1693-1694
Formation of the first party Ministry--Reintroduction of
the Triennial Bill and its defeat--Of the Place Bill and
its veto--Causes of the disallowance--Macaulay's account
examined--Campaign of 1694--Death of Mary.
I am now to speak of one of the most important, as it is sometimes
regarded, of all the steps made under William's auspices in the
development of our parliamentary polity--a step represented as even more
influential in fixing and determining that system of strict party
government under which the nation is thriving or declining at the
present era than even the Revolution itself--the formation of the first
Ministry of the modern type. "No writer," says Macaulay in speaking of
it, "has yet attempted to trace the progress of this institution--an
institution indispensable to the harmonious working of our other
institutions. The first Ministry was the work partly of chance and
partly of wisdom--not however of that highest wisdom that is conversant
with great principles of political philosophy, but of that lower wisdom
which meets daily exigencies by daily expedients. Neither William nor
the most enlightened of his advisers fully understood the nature and
importance of that noiseless revolution--for it was no less--which began
about the close of 1693, and was completed about the close of 1696. But
everybody could perceive that at the close of 1693 the chief offices in
the Government were distributed not unequally between the two great
parties, that the men who held these offices were perpetually caballing
against each other, haranguing against each other, moving votes of
censure on each other, exhibiting articles of impeachment against each
other, and that the temper of the House of Commons was wild,
ungovernable and uncertain. Everybody could perceive that at the close
of 1696 all the principal servants of the Crown were Whigs, closely
bound together by public and private ties, and prompt to defend one
another against every attack, and that the majority of the House of
Commons was arrayed in good order under these leaders, and had learned
to move like one man at the word of command."
There are perhaps not many passages of the famous history in which its
author's love of dramatic antithesis has displayed itself in a statement
more likely to mislead the student. Because the change which took place
in the relation of Ministers of the Crown between 1693 and 1696 was a
striking one Macaulay cannot resist the temptation of describing it as
though it were a final one. In 1693 Ministers in disagreement with each
other, in 1696 Ministers in accord with each other--the suggestion of
course being that they "lived happily ever afterwards." Certainly no one
previously unacquainted with the facts would suppose from this account
of them that the first politically homogeneous Ministry was a purely
experimental one, and that the experiment was not repeated by William,
and never even attempted by his successor, under whom the old system
prevailed, though with gradual modification, throughout her reign; that
on many later occasions in our history the men in the chief offices of
the Government were to be found "caballing" and sometimes even
"haranguing" against each other; and, in short, that it was not till far
on in the next century that the idea of Ministers being men of like
political opinions "bound together by public and private ties," and
supported by a majority "arrayed in good order under them, and moving
like one man at the word of command," became uniformly and permanently
associated with the constitution. Yet this is in fact the case. The
"lower political wisdom meeting daily exigencies by daily expedients"
did not devise an arrangement calculated to endure for all time; and no
one ought to have been more surprised than Macaulay if it had. It met a
particular exigency by a particular expedient, and as that particular
exigency did not uniformly recur, the particular expedient naturally did
not at once stereotype itself in our parliamentary polity. The pure Whig
Government of 1696 attained the object of its formation, namely, to
carry out his war policy, and passed away. William's later ministries
were of a mixed character; the ministries of Anne were partly Whig and
partly Tory; and the political unity which prevailed in the Walpole
Administration was succeeded by a return to the old practice under
Pulteney. It was not, as has been said, until well on in the century
that it became an admitted political axiom that Cabinets should be
constructed upon some bases of political union agreed upon by the
members composing the same when they accept office together.
