THE Revolution
had been accomplished. The decrees of the Convention were everywhere
received with submission. London, true during fifty eventful years
to the cause of civil freedom and of the reformed religion, was
foremost in professing loyalty to the new Sovereigns. Garter King at
arms, after making proclamation under the windows of Whitehall, rode
in state along the Strand to Temple Bar. He was followed by the
maces of the two Houses, by the two Speakers, Halifax and Powle, and
by a long train of coaches filled with noblemen and gentlemen. The
magistrates of the City threw open their gates and joined the
procession. Four regiments of militia lined the way up Ludgate Hill,
round Saint Paul's Cathedral, and along Cheapside. The streets, the
balconies, and the very housetops were crowded with gazers. All the
steeples from the Abbey to the Tower sent forth a joyous din. The
proclamation was repeated, with sound of trumpet, in front of the
Royal Exchange, amidst the shouts of the citizens.
In the evening
every window from Whitechapel to Piccadilly was lighted up. The
state rooms of the palace were thrown open, and were filled by a
gorgeous company of courtiers desirous to kiss the hands of the King
and Queen. The Whigs assembled there, flushed with victory and
prosperity. There were among them some who might be pardoned if a
vindictive feeling mingled with their joy. The most deeply injured
of all who had survived the evil times was absent. Lady Russell,
while her friends were crowding the galleries of Whitehall,
remained in her retreat, thinking of one who, if he had been still
living, would have held no undistinguished place in the ceremonies
of that great day. But her daughter, who had a few months before
become the wife of Lord Cavendish, was presented to the royal pair
by his mother the Countess of Devonshire. A letter is still extant
in which the young lady described with great vivacity the roar of
the populace, the blaze in the streets, the throng in the presence
chamber, the beauty of Mary, and the expression which ennobled and
softened the harsh features of William. But the most interesting
passage is that in which the orphan girl avowed the stern delight
with which she had witnessed the tardy punishment of her father's
murderer.
The example of
London was followed by the provincial towns. During three weeks the
Gazettes were filled with accounts of the solemnities by which the
public joy manifested itself, cavalcades of gentlemen and yeomen,
processions of Sheriffs and Bailiffs in scarlet gowns, musters of
zealous Protestants with orange flags and ribands, salutes,
bonfires, illuminations, music, balls, dinners, gutters running with
ale and conduits spouting claret.
Still more
cordial was the rejoicing among the Dutch, when they learned that
the first minister of their Commonwealth had been raised to a
throne. On the very day of his accession he had written to assure
the States General that the change in his situation had made no
change in the affection which he bore to his native land, and that
his new dignity would, he hoped, enable him to discharge his old
duties more efficiently than ever. That oligarchical party, which
had always been hostile to the doctrines of Calvin and to the House
of Orange, muttered faintly that His Majesty ought to resign the
Stadtholdership. But all such mutterings were drowned by the
acclamations of a people proud of the genius and success of their
great countryman. A day of thanksgiving was appointed. In all the
cities of the Seven Provinces the public joy manifested itself by
festivities of which the expense was chiefly defrayed by voluntary
gifts. Every class assisted. The poorest labourer could help to set
up an arch of triumph, or to bring sedge to a bonfire. Even the
ruined Huguenots of France could contribute the aid of their
ingenuity.
One art which
they had carried with them into banishment was the art of making
fireworks; and they now, in honour of the victorious champion of
their faith, lighted up the canals of Amsterdam with showers of
splendid constellations.
To superficial
observers it might well seem that William was, at this time, one of
the most enviable of human beings. He was in truth one of the most
anxious and unhappy. He well knew that the difficulties of his task
were only beginning. Already that dawn which had lately been so
bright was overcast; and many signs portended a dark and stormy day.
It was
observed that two important classes took little or no part in the
festivities by which, all over England, the inauguration of the new
government was celebrated. Very seldom could either a priest or a
soldier be seen in the assemblages which gathered round the market
crosses where the King and Queen were proclaimed. The professional
pride both of the clergy and of the army had been deeply wounded.
The doctrine of nonresistance had been dear to the Anglican divines.
It was their distinguishing badge. It was their favourite theme. If
we are to judge by that portion of their oratory which has come down
to us, they had preached about the duty of passive obedience at
least as often and as zealously as about the Trinity or the
Atonement. Their attachment to their political creed had indeed been
severely tried, and had, during a short time, wavered. But with the
tyranny of James the bitter feeling which that tyranny had excited
among them had passed away. The parson of a parish was naturally
unwilling to join in what was really a triumph over those principles
which, during twenty-eight years, his flock had heard him proclaim
on every anniversary of the Martyrdom and on every anniversary of
the Restoration.
The soldiers,
too, were discontented. They hated Popery indeed; and they had not
loved the banished King. But they keenly felt that, in the short
campaign which had decided the fate of their country, theirs had
been an inglorious part. Forty fine regiments, a regular army such
as had never before marched to battle under the royal standard of
England, had retreated precipitately before an invader, and had
then, without a struggle, submitted to him. That great force had
been absolutely of no account in the late change, had done nothing
towards keeping William out, and had done nothing towards bringing
him in. The clowns, who, armed with pitchforks and mounted on
carthorses, had straggled in the train of Lovelace or Delamere, had
borne a greater part in the Revolution than those splendid household
troops, whose plumed hats, embroidered coats, and curvetting
chargers the Londoners had so often seen with admiration in Hyde
Park. The mortification of the army was increased by the taunts of
the foreigners, taunts which neither orders nor punishments could
entirely restrain. At several places the anger which a brave and
highspirited body of men might, in such circumstances, be expected
to feel, showed itself in an alarming manner. A battalion which lay
at Cirencester put out the bonfires, huzzaed for King James, and
drank confusion to his daughter and his nephew. The garrison of
Plymouth disturbed the rejoicings of the County of Cornwall: blows
were exchanged, and a man was killed in the fray.
