CHAPTER XXIII

Standing Armies

Sunderland

Lord Spencer

Controversy touching Standing Armies

Meeting of Parliament

The King's Speech well received; Debate on a Peace Establishment

Sunderland attacked

The Nation averse to a Standing Army

Mutiny Act; the Navy Acts concerning High Treason

Earl of Clancarty

Ways and Means; Rights of the Sovereign in reference to Crown Lands

Proceedings in Parliament on Grants of Crown Lands

Montague accused of Peculation

Bill of Pains and Penalties against Duncombe

Dissension between the houses

Commercial Questions

Irish Manufactures

East India Companies

Fire at Whitehall

Visit of the Czar

Portland's Embassy to France

The Spanish Succession

The Count of Tallard's Embassy

Newmarket Meeting: the insecure State of the Roads

Further Negotiations relating to the Spanish Succession

The King goes to Holland

Portland returns from his Embassy

William is reconciled to Marlborough

CHAPTER XXIV

Altered Position of the Ministry

The Elections

First Partition Treaty

Domestic Discontent

Littleton chosen Speaker

King's Speech; Proceedings relating to the Amount of the Land Force

Unpopularity of Montague

Bill for Disbanding the Army

The King's Speech

Death of the Electoral Prince of Bavaria.

Renewed Discussion of the Army Question

Naval Administration

Commission on Irish Forfeitures.

Prorogation of Parliament

Changes in the Ministry and Household

Spanish Succession

Darien

CHAPTER XXV.

Trial of Spencer Cowper

Duels

Discontent of the Nation

Captain Kidd

Meeting of Parliament

Attacks on Burnet

Renewed Attack on Somers

Question of the Irish Forfeitures: Dispute between the Houses

Somers again attacked

Prorogation of Parliament

Death of James the Second

The Pretender recognised as King

Return of the King

General Election

Death of William

PREFACE TO THE FIFTH VOLUME.

I HAVE thought it right to publish that portion of the continuation of

the "History of England" which was fairly transcribed and revised by

Lord Macaulay. It is given to the world precisely as it was left: no

connecting link has been added; no reference verified; no authority

sought for or examined. It would indeed have been possible, with the

help I might have obtained from his friends, to have supplied much that

is wanting; but I preferred, and I believe the public will prefer, that

the last thoughts of the great mind passed away from among us should

be preserved sacred from any touch but his own. Besides the revised

manuscript, a few pages containing the first rough sketch of the last

two months of William's reign are all that is left. From this I have

with some difficulty deciphered the account of the death of William. No

attempt has been made to join it on to the preceding part, or to supply

the corrections which would have been given by the improving hand of the

author. But, imperfect as it must be, I believe it will be received with

pleasure and interest as a fit conclusion to the life of his great hero.

I will only add my grateful thanks for the kind advice and assistance

given me by his most dear and valued friends, Dean Milman and Mr. Ellis.

CHAPTER XXIII

Standing Armies--Sunderland--Lord Spencer--Controversy touching Standing

Armies--Meeting of Parliament--The King's Speech well received; Debate

on a Peace Establishment--Sunderland attacked--The Nation averse to a

Standing Army--Mutiny Act; the Navy Acts concerning High Treason--Earl

of Clancarty--Ways and Means; Rights of the Sovereign in reference

to Crown Lands--Proceedings in Parliament on Grants of Crown

Lands--Montague accused of Peculation--Bill of Pains and Penalties

against Duncombe--Dissension between the houses--Commercial

Questions--Irish Manufactures--East India Companies--Fire at

Whitehall--Visit of the Czar--Portland's Embassy to France--The Spanish

Succession--The Count of Tallard's Embassy--Newmarket Meeting: the

insecure State of the Roads--Further Negotiations relating to the

Spanish Succession--The King goes to Holland--Portland returns from his

Embassy--William is reconciled to Marlborough

THE rejoicings, by which London, on the second of December 1697,

celebrated the return of peace and prosperity, continued till long after

midnight. On the following morning the Parliament met; and one of the

most laborious sessions of that age commenced.

Among the questions which it was necessary that the Houses should

speedily decide, one stood forth preeminent in interest and importance.

Even in the first transports of joy with which the bearer of the treaty

of Ryswick had been welcomed to England, men had eagerly and anxiously

asked one another what was to be done with that army which had

been formed in Ireland and Belgium, which had learned, in many

hard campaigns, to obey and to conquer, and which now consisted of

eighty-seven thousand excellent soldiers. Was any part of this great

force to be retained in the service of the State? And, if any part, what

part? The last two kings had, without the consent of the legislature,

maintained military establishments in time of peace. But that they

had done this in violation of the fundamental laws of England was

acknowledged by all jurists, and had been expressly affirmed in the Bill

of Rights. It was therefore impossible for William, now that the country

was threatened by no foreign and no domestic enemy, to keep up even a

single battalion without the sanction of the Estates of the Realm; and

it might well be doubted whether such a sanction would be given.

It is not easy for us to see this question in the light in which it

appeared to our ancestors.

No man of sense has, in our days, or in the days of our fathers,

seriously maintained that our island could be safe without an army.

And, even if our island were perfectly secure from attack, an army would

still be indispensably necessary to us. The growth of the empire has

left us no choice. The regions which we have colonized or conquered

since the accession of the House of Hanover contain a population

exceeding twenty-fold that which the House of Stuart governed. There are

now more English soldiers on the other side of the tropic of Cancer in

time of peace than Cromwell had under his command in time of war. All

the troops of Charles II. would not have been sufficient to garrison the

posts which we now occupy in the Mediterranean Sea alone. The regiments

which defend the remote dependencies of the Crown cannot be duly

recruited and relieved, unless a force far larger than that which James

collected in the camp at Hounslow for the purpose of overawing his

capital be constantly kept up within the kingdom. The old national

antipathy to permanent military establishments, an antipathy which was

once reasonable and salutary, but which lasted some time after it

had become unreasonable and noxious, has gradually yielded to the

irresistible force of circumstances. We have made the discovery, that

an army may be so constituted as to be in the highest degree efficient

against an enemy, and yet obsequious to the civil magistrate. We have

long ceased to apprehend danger to law and to freedom from the license

of troops, and from the ambition of victorious generals. An alarmist who

should now talk such language, as was common five generations ago, who

should call for the entire disbanding of the land force; of the realm,

and who should gravely predict that the warriors of Inkerman and Delhi

would depose the Queen, dissolve the Parliament, and plunder the Bank,

would be regarded as fit only for a cell in Saint Luke's. But before the

Revolution our ancestors had known a standing army only as an instrument

of lawless power. Judging by their own experience, they thought it

impossible that such an army should exist without danger to the rights

both of the Crown and of the people. One class of politicians was never

weary of repeating that an Apostolic Church, a loyal gentry, an ancient

nobility, a sainted King, had been foully outraged by the Joyces and the

Prides; another class recounted the atrocities committed by the Lambs of

Kirke, and by the Beelzebubs and Lucifers of Dundee; and both classes,

agreeing in scarcely any thing else, were disposed to agree in aversion

to the red coats.

While such was the feeling of the nation, the King was, both as a

statesman and as a general, most unwilling to see that superb body

of troops which he had formed with infinite difficulty broken up and

dispersed. But, as to this matter, he could not absolutely rely on the

support of his ministers; nor could his ministers absolutely rely on the

support of that parliamentary majority whose attachment had enabled them

to confront enemies abroad and to crush traitors at home, to restore

a debased currency, and to fix public credit on deep and solid

foundations.

The difficulties of the King's situation are to be, in part at least,

attributed to an error which he had committed in the preceding spring.

The Gazette which announced that Sunderland been appointed Chamberlain

of the Royal Household, sworn of the Privy Council, and named one of the

Lords Justices who were to administer the government during the summer

had caused great uneasiness among plain men who remembered all the

windings and doublings of his long career. In truth, his countrymen

were unjust to him. For they thought him, not only an unprincipled and

faithless politician, which he was, but a deadly enemy of the liberties

of the nation, which he was not. What he wanted was simply to be safe,

rich and great. To these objects he had been constant through all the

vicissitudes of his life. For these objects he had passed from Church

to Church and from faction to faction, had joined the most turbulent

of oppositions without any zeal for freedom, and had served the most

arbitrary of monarchs without any zeal for monarchy; had voted for

the Exclusion Bill without being a Protestant, and had adored the Host

without being a Papist; had sold his country at once to both the great

parties which divided the Continent; had taken money from France, and

had sent intelligence to Holland. As far, however, as he could be said

to have any opinions, his opinions were Whiggish. Since his return from

exile, his influence had been generally exerted in favour of the Whig

party. It was by his counsel that the Great Seal had been entrusted

to Somers, that Nottingham had been sacrificed to Russell, and that

Montague had been preferred to Fox. It was by his dexterous management

that the Princess Anne had been detached from the opposition, and that

Godolphin had been removed from the head of the hoard of Treasury. The

party which Sunderland had done so much to serve now held a new pledge

for his fidelity. His only son, Charles Lord Spencer, was just entering

on public life. The precocious maturity of the young man's intellectual

and moral character had excited hopes which were not destined to

be realized. His knowledge of ancient literature, and his skill in

imitating the styles of the masters of Roman eloquence, were applauded

by veteran scholars. The sedateness of his deportment and the apparent

regularity of his life delighted austere moralists. He was known indeed

to have one expensive taste; but it was a taste of the most respectable

kind. He loved books, and was bent or forming the most magnificent

private library in England. While other heirs of noble houses were

inspecting patterns of steinkirks and sword knots, dangling after

actresses, or betting on fighting cocks, he was in pursuit of the

Mentz editions of Tully's Offices, of the Parmesan Statius, and of

the inestimable Virgin of Zarottus. [1] It was natural that high

expectations should be formed of the virtue and wisdom of a youth whose

very luxury and prodigality had a grave and erudite air, and that even

discerning men should be unable to detect the vices which were hidden

under that show of premature sobriety.

Spencer was a Whig, unhappily for the Whig party, which, before the

unhonoured and unlamented close of his life, was more than once brought

to the verge of ruin by his violent temper and his crooked politics. His

Whiggism differed widely from that of his father. It was not a languid,

speculative, preference of one theory of government to another, but a

fierce and dominant passion. Unfortunately, though an ardent, it was at

the same time a corrupt and degenerate, Whiggism; a Whiggism so narrow

and oligarchical as to be little, if at all, preferable to the worst

forms of Toryism. The young lord's imagination had been fascinated by

those swelling sentiments of liberty which abound in the Latin poets

and orators; and he, like those poets and orators, meant by liberty

something very different from the only liberty which is of importance to

the happiness of mankind. Like them, he could see no danger to liberty

except from kings. A commonwealth, oppressed and pillaged by such men

as Opimius and Verres, was free, because it had no king. A member of the

Grand Council of Venice, who passed his whole life under tutelage and

in fear, who could not travel where he chose, or visit whom he chose,

or invest his property as he chose, whose path was beset with spies,

who saw at the corners of the streets the mouth of bronze gaping for

anonymous accusations against him, and whom the Inquisitors of State

could, at any moment, and for any or no reason, arrest, torture, fling

into the Grand Canal, was free, because he had no king. To curtail,

for the benefit of a small privileged class, prerogatives which the

Sovereign possesses and ought to possess for the benefit of the whole

nation, was the object on which Spencer's heart was set. During many

years he was restrained by older and wiser men; and it was not till

those whom he had early been accustomed to respect had passed away, and

till he was himself at the head of affairs, that he openly attempted to

obtain for the hereditary nobility a precarious and invidious ascendency

in the State, at the expense both of the Commons and of the Throne.

