Such
was the opinion of the King who was present during the trial; and such
was the almost unanimous opinion of the public.
was the opinion of the King who was present during the trial; and such
was the almost unanimous opinion of the public.
Macaulay
He declared that he was privy to a treasonable plot.
Some
Jacobite lords had promised him immense rewards if he would, at the head
of his gang, fall upon the King at a stag hunt in Windsor Forest. There
was nothing intrinsically improbable in Whitney's story. Indeed a design
very similar to that which he imputed to the malecontents was, only
three years later, actually formed by some of them, and was all but
carried into execution. But it was far better that a few bad men should
go unpunished than that all honest men should live in fear of being
falsely accused by felons sentenced to the gallows. Chief Justice Holt
advised the King to let the law take its course. William, never much
inclined to give credit to stories about conspiracies, assented. The
Captain, as he was called, was hanged in Smithfield, and made a most
penitent end. [343]
Meanwhile, in the midst of discontent, distress and disorder, had begun
a session of Parliament singularly eventful, a session from which dates
a new era in the history of English finance, a session in which some
grave constitutional questions, not yet entirely set at rest, were for
the first time debated.
It is much to be lamented that any account of this session which can
be framed out of the scanty and dispersed materials now accessible must
leave many things obscure. The relations of the parliamentary factions
were, during this year, in a singularly complicated state. Each of the
two Houses was divided and subdivided by several lines. To omit minor
distinctions, there was the great line which separated the Whig party
from the Tory party; and there was the great line which separated the
official men and their friends and dependents, who were sometimes
called the Court party, from those who were sometimes nicknamed the
Grumbletonians and sometimes honoured with the appellation of the
Country party. And these two great lines were intersecting lines. For
of the servants of the Crown and of their adherents about one half were
Whigs and one half Tories. It is also to be remembered that there was,
quite distinct from the feud between Whigs and Tories, quite distinct
also from the feud between those who were in and those who were out, a
feud between the Lords as Lords and the Commons as Commons. The spirit
both of the hereditary and of the elective chamber had been thoroughly
roused in the preceding session by the dispute about the Court of the
Lord High Steward; and they met in a pugnacious mood.
The speech which the King made at the opening of the session was
skilfully framed for the purpose of conciliating the Houses. He came, he
told them, to ask for their advice and assistance. He congratulated them
on the victory of La Hogue. He acknowledged with much concern that the
operations of the allies had been less successful by land than by sea;
but he warmly declared that, both by land and by sea, the valour of his
English subjects had been preeminently conspicuous. The distress of his
people, he said, was his own; his interest was inseparable from theirs;
it was painful to him to call on them to make sacrifices; but from
sacrifices which were necessary to the safety of the English nation and
of the Protestant religion no good Englishman and no good Protestant
would shrink. [344]
The Commons thanked the King in cordial terms for his gracious speech.
[345] But the Lords were in a bad humour. Two of their body, Marlborough
and Huntingdon, had, during the recess, when an invasion and an
insurrection were hourly expected, been sent to the Tower, and were
still under recognisances. Had a country gentleman or a merchant been
taken up and held to bail on even slighter grounds at so alarming a
crisis, the Lords would assuredly not have interfered. But they were
easily moved to anger by any thing that looked like an indignity offered
to their own order. They not only crossexamined with great severity
Aaron Smith, the Solicitor of the Treasury, whose character, to say the
truth, entitled him to little indulgence, but passed; by thirty-five
votes to twenty-eight, a resolution implying a censure on the judges of
the King's Bench, men certainly not inferior in probity, and very far
superior in legal learning, to any peer of the realm. The King thought
it prudent to soothe the wounded pride of the nobility by ordering the
recognisances to be cancelled; and with this concession the House was
satisfied, to the great vexation of the Jacobites, who had hoped that
the quarrel would be prosecuted to some fatal issue, and who, finding
themselves disappointed, vented their spleen by railing at the tameness
of the degenerate barons of England. [346]
Both Houses held long and earnest deliberations on the state of the
nation. The King, when he requested their advice, had, perhaps, not
foreseen that his words would be construed into an invitation to
scrutinise every part of the administration, and to offer suggestions
touching matters which parliaments have generally thought it expedient
to leave entirely to the Crown. Some of the discontented peers proposed
that a Committee, chosen partly by the Lords and partly by the Commons,
should be authorised to inquire into the whole management of public
affairs. But it was generally apprehended that such a Committee would
become a second and more powerful Privy Council, independent of the
Crown, and unknown to the Constitution. The motion was therefore
rejected by forty-eight votes to thirty-six. On this occasion the
ministers, with scarcely an exception, voted in the majority. A protest
was signed by eighteen of the minority, among whom were the bitterest
Whigs and the bitterest Tories in the whole peerage. [347]
The Houses inquired, each for itself, into the causes of the public
calamities. The Commons resolved themselves into a Grand Committee
to consider of the advice to be given to the King. From the concise
abstracts and fragments which have come down to us it seems that, in
this Committee, which continued to sit many days, the debates wandered
over a vast space. One member spoke of the prevalence of highway
robbery; another deplored the quarrel between the Queen and the
Princess, and proposed that two or three gentlemen should be deputed to
wait on Her Majesty and try to make matters up. A third described the
machinations of the Jacobites in the preceding spring. It was notorious,
he said, that preparations had been made for a rising, and that arms and
horses had been collected; yet not a single traitor had been brought to
justice. [348]
The events of the war by land and sea furnished matter for several