The ill humour
of the clergy and of the army could not but be noticed by the most
heedless; for the clergy and the army were distinguished from other
classes by obvious peculiarities of garb. "Black coats and red
coats," said a vehement Whig in the House of Commons, "are the
curses of the nation." But the discontent was not confined to the
black coats and the red coats. The enthusiasm with which men of all
classes had welcomed William to London at Christmas had greatly
abated before the close of February. The new king had, at the very
moment at which his fame and fortune reached the highest point,
predicted the coming reaction. That reaction might, indeed, have
been predicted by a less sagacious observer of human affairs. For it
is to be chiefly ascribed to a law as certain as the laws which
regulate the succession of the seasons and the course of the trade
winds. It is the nature of man to overrate present evil, and to
underrate present good; to long for what he has not, and to be
dissatisfied with what he has. This propensity, as it appears in
individuals, has often been noticed both by laughing and by weeping
philosophers. It was a favourite theme of Horace and of Pascal, of
Voltaire and of Johnson. To its influence on the fate of great
communities may be ascribed most of the revolutions and
counterrevolutions recorded in history. A hundred generations have
elapsed since the first great national emancipation, of which an
account has come down to us. We read in the most ancient of books
that a people bowed to the dust under a cruel yoke, scourged to toil
by hard taskmasters, not supplied with straw, yet compelled to
furnish the daily tale of bricks, became sick of life, and raised
such a cry of misery as pierced the heavens. The slaves were
wonderfully set free: at the moment of their liberation they raised
a song of gratitude and triumph: but, in a few hours, they began to
regret their slavery, and to murmur against the leader who had
decoyed them away from the savoury fare of the house of bondage to
the dreary waste which still separated them from the land flowing
with milk and honey. Since that time the history of every great
deliverer has been the history of Moses retold. Down to the present
hour rejoicings like those on the shore of the Red Sea have ever
been speedily followed by murmurings like those at the Waters of
Strife. The most just and salutary revolution must produce much
suffering. The most just and salutary revolution cannot produce all
the good that had been expected from it by men of uninstructed minds
and sanguine tempers. Even the wisest cannot, while it is still
recent, weigh quite fairly the evils which it has caused against the
evils which it has removed. For the evils which it has caused are
felt; and the evils which it has removed are felt no longer.
Thus it was
now in England. The public was, as it always is during the cold fits
which follow its hot fits, sullen, hard to please, dissatisfied with
itself, dissatisfied with those who had lately been its favourites.
The truce between the two great parties was at an end. Separated by
the memory of all that had been done and suffered during a conflict
of half a century, they had been, during a few months, united by a
common danger. But the danger was over: the union was dissolved; and
the old animosity broke forth again in all its strength.
James had
during the last year of his reign, been even more hated by the
Tories than by the Whigs; and not without cause for the Whigs he was
only an enemy; and to the Tories he had been a faithless and
thankless friend. But the old royalist feeling, which had seemed to
be extinct in the time of his lawless domination, had been partially
revived by his misfortunes. Many lords and gentlemen, who had, in
December, taken arms for the Prince of Orange and a Free Parliament,
muttered, two months later, that they had been drawn in; that they
had trusted too much to His Highness's Declaration; that they had
given him credit for a disinterestedness which, it now appeared, was
not in his nature. They had meant to put on King James, for his own
good, some gentle force, to punish the Jesuits and renegades who had
misled him, to obtain from him some guarantee for the safety of the
civil and ecclesiastical institutions of the realm, but not to
uncrown and banish him. For his maladministration, gross as it had
been, excuses were found. Was it strange that, driven from his
native land, while still a boy, by rebels who were a disgrace to the
Protestant name, and forced to pass his youth in countries where the
Roman Catholic religion was established, he should have been
captivated by that most attractive of all superstitions? Was it
strange that, persecuted and calumniated as he had been by an
implacable faction, his disposition should have become sterner and
more severe than it had once been thought, and that, when those who
had tried to blast his honour and to rob him of his birthright were
at length in his power, he should not have sufficiently tempered
justice with mercy? As to the worst charge which had been brought
against him, the charge of trying to cheat his daughters out of
their inheritance by fathering a supposititious child, on what
grounds did it rest? Merely on slight circumstances, such as might
well be imputed to accident, or to that imprudence which was but too
much in harmony with his character. Did ever the most stupid country
justice put a boy in the stocks without requiring stronger evidence
than that on which the English people had pronounced their King
guilty of the basest and most odious of all frauds? Some great
faults he had doubtless committed, nothing could be more just or
constitutional than that for those faults his advisers and tools
should be called to a severe reckoning; nor did any of those
advisers and tools more richly deserve punishment than the Roundhead
sectaries whose adulation had encouraged him to persist in the fatal
exercise of the dispensing power. It was a fundamental law of the
land that the King could do no wrong, and that, if wrong were done
by his authority, his counsellors and agents were responsible. That
great rule, essential to our polity, was now inverted. The
sycophants, who were legally punishable, enjoyed impunity: the King,
who was not legally punishable, was punished with merciless
severity. Was it possible for the Cavaliers of England, the sons of
the warriors who had fought under Rupert, not to feel bitter sorrow
and indignation when they reflected on the fate of their rightful
liege lord, the heir of a long line of princes, lately enthroned in
splendour at Whitehall, now an exile, a suppliant, a mendicant? His
calamities had been greater than even those of the Blessed Martyr
from whom he sprang. The father had been slain by avowed and mortal
foes: the ruin of the son had been the work of his own children.
Surely the punishment, even if deserved, should have been inflicted
by other hands. And was it altogether deserved? Had not the unhappy
man been rather weak and rash than wicked? Had he not some of the
qualities of an excellent prince? His abilities were certainly not
of a high order: but he was diligent: he was thrifty: he had fought
bravely: he had been his own minister for maritime affairs, and had,
in that capacity, acquitted himself respectably: he had, till his
spiritual guides obtained a fatal ascendency over his mind, been
regarded as a man of strict justice; and, to the last, when he was
not misled by them, he generally spoke truth and dealt fairly. With
so many virtues he might, if he had been a Protestant, nay, if he
had been moderate Roman Catholic, have had a prosperous and
glorious reign. Perhaps it might not be too late for him to retrieve
his errors. It was difficult to believe that he could be so dull and
perverse as not to have profited by the terrible discipline which he
had recently undergone; and, if that discipline had produced the
effects which might reasonably be expected from it, England might
still enjoy, under her legitimate ruler, a larger measure of
happiness and tranquillity than she could expect from the
administration of the best and ablest usurper.
We should do
great injustice to those who held this language, if we supposed that
they had, as a body, ceased to regard Popery and despotism with
abhorrence. Some zealots might indeed be found who could not bear
the thought of imposing conditions on their King, and who were ready
to recall him without the smallest assurance that the Declaration of
Indulgence should not be instantly republished, that the High
Commission should not be instantly revived, that Petre should not be
again seated at the Council Board, and that the fellows of Magdalene
should not again be ejected. But the number of these men was small.