In 1695, Spencer had taken his seat in the House of Commons as member

for Tiverton, and had, during two sessions, conducted himself as a

steady and zealous Whig.

The party to which he had attached himself might perhaps have reasonably

considered him as a hostage sufficient to ensure the good faith of his

father; for the Earl was approaching that time of life at which even

the most ambitious and rapacious men generally toil rather for their

children than for themselves. But the distrust which Sunderland inspired

was such as no guarantee could quiet. Many fancied that he was,--with

what object they never took the trouble to inquire,--employing the same

arts which had ruined James for the purpose of ruining William. Each

prince had had his weak side. One was too much a Papist, and the other

too much a soldier, for such a nation as this. The same intriguing

sycophant who had encouraged the Papist in one fatal error was now

encouraging the soldier in another. It might well be apprehended that,

under the influence of this evil counsellor, the nephew might alienate

as many hearts by trying to make England a military country as the uncle

had alienated by trying to make her a Roman Catholic country.

The parliamentary conflict on the great question of a standing army

was preceded by a literary conflict. In the autumn of 1697 began a

controversy of no common interest and importance. The press was now

free. An exciting and momentous political question could be fairly

discussed. Those who held uncourtly opinions could express those

opinions without resorting to illegal expedients and employing the

agency of desperate men. The consequence was that the dispute was

carried on, though with sufficient keenness, yet, on the whole, with a

decency which would have been thought extraordinary in the days of the

censorship.

On this occasion the Tories, though they felt strongly, wrote but

little. The paper war was almost entirely carried on between two

sections of the Whig party. The combatants on both sides were generally

anonymous. But it was well known that one of the foremost champions of

the malecontent Whigs was John Trenchard, son of the late Secretary of

State. Preeminent among the ministerial Whigs was one in whom admirable

vigour and quickness of intellect were united to a not less admirable

moderation and urbanity, one who looked on the history of past ages with

the eye of a practical statesman, and on the events which were passing

before him with the eye of a philosophical historian. It was not

necessary for him to name himself. He could be none but Somers.

The pamphleteers who recommended the immediate and entire disbanding of

the army had an easy task. If they were embarrassed, it was only by the

abundance of the matter from which they had to make their selection. On

their side were claptraps and historical commonplaces without number,

the authority of a crowd of illustrious names, all the prejudices, all

the traditions, of both the parties in the state. These writers laid

it down as a fundamental principle of political science that a standing

army and a free constitution could not exist together. What, they asked,

had destroyed the noble commonwealths of Greece? What had enslaved the

mighty Roman people? What had turned the Italian republics of the middle

ages into lordships and duchies? How was it that so many of the kingdoms

of modern Europe had been transformed from limited into absolute

monarchies? The States General of France, the Cortes of Castile, the

Grand Justiciary of Arragon, what had been fatal to them all? History

was ransacked for instances of adventurers who, by the help of mercenary

troops, had subjugated free nations or deposed legitimate princes;

and such instances were easily found. Much was said about Pisistratus,

Timophanes, Dionysius, Agathocles, Marius and Sylla, Julius Caesar and

Augustus Caesar, Carthage besieged by her own mercenaries, Rome put up

to auction by her own Praetorian cohorts, Sultan Osman butchered by his

own Janissaries, Lewis Sforza sold into captivity by his own Switzers.

But the favourite instance was taken from the recent history of our own

land. Thousands still living had seen the great usurper, who, strong in

the power of the sword, had triumphed over both royalty and freedom. The

Tories were reminded that his soldiers had guarded the scaffold before

the Banqueting House. The Whigs were reminded that those same soldiers

had taken the mace from the table of the House of Commons. From such

evils, it was said, no country could be secure which was cursed with

a standing army. And what were the advantages which could be set off

against such evils? Invasion was the bugbear with which the Court tried

to frighten the nation. But we were not children to be scared by nursery

tales. We were at peace; and, even in time of war, an enemy who should

attempt to invade us would probably be intercepted by our fleet, and

would assuredly, if he reached our shores, be repelled by our militia.

Some people indeed talked as if a militia could achieve nothing great.

But that base doctrine was refuted by all ancient and all modern

history. What was the Lacedaemonian phalanx in the best days of

Lacedaemon? What was, the Roman legion in the best days of Rome? What

were the armies which conquered at Cressy, at Poitiers, at Agincourt,

at Halidon, or at Flodden? What was that mighty array which Elizabeth

reviewed at Tilbury? In the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth

centuries Englishmen who did not live by the trade of war had made war

with success and glory. Were the English of the seventeenth century so

degenerate that they could not be trusted to play the men for their own

homesteads and parish churches?

For such reasons as these the disbanding of the forces was strongly

recommended. Parliament, it was said, might perhaps, from respect and

tenderness for the person of His Majesty, permit him to have guards

enough to escort his coach and to pace the rounds before his palace. But

this was the very utmost that it would be right to concede. The defence

of the realm ought to be confided to the sailors and the militia. Even

the Tower ought to have no garrison except the trainbands of the Tower

Hamlets.

It must be evident to every intelligent and dispassionate man that

these declaimers contradicted themselves. If an army composed of regular

troops really was far more efficient than an army composed of husbandmen

taken from the plough and burghers taken from the counter, how could the

country be safe with no defenders but husbandmen and burghers, when a

great prince, who was our nearest neighbour, who had a few months before

been our enemy, and who might, in a few months, be our enemy again, kept

up not less than a hundred and fifty thousand regular troops? If, on the

other hand, the spirit of the English people was such that they would,

with little or no training, encounter and defeat the most formidable

array of veterans from the continent, was it not absurd to apprehend

that such a people could be reduced to slavery by a few regiments of

their own countrymen? But our ancestors were generally so much blinded

by prejudice that this inconsistency passed unnoticed. They were secure

where they ought to have been wary, and timorous where they might

well have been secure. They were not shocked by hearing the same man

maintain, in the same breath, that, if twenty thousand professional

soldiers were kept up, the liberty and property of millions of

Englishmen would be at the mercy of the Crown, and yet that those

millions of Englishmen, fighting for liberty and property, would

speedily annihilate an invading army composed of fifty or sixty thousand

of the conquerors of Steinkirk and Landen. Whoever denied the former

proposition was called a tool of the Court. Whoever denied the latter

was accused of insulting and slandering the nation.

Somers was too wise to oppose himself directly to the strong current

of popular feeling. With rare dexterity he took the tone, not of an

advocate, but of a judge. The danger which seemed so terrible to many

honest friends of liberty he did not venture to pronounce altogether

visionary. But he reminded his countrymen that a choice between dangers

was sometimes all that was left to the wisest of mankind. No lawgiver

had ever been able to devise a perfect and immortal form of government.

Perils lay thick on the right and on the left; and to keep far from one

evil was to draw near to another. That which, considered merely with

reference to the internal polity of England, might be, to a certain

extent, objectionable, might be absolutely essential to her rank among

European Powers, and even to her independence. All that a statesman

could do in such a case was to weigh inconveniences against each other,

and carefully to observe which way the scale leaned. The evil of having

regular soldiers, and the evil of not having them, Somers set forth and

compared in a little treatise, which was once widely renowned as the

Balancing Letter, and which was admitted, even by the malecontents,

to be an able and plausible composition. He well knew that mere names

exercise a mighty influence on the public mind; that the most perfect

tribunal which a legislator could construct would be unpopular if

it were called the Star Chamber; that the most judicious tax which

a financier could devise would excite murmurs if it were called the

Shipmoney; and that the words Standing Army then had to English ears

a sound as unpleasing as either Shipmoney or Star Chamber. He declared

therefore that he abhorred the thought of a standing army. What he

recommended was, not a standing, but a temporary army, an army of which

Parliament would annually fix the number, an army for which Parliament

would annually frame a military code, an army which would cease to

exist as soon as either the Lords or the Commons should think that its

services were not needed. From such an army surely the danger to public

liberty could not by wise men be thought serious. On the other hand,

the danger to which the kingdom would be exposed if all the troops were

disbanded was such as might well disturb the firmest mind. Suppose a

war with the greatest power in Christendom to break out suddenly, and to

find us without one battalion of regular infantry, without one squadron

of regular cavalry; what disasters might we not reasonably apprehend?

It was idle to say that a descent could not take place without ample

notice, and that we should have time to raise and discipline a great

force. An absolute prince, whose orders, given in profound secresy, were

promptly obeyed at once by his captains on the Rhine and on the Scheld,

and by his admirals in the Bay of Biscay and in the Mediterranean, might

be ready to strike a blow long before we were prepared to parry it. We

might be appalled by learning that ships from widely remote parts, and

troops from widely remote garrisons, had assembled at a single point

within sight of our coast. To trust to our fleet was to trust to the

winds and the waves. The breeze which was favourable to the invader

might prevent our men of war from standing out to sea. Only nine years

ago this had actually happened. The Protestant wind, before which the

Dutch armament had run full sail down the Channel, had driven King

James's navy back into the Thames. It must then be acknowledged to be

not improbable that the enemy might land. And, if he landed, what would

he find? An open country; a rich country; provisions everywhere; not a

river but which could be forded; no natural fastnesses such as protect

the fertile plains of Italy; no artificial fastnesses such as, at every

step, impede the progress of a conqueror in the Netherlands. Every

thing must then be staked on the steadiness of the militia; and it was

pernicious flattery to represent the militia as equal to a conflict in

the field with veterans whose whole life had been a preparation for the

day of battle. The instances which it was the fashion to cite of the

great achievements of soldiers taken from the threshing floor and the

shopboard were fit only for a schoolboy's theme. Somers, who had studied

ancient literature like a man,--a rare thing in his time,--said that

those instances refuted the doctrine which they were meant to prove. He

disposed of much idle declamation about the Lacedaemonians by

saying, most concisely, correctly and happily, that the Lacedaemonian

commonwealth really was a standing army which threatened all the rest

of Greece. In fact, the Spartan had no calling except war. Of arts,

sciences and letters he was ignorant. The labour of the spade and of the

loom, and the petty gains of trade, he contemptuously abandoned to men

of a lower caste. His whole existence from childhood to old age was

one long military training. Meanwhile the Athenian, the Corinthian, the

Argive, the Theban, gave his chief attention to his oliveyard or his

vineyard, his warehouse or his workshop, and took up his shield and

spear only for short terms and at long intervals. The difference

therefore between a Lacedaemonian phalanx and any other phalanx was long

as great as the difference between a regiment of the French household

troops and a regiment of the London trainbands. Lacedaemon consequently

continued to be dominant in Greece till other states began to employ

regular troops. Then her supremacy was at an end. She was great while

she was a standing army among militias. She fell when she had to contend

with other standing armies. The lesson which is really to be learned

from her ascendency and from her decline is this, that the occasional

soldier is no match for the professional soldier. [2]

The same lesson Somers drew from the history of Rome; and every scholar

who really understands that history will admit that he was in the right.