But though it is delusive to represent a mere political experiment as
the consummation of a great constitutional change, yet an experiment by
which such change was foreshadowed cannot of course be otherwise than
deeply interesting. And such undoubtedly is the character of the
ministerial reconstruction which took place in 1693. The particular
exigency which the expedient was designed to meet is almost patent on
the face of the European situation, as it must have presented itself to
a statesman of William's views and with William's policy at heart. The
one fact that the Whigs were in favour of a vigorous prosecution of the
war with Louis on its continental theatre, while the Tories favoured the
husbanding of English military resources and the maintenance of a
defensive attitude behind our "silver streak," and under the protection
of our navy, would undoubtedly have sufficed of itself to determine
William's choice of the former party. In all other respects he probably
regarded both English parties at this as at all other times of his life
with equal indifference--if indeed one should not say with equal
aversion. He could have no love for men who, like the Whigs, regarded
him as a king of their own making, or who, like the Tories, considered
him no king, in the full sense of the word, at all. Whichever of the two
English parties were more willing to assist his efforts for a country
which he loved far better than England was virtually assured of his
favour; and though no doubt he believed honestly enough that the
interests not only of continental Europe, but of insular England, were
identified with those of the United Provinces--though no doubt he
honestly regarded Holland as only the vanguard of European and English
liberties, menaced by the insatiable ambition of Louis--yet it is
impossible to credit him, or any other mortal man in the same situation,
with the capacity of impartial judgment on any point at which the
interests of England and those of Holland might have diverged. Nor is
it, I think, unjust to add that even when the balance of English
advantage might have appeared to William himself to incline somewhat
against any contemplated course of conduct, he would perhaps have held
himself justified in proceeding from contemplation to action. He was in
all probability firmly, and one cannot say unreasonably, possessed with
the idea that England was largely his debtor and the debtor of his
country; and that she should, at least within reason, make sacrifices
for the protection of that nation, who and whose Prince had rendered
such services to her. Whichever English party showed most disposition,
or rather least reluctance, to make common cause with the United
Provinces in the defence of Dutch (and therefore of English and
European) liberties, became thereby the party of William's choice. No
doubt his gradual construction of a pure Whig Ministry was in part
dictated by a desire to secure greater stability of counsel and unity of
action in the House of Commons. No doubt his laudable experiment of
governing by means of both parties had had results with which he could
hardly have been satisfied. But he had borne for five years with the
parliamentary factiousness which that experiment had undoubtedly tended
to aggravate, and there is no visible reason, save that which I have
indicated, for his putting an end to the experiment at this particular
moment and in this particular way. He had made shift to do without a
homogeneous Ministry ever since his accession. If now he needed a
Ministry which should be not only homogeneous, but homogeneously Whig,
we must look to the exigencies of his continental policy for the cause.
The process, however, of replacing the Tories of the Administration by
Whigs was a very gradual one, and it was not of course until it was
complete that the Whig party in the House of Commons could be trusted to
support the Administration, "right or wrong," as, without much suspicion
of satire, we may say to have now become the accepted constitutional
practice. Nottingham and the Tory Naval administrators were the first to
go, their retirement having been in the one case consequentially, and in
the other directly necessitated by the narrow escape of the latter from
parliamentary censure in respect of the late naval miscarriages. Russell
became First Lord of the Admiralty, and with him Nottingham, who, as
Secretary of State, was then responsible for the military service, was
of course unable to serve. His place, however, was not immediately
filled up, nor was it till the end of the session that any further
ministerial changes were made. And this session itself was one of
peculiar constitutional interest on other grounds. In the first place
the Triennial Bill, vetoed by William in the previous session, was
reintroduced, and met with a most unexpected fate. It was brought in
this time in the House of Commons, and passed through all its stages up
to the final one without a division. But the motion that "the Bill do
now pass" was rejected by a majority of ten. The whole affair is
involved in much obscurity, and the cause or causes of the unlooked-for
rejection of the measure must always remain matter of conjecture.
