Molyneux soon found
that he had ventured on a perilous undertaking. A member of the
English House of Commons complained in his place that a book which
attacked the most precious privileges of the supreme legislature was
in circulation. The volume was produced; some passages were read;
and a Committee was appointed to consider the whole subject. The
Committee soon reported that the obnoxious pamphlet was only one of
several symptoms which indicated a spirit such as ought to be
suppressed. The Crown of Ireland had been most improperly described
in public instruments as an imperial Crown. The Irish Lords and
Commons had presumed, not only to reenact an English Act passed
expressly for the purpose of binding them, but to reenact it with
alterations. The alterations were indeed small; but the alteration
even of a letter was tantamount to a declaration of independence.
Several addresses were voted without a division. The King was
entreated to discourage all encroachments of subordinate powers on
the supreme authority of the English legislature, to bring to
justice the pamphleteer who had dared to question that authority, to
enforce the Acts which had been passed for the protection of the
woollen manufactures of England, and to direct the industry and
capital of Ireland into the channel of the linen trade, a trade
which might grow and flourish in Leinster and Ulster without
exciting the smallest jealousy at Norwich or at Halifax.
The King promised to do what the Commons asked; but in truth there
was little to be done. The Irish, conscious of their impotence,
submitted without a murmur. The Irish woollen manufacture languished
and disappeared, as it would, in all probability, have languished
and disappeared if it had been left to itself. Had Molyneux lived a
few months longer he would probably have been impeached. But the
close of the session was approaching; and before the Houses met
again a timely death had snatched him from their vengeance; and the
momentous question which had been first stirred by him slept a deep
sleep till it was revived in a more formidable shape, after the
lapse of twenty-six years, by the fourth letter of The Drapier.
Of the commercial questions which prolonged this session far into
the summer the most important respected India. Four years had
elapsed since the House of Commons had decided that all Englishmen
had an equal right to traffic in the Asiatic Seas, unless prohibited
by Parliament; and in that decision the King had thought it prudent
to acquiesce. Any merchant of London or Bristol might now fit out a
ship for Bengal or for China, without the least apprehension of
being molested by the Admiralty or sued in the Courts of
Westminster. No wise man, however, was disposed to stake a large sum
on such a venture. For the vote which protected him from annoyance
here left him exposed to serious risks on the other side of the Cape
of Good Hope. The Old Company, though its exclusive privileges were
no more, and though its dividends had greatly diminished, was still
in existence, and still retained its castles and warehouses, its
fleet of fine merchantmen, and its able and zealous factors,
thoroughly qualified by a long experience to transact business both
in the palaces and in the bazaars of the East, and accustomed to
look for direction to the India House alone. The private trader
therefore still ran great risk of being treated as a smuggler, if
not as a pirate. He might indeed, if he was wronged, apply for
redress to the tribunals of his country. But years must elapse
before his cause could be heard; his witnesses must be conveyed over
fifteen thousand miles of sea; and in the meantime he was a ruined
man. The experiment of free trade with India had therefore been
tried under every disadvantage, or, to speak more correctly, had not
been tried at all. The general opinion had always been that some
restriction was necessary; and that opinion had been confirmed by
all that had happened since the old restrictions had been removed.
The doors of the House of Commons were again besieged by the two
great contending factions of the City. The Old Company offered, in
return for a monopoly secured by law, a loan of seven hundred
thousand pounds; and the whole body of Tories was for accepting the
offer. But those indefatigable agitators who had, ever since the
Revolution, been striving to obtain a share in the trade of the
Eastern seas exerted themselves at this conjuncture more strenuously
than ever, and found a powerful patron in Montague.