earnest debates. Many members complained of the preference given to
aliens over Englishmen. The whole battle of Steinkirk was fought over
again; and severe reflections were thrown on Solmes. "Let English
soldiers be commanded by none but English generals," was the almost
universal cry. Seymour, who had once been distinguished by his hatred of
the foreigners, but who, since he had been at the Board of Treasury,
had reconsidered his opinions, asked where English generals were to
be found. "I have no love for foreigners as foreigners; but we have no
choice. Men are not born generals; nay, a man may be a very valuable
captain or major, and not be equal to the conduct of an army. Nothing
but experience will form great commanders. Very few of our countrymen
have that experience; and therefore we must for the present employ
strangers. " Lowther followed on the same side. "We have had a long
peace; and the consequence is that we have not a sufficient supply of
officers fit for high commands. The parks and the camp at Hounslow were
very poor military schools, when compared with the fields of battle
and the lines of contravallation in which the great commanders of the
continental nations have learned their art. " In reply to these arguments
an orator on the other side was so absurd as to declare that he could
point out ten Englishmen who, if they were in the French service, would
be made Marshals. Four or five colonels who had been at Steinkirk took
part in the debate. It was said of them that they showed as much modesty
in speech as they had shown courage in action; and, from the very
imperfect report which has come down to us, the compliment seems to have
been not undeserved. They did not join in the vulgar cry against the
Dutch. They spoke well of the foreign officers generally, and did full
justice to the valour and conduct with which Auverquerque had rescued
the shattered remains of Mackay's division from what seemed certain
destruction. But in defence of Solmes not a word was said. His severity,
his haughty manners, and, above all, the indifference with which he had
looked on while the English, borne down by overwhelming numbers, were
fighting hand to hand with the French household troops, had made him so
odious that many members were prepared to vote for an address requesting
that he might be removed, and that his place might be filled by Talmash,
who, since the disgrace of Marlborough, was universally allowed to
be the best officer in the army. But Talmash's friends judiciously
interfered. "I have," said one of them, "a true regard for that
gentleman; and I implore you not to do him an injury under the notion of
doing him a kindness. Consider that you are usurping what is peculiarly
the King's prerogative. You are turning officers out and putting
officers in. " The debate ended without any vote of censure on Solmes.
But a hope was expressed, in language not very parliamentary, that what
had been said in the Committee would be reported to the King, and that
His Majesty would not disregard the general wish of the representatives
of his people. [349]
The Commons next proceeded to inquire into the naval administration, and
very soon came to a quarrel with the Lords on that subject. That there
had been mismanagement somewhere was but too evident. It was hardly
possible to acquit both Russell and Nottingham; and each House stood
by its own member. The Commons had, at the opening of the session,
unanimously passed a vote of thanks to Russell for his conduct at
La Hogue. They now, in the Grand Committee of Advice, took into
consideration the miscarriages which had followed the battle. A motion
was made so vaguely worded that it could hardly be said to mean any
thing. It was understood however to imply a censure on Nottingham, and
was therefore strongly opposed by his friends. On the division the Ayes
were a hundred and sixty-five, the Noes a hundred and sixty-four. [350]
On the very next day Nottingham appealed to the Lords. He told his story
with all the skill of a practised orator, and with all the authority
which belongs to unblemished integrity. He then laid on the table a
great mass of papers, which he requested the House to read and consider.
The Peers seem to have examined the papers seriously and diligently. The
result of the examination was by no means favourable to Russell. Yet
it was thought unjust to condemn him unheard; and it was difficult to
devise any way in which their Lordships could hear him. At last it was
resolved to send the papers down to the Commons with a message which
imported that, in the opinion of the Upper House, there was a case
against the Admiral which he ought to be called upon to answer. With the
papers was sent an abstract of the contents. [351]
The message was not very respectfully received. Russell had, at that
moment, a popularity which he little deserved, but which will not
surprise us when we remember that the public knew nothing of his
treasons, and knew that he was the only living Englishman who had won a
great battle. The abstract of the papers was read by the clerk. Russell
then spoke with great applause; and his friends pressed for an immediate
decision. Sir Christopher Musgrave very justly observed that it was
impossible to pronounce judgment on such a pile of despatches without
perusing them; but this objection was overruled. The Whigs regarded the
accused member as one of themselves; many of the Tories were dazzled by
the splendour of his recent victory; and neither Whigs nor Tories were
disposed to show any deference for the authority of the Peers. The
House, without reading the papers, passed an unanimous resolution
expressing warm approbation of Russell's whole conduct. The temper of
the assembly was such that some ardent Whigs thought that they might
now venture to propose a vote of censure on Nottingham by name. But the
attempt failed. "I am ready," said Lowther,--and he doubtless expressed
what many felt,--"I am ready to support any motion that may do honour to
the Admiral; but I cannot join in an attack on the Secretary of State.
For, to my knowledge, their Majesties have no more zealous, laborious
or faithful servant than my Lord Nottingham. " Finch exerted all his
mellifluous eloquence in defence of his brother, and contrived, without
directly opposing himself to the prevailing sentiment, to insinuate
that Russell's conduct had not been faultless. The vote of censure on
Nottingham was not pressed. The vote which pronounced Russell's conduct
to have been deserving of all praise was communicated to the Lords; and
the papers which they had sent down were very unceremoniously returned.
[352] The Lords, much offended, demanded a free conference. It was
granted; and the managers of the two Houses met in the Painted Chamber.