On the other hand, the number of those Royalists, who, if James
would have acknowledged his mistakes and promised to observe the
laws, were ready to rally round him, was very large. It is a
remarkable fact that two able and experienced statesmen, who had
borne a chief part in the Revolution, frankly acknowledged, a few
days after the Revolution had been accomplished, their apprehension
that a Restoration was close at hand. "If King James were a
Protestant," said Halifax to Reresby, "we could not keep him out
four months." "If King James," said Danby to the same person about
the same time, "would but give the country some satisfaction about
religion, which he might easily do, it would be very hard to make
head against him." Happily for England, James was, as usual, his own
worst enemy. No word indicating that he took blame to himself on
account of the past, or that he intended to govern constitutionally
for the future, could be extracted from him. Every letter, every
rumour, that found its way from Saint Germains to England made men
of sense fear that, if, in his present temper, he should be restored
to power, the second tyranny would be worse than the first. Thus the
Tories, as a body, were forced to admit, very unwillingly, that
there was, at that moment, no choice but between William and public
ruin. They therefore, without altogether relinquishing the hope that
he who was King by right might at some future time be disposed to
listen to reason, and without feeling any thing like loyalty towards
him who was King in possession, discontentedly endured the new
government.
It may be
doubted whether that government was not, during the first months of
its existence, in more danger from the affection of the Whigs than
from the disaffection of the Tories. Enmity can hardly be more
annoying than querulous, jealous, exacting fondness; and such was
the fondness which the Whigs felt for the Sovereign of their choice.
They were loud in his praise. They were ready to support him with
purse and sword against foreign and domestic foes. But their
attachment to him was of a peculiar kind. Loyalty such as had
animated the gallant gentlemen who fought for Charles the First,
loyalty such as had rescued Charles the Second from the fearful
dangers and difficulties caused by twenty years of
maladministration, was not a sentiment to which the doctrines of
Milton and Sidney were favourable; nor was it a sentiment which a
prince, just raised to power by a rebellion, could hope to inspire.
The Whig theory of government is that kings exist for the people,
and not the people for the kings; that the right of a king is divine
in no other sense than that in which the right of a member of
parliament, of a judge, of a juryman, of a mayor, of a headborough,
is divine; that, while the chief magistrate governs according to
law, he ought to be obeyed and reverenced; that, when he violates
the law, he ought to be withstood; and that, when he violates the
law grossly, systematically and pertinaciously, he ought to be
deposed. On the truth of these principles depended the justice of
William's title to the throne. It is obvious that the relation
between subjects who held these principles, and a ruler whose
accession had been the triumph of these principles, must have been
altogether different from the relation which had subsisted between
the Stuarts and the Cavaliers. The Whigs loved William indeed: but
they loved him not as a King, but as a party leader; and it was not
difficult to foresee that their enthusiasm would cool fast if he
should refuse to be the mere leader of their party, and should
attempt to be King of the whole nation. What they expected from him
in return for their devotion to his cause was that he should be one
of themselves, a stanch and ardent Whig; that he should show favour
to none but Whigs; that he should make all the old grudges of the
Whigs his own; and there was but too much reason to apprehend that,
if he disappointed this expectation, the only section of the
community which was zealous in his cause would be estranged from
him.
Such were the
difficulties by which, at the moment of his elevation, he found
himself beset. Where there was a good path he had seldom failed to
choose it. But now he had only a choice among paths every one of
which seemed likely to lead to destruction. From one faction he
could hope for no cordial support. The cordial support of the other
faction he could retain only by becoming himself the most factious
man in his kingdom, a Shaftesbury on the throne. If he persecuted
the Tories, their sulkiness would infallibly be turned into fury. If
he showed favour to the Tories, it was by no means certain that he
would gain their goodwill; and it was but too probable that he
might lose his hold on the hearts of the Whigs. Something however he
must do: something he must risk: a Privy Council must be sworn in:
all the great offices, political and judicial, must be filled. It
was impossible to make an arrangement that would please every body,
and difficult to make an arrangement that would please any body; but
an arrangement must be made.
What is now
called a ministry he did not think of forming. Indeed what is now
called a ministry was never known in England till he had been some
years on the throne. Under the Plantagenets, the Tudors, and the
Stuarts, there had been ministers; but there had been no ministry.
The servants of the Crown were not, as now, bound in frankpledge for
each other. They were not expected to be of the same opinion even on
questions of the gravest importance. Often they were politically and
personally hostile to each other, and made no secret of their
hostility. It was not yet felt to be inconvenient or unseemly that
they should accuse each other of high crimes, and demand each
other's heads. No man had been more active in the impeachment of the
Lord Chancellor Clarendon than Coventry, who was a Commissioner of
the Treasury. No man had been more active in the impeachment of the
Lord Treasurer Danby than Winnington, who was Solicitor General.
Among the members of the Government there was only one point of
union, their common head, the Sovereign. The nation considered him
as the proper chief of the administration, and blamed him severely
if he delegated his high functions to any subject. Clarendon has
told us that nothing was so hateful to the Englishmen of his time as
a Prime Minister. They would rather, he said, be subject to an
usurper like Oliver, who was first magistrate in fact as well as in
name, than to a legitimate King who referred them to a Grand Vizier.
One of the chief accusations which the country party had brought
against Charles the Second was that he was too indolent and too fond
of pleasure to examine with care the balance sheets of public
accountants and the inventories of military stores. James, when he
came to the crown, had determined to appoint no Lord High Admiral or
Board of Admiralty, and to keep the entire direction of maritime
affairs in his own hands; and this arrangement, which would now be
thought by men of all parties unconstitutional and pernicious in the
highest degree, was then generally applauded even by people who were
not inclined to see his conduct in a favourable light. How
completely the relation in which the King stood to his Parliament
and to his ministers had been altered by the Revolution was not at
first understood even by the most enlightened statesmen. It was
universally supposed that the government would, as in time past, be
conducted by functionaries independent of each other, and that
William would exercise a general superintendence over them all. It
was also fully expected that a prince of William's capacity and
experience would transact much important business without having
recourse to any adviser.
There were
therefore no complaints when it was understood that he had reserved
to himself the direction of foreign affairs. This was indeed
scarcely matter of choice: for, with the single exception of Sir
William Temple, whom nothing would induce to quit his retreat for
public life, there was no Englishman who had proved himself capable
of conducting an important negotiation with foreign powers to a
successful and honourable issue. Many years had elapsed since
England had interfered with weight and dignity in the affairs of the
great commonwealth of nations. The attention of the ablest English
politicians had long been almost exclusively occupied by disputes
concerning the civil and ecclesiastical constitution of their own
country. The contests about the Popish Plot and the Exclusion Bill,
the Habeas Corpus Act and the Test Act, had produced an abundance,
it might almost be said a glut, of those talents which raise men to
eminence in societies torn by internal factions. All the Continent
could not show such skilful and wary leaders of parties, such
dexterous parliamentary tacticians, such ready and eloquent
debaters, as were assembled at Westminister. But a very different
training was necessary to form a great minister for foreign affairs;
and the Revolution had on a sudden placed England in a situation in
which the services of a great minister for foreign affairs were
indispensable to her.
