1698-1699
Portland's embassy--His life in Paris--The question of the
Spanish Succession--The First Partition Treaty--General
election and meeting of the new Parliament--Its temper--
Opposition to William's military policy--Reduction of the
army.
One of William's first steps after the conclusion of the peace was to
appoint a strong ambassador to Versailles. Portland was selected,
partly, as it is said, in consequence of his jealousy of the growing
ascendency of his youthful rival Keppel in the favour of William, but
much more, one may suppose, because of his force of character and
intimate acquaintance with European politics. The Ambassador
Extraordinary was intended, as he understood his mission, to hold his
head high at the Court of Louis, and he undoubtedly did so. His retinue
and equipage was of remarkable splendour, and his bearing, especially
towards those who showed any sign of disputing his just pretensions, was
marked by an unflinching dignity.[17] He protested bluntly against the
presence of the would-be assassins of William at a Court at which he
was William's representative. He pressed for the removal of James and
his adherents from St. Germains; and on both these matters Louis, while
firmly maintaining the position which he had taken up at the Brabant
negotiation, showed, nevertheless, unmistakable anxiety to conciliate
the resolute ambassador. It was not, however, to deal with points of
this kind that Portland had been sent to Versailles. Another matter of
the greatest European moment was beginning to press, and it was to
endeavour to effect an adjustment of the various conflicting interests
involved in it that William had despatched his carefully-selected
emissary to the French Court. Charles II., King of Spain and the Indies,
and last of the male line of the Emperor Charles V., was known to be
near his end, and at his death the whole of his vast empire in the two
hemispheres would pass to one or other of two powerful reigning Houses,
to neither of which its transfer would be regarded with indifference by
Europe at large. The rightful heir of Charles II., if blood alone had
had to be considered, was the Dauphin of France, the son of his sister,
who had married Louis XIV. With the consent of her husband she had at
the time of her marriage renounced for herself and her posterity all
pretensions to the Spanish crown, and her renunciation was duly recorded
in a European Treaty. Failing this line it would be necessary to go back
another generation, and the Emperor Leopold, as the son of Charles's
aunt, stood next in succession. His claim was barred by no renunciation;
but it was no more likely that Louis would quietly allow him to succeed
than that he would submit to the succession of a Bourbon. It was not to
the interests of Europe that either House should acquire such an
enormous accession of territory and power. To William it appeared at any
rate intolerable that the House of Bourbon should do so, and in order to
avert this calamity, as he regarded it, he took one of the most keenly
canvassed steps of his political life in the negotiation and conclusion
of the famous Partition Treaty. There is no likelihood that posterity
will ever arrive at accord upon the policy of this famous transaction,
but before even attempting to consider the unfavourable criticisms
passed upon it, it is absolutely necessary to note one cardinal
characteristic of its nature. To William it was avowedly and essentially
an expedient adopted, to use Aristotle's expression, +kata ton deuteron
ploun+. It was never regarded or represented by him as more than the
"second-best" thing to be done in a case where the actual best had been
rendered impracticable by circumstances beyond his own control. He knew
that Louis's moderation in the settlement of the terms of Ryswick had
been merely politic; that its main object was to put an end to the war,
and so to break up the forces of a coalition which both he and his rival
knew that it would be a hard matter to get together again; and that the
peace once concluded, Louis would have it in his power to recruit his
military strength, and prepare to take advantage of the almost daily
expected death of Charles II. of Spain to carry out his long cherished
design upon that kingdom. There were two ways of dealing with this
situation, and two only. Either England must be kept under arms, or the
King of England must "transact" with the King of France. The former of
these two courses was denied him by the jealousy of his English
subjects, and he was accordingly forced upon the latter. In writing to
the Pensionary Heinsius he deplores the fact that he cannot "remain
armed," and declares that little reliance as could be placed upon
engagement with France, it was absolutely necessary that such should be
concluded; since otherwise, he writes, "I do not see a possibility of
preventing France from putting herself in immediate possession of the
monarchy of Spain in case the King should happen to die soon."