Macaulay declares its defeat to have been brought about by the
instrumentality of the expert parliamentary intriguer Seymour; and as no
House of Commons that ever lived is likely to have relished the idea of
putting a term to its own existence, it is not difficult to guess the
kind of sentiment to which Seymour might have appealed. But one point
not unworthy of notice in the matter is that the numbers voting in the
division, 146 Noes and 136 Ayes, did not together compose a very full
House. They fell short by thirty-two of the numbers who voted in the
division by which the second edition of the Triennial Bill, introduced
in, and passed through, the House of Lords, and sent down to the House
of Commons, was rejected a fortnight afterwards. In this case, of
course, the adverse majority of 197 were able to allege that they were
not opposing the limitation of Parliament, but merely resisting a
usurpation of constitutional jurisdiction on the part of the Peers. But
it should be observed that this argument does not appear to have
produced many defections from the party of the Ayes. They number 127, or
only nine short of their original strength; and assuming that these nine
votes were transferred to the Noes, it will still leave some forty new
votes to be accounted for. It looks rather as if these were the votes of
members who would have divided against the Bill if they had dared (and
as they did so soon as they got a plausible pretext for doing so), but
not daring, consented to assist in compassing its rejection by absenting
themselves from the division.
The Place Bill, another abortive measure of this session, had a quite
different history. It was introduced in much the same shape as in the
previous year, and passed the Lower House substantially unchanged. In
the Lords, however, it underwent a material amendment. As originally
drawn it provided that no member of the House of Commons elected after
the 1st of January 1694 should accept any place of profit under the
Crown on pain of forfeiting his seat, and of being incapable of sitting
again in the same Parliament. The Lords, while maintaining the provision
for the forfeiture of the seat, introduced words qualifying the acceptor
of office to sit in the same Parliament if again chosen as a
representative. This amendment the Commons adopted, and the Bill thus
modified, having passed both Houses, was, somewhat to the surprise of
everybody and to the disgust of many people, vetoed by the King. This
exercise of the prerogative was received with far less patience than on
the two former occasions, and for a few days a serious conflict between
the Legislature and the Crown appeared to be imminent. An address of
remonstrance was presented to William, who replied in conciliatory
language, but without holding out any hopes that his veto would be
withdrawn. Another debate of a somewhat excited character followed, but
calmer counsels than had at first found favour with the House of Commons
ultimately prevailed. A motion to prepare a new representation or
remonstrance was rejected by a very large majority, and the Place Bill
dropped. The great Whig historian's account of the matter is that the
amendment "deprived the Bill of all efficacy both for good and evil";
but that the Commons "so little understood what they were about that,
after framing a law, in one view most mischievous"--namely, in respect
of its tending to keep the chief Ministers of the Crown out of the
House of Commons, "and in another view most beneficial"--namely, as
tending to keep subordinate officials out of the House of Commons, they
were perfectly willing that it should be "transformed into a law quite
harmless and almost useless"; and that William went out of the way to
veto this quite harmless and almost useless law, because he "understood
the question as little as the Commons themselves."
This is not a very plausible theory; nor does one well see why Macaulay
should describe that proviso of a right to re-election--which was
afterwards adopted, and which is an essential feature of our still
subsisting Act of Anne--as depriving the Bill of nine-tenths of its
power both for good and for evil. Surely both King and Parliament might
have been credited with knowing their own business a little better than
that. It seems reasonable rather to ask ourselves whether the amendment
was such as to militate in any serious degree against the legislative
object of the Commons, or in any similar degree to disarm the objections
which William entertained to the measure. If it did neither of these
things, there was nothing paradoxical either in the Commons accepting or
the King pronouncing his veto upon the Place Bill; and it seems to me to
be clear that the amendment did neither of these things in fact. No
doubt it was desirable, from the point of view of the majority, that
office-holders should cease to sit in Parliament and become
incapacitated for re-election; and this on the abstract and general
ground that such persons were not sufficiently independent to be able to
discharge the functions of legislators with advantage to the country.