William was
admirably qualified to supply that in which the most accomplished
statesmen of his kingdom were deficient. He had long been
preeminently distinguished as a negotiator. He was the author and
the soul of the European coalition against the French ascendency.
The clue, without which it was perilous to enter the vast and
intricate maze of Continental politics, was in his hands. His
English counsellors, therefore, however able and active, seldom,
during his reign, ventured to meddle with that part of the public
business which he had taken as his peculiar province.
The internal
government of England could be carried on only by the advice and
agency of English ministers. Those ministers William selected in
such a manner as showed that he was determined not to proscribe any
set of men who were willing to support his throne. On the day after
the crown had been presented to him in the Banqueting House, the
Privy Council was sworn in. Most of the Councillors were Whigs; but
the names of several eminent Tories appeared in the list. The four
highest offices in the state were assigned to four noblemen, the
representatives of four classes of politicians.
In practical
ability and official experience Danby had no superior among his
contemporaries. To the gratitude of the new Sovereigns he had a
strong claim; for it was by his dexterity that their marriage had
been brought about in spite of difficulties which had seemed
insuperable. The enmity which he had always borne to France was a
scarcely less powerful recommendation. He had signed the invitation
of the thirtieth of June, had excited and directed the northern
insurrection, and had, in the Convention, exerted all his influence
and eloquence in opposition to the scheme of Regency. Yet the Whigs
regarded him with unconquerable distrust and aversion. They could
not forget that he had, in evil days, been the first minister of the
state, the head of the Cavaliers, the champion of prerogative, the
persecutor of dissenters. Even in becoming a rebel, he had not
ceased to be a Tory. If he had drawn the sword against the Crown, he
had drawn it only in defence of the Church. If he had, in the
Convention, done good by opposing the scheme of Regency, he had done
harm by obstinately maintaining that the throne was not vacant, and
that the Estates had no right to determine who should fill it. The
Whigs were therefore of opinion that he ought to think himself amply
rewarded for his recent merits by being suffered to escape the
punishment of those offences for which he had been impeached ten
years before. He, on the other hand, estimated his own abilities and
services, which were doubtless considerable, at their full value,
and thought himself entitled to the great place of Lord High
Treasurer, which he had formerly held. But he was disappointed.
William, on principle, thought it desirable to divide the power and
patronage of the Treasury among several Commissioners. He was the
first English King who never, from the beginning to the end of his
reign, trusted the white staff in the hands of a single subject.
Danby was offered his choice between the Presidency of the Council
and a Secretaryship of State. He sullenly accepted the Presidency,
and, while the Whigs murmured at seeing him placed so high, hardly
attempted to conceal his anger at not having been placed higher.
Halifax, the
most illustrious man of that small party which boasted that it kept
the balance even between Whigs and Tories, took charge of the Privy
Seal, and continued to be Speaker of the House of Lords.14 He had
been foremost in strictly legal opposition to the late Government,
and had spoken and written with great ability against the dispensing
power: but he had refused to know any thing about the design of
invasion: he had laboured, even when the Dutch were in full march
towards London, to effect a reconciliation; and he had never
deserted James till James had deserted the throne. But, from the
moment of that shameful flight, the sagacious Trimmer, convinced
that compromise was thenceforth impossible, had taken a decided
part. He had distinguished himself preeminently in the Convention:
nor was it without a peculiar propriety that he had been appointed
to the honourable office of tendering the crown, in the name of all
the Estates of England, to the Prince and Princess of Orange; for
our Revolution, as far as it can be said to bear the character of
any single mind, assuredly bears the character of the large yet
cautious mind of Halifax. The Whigs, however, were not in a temper
to accept a recent service as an atonement for an old offence; and
the offence of Halifax had been grave indeed. He had long before
been conspicuous in their front rank during a hard fight for
liberty. When they were at length victorious, when it seemed that
Whitehall was at their mercy, when they had a near prospect of
dominion and revenge, he had changed sides; and fortune had changed
sides with him. In the great debate on the Exclusion Bill, his
eloquence had struck them dumb, and had put new life into the inert
and desponding party of the Court. It was true that, though he had
left them in the day of their insolent prosperity, he had returned
to them in the day of their distress. But, now that their distress
was over, they forgot that he had returned to them, and remembered
only that he had left them.
The vexation
with which they saw Danby presiding in the Council, and Halifax
bearing the Privy Seal, was not diminished by the news that
Nottingham was appointed Secretary of State. Some of those zealous
churchmen who had never ceased to profess the doctrine of
nonresistance, who thought the Revolution unjustifiable, who had
voted for a Regency, and who had to the last maintained that the
English throne could never be one moment vacant, yet conceived it to
be their duty to submit to the decision of the Convention. They had
not, they said, rebelled against James. They had not selected
William. But, now that they saw on the throne a Sovereign whom they
never would have placed there, they were of opinion that no law,
divine or human, bound them to carry the contest further. They
thought that they found, both in the Bible and in the Statute Book,
directions which could not be misunderstood. The Bible enjoins
obedience to the powers that be. The Statute Book contains an act
providing that no subject shall be deemed a wrongdoer for adhering
to the King in possession. On these grounds many, who had not
concurred in setting up the new government, believed that they might
give it their support without offence to God or man. One of the most
eminent politicians of this school was Nottingham. At his instance
the Convention had, before the throne was filled, made such changes
in the oath of allegiance as enabled him and those who agreed with
him to take that oath without scruple. "My principles," he said, "do
not permit me to bear any part in making a King. But when a King has
been made, my principles bind me to pay him an obedience more strict
than he can expect from those who have made him." He now, to the
surprise of some of those who most esteemed him, consented to sit in
the council, and to accept the seals of Secretary. William doubtless
hoped that this appointment would be considered by the clergy and
the Tory country gentlemen as a sufficient guarantee that no evil
was meditated against the Church. Even Burnet, who at a later period
felt a strong antipathy to Nottingham, owned, in some memoirs
written soon after the Revolution, that the King had judged well,
and that the influence of the Tory Secretary, honestly exerted in
support of the new Sovereigns, had saved England from great
calamities.