The finest militia that ever existed was probably that of Italy in the

third century before Christ. It might have been thought that seven

or eight hundred thousand fighting men, who assuredly wanted neither

natural courage nor public spirit, would have been able to protect their

own hearths and altars against an invader. An invader came, bringing

with him an army small and exhausted by a march over the snows of the

Alps, but familiar with battles and sieges. At the head of this army

he traversed the peninsula to and fro, gained a succession of victories

against immense numerical odds, slaughtered the hardy youth of Latium

like sheep, by tens of thousands, encamped under the walls of Rome,

continued during sixteen years to maintain himself in a hostile country,

and was never dislodged till he had by a cruel discipline gradually

taught his adversaries how to resist him.

It was idle to repeat the names of great battles won, in the middle

ages, by men who did not make war their chief calling; those battles

proved only that one militia might beat another, and not that a militia

could beat a regular army. As idle was it to declaim about the camp

at Tilbury. We had indeed reason to be proud of the spirit which all

classes of Englishmen, gentlemen and yeomen, peasants and burgesses,

had so signally displayed in the great crisis of 1588. But we had also

reason to be thankful that, with all their spirit, they were not brought

face to face with the Spanish battalions. Somers related an anecdote,

well worthy to be remembered, which had been preserved by tradition

in the noble house of De Vere. One of the most illustrious men of that

house, a captain who had acquired much experience and much fame in the

Netherlands, had, in the crisis of peril, been summoned back to England

by Elizabeth, and rode with her through the endless ranks of shouting

pikemen. She asked him what he thought of the army. "It is," he said, "a

brave army." There was something in his tone or manner which showed

that he meant more than his words expressed. The Queen insisted on his

speaking out. "Madam," he said, "Your Grace's army is brave indeed. I

have not in the world the name of a coward, and yet I am the greatest

coward here. All these fine fellows are praying that the enemy may land,

and that there may be a battle; and I, who know that enemy well, cannot

think of such a battle without dismay." De Vere was doubtless in the

right. The Duke of Parma, indeed, would not have subjected our country;

but it is by no means improbable that, if he had effected a landing,

the island would have been the theatre of a war greatly resembling that

which Hannibal waged in Italy, and that the invaders would not have been

driven out till many cities had been sacked, till many counties had been

wasted, and till multitudes of our stout-hearted rustics and artisans

had perished in the carnage of days not less terrible than those of

Thrasymene and Cannae.

While the pamphlets of Trenchard and Somers were in every hand, the

Parliament met.

The words with which the King opened the session brought the great

question to a speedy issue. "The circumstances," he said, "of affairs

abroad are such, that I think myself obliged to tell you my opinion,

that, for the present, England cannot be safe without a land force;

and I hope we shall not give those that mean us ill the opportunity of

effecting that under the notion of a peace which they could not bring to

pass by war."

The speech was well received; for that Parliament was thoroughly well

affected to the Government. The members had, like the rest of the

community, been put into high good humour by the return of peace and by

the revival of trade. They were indeed still under the influence of

the feelings of the preceding day; and they had still in their ears

the thanksgiving sermons and thanksgiving anthems; all the bonfires had

hardly burned out; and the rows of lamps and candles had hardly been

taken down. Many, therefore, who did not assent to all that the King had

said, joined in a loud hum of approbation when he concluded. [3] As

soon as the Commons had retired to their own chamber, they resolved to

present an address assuring His Majesty that they would stand by him

in peace as firmly as they had stood by him in war. Seymour, who had,

during the autumn, been going from shire to shire, for the purpose of

inflaming the country gentlemen against the ministry, ventured to make

some uncourtly remarks; but he gave so much offence that he was hissed

down, and did not venture to demand a division. [4]

The friends of the Government were greatly elated by the proceedings

of this day. During the following week hopes were entertained that the

Parliament might be induced to vote a peace establishment of thirty

thousand men. But these hopes were delusive. The hum with which

William's speech had been received, and the hiss which had drowned the

voice of Seymour, had been misunderstood. The Commons were indeed warmly

attached to the King's person and government, and quick to resent any

disrespectful mention of his name. But the members who were disposed

to let him have even half as many troops as he thought necessary were

a minority. On the tenth of December his speech was considered in a

Committee of the whole House; and Harley came forward as the chief of

the opposition. He did not, like some hot headed men, among both

the Whigs and the Tories, contend that there ought to be no regular

soldiers. But he maintained that it was unnecessary to keep up, after

the peace of Ryswick, a larger force than had been kept up after the

peace of Nimeguen. He moved, therefore, that the military establishment

should be reduced to what it had been in the year 1680. The Ministers

found that, on this occasion, neither their honest nor their dishonest

supporters could be trusted. For, in the minds of the most respectable

men, the prejudice against standing armies was of too long growth and

too deep root to be at once removed; and those means by which the Court

might, at another time, have secured the help of venal politicians

were, at that moment, of less avail than usual. The Triennial Act was

beginning to produce its effects. A general election was at hand. Every

member who had constituents was desirous to please them; and it was

certain that no member would please his constituents by voting for a

standing army; and the resolution moved by Harvey was strongly supported

by Howe, was carried, was reported to the House on the following day,

and, after a debate in which several orators made a great display of

their knowledge of ancient and modern history, was confirmed by one

hundred and eighty-five votes to one hundred and forty-eight. [5]

In this debate the fear and hatred with which many of the best friends

of the Government regarded Sunderland were unequivocally manifested. "It

is easy," such was the language of several members, "it is easy to

guess by whom that unhappy sentence was inserted in the speech from the

Throne. No person well acquainted with the disastrous and disgraceful

history of the last two reigns can doubt who the minister is, who is now

whispering evil counsel in the ear of a third master." The Chamberlain,

thus fiercely attacked, was very feebly defended. There was indeed in

the House of Commons a small knot of his creatures; and they were men

not destitute of a certain kind of ability; but their moral character

was as bad as his. One of them was the late Secretary of the Treasury,

Guy, who had been turned out of his place for corruption. Another was

the late Speaker, Trevor, who had, from the chair, put the question

whether he was or was not a rogue, and had been forced to pronounce

that the Ayes had it. A third was Charles Duncombe, long the greatest

goldsmith of Lombard Street, and now one of the greatest landowners of

the North Riding of Yorkshire. Possessed of a private fortune equal to

that of any duke, he had not thought it beneath him to accept the place

of Cashier of the Excise, and had perfectly understood how to make

that place lucrative; but he had recently been ejected from office by

Montague, who thought, with good reason, that he was not a man to be

trusted. Such advocates as Trevor, Guy and Duncombe could do little for

Sunderland in debate. The statesmen of the junto would do nothing for

him. They had undoubtedly owed much to him. His influence, cooperating

with their own great abilities and with the force of circumstances, had

induced the King to commit the direction of the internal administration

of the realm to a Whig Cabinet. But the distrust which the old traitor

and apostate inspired was not to be overcome. The ministers could not be

sure that he was not, while smiling on them, whispering in confidential

tones to them, pouring out, as it might seem, all his heart to them,

really calumniating them in the closet or suggesting to the opposition

some ingenious mode of attacking them. They had very recently been

thwarted by him. They were bent on making Wharton a Secretary of State,

and had therefore looked forward with impatience to the retirement of

Trumball, who was indeed hardly equal to the duties of his great place.

To their surprise and mortification they learned, on the eve of the

meeting of Parliament, that Trumball had suddenly resigned, and Vernon,

the Under Secretary, had been summoned to Kensington, and had returned

thence with the seals. Vernon was a zealous Whig, and not personally

unacceptable to the chiefs of his party. But the Lord Chancellor, the

First Lord of the Treasury, and the First Lord of the Admiralty, might

not unnaturally think it strange that a post of the highest importance

should have been filled up in opposition to their known wishes, and with

a haste and a secresy which plainly showed that the King did not wish to

be annoyed by their remonstrances. The Lord Chamberlain pretended that

he had done all in his power to serve Wharton. But the Whig chiefs were

not men to be duped by the professions of so notorious a liar. Montague

bitterly described him as a fireship, dangerous at best, but on the

whole most dangerous as a consort, and least dangerous when showing

hostile colours. Smith, who was the most efficient of Montague's

lieutenants, both in the Treasury and in the Parliament, cordially

sympathised with his leader. Sunderland was therefore left undefended.

His enemies became bolder and more vehement every day. Sir Thomas Dyke,

member for Grinstead, and Lord Norris, son of the Earl of Abingdon,

talked of moving an address requesting the King to banish for ever from

the Court and the Council that evil adviser who had misled His Majesty's

royal uncles, had betrayed the liberties of the people, and had abjured

the Protestant religion.

Sunderland had been uneasy from the first moment at which his name

had been mentioned in the House of Commons. He was now in an agony

of terror. The whole enigma of his life, an enigma of which many

unsatisfactory and some absurd explanations have been propounded, is at

once solved if we consider him as a man insatiably greedy of wealth and

power, and yet nervously apprehensive of danger. He rushed with ravenous

eagerness at every bait which was offered to his cupidity. But any

ominous shadow, any threatening murmur, sufficed to stop him in his full

career, and to make him change his course or bury himself in a hiding

place. He ought to have thought himself fortunate indeed, when, after

all the crimes which he had committed, he found himself again enjoying

his picture gallery and his woods at Althorpe, sitting in the House of

Lords, admitted to the royal closet, pensioned from the Privy Purse,

consulted about the most important affairs of state. But his ambition

and avarice would not suffer him to rest till he held a high and

lucrative office, till he was a regent of the kingdom. The consequence

was, as might have been expected, a violent clamour; and that clamour he

had not the spirit to face.

His friends assured him that the threatened address would not be

carried. Perhaps a hundred and sixty members might vote for it; but

hardly more. "A hundred and sixty!" he cried: "No minister can stand

against a hundred and sixty. I am sure that I will not try." It must be

remembered that a hundred and sixty votes in a House of five hundred and

thirteen members would correspond to more than two hundred votes in the

present House of Commons; a very formidable minority on the unfavourable

side of a question deeply affecting the personal character of a public

man. William, unwilling to part with a servant whom he knew to be

unprincipled, but whom he did not consider as more unprincipled than

many other English politicians, and in whom he had found much of a very

useful sort of knowledge, and of a very useful sort of ability, tried to

induce the ministry to come to the rescue. It was particularly

important to soothe Wharton, who had been exasperated by his recent

disappointment, and had probably exasperated the other members of the

junto. He was sent for to the palace. The King himself intreated him

to be reconciled to the Lord Chamberlain, and to prevail on the Whig

leaders in the Lower House to oppose any motion which Dyke or Norris

might make. Wharton answered in a manner which made it clear that

from him no help was to be expected. Sunderland's terrors now became

insupportable. He had requested some of his friends to come to his house

that he might consult them; they came at the appointed hour, but found

that he had gone to Kensington, and had left word that he should soon

be back. When he joined them, they observed that he had not the gold key

which is the badge of the Lord Chamberlain, and asked where it was. "At

Kensington," answered Sunderland. They found that he had tendered his

resignation, and that it had been, after a long struggle, accepted.

