subject to be closed by either

house of parliament, if any jealousies should induce them to refuse

their assent to this annual enactment.[359]

_Principles of toleration fully established._--Meanwhile the

principles of religious liberty, in all senses of the word, gained

strength by this eager controversy, naturally pleasing as they are to

the proud independence of the English character, and congenial to

those of civil freedom, which both parties, tory as much as whig, had

now learned sedulously to maintain. The non-juring and high-church

factions among the clergy produced few eminent men; and lost credit,

not more by the folly of their notions than by their general want of

scholarship and disregard of their duties. The university of Oxford

was tainted to the core with jacobite prejudices; but it must be added

that it never stood so low in respectability as a place of

education.[360] The government, on the other hand, was studious to

promote distinguished men; and doubtless the hierarchy in the first

sixty years of the eighteenth century might very advantageously be

compared, in point of conspicuous ability, with that of any equal

period that ensued. The maxims of persecution were silently abandoned,

as well as its practice; Warburton, and others of less name, taught

those of toleration with as much boldness as Hoadley, but without some

of his more invidious tenets; the more popular writers took a liberal

tone; the names of Locke and Montesquieu acquired immense authority;

the courts of justice discountenanced any endeavour to revive

oppressive statutes; and, not long after the end of George the

Second's reign, it was adjudged in the House of Lords, upon the

broadest principles of toleration laid down by Lord Mansfield, that

nonconformity with the established church is recognised by the law,

and not an offence at which it connives.

_Banishment of Atterbury._--Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester, the most

distinguished of the party denominated high-church, became the victim

of his restless character and implacable disaffection to the house of

Hanover. The pretended king, for some years after his competitor's

accession, had fair hopes from different powers of Europe--France,

Sweden, Russia, Spain, Austria--(each of whom, in its turn, was ready

to make use of this instrument), and from the powerful faction who

panted for his restoration. This was unquestionably very numerous;

though we have not as yet the means of fixing with certainty on more

than comparatively a small number of names. But a conspiracy for an

invasion from Spain and a simultaneous rising was detected in 1722,

which implicated three or four peers, and among them the Bishop of

Rochester.[361] The evidence, however, though tolerably convincing,

being insufficient for a verdict at law, it was thought expedient to

pass a bill of pains and penalties against this prelate, as well as

others against two of his accomplices. The proof, besides many

corroborating circumstances, consisted in three letters relative to

the conspiracy, supposed to be written by his secretary Kelly, and

appearing to be dictated by the bishop. He was deprived of his see,

and banished the kingdom for life.[362] This met with strong

opposition, not limited to the enemies of the royal family, and is

open to the same objection as the attainder of Sir John Fenwick; the

danger of setting aside those precious securities against a wicked

government which the law of treason has furnished. As a vigorous

assertion of the state's authority over the church we may commend the

policy of Atterbury's deprivation; but perhaps this was ill purchased

by a mischievous precedent. It is however the last act of a violent

nature in any important matter, which can be charged against the

English legislature.