So far, then, as the general principle relating to office-holders was
concerned, the amendment was opposed to the real wishes of the Commons,
and had no reason therefore to provoke the hostility of the King. But
there was a specific ground on which the House had cause to dislike
office-holders, and a specific class of appointments to which this
ground applied; and the Bill, even as modified by the Lords' proviso,
would have limited the royal influence in respect of these appointments
to an extent quite sufficient to account both for the Commons adopting
the amendment of the Upper House, and for the King refusing his assent
to the Bill. It would obviously have dealt a heavy, though not, of
course, a final, blow to the employment of the patronage of the Crown
for the purpose of "managing" the Legislature. It would have made it a
far more difficult thing for the Court or the Government to maintain
their majority in the House of Commons by what would now be called a
corrupt use of its patronage, but what was then regarded, or getting to
be regarded--at any rate by the party in power,--as one of the
legitimate arts of rule. For whenever the Sovereign or his Ministers
endeavoured to convert a hostile into a friendly vote by the bestowal of
office upon its possessor, he or they would always have to reckon with
the possibility that the constituents of the bought member might not
care to have their interests sold along with their parliamentary
representative. They might, and on a question which strongly moved them
they very probably would, have expressed their disapproval of his
conduct by refusing to re-elect him; in which case the Government would,
of course, have found themselves at the end of the transaction with one
piece of patronage the less, but not with one vote the more. In a word,
the Place Bill, as amended by the Lords, though it would have left
untouched the power of the Crown to bring office-holders into
Parliament, would materially have impaired its power of turning members
of Parliament into office-holders; and apparently it was only because
Macaulay viewed the Bill too exclusively in its relation to the former
power, and took no account of its bearing on the latter, that he could
have regarded it as a measure in which William had no real concern, and
which he only vetoed through some vague dislike of it as affecting his
prerogative he hardly knew how. So far from this, it seems to me that
his objection may well have been a very definite one, and that he
perfectly understood, and was not at all disposed to undervalue, the
particular exercise of his prerogative which it threatened. For whatever
may have been his original or even his persistent repugnance to the acts
of parliamentary management by means of parliamentary corruption, he had
probably come by this time to regard it as among the inevitable if
disagreeable necessities of royal and ministerial policy under the
English system of party government.
The close of this session witnessed the virtual completion of the work
of ministerial reconstruction on a purely Whig basis. Shrewsbury, who
had been offered the Secretaryship of State left vacant by the
retirement of Nottingham, after some months of hesitation accepted the
office. Trenchard, the other Secretary of State, was also a member of
the Whig party. The rising Whig financier, Charles Montague, who had
during this session devised and carried out the legislative measure for
the establishment of the Bank of England, was for this service elevated
to the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Keeper of the Seal was
the Whig Somers. The Whig Russell was First Lord of the Admiralty. All
the important offices of the State were now in fact in the hands of the
Whig party, and William, now fairly embarked upon the experiment
recommended by Sunderland, made one last concession to his old policy of
balancing one party against the other by a liberal distribution of
honours among the displaced Tories.
The military and naval operations of 1694 were marked by none of these
successes which catch the public eye, but the year was really one of
more moment to the history of the struggle with Louis than at first
sight appears. Mismanagement and treachery brought disaster on the
expedition against Brest, and the disgrace was certainly not redeemed by
the subsequent bombardment and destruction of Dieppe and Havre. But the
despatch of Russell's fleet to the Mediterranean yielded solid gains
which more than compensated for our losses in the Channel. Russell
relieved Barcelona, blockaded Toulon, brought the hostile Italian States
to reason, and compelled them, for the first time, to acknowledge
William's titles, reanimated the Duke of Savoy, who had begun to think
of a separate peace with France, and, indeed, practically brought the
Mediterranean under English maritime control. As a consequence, our
commerce, which had been declining ever since the Revolution, began
rapidly to revive.