That dexterous and eloquent statesman had two objects in view. One
was to obtain for the State, as the price of the monopoly, a sum
much larger than the Old Company was able to give. The other was to
promote the interest of his own party. Nowhere was the conflict
between Whigs and Tories sharper than in the City of London; and the
influence of the City of London was felt to the remotest corner of
the realm. To elevate the Whig section of that mighty commercial
aristocracy which congregated under the arches of the Royal
Exchange, and to depress the Tory section, had long been one of
Montague's favourite schemes. He had already formed one citadel in
the heart of that great emporium; and he now thought that it might
be in his power to erect and garrison a second stronghold in a
position scarcely less commanding. It had often been said, in times
of civil war, that whoever was master of the Tower and of Tilbury
Fort was master of London. The fastnesses by means of which Montague
proposed to keep the capital obedient in times of peace and of
constitutional government were of a different kind. The Bank was one
of his fortresses; and he trusted that a new India House would be
the other.
The task which he had undertaken was not an easy one. For, while his
opponents were united, his adherents were divided. Most of those who
were for a New Company thought that the New Company ought, like the
Old Company, to trade on a joint stock. But there were some who held
that our commerce with India would be best carried on by means of
what is called a regulated Company. There was a Turkey Company, the
members of which contributed to a general fund, and had in return
the exclusive privilege of trafficking with the Levant; but those
members trafficked, each on his own account; they forestalled each
other; they undersold each other; one became rich; another became
bankrupt. The Corporation meanwhile watched over the common interest
of all the members, furnished the Crown with the means of
maintaining an embassy at Constantinople, and placed at several
important ports consuls and vice-consuls, whose business was to keep
the Pacha and the Cadi in good humour, and to arbitrate in disputes
among Englishmen. Why might not the same system be found to answer
in regions lying still further to the east? Why should not every
member of the New Company be at liberty to export European
commodities to the countries beyond the Cape, and to bring back
shawls, saltpetre and bohea to England, while the Company, in its
collective capacity, might treat with Asiatic potentates, or exact
reparation from them, and might be entrusted with powers for the
administration of justice and for the government of forts and
factories?
Montague tried to please all those whose support was necessary to
him; and this he could effect only by bringing forward a plan so
intricate that it cannot without some pains be understood. He wanted
two millions to extricate the State from its financial
embarrassments. That sum he proposed to raise by a loan at eight per
cent. The lenders might be either individuals or corporations. But
they were all, individuals and corporations, to be united in a new
corporation, which was to be called the General Society. Every
member of the General Society, whether individual or corporation,
might trade separately with India to an extent not exceeding the
amount which such member had advanced to the government. But all the
members or any of them might, if they so thought fit, give up the
privilege of trading separately, and unite themselves under a royal
Charter for the purpose of trading in common. Thus the General
Society was, by its original constitution, a regulated company; but
it was provided that either the whole Society or any part of it
might become a joint stock company.
The opposition to the scheme was vehement and pertinacious. The Old
Company presented petition after petition. The Tories, with Seymour
at their head, appealed both to the good faith and to the compassion
of Parliament. Much was said about the sanctity of the existing
Charter, and much about the tenderness due to the numerous families
which had, in reliance on that Charter, invested their substance in
India stock. On the other side there was no want of plausible topics
or of skill to use them. Was it not strange that those who talked so
much about the Charter should have altogether overlooked the very
clause of the Charter on which the whole question turned? That
clause expressly reserved to the government power of revocation,
after three years' notice, if the Charter should not appear to be
beneficial to the public. The Charter had not been found beneficial
to the public; the three years' notice should be given; and in the
year 1701 the revocation would take effect. What could be fairer? If
anybody was so weak as to imagine that the privileges of the Old
Company were perpetual, when the very instrument which created those
privileges expressly declared them to be terminable, what right had
he to blame the Parliament, which was bound to do the best for the
State, for not saving him, at the expense of the State, from the
natural punishment of his own folly? It was evident that nothing was
proposed inconsistent with strict justice. And what right had the
Old Company to more than strict justice? These petitioners who
implored the legislature to deal indulgently with them in their
adversity, how had they used their boundless prosperity? Had not the
India House recently been the very den of corruption, the tainted
spot from which the plague had spread to the Court and the Council,
to the House of Commons and the House of Lords? Were the disclosures
of 1695 forgotten, the eighty thousand pounds of secret service
money disbursed in one year, the enormous bribes direct and
indirect, Seymour's saltpetre contracts, Leeds's bags of golds? By
the malpractices which the inquiry in the Exchequer Chamber then
brought to light, the Charter had been forfeited; and it would have
been well if the forfeiture had been immediately enforced. "Had not
time then pressed," said Montague, "had it not been necessary that
the session should close, it is probable that the petitioners, who
now cry out that they cannot get justice, would have got more
justice than they desired. If they had been called to account for
great and real wrong in 1695, we should not have had them here
complaining of imaginary wrong in 1698."
