1689
William's part in the Revolution--Convention declared a
Parliament--Oath of Allegiance--Settlement of Civil List
--Appropriation Clause--Toleration and Comprehension--
Address of the Commons inviting the King to declare war.
Thus prudently and calmly was effected our great English Revolution.
Both as an event and as an achievement we have equal cause to review its
history with pleasure; for if in some aspects it testifies to the good
fortune of our nation, it reflects credit in others on the good
qualities of our people. I have endeavoured in the last chapter to point
out that the modern Whig view of the Revolution as a great conflict
between two opposing schools of constitutional doctors, resulting in the
victory of the more liberal one, is largely legendary; that the struggle
between Whigs and Tories resolved itself almost entirely into a dispute
of preferences as between two alternative candidates for the throne; and
that both parties showed themselves alike prepared to waive the
principles which they severally held on condition of attaining their
practical end--the success of their favoured candidate. But this does
not in any way detract either from the value of the Revolution or from
the merits of its authors; while it otherwise only serves to conform it
to the normal type of English political work. All our great
constitutional precedents are the parents of principle rather than its
offspring; we deduce our theories from accomplished facts of our own
creation, the creation of such accomplished facts being itself
determined by no theoretical considerations, but by certain practical
exigencies of the moment. Few Englishmen will think any worse of the
Whig because, although firmly wedded to the principle of national
sovereignty, he would have been willing to lose the opportunity of
expressly affirming it so long as he could by any means place William of
Orange, with full regal power, on the throne. Nor will they be any more
disposed to condemn the Tory in that when he found himself compelled to
give way on the practical point of the succession, he did not think it
worth while to quarrel with the assertions or implications of Whig
principle contained in the resolution by which the transfer was
effected. On the contrary, the temper and habits of mind thus jointly
illustrated are national characteristics on which we especially and not
unreasonably pride ourselves.
For the purposes of a precedent, too, the transaction could hardly have
come more happily off. Even a Tory of to-day will admit that it was good
for the future development of our constitutional life that the Whig
principles of "national sovereignty," "original contract between king
and people," and all the rest of it, should then and there receive
unmistakable recognition and irrevocable ratification; and this beyond
question they did receive. No hair-splittings about desertion or
abdication[10] could obscure the two plain facts, that the nation
_deposed_ James II., and by a distinct assertion of inherent, or
assumption of new, authority--it matters not which--_made_ a new king
out of a man who, but for such assertion or assumption of authority,
could never have become more than the consort of a queen.
As regards the new King himself, his behaviour at this great crisis in
his own fortunes and the destiny of two nations deserves, at any rate,
the credit of honesty and straightforwardness. We shall not really add
to that honour by seeking any more showy motives than those which lie on
the face of his conduct. The mere masculine repugnance of the man of
action to lower the spear before the distaff would in any case probably
have induced him to reject the proposal of the Tory lords. But apart
from this, his shrewd knowledge of men and clear insight into politics
assured him that he had only to refuse the false position in order to
compel the offer of the true one. He might have been all else that he
was--the devoted son of Holland; the true, if unimpassioned, friend of
England; the implacable enemy of the French king and his designs; the
ardent champion of Protestantism and the liberties of Europe;--and yet
only been the more tempted in every one of these by a place on the steps
of a powerful throne, and an influence which even from that situation he
might have wielded to the attainment of many great ends. He was saved
from accepting it solely by his pride, his ambition, and his
perspicacity. He resented the thought of holding power as his wife's
lieutenant, and he saw that he had only to refuse that post in order to
make himself a necessity as king.
The first act of the new sovereign was to summon and swear a Privy
Council, and to nominate a Ministry. In the then infancy of our modern
Constitution it was not, as it now is, incumbent upon the sovereign to
select the Ministers from one particular party. It was competent to him,
and William deemed it expedient for him, to tender office to the
representatives of both political connections. Danby, a Tory by
principle, though he had sided with the Whigs in opposing the Regency
scheme, and only broke away from them on the question of declaring the
throne vacant, was made President of the Council. Halifax, a Trimmer
indeed, but of closer affinities with Whiggery than with Toryism, and
the chief upholder of the Whig doctrine on the question of the
succession, became Lord Privy Seal. Nottingham, a Tory up to almost any
point short of passive obedience, received the seals of one
Secretaryship of State; upon Shrewsbury, a Whig, were bestowed those of
the other. The Treasury and the Admiralty were committed to the
Administration of Boards--the former under the presidency of Admiral
Herbert, the latter under that of Charles Mordaunt, afterwards the
famous and eccentric Earl of Peterborough. By an exercise of the royal
authority, willingly acquiesced in at the time by the nation, but
destined to entail more momentous national consequences than any of his
subjects foresaw, King William retained in his own hands the exclusive
direction of foreign affairs. The Great Seal was placed in commission.