The land campaign, though equally undistinguished by any striking
triumph, was no less fruitful in matter for solid satisfaction. An
attempt of William to carry the war into the enemy's country was foiled,
it is true, by the skill of Luxembourg, who repulsed the advance of the
Elector of Bavaria upon French Flanders, and this check was, of course,
more important on one side than William's capture of the inconsiderable
fortress of Huy was on the other. But in Spain, where Russell's
appearance before Barcelona had compelled De Noailles to retreat; on the
Rhine, where the Prince of Baden drove back Delorges, and established
himself for the summer in Alsace; and in Piedmont, where, in spite of
the vacillations of the Duke of Savoy, the French gained no material
advantage--the course of events, particularly as contrasted with those
of the three previous years, gave ample justification for the words with
which William met his Parliament on the 9th of November. "With respect,"
he said, "to the war by land, I think I may say that this year has put a
stop to the progress of the French arms." Loyal addresses were returned,
and supplies to the amount of five millions were readily voted; but,
along with the Supply Bill, the Triennial Bill was again introduced. It
was probably intimated to Parliament, through some of the private
channels of communication with the Court, that William was not prepared
to veto it a second time. The Bill was brought in on the first day of
the session, and, together with a Bill settling the Customs on the
Crown, received the royal assent on the 22d of December. November of
1696 was fixed as the limit of the life of the existing Parliament. The
Place Bill, vetoed by the King in the previous session, was again
introduced, and with exactly the same results as had followed the second
attempt to pass the Triennial Bill. This measure, it will be
remembered, after failing to obtain the royal assent in the session of
1692-3, was defeated in the Commons in 1693-4, and so also it happened
with the Place Bill. The inference which I think suggests itself in both
cases is that the exercise of the royal veto, though unpopular with the
country, was not by any means equally so with the House of Commons; that
there were many Tories who were not particularly keen on purging
Parliament of office-holders, and not a few Whigs whose zeal for the
limitation of its constitutional life was somewhat lukewarm; and that
both Whigs and Tories of this order were not sorry to be able to evade
their party obligations to vote for these measures by pleading their
unwillingness to force the King's hand, and perhaps provoke a
constitutional crisis.
The day on which William gave his assent to the Triennial Bill was to
him a day of grave anxiety; and a year fairly prosperous abroad and
peaceful at home was to bring him ere its close the heaviest calamity of
his life. The illness of the Queen, who had been for two or three days
confined to her bed, was on the evening of the 21st of December
recognised by her physician as smallpox. A week afterwards, at one in
the morning of the 28th of December, she died. William's grief at her
loss was uncontrollable, and to all but those, and they were few, who
had penetrated the stoicism beneath which he was accustomed to conceal
deep feelings, it must have been a strange and moving sight. He remained
for days at her bedside scarcely taking food or sleep. He broke out in
the presence of Burnet into passionate outcries upon his agony at the
thought of losing her, and into fervent praises of her love and
virtues. "He cried out," says the Bishop, "that there was no hope, and
that from being the happiest he was now going to be the miserablest
creature on earth. He said that during the whole course of their
marriage he had never known one single fault in her; there was a worth
in her which nobody knew besides himself.... The King's affection was
greater than those who knew him best thought his temper capable of; he
went beyond all bounds in it; during her sickness he was in an agony
that amazed us all, fainting often and breaking out into most violent
lamentations; when she died his spirits sank so low that there was great
reason to apprehend that he was following her; for some weeks after he
was so little master of himself that he was not capable of minding
business or of seeing company."
The depth of this affection, moreover, was not disproportioned, as is
sometimes the case in examples of conjugal devotion, to the worthiness
of the object. Even Evelyn, who was shocked as a Tory and legitimate
king's-man by the levity of Mary's behaviour (for which, however, an
explanation has been suggested) on her arrival at Whitehall after
James's flight, affirms of her that "she was such an admirable woman,
abating for taking the crown without a due apology, as does, if
possible, outdo the renowned Queen Elizabeth." The comparison,
extravagant as it may appear at first sight, is not without some
justification in the spirited behaviour of Mary on the great national
crisis which occurred during her husband's absence in the Irish
campaign. It would be absurd of course to credit Mary with Elizabeth's
gifts of statecraft, or with her intellectual capacity in general, but
in courage and composure in the presence of danger she was no unworthy
successor of that great queen. In William's passionate declarations of
his debt to her there was no extravagance at all. To him she had been
the most affectionate, dutiful, and forbearing of wives, and if her
influence over him fell short of retaining his marital constancy, she
endeared herself more closely to him on the side of the purer emotions
by her magnanimous forgiveness of his errors. It cannot but soften the
harsher outlines of our conception of William, and help to supply that
human and homely element which is too much wanting in his character, to
know that he was capable both of inspiring and reciprocating so true an
affection as this.