The fight was protracted by the obstinacy and dexterity of the Old
Company and its friends from the first week of May to the last week
in June. It seems that many even of Montague's followers doubted
whether the promised two millions would be forthcoming. His enemies
confidently predicted that the General Society would be as complete
a failure as the Land Bank had been in the year before the last, and
that he would in the autumn find himself in charge of an empty
exchequer. His activity and eloquence, however, prevailed. On the
twenty-sixth of June, after many laborious sittings, the question
was put that this Bill do pass, and was carried by one hundred and
fifteen votes to seventy-eight. In the upper House, the conflict was
short and sharp. Some peers declared that, in their opinion, the
subscription to the proposed loan, far from amounting to the two
millions which the Chancellor of the Exchequer expected, would fall
far short of one million. Others, with much reason, complained that
a law of such grave importance should have been sent up to them in
such a shape that they must either take the whole or throw out the
whole. The privilege of the Commons with respect to money bills had
of late been grossly abused. The Bank had been created by one money
bill; this General Society was to be created by another money bill.
Such a bill the Lords could not amend; they might indeed reject it;
but to reject it was to shake the foundations of public credit and
to leave the kingdom defenceless. Thus one branch of the legislature
was systematically put under duress by the other, and seemed likely
to be reduced to utter insignificance. It was better that the
government should be once pinched for money than that the House of
Peers should cease to be part of the Constitution. So strong was
this feeling that the Bill was carried only by sixty-five to
forty-eight. It received the royal sanction on the fifth of July.
The King then spoke from the throne. This was the first occasion on
which a King of England had spoken to a Parliament of which the
existence was about to be terminated, not by his own act, but by the
act of the law. He could not, he said, take leave of the Lords and
Gentlemen before him without publicly acknowledging the great things
which they had done for his dignity and for the welfare of the
nation. He recounted the chief services which they had, during three
eventful sessions, rendered to the country. "These things will," he
said, "give a lasting reputation to this Parliament, and will be a
subject of emulation to Parliaments which shall come after." The
Houses were then prorogued.
During the week which followed there was some anxiety as to the
result of the subscription for the stock of the General Society. If
that subscription failed, there would be a deficit; public credit
would be shaken; and Montague would be regarded as a pretender who
had owed his reputation to a mere run of good luck, and who had
tempted chance once too often. But the event was such as even his
sanguine spirit had scarcely ventured to anticipate. At one in the
afternoon of the 14th of July the books were opened at the Hall of
the Company of Mercers in Cheapside. An immense crowd was already
collected in the street. As soon as the doors were flung wide,
wealthy citizens, with their money in their hands, pressed in,
pushing and elbowing each other. The guineas were paid down faster
than the clerks could count them. Before night six hundred thousand
pounds had been subscribed. The next day the throng was as great.
More than one capitalist put down his name for thirty thousand
pounds. To the astonishment of those ill boding politicians who were
constantly repeating that the war, the debt, the taxes, the grants
to Dutch courtiers, had ruined the kingdom, the sum, which it had
been doubted whether England would be able to raise in many weeks,
was subscribed by London in a few hours. The applications from the
provincial towns and rural districts came too late. The merchants of
Bristol had intended to take three hundred thousand pounds of the
stock, but had waited to learn how the subscription went on before
they gave their final orders; and, by the time that the mail had
gone down to Bristol and returned, there was no more stock to be
had. This was the moment at which the fortunes of Montague reached
the meridian. The decline was close at hand. His ability and his
constant success were everywhere talked of with admiration and envy.