Rochester, in the name of his brethren, expressed a wish to be informed
of the grounds on which the Admiral had been declared faultless. To this
appeal the gentlemen who stood on the other side of the table answered
only that they had not been authorised to give any explanation, but that
they would report to those who had sent them what had been said. [353]
By this time the Commons were thoroughly tired of the inquiry into the
conduct of the war. The members had got rid of much of the ill humour
which they had brought up with them from their country seats by the
simple process of talking it away. Burnet hints that those arts of which
Caermarthen and Trevor were the great masters were employed for the
purpose of averting votes which would have seriously embarrassed the
government. But, though it is not improbable that a few noisy pretenders
to patriotism may have been quieted with bags of guineas, it would
be absurd to suppose that the House generally was influenced in this
manner. Whoever has seen anything of such assemblies knows that the
spirit with which they enter on long inquiries very soon flags, and that
their resentment, if not kept alive by injudicious opposition, cools
fast. In a short time every body was sick of the Grand Committee of
Advice. The debates had been tedious and desultory. The resolutions
which had been carried were for the most part merely childish. The King
was to be humbly advised to employ men of ability and integrity. He was
to be humbly advised to employ men who would stand by him against James.
The patience of the House was wearied out by long discussions ending in
the pompous promulgation of truisms like these. At last the explosion
came. One of the grumblers called the attention of the Grand Committee
to the alarming fact that two Dutchmen were employed in the Ordnance
department, and moved that the King should be humbly advised to dismiss
them. The motion was received with disdainful mockery. It was remarked
that the military men especially were loud in the expression of
contempt. "Do we seriously think of going to the King and telling him
that, as he has condescended to ask our advice at this momentous crisis,
we humbly advise him to turn a Dutch storekeeper out of the Tower?
Really, if we have no more important suggestion to carry up to the
throne, we may as well go to our dinners. " The members generally were
of the same mind. The chairman was voted out of the chair, and was not
directed to ask leave to sit again. The Grand Committee ceased to exist.
The resolutions which it had passed were formally reported to the House.
One of them was rejected; the others were suffered to drop; and the
Commons, after considering during several weeks what advice they should
give to the King, ended by giving him no advice at all. [354]
The temper of the Lords was different. From many circumstances it
appears that there was no place where the Dutch were, at this time, so
much hated as in the Upper House. The dislike with which an Englishman
of the middle class regarded the King's foreign friends was merely
national. But the dislike with which an English nobleman regarded them
was personal. They stood between him and Majesty. They intercepted from
him the rays of royal favour. The preference given to them wounded him
both in his interests and in his pride. His chance of the Garter was
much smaller since they had become his competitors. He might have been
Master of the Horse but for Auverquerque, Master of the Robes but for
Zulestein, Groom of the Stole but for Bentinck. [355] The ill humour of
the aristocracy was inflamed by Marlborough, who, at this time, affected
the character of a patriot persecuted for standing up against the Dutch
in defence of the interests of his native land, and who did not foresee
that a day would come when he would be accused of sacrificing the
interests of his native land to gratify the Dutch. The Peers determined
to present an address, requesting William not to place his English
troops under the command of a foreign general. They took up very
seriously that question which had moved the House of Commons to
laughter, and solemnly counselled their Sovereign not to employ
foreigners in his magazines. At Marlborough's suggestion they urged the
King to insist that the youngest English general should take precedence
of the oldest general in the service of the States General. It was, they
said, derogatory to the dignity of the Crown, that an officer who held
a commission from His Majesty should ever be commanded by an officer
who held a similar commission from a republic. To this advice, evidently
dictated by an ignoble malevolence to Holland, William, who troubled
himself little about votes of the Upper House which were not backed by
the Lower, returned, as might have been expected, a very short and dry
answer. [356]
While the inquiry into the conduct of the war was pending, the Commons
resumed the consideration of an important subject which had occupied
much of their attention in the preceding year. The Bill for the
Regulation of Trials in cases of High Treason was again brought in, but
was strongly opposed by the official men, both Whigs and Tories. Somers,
now Attorney General, strongly recommended delay. That the law, as
it stood, was open to grave objections, was not denied; but it was
contended that the proposed reform would, at that moment, produce more
harm than good. Nobody would assert that, under the existing government,
the lives of innocent subjects were in any danger. Nobody would deny
that the government itself was in great danger. Was it the part of wise
men to increase the perils of that which was already in serious peril
for the purpose of giving new security to that which was already
perfectly secure? Those who held this language were twitted with their
inconsistency, and asked why they had not ventured to oppose the bill
in the preceding session. They answered very plausibly that the events
which had taken place during the recess had taught an important lesson
to all who were capable of learning. The country had been threatened at
once with invasion and insurrection. No rational man doubted that many
traitors had made preparations for joining the French, and had collected
arms, ammunition and horses for that purpose. Yet, though there was
abundant moral evidence against these enemies of their country, it had
not been possible to find legal evidence against a single one of them.
The law of treason might, in theory, be harsh, and had undoubtedly, in
times past, been grossly abused. But a statesman who troubled himself
less about theory than about practice, and less about times past than
about the time present, would pronounce that law not too stringent but
too lax, and would, while the commonwealth remained in extreme jeopardy,
refuse to consent to any further relaxation. In spite of all opposition,
however, the principle of the bill was approved by one hundred and
seventy-one votes to one hundred and fifty-two. But in the committee it
was moved and carried that the new rules of procedure should not come
into operation till after the end of the war with France. When the
report was brought up the House divided on this amendment, and ratified
it by a hundred and forty-five votes to a hundred and twenty-five. The
bill was consequently suffered to drop. [357] Had it gone up to the
Peers it would in all probability have been lost after causing another
quarrel between the Houses. For the Peers were fully determined that
no such bill should pass, unless it contained a clause altering the
constitution of the Lord High Steward's Court; and a clause altering
the constitution of the Lord High Steward's Court would have been less
likely than ever to find favour with the Commons. For in the course of
this session an event took place which proved that the great were only
too well protected by the law as it stood, and which well deserves to be
recorded as a striking illustration of the state of manners and morals
in that age.