They blamed his haste, and told him that, since he had summoned them to

advise him on that day, he might at least have waited till the morrow.

"To morrow," he exclaimed, "would have ruined me. To night has saved

me."

Meanwhile, both the disciples of Somers and the disciples of Trenchard

were grumbling at Harley's resolution. The disciples of Somers

maintained that, if it was right to have an army at all, it must be

right to have an efficient army. The disciples of Trenchard complained

that a great principle had been shamefully given up. On the vital

issue, Standing Army or no Standing Army, the Commons had pronounced an

erroneous, a fatal decision. Whether that army should consist of five

regiments or of fifteen was hardly worth debating. The great dyke which

kept out arbitrary power had been broken. It was idle to say that the

breach was narrow; for it would soon be widened by the flood which would

rush in. The war of pamphlets raged more fiercely than ever. At the same

time alarming symptoms began to appear among the men of the sword. They

saw themselves every day described in print as the scum of society,

as mortal enemies of the liberties of their country. Was it

reasonable,--such was the language of some scribblers,--that an honest

gentleman should pay a heavy land tax, in order to support in idleness

and luxury a set of fellows who requited him by seducing his dairy maids

and shooting his partridges? Nor was it only in Grub Street tracts that

such reflections were to be found. It was known all over the town that

uncivil things had been said of the military profession in the House of

Commons, and that Jack Howe, in particular, had, on this subject,

given the rein to his wit and to his ill nature. Some rough and daring

veterans, marked with the scars of Steinkirk and singed with the smoke

of Namur, threatened vengeance for these insults. The writers and

speakers who had taken the greatest liberties went in constant fear

of being accosted by fierce-looking captains, and required to make an

immediate choice between fighting and being caned. One gentleman, who

had made himself conspicuous by the severity of his language, went about

with pistols in his pockets. Howe, whose courage was not proportionate

to his malignity and petulance, was so much frightened, that he retired

into the country. The King, well aware that a single blow given, at

that critical conjuncture, by a soldier to a member of Parliament might

produce disastrous consequences, ordered the officers of the army to

their quarters, and, by the vigorous exertion of his authority and

influence, succeeded in preventing all outrage. [6]

All this time the feeling in favour of a regular force seemed to be

growing in the House of Commons. The resignation of Sunderland had

put many honest gentlemen in good humour. The Whig leaders exerted

themselves to rally their followers, held meetings at the "Rose," and

represented strongly the dangers to which the country would be exposed,

if defended only by a militia. The opposition asserted that neither

bribes nor promises were spared. The ministers at length flattered

themselves that Harley's resolution might be rescinded. On the eighth of

January they again tried their strength, and were again defeated, though

by a smaller majority than before. A hundred and sixty-four members

divided with them. A hundred and eighty-eight were for adhering to the

vote of the eleventh of December. It was remarked that on this occasion

the naval men, with Rooke at their head, voted against the Government.

[7]

It was necessary to yield. All that remained was to put on the words

of the resolution of the eleventh of December the most favourable sense

that they could be made to bear. They did indeed admit of very different

interpretations. The force which was actually in England in 1680 hardly

amounted to five thousand men. But the garrison of Tangier and the

regiments in the pay of the Batavian federation, which, as they were

available for the defence of England against a foreign or domestic

enemy, might be said to be in some sort part of the English army,

amounted to at least five thousand more. The construction which the

ministers put on the resolution of the eleventh of December was, that

the army was to consist of ten thousand men; and in this construction

the House acquiesced. It was not held to be necessary that the

Parliament should, as in our time, fix the amount of the land force. The

Commons thought that they sufficiently limited the number of soldiers by

limiting the sum which was to be expended in maintaining soldiers. What

that sum should be was a question which raised much debate. Harley was

unwilling to give more than three hundred thousand pounds. Montague

struggled for four hundred thousand. The general sense of the House was

that Harley offered too little, and that Montague demanded too much. At

last, on the fourteenth of January, a vote was taken for three hundred

and fifty thousand pounds. Four days later the House resolved to

grant half-pay to the disbanded officers till they should be otherwise

provided for. The half-pay was meant to be a retainer as well as a

reward. The effect of this important vote therefore was that, whenever

a new war should break out, the nation would be able to command the

services of many gentlemen of great military experience. The ministry

afterwards succeeded in obtaining, much against the will of a portion of

the opposition, a separate vote for three thousand marines.

A Mutiny Act, which had been passed in 1697, expired in the spring of

1698. As yet no such Act had been passed except in time of war; and the

temper of the Parliament and of the nation was such that the ministers

did not venture to ask, in time of peace, for a renewal of powers

unknown to the constitution. For the present, therefore, the soldier was

again, as in the times which preceded the Revolution, subject to exactly

the same law which governed the citizen.

It was only in matters relating to the army that the government found

the Commons unmanageable. Liberal provision was made for the navy. The

number of seamen was fixed at ten thousand, a great force, according to

the notions of that age, for a time of peace. The funds assigned some

years before for the support of the civil list had fallen short of the

estimate. It was resolved that a new arrangement should be made, and

that a certain income should be settled on the King. The amount was

fixed, by an unanimous vote, at seven hundred thousand pounds; and the

Commons declared that, by making this ample provision for his comfort

and dignity, they meant to express their sense of the great things which

he had done for the country. It is probable, however, that so large a

sum would not have been given without debates and divisions, had it not

been understood that he meant to take on himself the charge of the Duke

of Gloucester's establishment, and that he would in all probability have

to pay fifty thousand pounds a year to Mary of Modena. The Tories

were unwilling to disoblige the Princess of Denmark; and the Jacobites

abstained from offering any opposition to a grant in the benefit of

which they hoped that the banished family would participate.

It was not merely by pecuniary liberality that the Parliament testified

attachment to the Sovereign. A bill was rapidly passed which withheld

the benefit of the Habeas Corpus Act, during twelve months more, from

Bernardi and some other conspirators who had been concerned in the

Assassination Plot, but whose guilt, though demonstrated to the

conviction of every reasonable man, could not be proved by two

witnesses. At the same time new securities were provided against a new

danger which threatened the government. The peace had put an end to the

apprehension that the throne of William might be subverted by foreign

arms, but had, at the same time, facilitated domestic treason. It was no

longer necessary for an agent from Saint Germains to cross the sea in

a fishing boat, under the constant dread of being intercepted by a

cruiser. It was no longer necessary for him to land on a desolate beach,

to lodge in a thatched hovel, to dress himself like a carter, or to

travel up to town on foot. He came openly by the Calais packet, walked

into the best inn at Dover, and ordered posthorses for London. Meanwhile

young Englishmen of quality and fortune were hastening in crowds to

Paris. They would naturally wish to see him who had once been their

king; and this curiosity, though in itself innocent, might have evil

consequences. Artful tempters would doubtless be on the watch for every

such traveller; and many such travellers might be well pleased to be

courteously accosted, in a foreign land, by Englishmen of honourable

name, distinguished appearance, and insinuating address. It was not to

be expected that a lad fresh from the university would be able to refute

all the sophisms and calumnies which might be breathed in his ear

by dexterous and experienced seducers. Nor would it be strange if he

should, in no long time, accept an invitation to a private audience

at Saint Germains, should be charmed by the graces of Mary of Modena,

should find something engaging in the childish innocence of the Prince

of Wales, should kiss the hand of James, and should return home an

ardent Jacobite. An Act was therefore passed forbidding English subjects

to hold any intercourse orally, or by writing, or by message, with the

exiled family. A day was fixed after which no English subject, who had,

during the late war, gone into France without the royal permission or

borne arms against his country was to be permitted to reside in this

kingdom, except under a special license from the King. Whoever infringed

these rules incurred the penalties of high treason.

The dismay was at first great among the malecontents. For English and

Irish Jacobites, who had served under the standards of Lewis or hung

about the Court of Saint Germains, had, since the peace, come over in

multitudes to England. It was computed that thousands were within the

scope of the new Act. But the severity of that Act was mitigated by a

beneficent administration. Some fierce and stubborn non-jurors who would

not debase themselves by asking for any indulgence, and some conspicuous

enemies of the government who had asked for indulgence in vain, were

under the necessity of taking refuge on the Continent. But the great

majority of those offenders who promised to live peaceably under

William's rule obtained his permission to remain in their native land.

In the case of one great offender there were some circumstances which

attracted general interest, and which might furnish a good subject to

a novelist or a dramatist. Near fourteen years before this time,

Sunderland, then Secretary of State to Charles the Second, had married

his daughter Lady Elizabeth Spencer to Donough Macarthy, Earl of

Clancarty, the lord of an immense domain in Munster. Both the bridegroom

and the bride were mere children, the bridegroom only fifteen, the bride

only eleven. After the ceremony they were separated; and many years

full of strange vicissitudes elapsed before they again met. The boy soon

visited his estates in Ireland. He had been bred a member of the Church

of England; but his opinions and his practice were loose. He found

himself among kinsmen who were zealous Roman Catholics. A Roman

Catholic king was on the throne. To turn Roman Catholic was the best

recommendation to favour both at Whitehall and at Dublin Castle.

Clancarty speedily changed his religion, and from a dissolute Protestant

became a dissolute Papist. After the Revolution he followed the fortunes

of James; sate in the Celtic Parliament which met at the King's Inns;

commanded a regiment in the Celtic army; was forced to surrender himself

to Marlborough at Cork; was sent to England, and was imprisoned in the

Tower. The Clancarty estates, which were supposed to yield a rent of not

much less than ten thousand a year, were confiscated. They were charged

with an annuity to the Earl's brother, and with another annuity to his

wife; but the greater part was bestowed by the King on Lord Woodstock,

the eldest son of Portland; During some time, the prisoner's life was

not safe. For the popular voice accused him of outrages for which the

utmost license of civil war would not furnish a plea. It is said that

he was threatened with an appeal of murder by the widow of a Protestant

clergyman who had been put to death during the troubles. After passing

three years in confinement, Clancarty made his escape to the Continent,

was graciously received at St. Germains, and was entrusted with the

command of a corps of Irish refugees. When the treaty of Ryswick had

put an end to the hope that the banished dynasty would be restored by

foreign arms, he flattered himself that he might be able to make his

peace with the English Government. But he was grievously disappointed.

The interest of his wife's family was undoubtedly more than sufficient

to obtain a pardon for him. But on that interest he could not reckon.

The selfish, base, covetous, father-in-law was not at all desirous

to have a highborn beggar and the posterity of a highborn beggar to

maintain. The ruling passion of the brother-in-law was a stern and

acrimonious party spirit. He could not bear to think that he was so

nearly connected with an enemy of the Revolution and of the Bill of

Rights, and would with pleasure have seen the odious tie severed even

by the hand of the executioner. There was one, however, from whom the

ruined, expatriated, proscribed young nobleman might hope to find a kind

reception. He stole across the Channel in disguise, presented himself at

Sunderland's door, and requested to see Lady Clancarty. He was charged,

he said, with a message to her from her mother, who was then lying on a

sick bed at Windsor. By this fiction he obtained admission, made himself

known to his wife, whose thoughts had probably been constantly fixed on

him during many years, and prevailed on her to give him the most tender

proofs of an affection sanctioned by the laws both of God and of man.