That man, it was commonly said, has never wanted, and never will
want, an expedient.
During the long and busy session which had just closed, some
interesting and important events had taken place which may properly
be mentioned here. One of those events was the destruction of the
most celebrated palace in which the sovereigns of England have ever
dwelt. On the evening of the 4th of January, a woman,--the patriotic
journalists and pamphleteers of that time did not fail to note that
she was a Dutchwoman,--who was employed as a laundress at Whitehall,
lighted a charcoal fire in her room and placed some linen round it.
The linen caught fire and burned furiously. The tapestry, the
bedding, the wainscots were soon in a blaze. The unhappy woman who
had done the mischief perished. Soon the flames burst out of the
windows. All Westminster, all the Strand, all the river were in
commotion. Before midnight the King's apartments, the Queen's
apartments, the Wardrobe, the Treasury, the office of the Privy
Council, the office of the Secretary of State, had been destroyed.
The two chapels perished together; that ancient chapel where Wolsey
had heard mass in the midst of gorgeous copes, golden candlesticks,
and jewelled crosses, and that modern edifice which had been erected
for the devotions of James and had been embellished by the pencil of
Verrio and the chisel of Gibbons. Meanwhile a great extent of
building had been blown up; and it was hoped that by this expedient
a stop had been put to the conflagration. But early in the morning a
new fire broke out of the heaps of combustible matter which the
gunpowder had scattered to right and left. The guard room was
consumed. No trace was left of that celebrated gallery which had
witnessed so many balls and pageants, in which so many maids of
honour had listened too easily to the vows and flatteries of
gallants, and in which so many bags of gold had changed masters at
the hazard table. During some time men despaired of the Banqueting
House. The flames broke in on the south of that beautiful hall, and
were with great difficulty extinguished by the exertions of the
guards, to whom Cutts, mindful of his honourable nickname of the
Salamander, set as good an example on this night of terror as he had
set in the breach of Namur. Many lives were lost, and many grievous
wounds were inflicted by the falling masses of stone and timber,
before the fire was effectually subdued. When day broke, the heaps
of smoking ruins spread from Scotland Yard to the Bowling Green,
where the mansion of the Duke of Buccleuch now stands. The
Banqueting House was safe; but the graceful columns and festoons
designed by Inigo were so much defaced and blackened that their form
could hardly be discerned. There had been time to move the most
valuable effects which were moveable. Unfortunately some of
Holbein's finest pictures were painted on the walls, and are
consequently known to us only by copies and engravings. The books of
the Treasury and of the Privy Council were rescued, and are still
preserved. The Ministers whose offices had been burned down were
provided with new offices in the neighbourhood. Henry the Eighth had
built, close to St. James's Park, two appendages to the Palace of
Whitehall, a cockpit and a tennis court. The Treasury now occupies
the site of the cockpit, the Privy Council Office the site of the
tennis court.
Notwithstanding the many associations which make the name of
Whitehall still interesting to an Englishman, the old building was
little regretted. It was spacious indeed and commodious, but mean
and inelegant. The people of the capital had been annoyed by the
scoffing way in which foreigners spoke of the principal residence of
our sovereigns, and often said that it was a pity that the great
fire had not spared the old portico of St. Paul's and the stately
arcades of Gresham's Bourse, and taken in exchange that ugly old
labyrinth of dingy brick and plastered timber. It might now be hoped
that we should have a Louvre. Before the ashes of the old palace
were cold, plans for a new palace were circulated and discussed. But
William, who could not draw his breath in the air of Westminster,
was little disposed to expend a million on a house which it would
have been impossible for him to inhabit. Many blamed him for not
restoring the dwelling of his predecessors; and a few Jacobites,
whom evil temper and repeated disappointments had driven almost mad,
accused him of having burned it down. It was not till long after his
death that Tory writers ceased to call for the rebuilding of
Whitehall, and to complain that the King of England had no better
town house than St. James's, while the delightful spot where the
Tudors and the Stuarts had held their councils and their revels was
covered with the mansions of his jobbing courtiers. In the same week
in which Whitehall perished, the Londoners were supplied with a new
topic of conversation by a royal visit, which, of all royal visits,
was the least pompous and ceremonious and yet the most interesting
and important. On the 10th of January a vessel from Holland anchored
off Greenwich and was welcomed with great respect. Peter the First,
Czar of Muscovy, was on board. He took boat with a few attendants
and was rowed up the Thames to Norfolk Street, where a house
overlooking the river had been prepared for his reception.