Of all the actors who were then on the English stage the most graceful
was William Mountford. He had every physical qualification for his
calling, a noble figure, a handsome face, a melodious voice. It was not
easy to say whether he succeeded better in heroic or in ludicrous parts.
He was allowed to be both the best Alexander and the best Sir Courtly
Nice that ever trod the boards. Queen Mary, whose knowledge was very
superficial, but who had naturally a quick perception of what was
excellent in art, admired him greatly. He was a dramatist as well as a
player, and has left us one comedy which is not contemptible. [358]
The most popular actress of the time was Anne Bracegirdle. There were on
the stage many women of more faultless beauty, but none whose features
and deportment had such power to fascinate the senses and the hearts
of men. The sight of her bright black eyes and of her rich brown cheek
sufficed to put the most turbulent audience into good humour. It was
said of her that in the crowded theatre she had as many lovers as she
had male spectators. Yet no lover, however rich, however high in rank,
had prevailed on her to be his mistress. Those who are acquainted with
the parts which she was in the habit of playing, and with the epilogues
which it was her especial business to recite, will not easily give her
credit for any extraordinary measure of virtue or of delicacy. She
seems to have been a cold, vain and interested coquette, who perfectly
understood how much the influence of her charms was increased by the
fame of a severity which cost her nothing, and who could venture to
flirt with a succession of admirers in the just confidence that no flame
which she might kindle in them would thaw her own ice. [359] Among those
who pursued her with an insane desire was a profligate captain in the
army named Hill. With Hill was closely bound in a league of debauchery
and violence Charles Lord Mohun, a young nobleman whose life was one
long revel and brawl. Hill, finding that the beautiful brunette was
invincible, took it into his head that he was rejected for a more
favoured rival, and that this rival was the brilliant Mountford. The
jealous lover swore over his wine at a tavern that he would stab the
villain. "And I," said Mohun, "will stand by my friend. " From the tavern
the pair went, with some soldiers whose services Hill had secured, to
Drury Lane where the lady resided. They lay some time in wait for her.
As soon as she appeared in the street she was seized and hurried to
a coach. She screamed for help; her mother clung round her; the whole
neighbourhood rose; and she was rescued. Hill and Mohun went away vowing
vengeance. They swaggered sword in hand during two hours about the
streets near Mountford's dwelling. The watch requested them to put up
their weapons. But when the young lord announced that he was a peer,
and bade the constables touch him if they durst, they let him pass. So
strong was privilege then; and so weak was law. Messengers were sent to
warn Mountford of his danger; but unhappily they missed him. He came. A
short altercation took place between him and Mohun; and, while they were
wrangling, Hill ran the unfortunate actor through the body, and fled.
The grand jury of Middlesex, consisting of gentlemen of note, found a
bill of murder against Hill and Mohun. Hill escaped. Mohun was taken.
His mother threw herself at William's feet, but in vain. "It was a cruel
act," said the King; "I shall leave it to the law. " The trial came on
in the Court of the Lord High Steward; and, as Parliament happened to be
sitting, the culprit had the advantage of being judged by the whole
body of the peerage. There was then no lawyer in the Upper House. It
therefore became necessary, for the first time since Buckhurst had
pronounced sentence on Essex and Southampton, that a peer who had never
made jurisprudence his special study should preside over that grave
tribunal. Caermarthen, who, as Lord President, took precedence of all
the nobility, was appointed Lord High Steward. A full report of the
proceedings has come down to us. No person, who carefully examines that
report, and attends to the opinion unanimously given by the judges in
answer to a question which Nottingham drew up, and in which the facts
brought out by the evidence are stated with perfect fairness, can doubt
that the crime of murder was fully brought home to the prisoner.
Such
was the opinion of the King who was present during the trial; and such
was the almost unanimous opinion of the public. Had the issue been tried
by Holt and twelve plain men at the Old Bailey, there can be no doubt
that a verdict of Guilty would have been returned. The Peers, however,
by sixty-nine votes to fourteen, acquitted their accused brother. One
great nobleman was so brutal and stupid as to say, "After all the fellow
was but a player; and players are rogues. " All the newsletters, all the
coffeehouse orators, complained that the blood of the poor was shed with
impunity by the great. Wits remarked that the only fair thing about the
trial was the show of ladies in the galleries. Letters and journals
are still extant in which men of all shades of opinion, Whigs, Tories,
Nonjurors, condemn the partiality of the tribunal. It was not to be
expected that, while the memory of this scandal was fresh in the public
mind, the Commons would be induced to give any new advantage to accused
peers. [360]
The Commons had, in the meantime, resumed the consideration of another
highly important matter, the state of the trade with India. They had,
towards the close of the preceding session, requested the King to
dissolve the old Company and to constitute a new Company on such terms
as he should think fit; and he had promised to take their request into
his serious consideration. He now sent a message to inform them that
it was out of his power to do what they had asked. He had referred the
charter of the old Company to the Judges, and the judges had pronounced
that, under the provisions of that charter, the old Company could not
be dissolved without three years' notice, and must retain during those
three years the exclusive privilege of trading to the East Indies. He
added that, being sincerely desirous to gratify the Commons, and finding
himself unable to do so in the way which they had pointed out, he had
tried to prevail on the old Company to agree to a compromise; but that
body stood obstinately on its extreme rights; and his endeavours had
been frustrated. [361]
This message reopened the whole question. The two factions which divided
the City were instantly on the alert. The debates in the House were
long and warm. Petitions against the old Company were laid on the table.