The other
Secretary was Shrewsbury. No man so young had within living memory
occupied so high a post in the government. He had but just completed
his twenty-eighth year. Nobody, however, except the solemn
formalists at the Spanish embassy, thought his youth an objection to
his promotion.18 He had already secured for himself a place in
history by the conspicuous part which he had taken in the
deliverance of his country. His talents, his accomplishments, his
graceful manners, his bland temper, made him generally popular. By
the Whigs especially he was almost adored. None suspected that, with
many great and many amiable qualities, he had such faults both of
head and of heart as would make the rest of a life which had opened
under the fairest auspices burdensome to himself and almost useless
to his country. The naval administration and the financial
administration were confided to Boards. Herbert was First
Commissioner of the Admiralty. He had in the late reign given up
wealth and dignities when he found that he could not retain them
with honour and with a good conscience. He had carried the memorable
invitation to the Hague. He had commanded the Dutch fleet during the
voyage from Helvoetsluys to Torbay. His character for courage and
professional skill stood high. That he had had his follies and vices
was well known. But his recent conduct in the time of severe trial
had atoned for all, and seemed to warrant the hope that his future
career would be glorious. Among the commissioners who sate with him
at the Admiralty were two distinguished members of the House of
Commons, William Sacheverell, a veteran Whig, who had great
authority in his party, and Sir John Lowther, an honest and very
moderate Tory, who in fortune and parliamentary interest was among
the first of the English gentry.
Mordaunt, one
of the most vehement of the Whigs, was placed at the head of the
Treasury; why, it is difficult to say. His romantic courage, his
flighty wit, his eccentric invention, his love of desperate risks
and startling effects, were not qualities likely to be of much use
to him in financial calculations and negotiations. Delamere, a more
vehement Whig, if possible, than Mordaunt, sate second at the board,
and was Chancellor of the Exchequer. Two Whig members of the House
of Commons were in the Commission, Sir Henry Capel, brother of that
Earl of Essex who died by his own hand in the Tower, and Richard
Hampden, son of the great leader of the Long Parliament. But the
Commissioner on whom the chief weight of business lay was Godolphin.
This man, taciturn, clearminded, laborious, inoffensive, zealous for
no government and useful to every government, had gradually become
an almost indispensable part of the machinery of the state. Though a
churchman, he had prospered in a Court governed by Jesuits. Though
he had voted for a Regency, he was the real head of a treasury
filled with Whigs. His abilities and knowledge, which had in the
late reign supplied the deficiencies of Bellasyse and Dover, were
now needed to supply the deficiencies of Mordaunt and Delamere.
There were
some difficulties in disposing of the Great Seal. The King at first
wished to confide it to Nottingham, whose father
had borne it
during several years with high reputation. Nottingham, however,
declined the trust; and it was offered to Halifax, but was again
declined. Both these Lords doubtless felt that it was a trust which
they could not discharge with honour to themselves or with advantage
to the public. In old times, indeed, the Seal had been generally
held by persons who were not lawyers. Even in the seventeenth
century it had been confided to two eminent men, who had never
studied at any Inn of Court. Dean Williams had been Lord Keeper to
James the First. Shaftesbury had been Lord Chancellor to Charles the
Second. But such appointments could no longer be made without
serious inconvenience. Equity had been gradually shaping itself into
a refined science, which no human faculties could master without
long and intense application. Even Shaftesbury, vigorous as was his
intellect, had painfully felt his want of technical knowledge; and,
during the fifteen years which had elapsed since Shaftesbury had
resigned the Seal, technical knowledge had constantly been becoming
more and more necessary to his successors. Neither Nottingham
therefore, though he had a stock of legal learning such as is rarely
found in any person who has not received a legal education, nor
Halifax, though, in the judicial sittings of the House of Lords, the
quickness of his apprehension and the subtlety of his reasoning had
often astonished the bar, ventured to accept the highest office
which an English layman can fill. After some delay the Seal was
confided to a commission of eminent lawyers, with Maynard at their
head.
The choice of
judges did honour to the new government. Every Privy Councillor was
directed to bring a list. The lists were compared; and twelve men of
conspicuous merit were selected. The professional attainments and
Whig principles of Pollexfen gave him pretensions to the highest
place. But it was remembered that he had held briefs for the Crown,
in the Western counties, at the assizes which followed the battle of
Sedgemoor. It seems indeed from the reports of the trials that he
did as little as he could do if he held the briefs at all, and that
he left to the Judges the business of browbeating witnesses and
prisoners. Nevertheless his name was inseparably associated in the
public mind with the Bloody Circuit. He, therefore, could not with
propriety be put at the head of the first criminal court in the
realm. After acting during a few weeks as Attorney General, he was
made Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. Sir John Holt, a young man,
but distinguished by learning, integrity, and courage, became Chief
Justice of the King's Bench. Sir Robert Atkyns, an eminent lawyer,
who had passed some years in rural retirement, but whose reputation
was still great in Westminster Hall, was appointed Chief Baron.
Powell, who had been disgraced on account of his honest declaration
in favour of the Bishops, again took his seat among the judges.
Treby succeeded Pollexfen as Attorney General; and Somers was made
Solicitor.
Two of the
chief places in the Royal household were filled by two English
noblemen eminently qualified to adorn a court. The high spirited and
accomplished Devonshire was named Lord Steward. No man had done more
or risked more for England during the crisis of her fate. In
retrieving her liberties he had retrieved also the fortunes of his
own house. His bond for thirty thousand pounds was found among the
papers which James had left at Whitehall, and was cancelled by
William.
Dorset became
Lord Chamberlain, and employed the influence and patronage annexed
to his functions, as he had long employed his private means, in
encouraging genius and in alleviating misfortune. One of the first
acts which he was under the necessity of performing must have been
painful to a man of so generous a nature, and of so keen a relish
for whatever was excellent in arts and letters. Dryden could no
longer remain Poet Laureate. The public would not have borne to see
any Papist among the servants of their Majesties; and Dryden was not
only a Papist, but an apostate. He had moreover aggravated the guilt
of his apostasy by calumniating and ridiculing the Church which he
had deserted. He had, it was facetiously said, treated her as the
Pagan persecutors of old treated her children. He had dressed her up
in the skin of a wild beast, and then baited her for the public
amusement. He was removed; but he received from the private bounty
of the magnificent Chamberlain a pension equal the salary which had
been withdrawn. The deposed Laureate, however, as poor of spirit as
rich in intellectual gifts, continued to complain piteously, year
after year, of the losses which he had not suffered, till at length
his wailings drew forth expressions of well merited contempt from
brave and honest Jacobites, who had sacrificed every thing to their
principles without deigning to utter one word of deprecation or
lamentation.