The secret was soon discovered and betrayed by a waiting woman. Spencer

learned that very night that his sister had admitted her husband to her

apartment. The fanatical young Whig, burning with animosity which he

mistook for virtue, and eager to emulate the Corinthian who assassinated

his brother, and the Roman who passed sentence of death on his son, flew

to Vernon's office, gave information that the Irish rebel, who had once

already escaped from custody, was in hiding hard by, and procured a

warrant and a guard of soldiers. Clancarty was found in the arms of his

wife, and dragged to the Tower. She followed him and implored permission

to partake his cell. These events produced a great stir throughout the

society of London. Sunderland professed everywhere that he heartily

approved of his son's conduct; but the public had made up its mind about

Sunderland's veracity, and paid very little attention to his professions

on this or on any other subject. In general, honourable men of both

parties, whatever might be their opinion of Clancarty, felt great

compassion for his mother who was dying of a broken heart, and his poor

young wife who was begging piteously to be admitted within the Traitor's

Gate. Devonshire and Bedford joined with Ormond to ask for mercy. The

aid of a still more powerful intercessor was called in. Lady Russell

was esteemed by the King as a valuable friend; she was venerated by

the nation generally as a saint, the widow of a martyr; and, when she

deigned to solicit favours, it was scarcely possible that she should

solicit in vain. She naturally felt a strong sympathy for the unhappy

couple, who were parted by the walls of that gloomy old fortress in

which she had herself exchanged the last sad endearments with one whose

image was never absent from her. She took Lady Clancarty with her to the

palace, obtained access to William, and put a petition into his hand.

Clancarty was pardoned on condition that he should leave the kingdom and

never return to it. A pension was granted to him, small when compared

with the magnificent inheritance which he had forfeited, but quite

sufficient to enable him to live like a gentleman on the Continent. He

retired, accompanied by his Elizabeth, to Altona.

All this time the ways and means for the year were under consideration.

The Parliament was able to grant some relief to the country. The land

tax was reduced from four shillings in the pound to three. But nine

expensive campaigns had left a heavy arrear behind them; and it was

plain that the public burdens must, even in the time of peace, be such

as, before the Revolution, would have been thought more than sufficient

to support a vigorous war. A country gentleman was in no very good

humour, when he compared the sums which were now exacted from him with

those which he had been in the habit of paying under the last two kings;

his discontent became stronger when he compared his own situation

with that of courtiers, and above all of Dutch courtiers, who had been

enriched by grants of Crown property; and both interest and envy made

him willing to listen to politicians who assured him that, if those

grants were resumed, he might be relieved from another shilling.

The arguments against such a resumption were not likely to be heard with

favour by a popular assembly composed of taxpayers, but to statesmen and

legislators will seem unanswerable.

There can be no doubt that the Sovereign was, by the old polity of the

realm, competent to give or let the domains of the Crown in such manner

as seemed good to him. No statute defined the length of the term which

he might grant, or the amount of the rent which he must reserve. He

might part with the fee simple of a forest extending over a hundred

square miles in consideration of a tribute of a brace of hawks to be

delivered annually to his falconer, or of a napkin of fine linen to be

laid on the royal table at the coronation banquet. In fact, there had

been hardly a reign since the Conquest, in which great estates had not

been bestowed by our princes on favoured subjects. Anciently, indeed,

what had been lavishly given was not seldom violently taken away.

Several laws for the resumption of Crown lands were passed by the

Parliaments of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Of those laws the

last was that which, in the year 1485, immediately after the battle of

Bosworth, annulled the donations of the kings of the House of York. More

than two hundred years had since elapsed without any Resumption Act.

An estate derived from the royal liberality had long been universally

thought as secure as an estate which had descended from father to son

since the compilation of Domesday Book. No title was considered as more

perfect than that of the Russells to Woburn, given by Henry the Eighth

to the first Earl of Bedford, or than that of the Cecils to Hatfield,

purchased from the Crown for less than a third of the real value by

the first Earl of Salisbury. The Long Parliament did not, even in that

celebrated instrument of nineteen articles, which was framed expressly

for the purpose of making the King a mere Doge, propose to restrain him

from dealing according to his pleasure with his parks and his castles,

his fisheries and his mines. After the Restoration, under the government

of an easy prince, who had indeed little disposition to give, but who

could not bear to refuse, many noble private fortunes were carved out of

the property of the Crown. Some of the persons who were thus enriched,

Albemarle, for example, Sandwich and Clarendon, might be thought to have

fairly earned their master's favour by their services. Others had

merely amused his leisure or pandered to his vices. His mistresses were

munificently rewarded. Estates sufficient to support the highest rank in

the peerage were distributed among his illegitimate children. That these

grants, however prodigal, were strictly legal, was tacitly admitted by

the Estates of the Realm, when, in 1689, they recounted and condemned

the unconstitutional acts of the kings of the House of Stuart. Neither

in the Declaration of Right nor in the Bill of Rights is there a word on

the subject. William, therefore, thought himself at liberty to give

away his hereditary domains as freely as his predecessors had given away

theirs. There was much murmuring at the profusion with which he rewarded

his Dutch favourites; and we have seen that, on one occasion in the year

1696, the House of Commons interfered for the purpose of restraining

his liberality. An address was presented requesting him not to grant to

Portland an extensive territory in North Wales. But it is to be observed

that, though in this address a strong opinion was expressed that the

grant would be mischievous, the Commons did not deny, and must therefore

be considered as having admitted, that it would be perfectly legal. The

King, however, yielded; and Portland was forced to content himself with

ten or twelve manors scattered over various counties from Cumberland to

Sussex.

It seems, therefore, clear that our princes were, by the law of the

land, competent to do what they would with their hereditary estates.

It is perfectly true that the law was defective, and that the profusion

with which mansions, abbeys, chaces, warrens, beds of ore, whole

streets, whole market towns, had been bestowed on courtiers was greatly

to be lamented. Nothing could have been more proper than to pass a

prospective statute tying up in strict entail the little which still

remained of the Crown property. But to annul by a retrospective statute

patents, which in Westminster Hall were held to be legally valid, would

have been simply robbery. Such robbery must necessarily have made all

property insecure; and a statesman must be short-sighted indeed who

imagines that what makes property insecure can really make society

prosperous.

But it is vain to expect that men who are inflamed by anger, who are

suffering distress, and who fancy that it is in their power to obtain

immediate relief from their distresses at the expense of those who have

excited their anger, will reason as calmly as the historian who, biassed

neither by interest nor passion, reviews the events of a past age.

The public burdens were heavy. To whatever extent the grants of royal

domains were revoked, those burdens would be lightened. Some of the

recent grants had undoubtedly been profuse. Some of the living grantees

were unpopular. A cry was raised which soon became formidably loud. All

the Tories, all the malecontent Whigs, and multitudes who, without

being either Tories or malecontent Whigs, disliked taxes and disliked

Dutchmen, called for a resumption of all the Crown property which King

William had, as it was phrased, been deceived into giving away.

On the seventh of February 1698, this subject, destined to irritate

the public mind at intervals during many years, was brought under the

consideration of the House of Commons. The opposition asked leave to

bring in a bill vacating all grants of Crown property which had been

made since the Revolution. The ministers were in a great strait; the

public feeling was strong; a general election was approaching; it was

dangerous and it would probably be vain to encounter the prevailing

sentiment directly. But the shock which could not be resisted might be

eluded. The ministry accordingly professed to find no fault with the

proposed bill, except that it did not go far enough, and moved for leave

to bring in two more bills, one for annulling the grants of James the

Second, the other for annulling the grants of Charles the Second. The

Tories were caught in their own snare. For most of the grants of Charles

and James had been made to Tories; and a resumption of those grants

would have reduced some of the chiefs of the Tory party to poverty. Yet

it was impossible to draw a distinction between the grants of William

and those of his two predecessors. Nobody could pretend that the law

had been altered since his accession. If, therefore, the grants of the

Stuarts were legal, so were his; if his grants were illegal, so were

the grants of his uncles. And, if both his grants and the grants of his

uncles were illegal, it was absurd to say that the mere lapse of time

made a difference. For not only was it part of the alphabet of the law

that there was no prescription against the Crown, but the thirty-eight

years which had elapsed since the Restoration would not have sufficed

to bar a writ of right brought by a private demandant against a wrongful

tenant. Nor could it be pretended that William had bestowed his favours

less judiciously than Charles and James. Those who were least friendly

to the Dutch would hardly venture to say that Portland, Zulestein and

Ginkell was less deserving of the royal bounty than the Duchess of

Cleveland and the Duchess of Portsmouth, than the progeny of Nell Gwynn,

than the apostate Arlington or the butcher Jeffreys. The opposition,

therefore, sullenly assented to what the ministry proposed. From that

moment the scheme was doomed. Everybody affected to be for it; and

everybody was really against it. The three bills were brought in

together, read a second time together, ordered to be committed together,

and were then, first mutilated, and at length quietly dropped.

In the history of the financial legislation of this session, there were

some episodes which deserve to be related. Those members, a numerous

body, who envied and dreaded Montague readily became the unconscious

tools of the cunning malice of Sunderland, whom Montague had refused

to defend in Parliament, and who, though detested by the opposition,

contrived to exercise some influence over that party through the

instrumentality of Charles Duncombe. Duncombe indeed had his own reasons

for hating Montague, who had turned him out of the place of Cashier of

the Excise. A serious charge was brought against the Board of Treasury,

and especially against its chief. He was the inventor of Exchequer

Bills; and they were popularly called Montague's notes. He had induced

the Parliament to enact that those bills, even when at a discount in the

market, should be received at par by the collectors of the revenue.

This enactment, if honestly carried into effect, would have been

unobjectionable. But it was strongly rumoured that there had been

foul play, peculation, even forgery. Duncombe threw the most serious

imputations on the Board of Treasury, and pretended that he had been put

out of his office only because he was too shrewd to be deceived, and too

honest to join in deceiving the public. Tories and malecontent Whigs,

elated by the hope that Montague might be convicted of malversation,

eagerly called for inquiry. An inquiry was instituted; but the

result not only disappointed but utterly confounded the accusers. The

persecuted minister obtained both a complete acquittal, and a signal

revenge. Circumstances were discovered which seemed to indicate that

Duncombe himself was not blameless. The clue was followed; he was

severely cross-examined; he lost his head; made one unguarded admission

after another, and was at length compelled to confess, on the floor of

the House, that he had been guilty of an infamous fraud, which, but for

his own confession, it would have been scarcely possible to bring home

to him. He had been ordered by the Commissioners of the Excise to pay

ten thousand pounds into the Exchequer for the public service. He had in

his hands, as cashier, more than double that sum in good milled silver.