Satirical handbills against the new Company were distributed in the
lobby. At length, after much discussion, it was resolved to present
an address requesting the King to give the notice which the judges had
pronounced necessary. He promised to bear the subject in mind, and to
do his best to promote the welfare of the kingdom. With this answer the
House was satisfied, and the subject was not again mentioned till the
next session. [362]
The debates of the Commons on the conduct of the war, on the law of
treason and on the trade with India, occupied much time, and produced no
important result. But meanwhile real business was doing in the Committee
of Supply and the Committee of Ways and Means. In the Committee of
Supply the estimates passed rapidly. A few members declared it to
be their opinion that England ought to withdraw her troops from the
Continent, to carry on the war with vigour by sea, and to keep up only
such an army as might be sufficient to repel any invader who might elude
the vigilance of her fleets. But this doctrine, which speedily became
and long continued to be the badge of one of the great parties in the
state, was as yet professed only by a small minority which did not
venture to call for a division. [363]
In the Committee of Ways and Means, it was determined that a great part
of the charge of the year should be defrayed by means of an impost,
which, though old in substance, was new in form. From a very early
period to the middle of the seventeenth century, our Parliaments had
provided for the extraordinary necessities of the government chiefly by
granting subsidies. A subsidy was raised by an impost on the people of
the realm in respect of their reputed estates. Landed property was the
chief subject of taxation, and was assessed nominally at four shillings
in the pound. But the assessment was made in such a way that it not only
did not rise in proportion to the rise in the value of land or to
the fall in the value of the precious metals, but went on constantly
sinking, till at length the rate was in truth less than twopence in the
pound. In the time of Charles the First a real tax of four shillings in
the pound on land would probably have yielded near a million and a half;
but a subsidy amounted to little more than fifty thousand pounds. [364]
The financiers of the Long Parliament devised a more efficient mode of
taxing estates. The sum which was to be raised was fixed. It was then
distributed among the counties in proportion to their supposed wealth,
and was levied within each county by a rate. The revenue derived
from these assessments in the time of the Commonwealth varied from
thirty-five thousand pounds to a hundred and twenty thousand pounds a
month.
After the Restoration the legislature seemed for a time inclined
to revert, in finance as in other things, to the ancient practice.
Subsidies were once or twice granted to Charles the Second. But it
soon appeared that the old system was much less convenient than the
new system. The Cavaliers condescended to take a lesson in the art
of taxation from the Roundheads; and, during the interval between the
Restoration and the Revolution, extraordinary calls were occasionally
met by assessments resembling the assessments of the Commonwealth. After
the Revolution, the war with France made it necessary to have recourse
annually to this abundant source of revenue. In 1689, in 1690 and in
1691, great sums had been raised on the land. At length in 1692 it was
determined to draw supplies from real property more largely than ever.
The Commons resolved that a new and more accurate valuation of estates
should be made over the whole realm, and that on the rental thus
ascertained a pound rate should be paid to the government.
Such was the origin of the existing land tax. The valuation made in
1692 has remained unaltered down to our own time. According to that
valuation, one shilling in the pound on the rental of the kingdom
amounted, in round numbers, to half a million. During a hundred and six
years, a land tax bill was annually presented to Parliament, and was
annually passed, though not always without murmurs from the country
gentlemen. The rate was, in time of war, four shillings in the pound. In
time of peace, before the reign of George the Third, only two or three
shillings were usually granted; and, during a short part of the prudent
and gentle administration of Walpole, the government asked for only one
shilling. But, after the disastrous year in which England drew the
sword against her American colonies, the rate was never less than four
shillings. At length, in the year 1798, the Parliament relieved itself
from the trouble of passing a new Act every spring. The land tax, at
four shillings in the pound, was made permanent; and those who were
subject to it were permitted to redeem it. A great part has been
redeemed; and at present little more than a fiftieth of the ordinary
revenue required in time of peace is raised by that impost which was
once regarded as the most productive of all the resources of the State.
[365]
The land tax was fixed, for the year 1693, at four shillings in the
pound, and consequently brought about two millions into the Treasury.
That sum, small as it may seem to a generation which has expended a
hundred and twenty millions in twelve months, was such as had never
before been raised here in one year by direct taxation. It seemed
immense both to Englishmen and to foreigners. Lewis, who found it almost
impossible to wring by cruel exactions from the beggared peasantry of
France the means of supporting the greatest army and the most gorgeous
court that had existed in Europe since the downfall of the Roman empire,
broke out, it is said, into an exclamation of angry surprise when he
learned that the Commons of England had, from dread and hatred of
his power, unanimously determined to lay on themselves, in a year of
scarcity and of commercial embarrassment, a burden such as neither they
nor their fathers had ever before borne. "My little cousin of Orange,"
he said, "seems to be firm in the saddle. " He afterwards added:
"No matter, the last piece of gold will win. " This however was a
consideration from which, if he had been well informed touching the
resources of England, he would not have derived much comfort. Kensington
was certainly a mere hovel when compared to his superb Versailles. The
display of jewels, plumes and lace, led horses and gilded coaches, which
daily surrounded him, far outshone the splendour which, even on great
public occasions, our princes were in the habit of displaying. But
the condition of the majority of the people of England was, beyond all
doubt, such as the majority of the people of France might well have
envied. In truth what was called severe distress here would have been
called unexampled prosperity there.
The land tax was not imposed without a quarrel between the Houses.