Obviously, therefore, it would be unfair to judge of the First Partition
Treaty as though the arrangement of it had been deliberately selected by
William from a variety of more or less eligible expedients. The only
mode in which it can be logically or reasonably attacked is by
contending either that the object of the Treaty, the exclusion of the
grandson of Louis from the throne of Spain, was not a political end of
such importance as to be worth bargaining for at all, or else that the
particular bargain to which William agreed was in itself an improvident
one.
So much premised, let us proceed to examine the provisions of this
memorable instrument. Roughly speaking they would have effected a
division of the heritage of the Spanish king between the Electoral
Prince of Bavaria and the Dauphin of France. The former was to have the
kingdom of Spain, the Spanish Netherlands, and the Spanish possessions
in the New World; to the latter were to pass the two Sicilies and
Sardinia, certain places on and off the coast of Tuscany, and the
Cis-Pyrenæan portion of the Province of Guipuzcoa. Milan was to go to
the Archduke Charles, the second son of the Emperor Leopold. Such was
the arrangement, and whether its terms were to be deemed good or bad for
England, it is at least certain that they were only obtained from the
French king after long and obstinate diplomatic haggling, first between
Portland, William's Ambassador-Extraordinary at Versailles, and the
French Ministers, and afterwards between the Count de Tallard, Louis
XIV.'s ambassador to England, and William himself. The French king was
extremely anxious to secure the Spanish kingdom for his grandson Philip,
Duke of Anjou, and was ready to undertake that the Dauphin and Philip's
elder brother should waive their rights, so as to guard against the
possibility of the French and Spanish monarchies being united under one
sceptre. As to the danger lest a Bourbon, once established at Madrid,
might hand over the Spanish Netherlands to the head of the family, Louis
was willing to protect England and Holland against that danger by
consenting that those provinces should be ceded to the Elector of
Bavaria. William met this proposal, not by a direct negative, but by
raising his terms of assent to it. Not only, he insisted, must the
Spanish Netherlands pass to the Elector of Bavaria, but Louis must give
up some fortified towns on his Flemish frontier, for the better
self-protection of the United Provinces, while England was "compensated"
on the Mediterranean and the Gulf of Mexico. Louis protested on his own
behalf against the former of these proposals, and declared that the
Spaniards would never consent to the latter. At last, unable to obtain
his way with regard to the elevation of one of his grandsons to the
Spanish throne, he assented to the only alternative arrangement which
would prevent Spain from passing to his rival the Emperor, and signified
his willingness to accept the Electoral Prince of Bavaria as the heir to
the Peninsula. The obstinacy with which the points of this treaty were
contested may be measured by the fact that the first interview between
Pomponne and Portland, in which the matter of the Spanish succession was
broached, took place on the 15th of March, and it was not till the 4th
of September that the treaty was signed. It cannot therefore be
contended that William spared pains to obtain what he considered the
best terms from Louis, and having regard to the fact that the King of
Spain was not expected to live out the year, it is plain enough that on
one assumption--that, namely, of the paramount necessity of preventing
the accession of a grandson of Louis to the Spanish throne--the
negotiations could not with safety have been protracted much longer. The
latter, in short, of the two questions which were propounded at the
outset of the examination may be said to depend for its answer upon the
former. Supposing that the exclusion of the Duke of Anjou or the Duke of
Berry from the throne of Spain was a political object worth bargaining
for at all, William cannot, I think, be charged with having paid an
improvident price for it. Nor does it appear to me reasonably arguable
that the object in question was not worth bargaining to obtain. It has
been urged by some critics of this transaction that the apprehensions
roused in those days at the prospect of a Bourbon prince succeeding to
the throne of Charles were exaggerated; that experience has shown the
fallacy of supposing that ties of kindred count for much in determining
the policy of monarchs, and that it would certainly have been better
that the Spanish throne should pass to the descendant of a French king
than that the two Sicilies and other points of vantage on the
Mediterranean should pass to a future French king himself. But those who
so argue rely too much upon general principles and pay too little
attention to the facts of the particular case. One might readily admit
that ties of kindred count for little in determining the policy of
monarchs, and at the same time retain the full conviction that the
subsistence of the relation of grandfather and grandson between the then
King of France--the man and the circumstances being what they were--and
the King of Spain would have been fraught with the most disastrous
consequences for all Europe. There could be no serious doubt that the
Duke of Anjou or the Duke of Berry would be a mere puppet with his
strings pulled from beyond the Pyrenees, and that the whole resources of
his kingdom would at once have been drawn upon by Louis to enable him to
resume the war. Had the French crown rested upon another head, or even
had there been any probability that the new occupant of the Spanish
throne would have time allowed him to outgrow the _regni novitas_ and
strike out a policy of his own, the case would have been different. But
we must judge of the situation by the light of the facts as they were.