His journey is an epoch in the history, not only of his own country,
but of our's, and of the world. To the polished nations of Western
Europe, the empire which he governed had till then been what Bokhara
or Siam is to us. That empire indeed, though less extensive than at
present, was the most extensive that had ever obeyed a single chief.
The dominions of Alexander and of Trajan were small when compared
with the immense area of the Scythian desert. But in the estimation
of statesmen that boundless expanse of larch forest and morass,
where the snow lay deep during eight months of every year, and where
a wretched peasantry could with difficulty defend their hovels
against troops of famished wolves, was of less account than the two
or three square miles into which were crowded the counting houses,
the warehouses, and the innumerable masts of Amsterdam. On the
Baltic Russia had not then a single port. Her maritime trade with
the other rations of Christendom was entirely carried on at
Archangel, a place which had been created and was supported by
adventurers from our island. In the days of the Tudors, a ship from
England, seeking a north east passage to the land of silk and spice,
had discovered the White Sea. The barbarians who dwelt on the shores
of that dreary gulf had never before seen such a portent as a vessel
of a hundred and sixty tons burden. They fled in terror; and, when
they were pursued and overtaken, prostrated themselves before the
chief of the strangers and kissed his feet.
He succeeded in opening a friendly communication with them; and from
that time there had been a regular commercial intercourse between
our country and the subjects of the Czar. A Russia Company was
incorporated in London. An English factory was built at Archangel.
That factory was indeed, even in the latter part of the seventeenth
century, a rude and mean building. The walls consisted of trees laid
one upon another; and the roof was of birch bark. This shelter,
however, was sufficient in the long summer day of the Arctic
regions. Regularly at that season several English ships cast anchor
in the bay. A fair was held on the beach. Traders came from a
distance of many hundreds of miles to the only mart where they could
exchange hemp and tar, hides and tallow, wax and honey, the fur of
the sable and the wolverine, and the roe of the sturgeon of the
Volga, for Manchester stuffs, Sheffield knives, Birmingham buttons,
sugar from Jamaica and pepper from Malabar. The commerce in these
articles was open. But there was a secret traffic which was not less
active or less lucrative, though the Russian laws had made it
punishable, and though the Russian divines pronounced it damnable.
In general the mandates of princes and the lessons of priests were
received by the Muscovite with profound reverence. But the authority
of his princes and of his priests united could not keep him from
tobacco. Pipes he could not obtain; but a cow's horn perforated
served his turn. From every Archangel fair rolls of the best
Virginia speedily found their way to Novgorod and Tobolsk.
The commercial intercourse between England and Russia made some
diplomatic intercourse necessary. The diplomatic intercourse however
was only occasional. The Czar had no permanent minister here. We had
no permanent minister at Moscow; and even at Archangel we had no
consul. Three or four times in a century extraordinary embassies
were sent from Whitehall to the Kremlin and from the Kremlin to
Whitehall.