The Commons appointed commissioners to make the assessment. These
commissioners were the principal gentlemen of every county, and were
named in the bill. The Lords thought this arrangement inconsistent with
the dignity of the peerage. They therefore inserted a clause providing
that their estates should be valued by twenty of their own order. The
Lower House indignantly rejected this amendment, and demanded an instant
conference. After some delay, which increased the ill humour of the
Commons, the conference took place. The bill was returned to the Peers
with a very concise and haughty intimation that they must not presume
to alter laws relating to money. A strong party among the Lords was
obstinate. Mulgrave spoke at great length against the pretensions of
the plebeians. He told his brethren that, if they gave way, they would
abdicate that authority which had belonged to the baronage of England
ever since the foundation of the monarchy, and that they would have
nothing left of their old greatness except their coronets and ermines.
Burnet says that this speech was the finest that he ever heard in
Parliament; and Burnet was undoubtedly a good judge of speaking, and
was neither partial to Mulgrave nor zealous for the privileges of the
aristocracy. The orator, however, though he charmed his hearers, did not
succeed in convincing them. Most of them shrank from a conflict in which
they would have had against them the Commons united as one man, and the
King, who, in case of necessity, would undoubtedly have created fifty
peers rather than have suffered the land tax bill to be lost. Two strong
protests, however, signed, the first by twenty-seven, the second by
twenty-one dissentients, show how obstinately many nobles were prepared
to contend at all hazards for the dignity of their caste. Another
conference was held; and Rochester announced that the Lords, for the
sake of the public interest, waived what they must nevertheless assert
to be their clear right, and would not insist on their amendment. [366]
The bill passed, and was followed by bills for laying additional duties
on imports, and for taxing the dividends of joint stock companies.
Still, however, the estimated revenue was not equal to the estimated
expenditure. The year 1692 had bequeathed a large deficit to the year
1693; and it seemed probable that the charge for 1693 would exceed by
about five hundred thousand pounds the charge for 1692. More than two
millions had been voted for the army and ordnance, near two millions for
the navy. [367] Only eight years before fourteen hundred thousand pounds
had defrayed the whole annual charge of government. More than four times
that sum was now required. Taxation, both direct and indirect, had been
carried to an unprecedented point; yet the income of the state still
fell short of the outlay by about a million. It was necessary to devise
something. Something was devised, something of which the effects are
felt to this day in every part of the globe.
There was indeed nothing strange or mysterious in the expedient to which
the government had recourse. It was an expedient familiar, during two
centuries, to the financiers of the Continent, and could hardly fail to
occur to any English statesman who compared the void in the Exchequer
with the overflow in the money market.
During the interval between the Restoration and the Revolution the
riches of the nation had been rapidly increasing. Thousands of busy
men found every Christmas that, after the expenses of the year's
housekeeping had been defrayed out of the year's income, a surplus
remained; and how that surplus was to be employed was a question of some
difficulty. In our time, to invest such a surplus, at something more
than three per cent. , on the best security that has ever been known in
the world, is the work of a few minutes. But in the seventeenth century
a lawyer, a physician, a retired merchant, who had saved some thousands
and who wished to place them safely and profitably, was often greatly
embarrassed. Three generations earlier, a man who had accumulated wealth
in a profession generally purchased real property or lent his savings on
mortgage. But the number of acres in the kingdom had remained the same;
and the value of those acres, though it had greatly increased, had by no
means increased so fast as the quantity of capital which was seeking for
employment. Many too wished to put their money where they could find it
at an hour's notice, and looked about for some species of property which
could be more readily transferred than a house or a field. A capitalist
might lend on bottomry or on personal security; but, if he did so, he
ran a great risk of losing interest and principal. There were a few
joint stock companies, among which the East India Company held the
foremost place; but the demand for the stock of such companies was far
greater than the supply. Indeed the cry for a new East India Company
was chiefly raised by persons who had found difficulty in placing their
savings at interest on good security. So great was that difficulty that
the practice of hoarding was common. We are told that the father of Pope
the poet, who retired from business in the City about the time of the
Revolution, carried to a retreat in the country a strong box containing
near twenty thousand pounds, and took out from time to time what was
required for household expenses; and it is highly probable that this was
not a solitary case. At present the quantity of coin which is hoarded
by private persons is so small that it would, if brought forth, make no
perceptible addition to the circulation. But, in the earlier part of the
reign of William the Third, all the greatest writers on currency were of
opinion that a very considerable mass of gold and silver was hidden in
secret drawers and behind wainscots.
The natural effect of this state of things was that a crowd of
projectors, ingenious and absurd, honest and knavish, employed
themselves in devising new schemes for the employment of redundant
capital. It was about the year 1688 that the word stockjobber was first
heard in London. In the short space of four years a crowd of companies,
every one of which confidently held out to subscribers the hope of
immense gains, sprang into existence; the Insurance Company, the Paper
Company, the Lutestring Company, the Pearl Fishery Company, the
Glass Bottle Company, the Alum Company, the Blythe Coal Company, the
Swordblade Company. There was a Tapestry Company which would soon
furnish pretty hangings for all the parlours of the middle class and
for all the bedchambers of the higher. There was a Copper Company which
proposed to explore the mines of England, and held out a hope that they
would prove not less valuable than those of Potosi. There was a Diving
Company which undertook to bring up precious effects from shipwrecked
vessels, and which announced that it had laid in a stock of wonderful
machines resembling complete suits of armour. In front of the helmet was
a huge glass eye like that of a cyclop; and out of the crest went a
pipe through which the air was to be admitted. The whole process was
exhibited on the Thames. Fine gentlemen and fine ladies were invited
to the show, were hospitably regaled, and were delighted by seeing the
divers in their panoply descend into the river and return laden with
old iron, and ship's tackle. There was a Greenland Fishing Company which
could not fail to drive the Dutch whalers and herring busses out of the
Northern Ocean. There was a Tanning Company which promised to furnish
leather superior to the best that was brought from Turkey or Russia.