It is beside the point to argue that because a grandson of Louis after
all succeeded the Spanish king, and after a desolating war for his
dethronement continued to reign over Spain, and his children after him,
without Europe being "a penny the worse"--it is beside the point, I say,
to argue that an arrangement which operated not amiss for Europe from
1712 onwards would have been tolerable in 1698. Philip V. was well
enough as a king of Spain, after his grandfather's power had been
brought low by a dozen more years of European war, but Philip of Anjou,
the nominee and instrument of Louis XIV., at the close of the previous
century, would have been a weapon pointed at the breast of free and
Protestant Europe. You cannot judge of the strength or keenness of a
dagger by merely estimating its power in the grasp of a failing hand.
Doubtless, however, the complaints both contemporary and subsequent of
the provisions of the Partition Treaty were to some extent stimulated by
the circumstances of its arrangement. It is well known that William,
acting as his own Foreign Minister, carried his official independence so
far as to conduct the whole of the negotiations with Louis from
beginning to end without any reference to, or at least any effective
consultation of, a single English Minister. Somers, it is true, had been
told before the King's departure for Loo that Lord Portland had been
sounded by Louis with reference to an agreement with England concerning
the Spanish succession; but it was not till the terms were actually
arranged that William wrote to Somers for his opinion upon them,
"leaving it to his judgment to whom else he might think it proper to
impart them," and adding "if it be fit that this negotiation be carried
on there is no time to be lost, and you will send me the full powers
under the Great Seal, with the names in blank, to treat with Count
Tallard." Portland at the same time communicated directly with Vernon,
the then Secretary of State, whose consent was necessary to the imprint
of the Great Seal; and Somers himself confided the affair to several
other Ministers. But it is clear, not only from Somers's own reply to
William, but generally on the face of the whole transaction, that even
if the King's English Ministers had been competent to revise the
agreement, their suggestions would have come too late. Somers's
criticisms, though sensible in themselves, were of the most tentative
character; he excuses himself indeed that his thoughts were so ill put
together, and pleaded the known effect of the waters at Tunbridge Wells,
where he then was, in "discomposing and disturbing the head so as almost
totally to disable one from writing"; but in fact he writes with the
extreme diffidence natural to the "layman" conscious of his incapacity
to advise the expert. The commission of plenipotentiaries was then drawn
out by Secretary Vernon with the names left in blank, and the Chancellor
requested the Secretary for his warrant before affixing the Great Seal.
This, however, Vernon refused to give, and Somers thereupon sealed the
powers with his own hand, taking care, however, to keep the King's
letter as a justification or an excuse for the act. That the whole
proceeding was unconstitutional, according to the fully developed theory
of the constitution, is of course obvious, and it is only a partial and
not a complete defence of William's share in it that the theory in
question was nothing like so fully developed or so firmly established as
it is at the present day. It is all very well to say that "William was
his own Foreign Minister,"--a statement which is repeated by Whig
writers, as though it sufficed to explain any conceivable
irregularity,--but the mere fact of his being unable to complete the
legal execution of a treaty without calling in the assistance of a
Minister (or rather, as it really should have been, if the Chancellor
had not taken upon him to dispense with the Secretary's co-operation, of
two Ministers), must have been a sufficient indication to the King of
the even _then_ constitutional limits of his prerogative. The _form_, in
short, was eloquent of the _fact_. It would have been plainly irrational
to suppose that the royal treaty-making power would have been made
exercisable only under the authority of an instrument validated by an
act which none but a Minister or Ministers could perform, unless it were
intended that such Minister or Ministers should be as fully responsible
for the doings of the executive in foreign as in domestic affairs. And
assuredly it cannot be regarded as more than a colourable recognition of
this responsibility to procure the merely mechanical assent of Ministers
to the results of an international agreement, in the negotiations for
which they have not been permitted to take any part. It seems difficult
therefore to contend that William was not in this matter _knowingly_
over-riding constitutional restrictions, under the conviction probably
that the pressing nature of the emergency, and the danger of delaying
the Spanish settlement by deliberations with the English Ministers,
sufficiently justified the irregularity.