With some of this money he bought Exchequer Bills which were then at

a considerable discount; he paid those bills in; and he pocketed the

discount, which amounted to about four hundred pounds. Nor was this

all. In order to make it appear that the depreciated paper, which he had

fraudulently substituted for silver, had been received by him in payment

of taxes, he had employed a knavish Jew to forge endorsements of names,

some real and some imaginary. This scandalous story, wrung out of his

own lips, was heard by the opposition with consternation and shame,

by the ministers and their friends with vindictive exultation. It was

resolved, without any division, that he should be sent to the Tower,

that he should be kept close prisoner there, that he should be expelled

from the House. Whether any further punishment could be inflicted on him

was a perplexing question. The English law touching forgery became, at a

later period, barbarously severe; but, in 1698, it was absurdly lax. The

prisoner's offence was certainly not a felony; and lawyers apprehended

that there would be much difficulty in convicting him even of a

misdemeanour. But a recent precedent was fresh in the minds of all men.

The weapon which had reached Fenwick might reach Duncombe. A bill of

pains and penalties was brought in, and carried through the earlier

stages with less opposition than might have been expected. Some Noes

might perhaps be uttered; but no members ventured to say that the Noes

had it. The Tories were mad with shame and mortification, at finding

that their rash attempt to ruin an enemy had produced no effect except

the ruin of a friend. In their rage, they eagerly caught at a new hope

of revenge, a hope destined to end, as their former hope had ended, in

discomfiture and disgrace. They learned, from the agents of Sunderland,

as many people suspected, but certainly from informants who were well

acquainted with the offices about Whitehall, that some securities

forfeited to the Crown in Ireland had been bestowed by the King

ostensibly on one Thomas Railton, but really on the Chancellor of the

Exchequer. The value of these securities was about ten thousand pounds.

On the sixteenth of February this transaction was brought without

any notice under the consideration of the House of Commons by Colonel

Granville, a Tory member, nearly related to the Earl of Bath. Montague

was taken completely by surprise, but manfully avowed the whole truth,

and defended what he had done. The orators of the opposition declaimed

against him with great animation and asperity. "This gentleman,"

they said, "has at once violated three distinct duties. He is a privy

councillor, and, as such, is bound to advise the Crown with a view, not

to his own selfish interests, but to the general good. He is the first

minister of finance, and is, as such, bound to be a thrifty manager of

the royal treasure. He is a member of this House, and is, as such, bound

to see that the burdens borne by his constituents are not made heavier

by rapacity and prodigality. To all these trusts he has been unfaithful.

The advice of the privy councillor to his master is, 'Give me money.'

The first Lord of the Treasury signs a warrant for giving himself money

out of the Treasury. The member for Westminster puts into his pocket

money which his constituents must be taxed to replace." The surprise

was complete; the onset was formidable; but the Whig majority, after

a moment of dismay and wavering, rallied firmly round their leader.

Several speakers declared that they highly approved of the prudent

liberality with which His Majesty had requited the services of a most

able, diligent and trusty counsellor. It was miserable economy indeed to

grudge a reward of a few thousands to one who had made the State richer

by millions. Would that all the largesses of former kings had been as

well bestowed! How those largesses had been bestowed none knew better

than some of the austere patriots who harangued so loudly against the

avidity of Montague. If there is, it was said, a House in England

which has been gorged with undeserved riches by the prodigality of weak

sovereigns, it is the House of Bath. Does it lie in the mouth of a son

of that house to blame the judicious munificence of a wise and good

King? Before the Granvilles complain that distinguished merit has been

rewarded with ten thousand pounds, let them refund some part of the

hundreds of thousands which they have pocketed without any merit at all.

The rule was, and still is, that a member against whom a charge is made

must be heard in his own defence, and must then leave the House. The

Opposition insisted that Montague should retire. His friends maintained

that this case did not fall within the rule. Distinctions were drawn;

precedents were cited; and at length the question was put, that Mr.

Montague do withdraw. The Ayes were only ninety-seven; the Noes two

hundred and nine. This decisive result astonished both parties. The

Tories lost heart and hope. The joy of the Whigs was boundless. It

was instantly moved that the Honourable Charles Montague, Esquire,

Chancellor of the Exchequer, for his good services to this Government

does deserve His Majesty's favour. The Opposition, completely cowed, did

not venture to demand another division. Montague scornfully thanked

them for the inestimable service which they had done him. But for

their malice he never should have had the honour and happiness of

being solemnly pronounced by the Commons of England a benefactor of his

country. As to the grant which had been the subject of debate, he was

perfectly ready to give it up, if his accusers would engage to follow

his example.

Even after this defeat the Tories returned to the charge. They pretended

that the frauds which had been committed with respect to the Exchequer

Bills had been facilitated by the mismanagement of the Board of

Treasury, and moved a resolution which implied a censure on that Board,

and especially on its chief. This resolution was rejected by a hundred

and seventy votes to eighty-eight. It was remarked that Spencer, as if

anxious to show that he had taken no part in the machinations of which

his father was justly or unjustly suspected, spoke in this debate with

great warmth against Duncombe and for Montague.

A few days later, the bill of pains and penalties against Duncombe

passed the Commons. It provided that two thirds of his enormous

property, real and personal, should be confiscated and applied to the

public service. Till the third reading there was no serious opposition.

Then the Tories mustered their strength. They were defeated by a hundred

and thirty-eight votes to a hundred and three; and the bill was carried

up to the Lords by the Marquess of Hartington, a young nobleman whom the

great body of Whigs respected as one of their hereditary chiefs, as the

heir of Devonshire, and as the son in law of Russell.

That Duncombe had been guilty of shameful dishonesty was acknowledged

by all men of sense and honour in the party to which he belonged. He had

therefore little right to expect indulgence from the party which he had

unfairly and malignantly assailed. Yet it is not creditable to the Whigs

that they should have been so much disgusted by his frauds, or so much

irritated by his attacks, as to have been bent on punishing him in a

manner inconsistent with all the principles which governments ought to

hold most sacred.

Those who concurred in the proceeding against Duncombe tried to

vindicate their conduct by citing as an example the proceeding

against Fenwick. So dangerous is it to violate, on any pretence, those

principles which the experience of ages has proved to be the safeguards

of all that is most precious to a community. Twelve months had hardly

elapsed since the legislature had, in very peculiar circumstances, and

for very plausible reasons, taken upon itself to try and to punish a

great criminal whom it was impossible to reach in the ordinary course

of justice; and already the breach then made in the fences which protect

the dearest rights of Englishmen was widening fast. What had last year

been defended only as a rare exception seemed now to be regarded as the

ordinary rule. Nay, the bill of pains and penalties which now had

an easy passage through the House of Commons was infinitely more

objectionable than the bill which had been so obstinately resisted at

every stage in the preceding session.

The writ of attainder against Fenwick was not, as the vulgar imagined

and still imagine, objectionable because it was retrospective. It

is always to be remembered that retrospective legislation is bad in

principle only when it affects the substantive law. Statutes creating

new crimes or increasing the punishment of old crimes ought in no case

to be retrospective. But statutes which merely alter the procedure, if

they are in themselves good statutes, ought to be retrospective. To take

examples from the legislation of our own time, the Act passed in 1845,

for punishing the malicious destruction of works of art with whipping,

was most properly made prospective only. Whatever indignation the

authors of that Act might feel against the ruffian who had broken the

Barberini Vase, they knew that they could not, without the most serious

detriment to the commonwealth, pass a law for scourging him. On the

other hand the Act which allowed the affirmation of a Quaker to be

received in criminal cases allowed, and most justly and reasonably, such

affirmation to be received in the case of a past as well as of a future

misdemeanour or felony. If we try the Act which attainted Fenwick by

these rules we shall find that almost all the numerous writers who

have condemned it have condemned it on wrong grounds. It made no

retrospective change in the substantive law. The crime was not new.

It was high treason as defined by the Statute of Edward the Third. The

punishment was not new. It was the punishment which had been inflicted

on traitors of ten generations. All that was new was the procedure;

and, if the new procedure had been intrinsically better than the old

procedure, the new procedure might with perfect propriety have been

employed. But the procedure employed in Fenwick's case was the worst

possible, and would have been the worst possible if it had been

established from time immemorial. However clearly political crime may

have been defined by ancient laws, a man accused of it ought not to be

tried by a crowd of five hundred and thirteen eager politicians, of whom

he can challenge none even with cause, who have no judge to guide them,

who are allowed to come in and go out as they choose, who hear as much

or as little as they choose of the accusation and of the defence, who

are exposed, during the investigation, to every kind of corrupting

influence, who are inflamed by all the passions which animated debates

naturally excite, who cheer one orator and cough down another, who are

roused from sleep to cry Aye or No, or who are hurried half drunk

from their suppers to divide. For this reason, and for no other, the

attainder of Fenwick is to be condemned. It was unjust and of evil

example, not because it was a retrospective Act, but because it was an

act essentially judicial, performed by a body destitute of all judicial

qualities.

The bill for punishing Duncombe was open to all the objections which can

be urged against the bill for punishing Fenwick, and to other objections

of even greater weight. In both cases the judicial functions were

usurped by a body unfit to exercise such functions. But the bill

against Duncombe really was, what the bill against Fenwick was not,

objectionable as a retrospective bill. It altered the substantive

criminal law. It visited an offence with a penalty of which the

offender, at the time when he offended, had no notice.

It may be thought a strange proposition that the bill against Duncombe

was a worse bill than the bill against Fenwick, because the bill against

Fenwick struck at life, and the bill against Duncombe struck only at

property. Yet this apparent paradox is a sober truth. Life is indeed

more precious than property. But the power of arbitrarily taking away

the lives of men is infinitely less likely to be abused than the power

of arbitrarily taking away their property. Even the lawless classes of

society generally shrink from blood. They commit thousands of offences

against property to one murder; and most of the few murders which they

do commit are committed for the purpose of facilitating or concealing

some offence against property. The unwillingness of juries to find a

fellow creature guilty of a capital felony even on the clearest evidence

is notorious; and it may well be suspected that they frequently violate

their oaths in favour of life. In civil suits, on the other hand, they

too often forget that their duty is merely to give the plaintiff a

compensation for evil suffered; and, if the conduct of the defendant has

moved their indignation and his fortune is known to be large, they turn

themselves into a criminal tribunal, and, under the name of damages,

impose a large fine. As housebreakers are more likely to take plate and

jewellery than to cut throats; as juries are far more likely to err on

the side of pecuniary severity in assessing damages than to send to the

gibbet any man who has not richly deserved it; so a legislature,

which should be so unwise as to take on itself the functions properly

belonging to the Courts of Law, would be far more likely to pass Acts of

Confiscation than Acts of Attainder. We naturally feel pity even for a

bad man whose head is about to fall. But, when a bad man is compelled to

disgorge his ill-gotten gains, we naturally feel a vindictive pleasure,

in which there is much danger that we may be tempted to indulge too

largely.

The hearts of many stout Whigs doubtless bled at the thought of what

Fenwick must have suffered, the agonizing struggle, in a mind not of

the firmest temper, between the fear of shame and the fear of death,

the parting from a tender wife, and all the gloomy solemnity of the

last morning. But whose heart was to bleed at the thought that

Charles Duncombe, who was born to carry parcels and to sweep down a

counting-house, was to be punished for his knavery by having his income

reduced to eight thousand a year, more than most earls then possessed?