There was a society which undertook the office of giving gentlemen a
liberal education on low terms, and which assumed the sounding name of
the Royal Academies Company. In a pompous advertisement it was announced
that the directors of the Royal Academies Company had engaged the best
masters in every branch of knowledge, and were about to issue twenty
thousand tickets at twenty shillings each. There was to be a lottery;
two thousand prizes were to be drawn; and the fortunate holders of the
prizes were to be taught, at the charge of the Company, Latin, Greek,
Hebrew, French, Spanish, conic sections, trigonometry, heraldry,
japanning, fortification, bookkeeping and the art of playing the
theorbo. Some of these companies took large mansions and printed their
advertisements in gilded letters. Others, less ostentatious, were
content with ink, and met at coffeehouses in the neighbourhood of the
Royal Exchange. Jonathan's and Garraway's were in a constant ferment
with brokers, buyers, sellers, meetings of directors, meetings
of proprietors. Time bargains soon came into fashion. Extensive
combinations were formed, and monstrous fables were circulated, for
the purpose of raising or depressing the price of shares. Our country
witnessed for the first time those phenomena with which a long
experience has made us familiar. A mania of which the symptoms were
essentially the same with those of the mania of 1720, of the mania of
1825, of the mania of 1845, seized the public mind. An impatience to
be rich, a contempt for those slow but sure gains which are the proper
reward of industry, patience and thrift, spread through society. The
spirit of the cogging dicers of Whitefriars took possession of the grave
Senators of the City, Wardens of Trades, Deputies, Aldermen. It was
much easier and much more lucrative to put forth a lying prospectus
announcing a new stock, to persuade ignorant people that the dividends
could not fall short of twenty per cent. , and to part with five thousand
pounds of this imaginary wealth for ten thousand solid guineas, than to
load a ship with a well chosen cargo for Virginia or the Levant. Every
day some new bubble was puffed into existence, rose buoyant, shone
bright, burst, and was forgotten. [368]
The new form which covetousness had taken furnished the comic poets
and satirists with an excellent subject; nor was that subject the
less welcome to them because some of the most unscrupulous and most
successful of the new race of gamesters were men in sad coloured clothes
and lank hair, men who called cards the Devil's books, men who thought
it a sin and a scandal to win or lose twopence over a backgammon board.
It was in the last drama of Shadwell that the hypocrisy and knavery of
these speculators was, for the first time, exposed to public ridicule.
He died in November 1692, just before his Stockjobbers came on the
stage; and the epilogue was spoken by an actor dressed in deep mourning.
The best scene is that in which four or five stern Nonconformists,
clad in the full Puritan costume, after discussing the prospects of
the Mousetrap Company and the Fleakilling Company, examine the question
whether the godly may lawfully hold stock in a Company for bringing over
Chinese ropedancers. "Considerable men have shares," says one austere
person in cropped hair and bands; "but verily I question whether it
be lawful or not. " These doubts are removed by a stout old Roundhead
colonel who had fought at Marston Moor, and who reminds his weaker
brother that the saints need not themselves see the ropedancing, and
that, in all probability, there will be no ropedancing to see. "The
thing," he says, "is like to take; the shares will sell well; and then
we shall not care whether the dancers come over or no. " It is important
to observe that this scene was exhibited and applauded before one
farthing of the national debt had been contracted. So ill informed were
the numerous writers who, at a later period, ascribed to the national
debt the existence of stockjobbing and of all the immoralities connected
with stockjobbing. The truth is that society had, in the natural course
of its growth, reached a point at which it was inevitable that there
should be stockjobbing whether there were a national debt or not, and
inevitable also that, if there were a long and costly war, there should
be a national debt.
How indeed was it possible that a debt should not have been contracted,
when one party was impelled by the strongest motives to borrow, and
another was impelled by equally strong motives to lend? A moment had
arrived at which the government found it impossible, without exciting
the most formidable discontents, to raise by taxation the supplies
necessary to defend the liberty and independence of the nation; and, at
that very moment, numerous capitalists were looking round them in vain
for some good mode of investing their savings, and, for want of such
a mode, were keeping their wealth locked up, or were lavishing it on
absurd projects. Riches sufficient to equip a navy which would sweep the
German Ocean and the Atlantic of French privateers, riches sufficient
to maintain an army which might retake Namur and avenge the disaster of
Steinkirk, were lying idle, or were passing away from the owners into
the hands of sharpers. A statesman might well think that some part of
the wealth which was daily buried or squandered might, with advantage to
the proprietor, to the taxpayer and to the State, be attracted into the
Treasury. Why meet the extraordinary charge of a year of war by seizing
the chairs, the tables, the beds of hardworking families, by compelling
one country gentleman to cut down his trees before they were ready for
the axe, another to let the cottages on his land fall to ruin, a third
to take away his hopeful son from the University, when Change Alley was
swarming with people who did not know what to do with their money and
who were pressing every body to borrow it?