In the Royal
household were placed some of those Dutch nobles who stood highest
in the favour of the King. Bentinck had the great office of Groom of
the Stole, with a salary of five thousand pounds a year. Zulestein
took charge of the robes. The Master of the Horse was Auverquerque,
a gallant soldier, who united the blood of Nassau to the blood of
Horn, and who wore with just pride a costly sword presented to him
by the States General in acknowledgment of the courage with which he
had, on the bloody day of Saint Dennis, saved the life of William.
The place of
Vice Chamberlain to the Queen was given to a man who had just become
conspicuous in public life, and whose name will frequently recur in
the history of this reign. John Howe, or, as he was more commonly
called, Jack Howe, had been sent up to the Convention by the borough
of Cirencester. His appearance was that of a man whose body was worn
by the constant workings of a restless and acrid mind. He was tall,
lean, pale, with a haggard eager look, expressive at once of
flightiness and of shrewdness. He had been known, during several
years, as a small poet; and some of the most savage lampoons which
were handed about the coffeehouses were imputed to him. But it was
in the House of Commons that both his parts and his illnature were
most signally displayed. Before he had been a member three weeks,
his volubility, his asperity, and his pertinacity had made him
conspicuous. Quickness, energy, and audacity, united, soon raised
him to the rank of a privileged man. His enemies, and he had many
enemies, said that he consulted his personal safety even in his most
petulant moods, and that he treated soldiers with a civility which
he never showed to ladies or to Bishops. But no man had in larger
measure that evil courage which braves and even courts disgust and
hatred. No decencies restrained him: his spite was implacable: his
skill in finding out the vulnerable parts of strong minds was
consummate. All his great contemporaries felt his sting in their
turns. Once it inflicted a wound which deranged even the stern
composure of William, and constrained him to utter a wish that he
were a private gentleman, and could invite Mr. Howe to a short
interview behind Montague House. As yet, however, Howe was reckoned
among the most strenuous supporters of the new government, and
directed all his sarcasms and invectives against the malcontents.
The
subordinate places in every public office were divided between the
two parties: but the Whigs had the larger share. Some persons,
indeed, who did little honour to the Whig name, were largely
recompensed for services which no good man would have performed.
Wildman was made Postmaster General. A lucrative sinecure in the
Excise was bestowed on Ferguson. The duties of the Solicitor of the
Treasury were both very important and very invidious. It was the
business of that officer to conduct political prosecutions, to
collect the evidence, to instruct the counsel for the Crown, to see
that the prisoners were not liberated on insufficient bail, to see
that the juries were not composed of persons hostile to the
government. In the days of Charles and James, the Solicitors of the
Treasury had been with too much reason accused of employing all the
vilest artifices of chicanery against men obnoxious to the Court.
The new government ought to have made a choice which was above all
suspicion. Unfortunately Mordaunt and Delamere pitched upon Aaron
Smith, an acrimonious and unprincipled politician, who had been the
legal adviser of Titus Oates in the days of the Popish Plot, and who
had been deeply implicated in the Rye House Plot. Richard Hampden, a
man of decided opinions but of moderate temper, objected to this
appointment. His objections however were overruled. The Jacobites,
who hated Smith and had reason to hate him, affirmed that he had
obtained his place by bullying the Lords of the Treasury, and
particularly by threatening that, if his just claims were
disregarded, he would be the death of Hampden.
Some weeks
elapsed before all the arrangements which have been mentioned were
publicly announced: and meanwhile many important events had taken
place. As soon as the new Privy Councillors had been sworn in, it
was necessary to submit to them a grave and pressing question. Could
the Convention now assembled be turned into a Parliament? The Whigs,
who had a decided majority in the Lower House, were all for the
affirmative. The Tories, who knew that, within the last month, the
public feeling had undergone a considerable change, and who hoped
that a general election would add to their strength, were for the
negative. They maintained that to the existence of a Parliament
royal writs were indispensably necessary. The Convention had not
been summoned by such writs: the original defect could not now be
supplied: the Houses were therefore mere clubs of private men, and
ought instantly to disperse.
It was
answered that the royal writ was mere matter of form, and that to
expose the substance of our laws and liberties to serious hazard for
the sake of a form would be the most senseless superstition.
Wherever the Sovereign, the Peers spiritual and temporal, and the
Representatives freely chosen by the constituent bodies of the realm
were met together, there was the essence of a Parliament. Such a
Parliament was now in being; and what could be more absurd than to
dissolve it at a conjuncture when every hour was precious, when
numerous important subjects required immediate legislation, and when
dangers, only to be averted by the combined efforts of King, Lords,
and Commons, menaced the State? A Jacobite indeed might consistently
refuse to recognise the Convention as a Parliament. For he held that
it had from the beginning been an unlawful assembly, that all its
resolutions were nullities, and that the Sovereigns whom it had set
up were usurpers. But with what consistency could any man, who
maintained that a new Parliament ought to be immediately called by
writs under the great seal of William and Mary, question the
authority which had placed William and Mary on the throne? Those who
held that William was rightful King must necessarily hold that the
body from which he derived his right was itself a rightful Great
Council of the Realm. Those who, though not holding him to be
rightful King, conceived that they might lawfully swear allegiance
to him as King in fact, might surely, on the same principle,
acknowledge the Convention as a Parliament in fact. It was plain
that the Convention was the fountainhead from which the authority of
all future Parliaments must be derived, and that on the validity of
the votes of the Convention must depend the validity of every future
statute. And how could the stream rise higher than the source? Was
it not absurd to say that the Convention was supreme in the state,
and yet a nullity; a legislature for the highest of all purposes,
and yet no legislature for the humblest purposes; competent to
declare the throne vacant, to change the succession, to fix the
landmarks of the constitution, and yet not competent to pass the
most trivial Act for the repairing of a pier or the building of a
parish church?
These
arguments would have had considerable weight, even if every
precedent had been on the other side. But in truth our history
afforded only one precedent which was at all in point; and that
precedent was decisive in favour of the doctrine that royal writs
are not indispensably necessary to the existence of a Parliament. No
royal writ had summoned the Convention which recalled Charles the
Second. Yet that Convention had, after his Restoration, continued to
sit and to legislate, had settled the revenue, had passed an Act of
amnesty, had abolished the feudal tenures. These proceedings had
been sanctioned by authority of which no party in the state could
speak without reverence. Hale had borne a considerable share in
them, and had always maintained that they were strictly legal.