The English embassies had historians whose narratives may still be
read with interest. Those historians described vividly, and
sometimes bitterly, the savage ignorance and the squalid poverty of
the barbarous country in which they had sojourned. In that country,
they said, there was neither literature nor science, neither school
nor college. It was not till more than a hundred years after the
invention of printing that a single printing press had been
introduced into the Russian empire; and that printing press had
speedily perished in a fire which was supposed to have been kindled
by the priests. Even in the seventeenth century the library of a
prelate of the first dignity consisted of a few manuscripts. Those
manuscripts too were in long rolls; for the art of bookbinding was
unknown. The best educated men could barely read and write. It was
much if the secretary to whom was entrusted the direction of
negotiations with foreign powers had a sufficient smattering of Dog
Latin to make himself understood. The arithmetic was the arithmetic
of the dark ages. The denary notation was unknown. Even in the
Imperial Treasury the computations were made by the help of balls
strung on wires. Round the person of the Sovereign there was a blaze
of gold and jewels; but even in his most splendid palaces were to be
found the filth and misery of an Irish cabin. So late as the year
1663 the gentlemen of the retinue of the Earl of Carlisle were, in
the city of Moscow, thrust into a single bedroom, and were told
that, if they did not remain together, they would be in danger of
being devoured by rats.
Such was the report which the English legations made of what they
had seen and suffered in Russia; and their evidence was confirmed by
the appearance which the Russian legations made in England. The
strangers spoke no civilised language. Their garb, their gestures,
their salutations, had a wild and barbarous character. The
ambassador and the grandees who accompanied him were so gorgeous
that all London crowded to stare at them, and so filthy that nobody
dared to touch them. They came to the court balls dropping pearls
and vermin. It was said that one envoy cudgelled the lords of his
train whenever they soiled or lost any part of their finery, and
that another had with difficulty been prevented from putting his son
to death for the crime of shaving and dressing after the French
fashion.
Our ancestors therefore were not a little surprised to learn that a
young barbarian, who had, at seventeen years of age, become the
autocrat of the immense region stretching from the confines of
Sweden to those of China, and whose education had been inferior to
that of an English farmer or shopman, had planned gigantic
improvements, had learned enough of some languages of Western Europe
to enable him to communicate with civilised men, had begun to
surround himself with able adventurers from various parts of the
world, had sent many of his young subjects to study languages, arts
and sciences in foreign cities, and finally had determined to travel
as a private man, and to discover, by personal observation, the
secret of the immense prosperity and power enjoyed by some
communities whose whole territory was far less than the hundredth
part of his dominions.
It might have been expected that France would have been the first
object of his curiosity. For the grace and dignity of the French
King, the splendour of the French Court, the discipline of the
French armies, and the genius and learning of the French writers,
were then renowned all over the world. But the Czar's mind had early
taken a strange ply which it retained to the last. His empire was of
all empires the least capable of being made a great naval power. The
Swedish provinces lay between his States and the Baltic. The
Bosporus and the Dardanelles lay between his States and the
Mediterranean. He had access to the ocean only in a latitude in
which navigation is, during a great part of every year, perilous and
difficult. On the ocean he had only a single port, Archangel; and
the whole shipping of Archangel was foreign. There did not exist a
Russian vessel larger than a fishing-boat.
Yet, from some cause which cannot now be traced, he had a taste for
maritime pursuits which amounted to a passion, indeed almost to a
monomania. His imagination was full of sails, yardarms, and rudders.
That large mind, equal to the highest duties of the general and the
statesman, contracted itself to the most minute details of naval
architecture and naval discipline. The chief ambition of the great
conqueror and legislator was to be a good boatswain and a good
ship's carpenter. Holland and England therefore had for him an
attraction which was wanting to the galleries and terraces of
Versailles. He repaired to Amsterdam, took a lodging in the
dockyard, assumed the garb of a pilot, put down his name on the list
of workmen, wielded with his own hand the caulking iron and the
mallet, fixed the pumps, and twisted the ropes. Ambassadors who came
to pay their respects to him were forced, much against their will,
to clamber up the rigging of a man of war, and found him enthroned
on the cross trees.