His judges were not likely to feel compassion for him; and they all had

strong selfish reasons to vote against him. They were all in fact bribed

by the very bill by which he would be punished.

His property was supposed to amount to considerably more than four

hundred thousand pounds. Two thirds of that property were equivalent to

about sevenpence in the pound on the rental of the kingdom as assessed

to the land tax. If, therefore, two thirds of that property could have

been brought into the Exchequer, the land tax for 1699, a burden most

painfully felt by the class which had the chief power in England, might

have been reduced from three shillings to two and fivepence. Every

squire of a thousand a year in the House of Commons would have had

thirty pounds more to spend; and that sum might well have made to him

the whole difference between being at ease and being pinched during

twelve months. If the bill had passed, if the gentry and yeomanry of

the kingdom had found that it was possible for them to obtain a welcome

remission of taxation by imposing on a Shylock or an Overreach, by a

retrospective law, a fine not heavier than his misconduct might, in a

moral view, seem to have deserved, it is impossible to believe that they

would not soon have recurred to so simple and agreeable a resource. In

every age it is easy to find rich men who have done bad things for which

the law has provided no punishment or an inadequate punishment. The

estates of such men would soon have been considered as a fund applicable

to the public service. As often as it was necessary to vote an

extraordinary supply to the Crown, the Committee of Ways and Means would

have looked about for some unpopular capitalist to plunder. Appetite

would have grown with indulgence. Accusations would have been eagerly

welcomed. Rumours and suspicions would have been received as proofs. The

wealth of the great goldsmiths of the Royal Exchange would have become

as insecure as that of a Jew under the Plantagenets, as that of a

Christian under a Turkish Pasha. Rich men would have tried to invest

their acquisitions in some form in which they could lie closely hidden

and could be speedily removed. In no long time it would have been found

that of all financial resources the least productive is robbery, and

that the public had really paid far more dearly for Duncombe's hundreds

of thousands than if it had borrowed them at fifty per cent.

These considerations had more weight with the Lords than with the

Commons. Indeed one of the principal uses of the Upper House is to

defend the vested rights of property in cases in which those rights are

unpopular, and are attacked on grounds which to shortsighted politicians

seem valid. An assembly composed of men almost all of whom have

inherited opulence, and who are not under the necessity of paying court

to constituent bodies, will not easily be hurried by passion or seduced

by sophistry into robbery. As soon as the bill for punishing Duncombe

had been read at the table of the Peers, it became clear that there

would be a sharp contest. Three great Tory noblemen, Rochester,

Nottingham and Leeds, headed the opposition; and they were joined by

some who did not ordinarily act with them. At an early stage of the

proceedings a new and perplexing question was raised. How did it appear

that the facts set forth in the preamble were true, that Duncombe had

committed the frauds for which it was proposed to punish him in so

extraordinary a manner? In the House of Commons, he had been taken

by surprise; he had made admissions of which he had not foreseen the

consequences; and he had then been so much disconcerted by the severe

manner in which he had been interrogated that he had at length avowed

everything. But he had now had time to prepare himself; he had been

furnished with advice by counsel; and, when he was placed at the bar of

the Peers, he refused to criminate himself and defied his persecutors

to prove him guilty. He was sent back to the Tower. The Lords acquainted

the Commons with the difficulty which had arisen. A conference was

held in the Painted Chamber; and there Hartington, who appeared for the

Commons, declared that he was authorized, by those who had sent him, to

assure the Lords that Duncombe had, in his place in Parliament, owned

the misdeeds which he now challenged his accusers to bring home to him.

The Lords, however, rightly thought that it would be a strange and a

dangerous thing to receive a declaration of the House of Commons in its

collective character as conclusive evidence of the fact that a man

had committed a crime. The House of Commons was under none of those

restraints which were thought necessary in ordinary cases to protect

innocent defendants against false witnesses. The House of Commons

could not be sworn, could not be cross-examined, could not be indicted,

imprisoned, pilloried, mutilated, for perjury. Indeed the testimony of

the House of Commons in its collective character was of less value than

the uncontradicted testimony of a single member. For it was only

the testimony of the majority of the House. There might be a large

respectable minority whose recollections might materially differ from

the recollections of the majority. This indeed was actually the case.

For there had been a dispute among those who had heard Duncombe's

confession as to the precise extent of what he had confessed; and

there had been a division; and the statement which the Upper House was

expected to receive as decisive on the point of fact had been at last

carried only by ninety votes to sixty-eight. It should seem therefore

that, whatever moral conviction the Lords might feel of Duncombe's

guilt, they were bound, as righteous judges, to absolve him.

After much animated debate, they divided; and the bill was lost by

forty-eight votes to forty-seven. It was proposed by some of the

minority that proxies should be called; but this scandalous proposition

was strenuously resisted; and the House, to its great honour, resolved

that on questions which were substantially judicial, though they might

be in form legislative, no peer who was absent should be allowed to have

a voice.

Many of the Whig Lords protested. Among them were Orford and Wharton.

It is to be lamented that Burnet, and the excellent Hough, who was now

Bishop of Oxford, should have been impelled by party spirit to record

their dissent from a decision which all sensible and candid men will now

pronounce to have been just and salutary. Somers was present; but his

name is not attached to the protest which was subscribed by his brethren

of the junto. We may therefore not unreasonably infer that, on this as

on many other occasions, that wise and virtuous statesman disapproved of

the violence of his friends.

In rejecting the bill, the Lords had only exercised their indisputable

right. But they immediately proceeded to take a step of which the

legality was not equally clear. Rochester moved that Duncombe should be

set at liberty. The motion was carried; a warrant for the discharge of

the prisoner was sent to the Tower, and was obeyed without hesitation

by Lord Lucas, who was Lieutenant of that fortress. As soon as this was

known, the anger of the Commons broke forth with violence. It was by

their order that the upstart Duncombe had been put in ward. He was their

prisoner; and it was monstrous insolence in the Peers to release him.

The Peers defended what they had done by arguments which must be allowed

to have been ingenious, if not satisfactory. It was quite true that

Duncombe had originally been committed to the Tower by the Commons. But,

it was said, the Commons, by sending a penal bill against him to the

Lords, did, by necessary implication, send him also to the Lords. For

it was plainly impossible for the Lords to pass the bill without hearing

what he had to say against it. The Commons had felt this, and had not

complained when he had, without their consent, been brought from his

place of confinement, and set at the bar of the Peers. From that moment

he was the prisoner of the Peers. He had been taken back from the bar

to the Tower, not by virtue of the Speaker's warrant, of which the force

was spent, but by virtue of their order which had remanded him. They,

therefore, might with perfect propriety discharge him.

Whatever a jurist might have thought of these arguments, they had no

effect on the Commons. Indeed, violent as the spirit of party was in

those times, it was less violent than the spirit of caste. Whenever a

dispute arose between the two Houses, many members of both forgot that

they were Whigs or Tories, and remembered only that they were Patricians

or Plebeians. On this occasion nobody was louder in asserting the

privileges of the representatives of the people in opposition to the

encroachments of the nobility than Harley. Duncombe was again arrested

by the Serjeant at Arms, and remained in confinement till the end of the

session. Some eager men were for addressing the King to turn Lucas out

of office. This was not done; but during several days the ill humour

of the Lower House showed itself by a studied discourtesy. One of

the members was wanted as a witness in a matter which the Lords were

investigating. They sent two judges with a message requesting the

permission of the Commons to examine him. At any other time the judges

would have been called in immediately, and the permission would have

been granted as of course. But on this occasion the judges were kept

waiting some hours at the door; and such difficulties were made about

the permission that the Peers desisted from urging a request which

seemed likely to be ungraciously refused.

The attention of the Parliament was, during the remainder of the

session, chiefly occupied by commercial questions. Some of those

questions required so much investigation, and gave occasion to so much

dispute, that the prorogation did not take place till the fifth of July.

There was consequently some illness and much discontent among both Lords

and Commons. For, in that age, the London season usually ended soon

after the first notes of the cuckoo had been heard, and before the poles

had been decked for the dances and mummeries which welcomed the genial

May day of the ancient calendar. Since the year of the Revolution, a

year which was an exception to all ordinary rules, the members of the

two Houses had never been detained from their woods and haycocks even so

late as the beginning of June.

The Commons had, soon after they met, appointed a Committee to enquire

into the state of trade, and had referred to this Committee several

petitions from merchants and manufacturers who complained that they were

in danger of being undersold, and who asked for additional protection.

A highly curious report on the importation of silks and the exportation

of wool was soon presented to the House. It was in that age believed by

all but a very few speculative men that the sound commercial policy was

to keep out of the country the delicate and brilliantly tinted textures

of southern looms, and to keep in the country the raw material on which

most of our own looms were employed. It was now fully proved that,

during eight years of war, the textures which it was thought desirable

to keep out had been constantly coming in, and the material which it

was thought desirable to keep in had been constantly going out. This

interchange, an interchange, as it was imagined, pernicious to England,

had been chiefly managed by an association of Huguenot refugees,

residing in London. Whole fleets of boats with illicit cargoes had

been passing and repassing between Kent and Picardy. The loading and

unloading had taken place sometimes in Romney Marsh, sometimes on the

beach under the cliffs between Dover and Folkstone. All the inhabitants

of the south eastern coast were in the plot. It was a common saying

among them that, if a gallows were set up every quarter of a mile along

the coast, the trade would still go on briskly. It had been discovered,

some years before, that the vessels and the hiding places which were

necessary to the business of the smuggler had frequently afforded

accommodation to the traitor. The report contained fresh evidence upon

this point. It was proved that one of the contrabandists had provided

the vessel in which the ruffian O'Brien had carried Scum Goodman over to

France.

The inference which ought to have been drawn from these facts was that

the prohibitory system was absurd. That system had not destroyed the

trade which was so much dreaded, but had merely called into existence a

desperate race of men who, accustomed to earn their daily bread by the

breach of an unreasonable law, soon came to regard the most reasonable

laws with contempt, and, having begun by eluding the custom house

officers, ended by conspiring against the throne. And, if, in time of

war, when the whole Channel was dotted with our cruisers, it had been

found impossible to prevent the regular exchange of the fleeces of

Cotswold for the alamodes of Lyons, what chance was there that any

machinery which could be employed in time of peace would be more

efficacious? The politicians of the seventeenth century, however, were

of opinion that sharp laws sharply administered could not fail to save

Englishmen from the intolerable grievance of selling dear what could

be best produced by themselves, and of buying cheap what could be best

produced by others. The penalty for importing French silks was made

more severe. An Act was passed which gave to a joint stock company an

absolute monopoly of lustrings for a term of fourteen years. The fruit

of these wise counsels was such as might have been foreseen. French

silks were still imported; and, long before the term of fourteen years

had expired, the funds of the Lustring Company had been spent, its

offices had been shut up, and its very name had been forgotten at

Jonathan's and Garraway's.