Clarendon, little as he was inclined to favour any doctrine
derogatory to the rights of the Crown, or to the dignity of that
seal of which he was keeper, had declared that, since God had, at a
most critical conjuncture, given the nation a good Parliament, it
would be the height of folly to look for technical flaws in the
instrument by which that Parliament was called together. Would it be
pretended by any Tory that the Convention of 1660 had a more
respectable origin than the Convention of 1689? Was not a letter
written by the first Prince of the Blood, at the request of the
whole peerage, and of hundreds of gentlemen who had represented
counties and towns, at least as good a warrant as a vote of the
Rump?
Weaker reasons
than these would have satisfied the Whigs who formed the majority of
the Privy Council. The King therefore, on the fifth day after he had
been proclaimed, went with royal state to the House of Lords, and
took his seat on the throne. The Commons were called in; and he,
with many gracious expressions, reminded his hearers of the perilous
situation of the country, and exhorted them to take such steps as
might prevent unnecessary delay in the transaction of public
business. His speech was received by the gentlemen who crowded the
bar with the deep hum by which our ancestors were wont to indicate
approbation, and which was often heard in places more sacred than
the Chamber of the Peers. As soon as he had retired, a Bill
declaring the Convention a Parliament was laid on the table of the
Lords, and rapidly passed by them. In the Commons the debates were
warm. The House resolved itself into a Committee; and so great was
the excitement that, when the authority of the Speaker was
withdrawn, it was hardly possible to preserve order. Sharp
personalities were exchanged. The phrase, "hear him," a phrase which
had originally been used only to silence irregular noises, and to
remind members of the duty of attending to the discussion, had,
during some years, been gradually becoming what it now is; that is
to say, a cry indicative, according to the tone, of admiration,
acquiescence, indignation, or derision. On this occasion, the Whigs
vociferated "Hear, hear," so tumultuously that the Tories complained
of unfair usage. Seymour, the leader of the minority, declared that
there could be no freedom of debate while such clamour was
tolerated. Some old Whig members were provoked into reminding him
that the same clamour had occasionally been heard when he presided,
and had not then been repressed. Yet, eager and angry as both sides
were, the speeches on both sides indicated that profound reverence
for law and prescription which has long been characteristic of
Englishmen, and which, though it runs sometimes into pedantry and
sometimes into superstition, is not without its advantages. Even at
that momentous crisis, when the nation was still in the ferment of a
revolution, our public men talked long and seriously about all the
circumstances of the deposition of Edward the Second and of the
deposition of Richard the Second, and anxiously inquired whether the
assembly which, with Archbishop Lanfranc at its head, set aside
Robert of Normandy, and put William Rufus on the throne, did or did
not afterwards continue to act as the legislature of the realm. Much
was said about the history of writs; much about the etymology of the
word Parliament. It is remarkable, that the orator who took the most
statesmanlike view of the subject was old Maynard. In the civil
conflicts of fifty eventful years he had learned that questions
affecting the highest interests of the commonwealth were not to be
decided by verbal cavils and by scraps of Law French and Law Latin;
and, being by universal acknowledgment the most subtle and the most
learned of English jurists, he could express what he felt without
the risk of being accused of ignorance and presumption. He
scornfully thrust aside as frivolous and out of place all that
blackletter learning, which some men, far less versed in such
matters than himself, had introduced into the discussion. "We are,"
he said, "at this moment out of the beaten path. If therefore we are
determined to move only in that path, we cannot move at all. A man
in a revolution resolving to do nothing which is not strictly
according to established form resembles a man who has lost himself
in the wilderness, and who stands crying 'Where is the king's
highway? I will walk nowhere but on the king's highway.' In a
wilderness a man should take the track which will carry him home. In
a revolution we must have recourse to the highest law, the safety of
the state." Another veteran Roundhead, Colonel Birch, took the same
side, and argued with great force and keenness from the precedent of
1660. Seymour and his supporters were beaten in the Committee, and
did not venture to divide the House on the Report. The Bill passed
rapidly, and received the royal assent on the tenth day after the
accession of William and Mary.
The law which
turned the Convention into a Parliament contained a clause providing
that no person should, after the first of March, sit or vote in
either House without taking the oaths to the new King and Queen.
This enactment produced great agitation throughout society. The
adherents of the exiled dynasty hoped and confidently predicted that
the recusants would be numerous. The minority in both Houses, it was
said, would be true to the cause of hereditary monarchy. There might
be here and there a traitor; but the great body of those who had
voted for a Regency would be firm. Only two Bishops at most would
recognise the usurpers. Seymour would retire from public life rather
than abjure his principles. Grafton had determined to fly to France
and to throw himself at the feet of his uncle. With such rumours as
these all the coffeehouses of London were filled during the latter
part of February. So intense was the public anxiety that, if any man
of rank was missed, two days running, at his usual haunts, it was
immediately whispered that he had stolen away to Saint Germains.
The second of
March arrived; and the event quieted the fears of one party, and
confounded the hopes of the other. The Primate indeed and several of
his suffragans stood obstinately aloof: but three Bishops and
seventy-three temporal peers took the oaths. At the next meeting of
the Upper House several more prelates came in. Within a week about a
hundred Lords had qualified themselves to sit. Others, who were
prevented by illness from appearing, sent excuses and professions of
attachment to their Majesties. Grafton refuted all the stories which
had been circulated about him by coming to be sworn on the first
day. Two members of the Ecclesiastical Commission, Mulgrave and
Sprat, hastened to make atonement for their fault by plighting their
faith to William. Beaufort, who had long been considered as the type
of a royalist of the old school, submitted after a very short
hesitation. Aylesbury and Dartmouth, though vehement Jacobites, had
as little scruple about taking the oath of allegiance as they
afterwards had about breaking it. The Hydes took different paths.
Rochester complied with the law; but Clarendon proved refractory.
Many thought it strange that the brother who had adhered to James
till James absconded should be less sturdy than the brother who had
been in the Dutch camp. The explanation perhaps is that Rochester
would have sacrificed much more than Clarendon by refusing to take
the oaths. Clarendon's income did not depend on the pleasure of the
Government but Rochester had a pension of four thousand a year,
which he could not hope to retain if he refused to acknowledge the
new Sovereigns. Indeed, he had so many enemies that, during some
months, it seemed doubtful whether he would, on any terms, be
suffered to retain the splendid reward which he had earned by
persecuting the Whigs and by sitting in the High Commission. He was
saved from what would have been a fatal blow to his fortunes by the
intercession of Burnet, who had been deeply injured by him, and who
revenged himself as became a Christian divine.