There was that, too, in Somers's letter which would have confirmed him
in the belief that he had done well in agreeing betimes with his
adversary. The Chancellor spoke of the "deadness and want of spirit"
universally prevailing in the nation. None, he said, were disposed to
the thought of entering on a new war; but all seemed to be tired out
with taxes, to a degree beyond what was discerned till it appeared upon
the occasion of the late elections. And, indeed, the lesson of these
elections was too significant to be missed. A great change had passed
over the mind of the country since the return of the Parliament of 1695,
and the overthrow of the Tory ascendency by an electorate thoroughly
roused to a sense of the duty of prosecuting the war, and to that end
supporting the war party. In 1698, although the Tory ranks were not very
largely recruited, nor those of the non-Ministerial Whigs materially
reduced, it is certain that many candidates on both sides had been
compelled to pledge themselves to a policy of peace and retrenchment.
The new Parliament was opened by the King on the 6th of December, and
the temper of the House of Commons was not long in declaring itself. The
Ministerial party succeeded in carrying the election of their Speaker,
Sir Thomas Littleton, but they were utterly powerless to sustain their
master's military policy against the mass of opposition which it had to
encounter. A resolution was adopted cutting down the army to 7000 men,
"and these to consist of his Majesty's natural-born subjects." To
William, whose Ministers had held out hopes to him that a force of at
least 10,000 men would be sanctioned by Parliament, and who personally
held that anything less than double that number would be insufficient, a
resolution which would not only have inexcusably weakened, in his
opinion, the defences of England, but have deprived him even of the
services of those Dutch Guards who had fought with such signal bravery
for the liberties of that country, caused natural and bitter chagrin. He
gave the royal assent to the Bill founded upon this resolution, but he
gave it in a speech through the dignified composure of which his grave
concern and disappointment perceptibly struggle. A later attempt to save
his Dutch Guards, almost pathetic in its character,[18] proved
unsuccessful; and, when, in reply to this appeal, the Commons reminded
him that he had promised in 1688 to "send all foreign troops that came
over with him back again," so narrow and ungenerous an insistence on the
strict letter of his pledge must no doubt have added to his
mortification.
The occasion of this second attempt was an event to be shortly noticed,
which might have been thought likely to dispose the Parliament to a more
liberal view of military necessities; and William has been censured by
his greatest admirer for not having applied to the House for an increase
of the English establishment instead of striving to retain a force of
his countrymen. It is not a matter for regret, however, that this
mistake, if mistake it was, should have been committed; for it enables
us pretty accurately to measure the respective proportions of reason and
prejudice in the conduct of Parliament. So far as the motive of the
House of Commons in these military retrenchments was a purely economical
one--so far even as it implied blindness to those European
considerations which our insular position no more absolved us from
regarding in 1698 than it does to-day--this motive was, if mistaken,
respectable. Even that exaggerated dread of a standing army, which, no
doubt, had more to do with the decision of the parliamentary majority
than any theory, good, bad, or indifferent, of the probable course of
European affairs, would not deserve to be severely judged. But it is
difficult to attribute the refusal of the House of Commons to sanction
William's retention of his body-guard to any worthier motive than mere
jealousy of the foreigner. It was a step as unwise from the political
point of view, and in its bearing on the relations of sovereign and
subject, as on the moral side it was ungracious. One can well understand
that the personal affront involved in it may have been harder for the
King to bear than even the rejection of his general military demands.