Not content with prospective legislation, the Commons unanimously

determined to treat the offences which the Committee had brought to

light as high crimes against the State, and to employ against a few

cunning mercers in Nicholas Lane and the Old Jewry all the gorgeous and

cumbrous machinery which ought to be reserved for the delinquencies of

great Ministers and Judges. It was resolved, without a division, that

several Frenchmen and one Englishman who had been deeply concerned

in the contraband trade should be impeached. Managers were appointed;

articles were drawn up; preparations were made for fitting up

Westminster Hall with benches and scarlet hangings; and at one time

it was thought that the trials would last till the partridge shooting

began. But the defendants, having little hope of acquittal, and not

wishing that the Peers should come to the business of fixing the

punishment in the temper which was likely to be the effect of an

August passed in London, very wisely declined to give their lordships

unnecessary trouble, and pleaded guilty. The sentences were consequently

lenient. The French offenders were merely fined; and their fines

probably did not amount to a fifth part of the sums which they had

realised by unlawful traffic. The Englishman who had been active in

managing the escape of Goodman was both fined and imprisoned.

The progress of the woollen manufactures of Ireland excited even more

alarm and indignation than the contraband trade with France. The

French question indeed had been simply commercial. The Irish question,

originally commercial, became political. It was not merely the

prosperity of the clothiers of Wiltshire and of the West Riding that was

at stake; but the dignity of the Crown, the authority of the Parliament,

and the unity of the empire. Already might be discerned among the

Englishry, who were now, by the help and under the protection of the

mother country, the lords of the conquered island, some signs of a

spirit, feeble indeed, as yet, and such as might easily be put down by a

few resolute words, but destined to revive at long intervals, and to be

stronger and more formidable at every revival.

The person who on this occasion came forward as the champion of the

colonists, the forerunner of Swift and of Grattan, was William Molyneux.

He would have rejected the name of Irishman as indignantly as a citizen

of Marseilles or Cyrene, proud of his pure Greek blood, and fully

qualified to send a chariot to the Olympic race course, would have

rejected the name of Gaul or Libyan. He was, in the phrase of that

time, an English gentleman of family and fortune born in Ireland. He had

studied at the Temple, had travelled on the Continent, had become

well known to the most eminent scholars and philosophers of Oxford and

Cambridge, had been elected a member of the Royal Society of London, and

had been one of the founders of the Royal Society of Dublin. In the days

of Popish ascendancy he had taken refuge among his friends here; he

had returned to his home when the ascendancy of his own caste had been

reestablished; and he had been chosen to represent the University of

Dublin in the House of Commons. He had made great efforts to promote the

manufactures of the kingdom in which he resided; and he had found those

efforts impeded by an Act of the English Parliament which laid severe

restrictions on the exportation of woollen goods from Ireland. In

principle this Act was altogether indefensible. Practically it was

altogether unimportant. Prohibitions were not needed to prevent the

Ireland of the seventeenth century from being a great manufacturing

country; nor could the most liberal bounties have made her so. The

jealousy of commerce, however, is as fanciful and unreasonable as the

jealousy of love. The clothiers of Wilts and Yorkshire were weak enough

to imagine that they should be ruined by the competition of a half

barbarous island, an island where there was far less capital than in

England, where there was far less security for life and property than

in England, and where there was far less industry and energy among the

labouring classes than in England. Molyneux, on the other hand, had

the sanguine temperament of a projector. He imagined that, but for

the tyrannical interference of strangers, a Ghent would spring up

in Connemara, and a Bruges in the Bog of Allen. And what right had

strangers to interfere? Not content with showing that the law of which

he complained was absurd and unjust, he undertook to prove that it was

null and void. Early in the year 1698 he published and dedicated to the

King a treatise in which it was asserted in plain terms that the English

Parliament had no authority over Ireland.

Whoever considers without passion or prejudice the great constitutional

question which was thus for the first time raised will probably be

of opinion that Molyneux was in error. The right of the Parliament of

England to legislate for Ireland rested on the broad general principle

that the paramount authority of the mother country extends over all

colonies planted by her sons in all parts of the world. This principle

was the subject of much discussion at the time of the American troubles,

and was then maintained, without any reservation, not only by the

English Ministers, but by Burke and all the adherents of Rockingham,

and was admitted, with one single reservation, even by the Americans

themselves. Down to the moment of separation the Congress fully

acknowledged the competency of the King, Lords and Commons to make laws,

of any kind but one, for Massachusetts and Virginia. The only power

which such men as Washington and Franklin denied to the Imperial

legislature was the power of taxing. Within living memory, Acts which

have made great political and social revolutions in our Colonies have

been passed in this country; nor has the validity of those Acts ever

been questioned; and conspicuous among them were the law of 1807 which

abolished the slave trade, and the law of 1833 which abolished slavery.

The doctrine that the parent state has supreme power over the colonies

is not only borne out by authority and by precedent, but will appear,

when examined, to be in entire accordance with justice and with policy.

During the feeble infancy of colonies independence would be pernicious,

or rather fatal, to them. Undoubtedly, as they grow stronger and

stronger, it will be wise in the home government to be more and more

indulgent. No sensible parent deals with a son of twenty in the same way

as with a son of ten. Nor will any government not infatuated treat such

a province as Canada or Victoria in the way in which it might be proper

to treat a little band of emigrants who have just begun to build their

huts on a barbarous shore, and to whom the protection of the flag of

a great nation is indispensably necessary. Nevertheless, there cannot

really be more than one supreme power in a society. If, therefore, a

time comes at which the mother country finds it expedient altogether to

abdicate her paramount authority over a colony, one of two courses

ought to be taken. There ought to be complete incorporation, if

such incorporation be possible. If not, there ought to be complete

separation. Very few propositions in polities can be so perfectly

demonstrated as this, that parliamentary government cannot be carried on

by two really equal and independent parliaments in one empire.

And, if we admit the general rule to be that the English parliament is

competent to legislate for colonies planted by English subjects, what

reason was there for considering the case of the colony in Ireland as an

exception? For it is to be observed that the whole question was between

the mother country and the colony. The aboriginal inhabitants, more than

five sixths of the population, had no more interest in the matter than

the swine or the poultry; or, if they had an interest, it was for

their interest that the caste which domineered over them should not be

emancipated from all external control. They were no more represented in

the parliament which sate at Dublin than in the parliament which sate at

Westminster. They had less to dread from legislation at Westminster than

from legislation at Dublin. They were, indeed, likely to obtain but a

very scanty measure of justice from the English Tories, a more scanty

measure still from the English Whigs; but the most acrimonious English

Whig did not feel towards them that intense antipathy, compounded of

hatred, fear and scorn, with which they were regarded by the Cromwellian

who dwelt among them. [8] For the Irishry Molyneux, though boasting that

he was the champion of liberty, though professing to have learned his

political principles from Locke's writings, and though confidently

expecting Locke's applause, asked nothing but a more cruel and more

hopeless slavery. What he claimed was that, as respected the colony to

which he belonged, England should forego rights which she has exercised

and is still exercising over every other colony that she has ever

planted. And what reason could be given for making such a distinction?

No colony had owed so much to England. No colony stood in such need of

the support of England. Twice, within the memory of men then living, the

natives had attempted to throw off the alien yoke; twice the intruders

had been in imminent danger of extirpation; twice England had come to

the rescue, and had put down the Celtic population under the feet of

her own progeny. Millions of English money had been expended in the

struggle. English blood had flowed at the Boyne and at Athlone, at

Aghrim and at Limerick. The graves of thousands of English soldiers

had been dug in the pestilential morass of Dundalk. It was owing to the

exertions and sacrifices of the English people that, from the basaltic

pillars of Ulster to the lakes of Kerry, the Saxon settlers were

trampling on the children of the soil. The colony in Ireland was

therefore emphatically a dependency; a dependency, not merely by the

common law of the realm, but by the nature of things. It was absurd to

claim independence for a community which could not cease to be dependent

without ceasing to exist.

Molyneux soon found that he had ventured on a perilous undertaking. A

member of the English House of Commons complained in his place that

a book which attacked the most precious privileges of the supreme

legislature was in circulation. The volume was produced; some passages

were read; and a Committee was appointed to consider the whole subject.

The Committee soon reported that the obnoxious pamphlet was only one

of several symptoms which indicated a spirit such as ought to be

suppressed. The Crown of Ireland had been most improperly described in

public instruments as an imperial Crown. The Irish Lords and Commons had

presumed, not only to reenact an English Act passed expressly for

the purpose of binding them, but to reenact it with alterations. The

alterations were indeed small; but the alteration even of a letter was

tantamount to a declaration of independence. Several addresses were

voted without a division. The King was entreated to discourage all

encroachments of subordinate powers on the supreme authority of the

English legislature, to bring to justice the pamphleteer who had dared

to question that authority, to enforce the Acts which had been passed

for the protection of the woollen manufactures of England, and to direct

the industry and capital of Ireland into the channel of the linen trade,

a trade which might grow and flourish in Leinster and Ulster without

exciting the smallest jealousy at Norwich or at Halifax.

The King promised to do what the Commons asked; but in truth there was

little to be done. The Irish, conscious of their impotence, submitted

without a murmur. The Irish woollen manufacture languished and

disappeared, as it would, in all probability, have languished and

disappeared if it had been left to itself. Had Molyneux lived a few

months longer he would probably have been impeached. But the close of

the session was approaching; and before the Houses met again a timely

death had snatched him from their vengeance; and the momentous question

which had been first stirred by him slept a deep sleep till it was

revived in a more formidable shape, after the lapse of twenty-six years,

by the fourth letter of The Drapier.

Of the commercial questions which prolonged this session far into the

summer the most important respected India. Four years had elapsed since

the House of Commons had decided that all Englishmen had an equal right

to traffic in the Asiatic Seas, unless prohibited by Parliament; and in

that decision the King had thought it prudent to acquiesce. Any merchant

of London or Bristol might now fit out a ship for Bengal or for China,

without the least apprehension of being molested by the Admiralty or

sued in the Courts of Westminster. No wise man, however, was disposed

to stake a large sum on such a venture. For the vote which protected him

from annoyance here left him exposed to serious risks on the other

side of the Cape of Good Hope. The Old Company, though its exclusive

privileges were no more, and though its dividends had greatly

diminished, was still in existence, and still retained its castles and

warehouses, its fleet of fine merchantmen, and its able and zealous

factors, thoroughly qualified by a long experience to transact business

both in the palaces and in the bazaars of the East, and accustomed

to look for direction to the India House alone. The private trader

therefore still ran great risk of being treated as a smuggler, if not as

a pirate. He might indeed, if he was wronged, apply for redress to the

tribunals of his country. But years must elapse before his cause could

be heard; his witnesses must be conveyed over fifteen thousand miles

of sea; and in the meantime he was a ruined man. The experiment of free

trade with India had therefore been tried under every disadvantage, or,

to speak more correctly, had not been tried at all. The general opinion

had always been that some restriction was necessary; and that opinion

had been confirmed by all that had happened since the old restrictions

had been removed. The doors of the House of Commons were again besieged

by the two great contending factions of the City. The Old Company

offered, in return for a monopoly secured by law, a loan of seven

hundred thousand pounds; and the whole body of Tories was for accepting

the offer. But those indefatigable agitators who had, ever since the

Revolution, been striving to obtain a share in the trade of the Eastern

seas exerted themselves at this conjuncture more strenuously than ever,

and found a powerful patron in Montague.