In the Lower
House four hundred members were sworn in on the second of March; and
among them was Seymour. The spirit of the Jacobites was broken by
his defection; and the minority with very few exceptions followed
his example.
Before the day
fixed for the taking of the oaths, the Commons had begun to discuss
a momentous question which admitted of no delay. During the
interregnum, William had, as provisional chief of the
administration, collected the taxes and applied them to the public
service; nor could the propriety of this course be questioned by any
person who approved of the Revolution. But the Revolution was now
over: the vacancy of the throne had been supplied: the Houses were
sitting: the law was in full force; and it became necessary
immediately to decide to what revenue the Government was entitled.
Nobody denied
that all the lands and hereditaments of the Crown had passed with
the Crown to the new Sovereigns. Nobody denied that all duties which
had been granted to the Crown for a fixed term of years might be
constitutionally exacted till that term should expire. But large
revenues had been settled by Parliament on James for life; and
whether what had been settled on James for life could, while he
lived, be claimed by William and Mary, was a question about which
opinions were divided.
Holt, Treby,
Pollexfen, indeed all the eminent Whig lawyers, Somers excepted,
held that these revenues had been granted to the late King, in his
political capacity, but for his natural life, and ought therefore,
as long as he continued to drag on his existence in a strange land,
to be paid to William and Mary. It appears from a very concise and
unconnected report of the debate that Somers dissented from this
doctrine. His opinion was that, if the Act of Parliament which had
imposed the duties in question was to be construed according to the
spirit, the word life must be understood to mean reign, and that
therefore the term for which the grant had been made had expired.
This was surely the sound opinion: for it was plainly irrational to
treat the interest of James in this grant as at once a thing annexed
to his person and a thing annexed to his office; to say in one
breath that the merchants of London and Bristol must pay money
because he was naturally alive, and that his successors must receive
that money because he was politically defunct. The House was
decidedly with Somers. The members generally were bent on effecting
a great reform, without which it was felt that the Declaration of
Rights would be but an imperfect guarantee for public liberty.
During the conflict which fifteen successive Parliaments had
maintained against four successive Kings, the chief weapon of the
Commons had been the power of the purse; and never had the
representatives of the people been induced to surrender that weapon
without having speedy cause to repent of their too credulous
loyalty. In that season of tumultuous joy which followed the
Restoration, a large revenue for life had been almost by acclamation
granted to Charles the Second. A few months later there was scarcely
a respectable Cavalier in the kingdom who did not own that the
stewards of the nation would have acted more wisely if they had kept
in their hands the means of checking the abuses which disgraced
every department of the government. James the Second had obtained
from his submissive Parliament, without a dissentient voice, an
income sufficient to defray the ordinary expenses of the state
during his life; and, before he had enjoyed that income half a year,
the great majority of those who had dealt thus liberally with him
blamed themselves severely for their liberality. If experience was
to be trusted, a long and painful experience, there could be no
effectual security against maladministration, unless the Sovereign
were under the necessity of recurring frequently to his Great
Council for pecuniary aid. Almost all honest and enlightened men
were therefore agreed in thinking that a part at least of the
supplies ought to be granted only for short terms. And what time
could be fitter for the introduction of this new practice than the
year 1689, the commencement of a new reign, of a new dynasty, of a
new era of constitutional government? The feeling on this subject
was so strong and general that the dissentient minority gave way. No
formal resolution was passed; but the House proceeded to act on the
supposition that the grants which had been made to James for life
had been annulled by his abdication.
It was
impossible to make a new settlement of the revenue without inquiry
and deliberation. The Exchequer was ordered to furnish such returns
as might enable the House to form estimates of the public
expenditure and income. In the meantime, liberal provision was made
for the immediate exigencies of the state. An extraordinary aid, to
be raised by direct monthly assessment, was voted to the King. An
Act was passed indemnifying all who had, since his landing,
collected by his authority the duties settled on James; and those
duties which had expired were continued for some months.
Along
William's whole line of march, from Torbay to London, he had been
importuned by the common people to relieve them from the intolerable
burden of the hearth money. In truth, that tax seems to have united
all the worst evils which can be imputed to any tax. It was unequal,
and unequal in the most pernicious way: for it pressed heavily on
the poor, and lightly on the rich. A peasant, all whose property was
not worth twenty pounds, was charged ten shillings. The Duke of
Ormond, or the Duke of Newcastle, whose estates were worth half a
million, paid only four or five pounds. The collectors were
empowered to examine the interior of every house in the realm, to
disturb families at meals, to force the doors of bedrooms, and, if
the sum demanded were not punctually paid, to sell the trencher on
which the barley loaf was divided among the poor children, and the
pillow from under the head of the lying-in woman. Nor could the
Treasury effectually restrain the chimneyman from using his powers
with harshness: for the tax was farmed; and the government was
consequently forced to connive at outrages and exactions such as
have, in every age made the name of publican a proverb for all that
is most hateful.
William had
been so much moved by what he had heard of these grievances that, at
one of the earliest sittings of the Privy Council, he introduced the
subject. He sent a message requesting the House of Commons to
consider whether better regulations would effectually prevent the
abuses which had excited so much discontent. He added that he would
willingly consent to the entire abolition of the tax if it should
appear that the tax and the abuses were inseparable. This
communication was received with loud applause. There were indeed
some financiers of the old school who muttered that tenderness for
the poor was a fine thing; but that no part of the revenue of the
state came in so exactly to the day as the hearth money; that the
goldsmiths of the City could not always be induced to lend on the
security of the next quarter's customs or excise, but that on an
assignment of hearth money there was no difficulty in obtaining
advances. In the House of Commons, those who thought thus did not
venture to raise their voices in opposition to the general feeling.
But in the Lords there was a conflict of which the event for a time
seemed doubtful. At length the influence of the Court, strenuously
exerted, carried an Act by which the chimney tax was declared a
badge of slavery, and was, with many expressions of gratitude to the
King, abolished for ever.
The Commons
granted, with little dispute, and without a division, six hundred
thousand pounds for the purpose of repaying to the United Provinces
the charges of the expedition which had delivered England. The
facility with which this large sum was voted to a shrewd, diligent
and thrifty people, our allies, indeed, politically, but
commercially our most formidable rivals, excited some murmurs out of
doors, and was, during many years, a favourite subject of sarcasm
with Tory pamphleteers. The liberality of the House admits however
of an easy explanation. On the very day on which the subject was
under consideration, alarming news arrived at Westminster, and
convinced many, who would at another time have been disposed to
scrutinise severely any account sent in by the Dutch, that our
country could not yet dispense with the services of the foreign
troops. |