Anyhow there seems no doubt that upon learning the decision of the House
in the matter of the army William did seriously contemplate retirement
to Holland, after abdicating in favour of the Princess Anne, and that
nothing but the firmness of Somers prevented him from carrying his
resolution into effect. So at least Somers himself believed; and
Somers's knowledge of the royal mind, as well as of the royal character,
was distinctly superior to that of Burnet, who treated the threat of
withdrawal as not seriously meant. And when, having schooled himself to
submit with dignity and grace to this rebuff, he found himself
churlishly denied the slight personal favour which he subsequently
requested, his bitterness of feeling was, we may well believe,
extreme.[19] The whole incident is one which no Englishman of the
present day, whatever his politics, can look back upon without a sense
of shame.
William, it may be imagined, was not sorry to put an end to a
parliamentary session so fraught with unpleasant incidents. Nor, after
the settlement of the military question, was there much more business to
be done. Its despatch, however, was attended by one occurrence which
deserves notice here as having prepared the way for one of the gravest
political conflicts of the reign. Defeated by the manoeuvre above
referred to in their attack upon the Crown grants, the country party
brought their forces to bear upon a position at once more limited and
more assailable. They demanded a commission of inquiry into the disposal
of the Irish forfeitures, and to insure the accomplishment of their
object they resorted to the questionable expedient of "tacking" to a
money Bill which they were sending to the Upper House a clause
authorising the appointment of seven commissioners to carry out the
proposed investigation. To this virtual "ouster" of their jurisdiction
over the question the Lords very naturally objected. They could not
reject the Land Tax Bill, the measure to which this clause had been
tacked, without creating national confusion; and rejection without
amendment was their only constitutional alternative to accepting
it--commissioners' clause, and all. They demurred, but ultimately
yielded, under protest; and William, not as it seems without foreboding
of future trouble, assented to the Bill with its irrelevant rider.
It was now the month of May, and the Houses, having held uninterrupted
session ever since the 1st of January, had fairly earned their recess.
On the 4th of the month the King came down to Westminster and bade his
Parliament a cold adieu.
FOOTNOTES:
[17] It is with a mixture of amusement and admiration that one reads in
Grimblot (i. 220) the account he gives of one of his diplomatic
receptions: "The King had sent the Duke d'Aumont, his first gentleman of
the bedchamber, to compliment me. After this the Duchess of Burgundy
sent the Marquis de Villacerf. They then began to make new pretensions,
requiring me to go and meet him half-way down the steps, as I had done
the former nobleman, and I refused to receive him except at the door of
the antechamber, which is at the top of the stairs. This gave rise to a
lengthened dispute, during which he was standing half-way up the steps,
and I at the top, while messengers passed backwards and forwards between
us. At length I sent him word that, if this did not content him, it
would be best for each of us to go our own way, without my having the
honour of seeing him, for that undoubtedly I should do no more, after
which he came up." Upon this grandee's leaving another difficulty arose.
Portland, although he conducted him back to his carriage, did not wait
to "see him depart," on which the "conductor of ambassadors" made great
complaints. The dispute as to the proper ceremony of reception was
renewed by the next arrival, when the conductor of ambassadors behaved
impertinently in public, "obliging me," says Portland, "to treat him as
became a person who has the honour to represent your Majesty," whereat
the conductor of ambassadors was "confounded and irritated."
[18] The message from the King runs thus: "His Majesty is pleased to let
the House know that the necessary preparations are made for transporting
the Guards who came with him into England, and that he intends to send
them away immediately, unless out of consideration for him the House be
disposed to find a way for continuing them longer in his service, which
his Majesty would take very kindly."
[19] He writes in a letter to Lord Galway, Jan. 27, 1699: "It is not
possible to be more sensibly touched than I am at my not being able to
do more for the poor refugee officers who have served me with so much
zeal and fidelity. I am afraid the good God will punish the ingratitude
of this nation. Assuredly on all sides my patience is put to the
trial."