Such was the prince whom the populace of London now crowded to
behold. His stately form, his intellectual forehead, his piercing
black eyes, his Tartar nose and mouth, his gracious smile, his frown
black with all the stormy rage and hate of a barbarian tyrant, and
above all a strange nervous convulsion which sometimes transformed
his countenance during a few moments, into an object on which it was
impossible to look without terror, the immense quantities of meat
which he devoured, the pints of brandy which he swallowed, and
which, it was said, he had carefully distilled with his own hands,
the fool who jabbered at his feet, the monkey which grinned at the
back of his chair, were, during some weeks, popular topics of
conversation. He meanwhile shunned the public gaze with a haughty
shyness which inflamed curiosity. He went to a play; but, as soon as
he perceived that pit, boxes and galleries were staring, not at the
stage, but at him, he retired to a back bench where he was screened
from observation by his attendants. He was desirous to see a sitting
of the House of Lords; but, as he was determined not to be seen, he
was forced to climb up to the leads, and to peep through a small
window. He heard with great interest the royal assent given to a
bill for raising fifteen hundred thousand pounds by land tax, and
learned with amazement that this sum, though larger by one half than
the whole revenue which he could wring from the population of the
immense empire of which he was absolute master, was but a small part
of what the Commons of England voluntarily granted every year to
their constitutional King.
William judiciously humoured the whims of his illustrious guest, and
stole to Norfolk Street so quietly that nobody in the neighbourhood
recognised His Majesty in the thin gentleman who got out of the
modest looking coach at the Czar's lodgings. The Czar returned the
visit with the same precautions, and was admitted into Kensington
House by a back door. It was afterwards known that he took no notice
of the fine pictures with which the palace was adorned. But over the
chimney of the royal sitting room was a plate which, by an ingenious
machinery, indicated the direction of the wind; and with this plate
he was in raptures. He soon became weary of his residence. He found
that he was too far from the objects of his curiosity, and too near
to the crowds to which he was himself an object of curiosity. He
accordingly removed to Deptford, and was there lodged in the house
of John Evelyn, a house which had long been a favourite resort of
men of letters, men of taste and men of science. Here Peter gave
himself up to his favourite pursuits. He navigated a yacht every day
up and down the river. His apartment was crowded with models of
three deckers and two deckers, frigates, sloops and fireships. The
only Englishman of rank in whose society he seemed to take much
pleasure was the eccentric Caermarthen, whose passion for the sea
bore some resemblance to his own, and who was very competent to give
an opinion about every part of a ship from the stem to the stern.
Caermarthen, indeed, became so great a favourite that he prevailed
on the Czar to consent to the admission of a limited quantity of
tobacco into Russia. There was reason to apprehend that the Russian
clergy would cry out against any relaxation of the ancient rule, and
would strenuously maintain that the practice of smoking was
condemned by that text which declares that man is defiled, not by
those things which enter in at the mouth, but by those which proceed
out of it. This apprehension was expressed by a deputation of
merchants who were admitted to an audience of the Czar; but they
were reassured by the air with which he told them that he knew how
to keep priests in order.
He was indeed so free from any bigoted attachment to the religion in
which he had been brought up that both Papists and Protestants hoped
at different times to make him a proselyte. Burnet, commissioned by
his brethren, and impelled, no doubt, by his own restless curiosity
and love of meddling, repaired to Deptford and was honoured with
several audiences. The Czar could not be persuaded to exhibit
himself at Saint Paul's; but he was induced to visit Lambeth palace.
There he saw the ceremony of ordination performed, and expressed
warm approbation of the Anglican ritual. Nothing in England
astonished him so much as the Archiepiscopal library. It was the
first good collection of books that he had seen; and he declared
that he had never imagined that there were so many printed volumes
in the world.