The first question propounded to the Privy Council was whether the
Convention should be declared a lawful Parliament, or dissolved and a
fresh Parliament summoned in the regular manner by royal writ. The
Council advised the former course, and a Bill declaring the Convention a
Parliament was at once introduced and passed through the House of Lords.
It was opposed in the Commons by the Tories, who hoped that a general
election might strengthen their numbers; but the resistance--founded as
it was upon mere technical considerations, and with historical precedent
against it--was never very formidable; and the Bill passed the Lower
House in a few days, and became law. Among its clauses was one providing
that no one should, after the 1st of March then next ensuing, sit or
vote in either House of Parliament without taking the oaths of
allegiance to the new King and Queen, and the Jacobites and ultra-Tories
conceived the hope that many peers, bishops, and commoners would find it
impossible to reconcile their consciences to this test. As a matter of
fact the non-jurors, except among the Episcopal body, to whom Archbishop
Sancroft set the example of recusancy, were comparatively few. Even
later, when the oath was tendered to the clergy at large, the number of
those who found themselves conscientiously unable to take it was but
one-twentieth of the whole body.[11]
In the interval, however, between the passing of the Act and the day
fixed for submission to the test, the great question of the royal
revenues was taken up and decided. Certain proceeds of taxation were in
those days granted to the Crown either for a fixed term of years or for
life. The former, being on the face of them annexed to the regal office,
were of course transferable without much difficulty or dispute to the
new incumbent of that office; but doubts naturally arose as to the exact
legal status of the latter kind of imposts. Some were for interpreting
the word "life" as virtually meaning reign, upon which construction the
right to exact these taxes had lapsed by the deposition of the sovereign
to whom they were granted. Others insisted on an interpretation stricter
in one sense and laxer in another, and argued that though William had
become entitled to these revenues as King he could only enjoy them
during the life of James. In other words, in order to avoid taking
liberties with the word "life," they were prepared to behave with far
more unbridled license to the word "king." The practical inconvenience
of settling revenues on William during the life of James may or may not
have weighed more with the Parliament than the theoretical anomaly of
treating the former as sovereign for one purpose and the latter as such
for another; but anyhow it was tacitly agreed to treat the grant to
James as annulled by his so-called abdication. The Commons then voted
the sum of £1,200,000 for the current year, one half to be appropriated
to the civil list, the other half to the defences of the
country--mainly, of course, in other words, to the prosecution of the
impending war in Ireland. At the first sitting of Parliament, after the
prorogation, which took place some months afterwards, the Royal Speech
from the Throne contained an announcement to the Commons that in order
that they might be satisfied how the money had been laid out which they
had already given, his Majesty had directed the accounts to be laid
before them whenever they should think fit to call for them. The
privilege thus practically acknowledged may no doubt be, as some
constitutional lawyers have contended, coeval with the constitution; but
it had been so intermittently respected that its unvarying recognition
from this time forward is justly reckoned as one of the chief gains
which accrued to our parliamentary system from the Revolution. It seems,
however, to have been only in the Stat., 9 and 10 Will. III. c. 44, that
there appears an appropriation clause of the modern type apportioning
all the supplies of the session to the services for which they were
provided.
But while these delicate matters of royal rights and official income
were being disposed of, the King was commendably anxious to show himself
at once in some other light than that of an applicant for parliamentary
aids. As early as the 1st of March he sent a special message to the
Commons calling their attention to the "grievous burden" of the
unpopular hearth-tax, and signifying that assent either "to the
regulation of it, or to the taking of it wholly away," not doubting but
the Commons would take care of his revenue in some other way. This
judicious proposal gave great satisfaction. The Commons replied in
terms of warm acknowledgment, and the city of London presented to him an
address of thanks. He interposed, however, with less success and perhaps
with less judgment in the religious disputes by which the country was
divided. The traditions, alike of his nation and his house, may well
have encouraged him to aspire to the great office of moderator and
mediator between contending sects; but it is doubtful whether such a
post could under any circumstances have been within the reach of a Dutch
Calvinist. For the imperfect and illogically-regulated relief accorded
by the Toleration Act to most of the dissenting denominations the
country was prepared; but neither the occasion nor the idea of the
Comprehension Bill--a measure for widening the entrance to the Church of
England at the very moment when those who had chosen to remain outside
were being encouraged by a relieving Act to remain there--was in itself
a happy one. Churchmen were, from their own point of view, entitled to
argue that the two measures proceeded upon two opposite and conflicting
theories of state policy; that toleration, properly understood and
applied, would render comprehension superfluous, and had indeed been
accepted by the Church with that very object; and that it was but a poor
return for her surrender of her ancient claim to compel schismatics into
her fold, that she should be required unduly to extend its limits for
the purpose of embracing them. It is probable enough that William's eye
for an ecclesiastical scruple was not quite as keen as his insight into
the principles of civil government and the workings of European policy,
for he seems to have been surprised and disappointed at finding that
Churchmen and Dissenters, though the Toleration Act was accepted by the
former without serious difficulty and by the latter with hearty
rejoicings, would neither of them so much as look at his scheme of
comprehension. He evidently understood neither the "dissidence of
dissent" nor the Anglicanism of the Anglican Communion. The
Comprehension Bill had a troubled time of it even in the House of Lords,
where it was first introduced, and after some debate in the House of
Commons it was shelved. As vainly did William attempt to compose the
feud between the Whig and Tory Churchman and Nonconformist by offering,
so to speak, a bribe to each of them to tolerate the other. The new oath
of allegiance, framed by Parliament for itself, required to be extended
to all those classes of persons who had been compelled to take one.