The impression which he made on Burnet was not favourable. The good
bishop could not understand that a mind which seemed to be chiefly
occupied with questions about the best place for a capstan and the
best way of rigging a jury mast might be capable, not merely of
ruling an empire, but of creating a nation. He complained that he
had gone to see a great prince, and had found only an industrious
shipwright. Nor does Evelyn seem to have formed a much more
favourable opinion of his august tenant. It was, indeed, not in the
character of tenant that the Czar was likely to gain the good word
of civilised men. With all the high qualities which were peculiar to
himself, he had all the filthy habits which were then common among
his countrymen. To the end of his life, while disciplining armies,
founding schools, framing codes, organising tribunals, building
cities in deserts, joining distant seas by artificial rivers, he
lived in his palace like a hog in a sty; and, when he was
entertained by other sovereigns, never failed to leave on their
tapestried walls and velvet state beds unequivocal proof that a
savage had been there. Evelyn's house was left in such a state that
the Treasury quieted his complaints with a considerable sum of
money.
Towards the close of March the Czar visited Portsmouth, saw a sham
seafight at Spithead, watched every movement of the contending
fleets with intense interest, and expressed in warm terms his
gratitude to the hospitable government which had provided so
delightful a spectacle for his amusement and instruction. After
passing more than three months in England, he departed in high good
humour.
His visit, his singular character, and what was rumoured of his
great designs, excited much curiosity here, but nothing more than
curiosity. England had as yet nothing to hope or to fear from his
vast empire. All her serious apprehensions were directed towards a
different quarter. None could say how soon France, so lately an
enemy, might be an enemy again.
The new diplomatic relations between the two great western powers
were widely different from those which had existed before the war.
During the eighteen years which had elapsed between the signing of
the Treaty of Dover and the Revolution, all the envoys who had been
sent from Whitehall to Versailles had been mere sycophants of the
great King. In England the French ambassador had been the object of
a degrading worship. The chiefs of both the great parties had been
his pensioners and his tools. The ministers of the Crown had paid
him open homage. The leaders of the opposition had stolen into his
house by the back door. Kings had stooped to implore his good
offices, had persecuted him for money with the importunity of street
beggars; and, when they had succeeded in obtaining from him a box of
doubloons or a bill of exchange, had embraced him with tears of
gratitude and joy. But those days were past. England would never
again send a Preston or a Skelton to bow down before the majesty of
France. France would never again send a Barillon to dictate to the
cabinet of England. Henceforth the intercourse between the two
states would be on terms of perfect equality.
William thought it necessary that the minister who was to represent
him at the French Court should be a man of the first consideration,
and one on whom entire reliance could be reposed. Portland was
chosen for this important and delicate mission; and the choice was
eminently judicious. He had, in the negotiations of the preceding
year, shown more ability than was to be found in the whole crowd of
formalists who had been exchanging notes and drawing up protocols at
Ryswick. Things which had been kept secret from the
plenipotentiaries who had signed the treaty were well known to him.
The clue of the whole foreign policy of England and Holland was in
his possession. His fidelity and diligence were beyond all praise.
These were strong recommendations. Yet it seemed strange to many
that William should have been willing to part, for a considerable
time, from a companion with whom he had during a quarter of a
century lived on terms of entire confidence and affection. The truth
was that the confidence was still what it had long been, but that
the affection, though it was not yet extinct, though it had not even
cooled, had become a cause of uneasiness to both parties. Till very
recently, the little knot of personal friends who had followed
William from his native land to his place of splendid banishment had
been firmly united. The aversion which the English nation felt for
them had given him much pain; but he had not been annoyed by any
quarrel among themselves. Zulestein and Auverquerque had, without a
murmur, yielded to Portland the first place in the royal favour; nor
had Portland grudged to Zulestein and Auverquerque very solid and
very signal proofs of their master's kindness. But a younger rival
had lately obtained an influence which created much jealousy. Among
the Dutch gentlemen who had sailed with the Prince of Orange from
Helvoetsluys to Torbay was one named Arnold Van Keppel. Keppel had a
sweet and obliging temper, winning manners, and a quick, though not
a profound, understanding. Courage, loyalty and secresy were common
between him and Portland. In other points they differed widely. |