Legislation was commenced for that purpose concurrently with the debates
over the Comprehension Bill, and the King, according to Burnet, saw
here, as he thought, an opportunity of bringing the disputants to a
mutually beneficial compromise. In his speech to the Commons on the 16th
of March, he signified his wish that in the pending legislation "they
would leave room for the admission of all Protestants that were willing
and able to serve"--a suggestion which, of course, was directly aimed at
the tests then excluding Dissenters from office. And while he pressed
this measure of relief upon the Tories, he at the same time invited the
Whigs to make a concession to their adversaries by absolving, as he was
willing to do, the existing beneficed clergy from the necessity of
taking the new oath of allegiance. He begged of the one party not to
compel the Nonconformist to choose between offence against conscience
and exclusion from civil office, and of the other party not to compel a
clergyman to choose between offence against conscience and expulsion
from ecclesiastical office; and he imagined that each would find their
account in consenting. But no. The Whig was determined to force the oath
upon the parson; the Tory was resolved to force the test upon the
dissenter. No provision of relief for Nonconformists was introduced into
the Comprehension Bill, and the measure itself was shortly afterwards
dropped. The Oaths Bill passed in a form which compelled every beneficed
clergyman to swear allegiance to the new King and Queen by the 1st of
August 1689, on pain of suspension, to be followed on the 1st of
February 1690, in the event of the non-juror remaining contumacious, by
deprivation.
History has done justice to these well-meaning efforts of William; but
the political virtue which for the moment was its own reward, must, one
imagines, have been felt by him as painfully unremunerative. He could
not have expected to be personally popular, and he was not, though
Macaulay, in his desire for strong pictorial effect, has surely
exaggerated his unpopularity. But he, no doubt, counted upon wielding a
greater civil influence at the outset of his career than he in fact
discovered to be his, and must have learned, with some chagrin, that he
had failed to realise the vehemence of those English party conflicts in
which not even the ablest and best intentioned of mediators can
interpose without disappointment until he has mastered all the secrets
of their intensity. On the whole, one can easily understand the feeling
of satisfaction with which he hailed the coming of the hour when he,
with whom the instincts of the European statesman and soldier were
always dominant over these of the domestic administrator, was once more
summoned to activity in one of the two arts in which he shone. On the
19th of April the Commons presented an address to the Crown, in which,
after reciting the various acts of hostility committed by Louis XIV.
against their country, "particularly the present invasion of Ireland,"
they assured William that when he "should think fit to enter into a war
against the French king, they would give him such assistance in a
parliamentary way as to enable him to support and go through with the
same." To this invitation from his Parliament William returned an answer
of ready acquiescence, while to those about him he exclaimed, with
unwonted animation, "This is the first day of my reign."
FOOTNOTES:
[10] There are but two ways in which a sovereign can, while alive, and
_compos mentis_, become divested of his regal attributes and
authority--by abdication and by deposition; and it is impossible to
define abdication satisfactorily by any form of words which does not
involve the idea of a _voluntary_ act. Even if a voluntary abandonment
or "desertion of the Government" amounted to abdication, it would not
help the case. James's flight from England in 1688 was no more voluntary
than the flight of his brother, then king _de jure_, after Worcester in
1651. Both flights were taken under what was or was conceived to be
_force majeure_.
[11] This, however, it should be conceded, was really, of the two, a
more respectable proportion; for the clergy had a sterner alternative
before them than the bishops, peers, or members of the Lower House. The
latter had only status at stake--the former, in most cases, their means
of subsistence.