It was often asserted at a later period by Tories, who hated the
national debt most of all things, and who hated Burnet most of all men,
that Burnet was the person who first advised the government to contract
a national debt. But this assertion is proved by no trustworthy
evidence, and seems to be disproved by the Bishop's silence. Of all men
he was the least likely to conceal the fact that an important fiscal
revolution had been his work. Nor was the Board of Treasury at that time
one which much needed, or was likely much to regard, the counsels of a
divine. At that Board sate Godolphin the most prudent and experienced,
and Montague the most daring and inventive of financiers. Neither of
these eminent men could be ignorant that it had long been the practice
of the neighbouring states to spread over many years of peace the
excessive taxation which was made necessary by one year of war. In Italy
this practice had existed through many generations. France had, during
the war which began in 1672 and ended in 1679, borrowed not less than
thirty millions of our money. Sir William Temple, in his interesting
work on the Batavian federation, had told his countrymen that, when he
was ambassador at the Hague, the single province of Holland, then ruled
by the frugal and prudent De Witt, owed about five millions sterling,
for which interest at four per cent. was always ready to the day, and
that when any part of the principal was paid off the public creditor
received his money with tears, well knowing that he could find no other
investment equally secure. The wonder is not that England should have at
length imitated the example both of her enemies and of her allies, but
that the fourth year of her arduous and exhausting struggle against
Lewis should have been drawing to a close before she resorted to an
expedient so obvious.
On the fifteenth of December 1692 the House of Commons resolved itself
into a Committee of Ways and Means. Somers took the chair. Montague
proposed to raise a million by way of loan; the proposition was
approved; and it was ordered that a bill should be brought in. The
details of the scheme were much discussed and modified; but the
principle appears to have been popular with all parties. The moneyed men
were glad to have a good opportunity of investing what they had hoarded.
The landed men, hard pressed by the load of taxation, were ready to
consent to any thing for the sake of present ease. No member ventured to
divide the House. On the twentieth of January the bill was read a third
time, carried up to the Lords by Somers, and passed by them without any
amendment. [369]
By this memorable law new duties were imposed on beer and other liquors.
These duties were to be kept in the Exchequer separate from all other
receipts, and were to form a fund on the credit of which a million was
to be raised by life annuities. As the annuitants dropped off, their
annuities were to be divided among the survivors, till the number of
survivors was reduced to seven. After that time, whatever fell in was to
go to the public. It was therefore certain that the eighteenth century
would be far advanced before the debt would be finally extinguished. The
rate of interest was to be ten per cent. till the year 1700, and after
that year seven per cent. The advantages offered to the public creditor
by this scheme may seem great, but were not more than sufficient to
compensate him for the risk which he ran. It was not impossible that
there might be a counterrevolution; and it was certain that, if there
were a counterrevolution, those who had lent money to William would lose
both interest and principal.
Such was the origin of that debt which has since become the greatest
prodigy that ever perplexed the sagacity and confounded the pride of
statesmen and philosophers. At every stage in the growth of that debt
the nation has set up the same cry of anguish and despair. At every
stage in the growth of that debt it has been seriously asserted by wise
men that bankruptcy and ruin were at hand. Yet still the debt went on
growing; and still bankruptcy and ruin were as remote as ever. When the
great contest with Lewis the Fourteenth was finally terminated by the
Peace of Utrecht, the nation owed about fifty millions; and that
debt was considered, not merely by the rude multitude, not merely by
foxhunting squires and coffeehouse orators, but by acute and profound
thinkers, as an incumbrance which would permanently cripple the body
politic; Nevertheless trade flourished; wealth increased; the nation
became richer and richer. Then came the war of the Austrian Succession;
and the debt rose to eighty millions. Pamphleteers, historians and
orators pronounced that now, at all events, our case was desperate.
Yet the signs of increasing prosperity, signs which could neither be
counterfeited nor concealed, ought to have satisfied observant and
reflecting men that a debt of eighty millions was less to the England
which was governed by Pelham than a debt of fifty millions had been to
the England which was governed by Oxford. Soon war again broke forth;
and, under the energetic and prodigal administration of the first
William Pitt, the debt rapidly swelled to a hundred and forty millions.
As soon as the first intoxication of victory was over, men of theory and
men of business almost unanimously pronounced that the fatal day had now
really arrived. The only statesman, indeed, active or speculative, who
did not share in the general delusion was Edmund Burke. David Hume,
undoubtedly one of the most profound political economists of his time,
declared that our madness had exceeded the madness of the Crusaders.
Richard Coeur de Lion and Saint Lewis had not gone in the face of
arithmetical demonstration. It was impossible to prove by figures that
the road to Paradise did not lie through the Holy Land; but it was
possible to prove by figures that the road to national ruin was through
the national debt. It was idle, however, now to talk about the road; we
had done with the road; we had reached the goal; all was over; all
the revenues of the island north of Trent and west of Reading were
mortgaged. Better for us to have been conquered by Prussia or Austria
than to be saddled with the interest of a hundred and forty millions.
[370] And yet this great philosopher--for such he was--had only to open
his eyes, and to see improvement all around him, cities increasing,
cultivation extending, marts too small for the crowd of buyers and
sellers, harbours insufficient to contain the shipping, artificial
rivers joining the chief inland seats of industry to the chief seaports,
streets better lighted, houses better furnished, richer wares exposed to
sale in statelier shops, swifter carriages rolling along smoother roads.
He had, indeed, only to compare the Edinburgh of his boyhood with
the Edinburgh of his old age. His prediction remains to posterity, a
memorable instance of the weakness from which the strongest minds
are not exempt. Adam Smith saw a little and but a little further.
He admitted that, immense as the burden was, the nation did actually
sustain it and thrive under it in a way which nobody could have
foreseen. But he warned his countrymen not to repeat so hazardous an
experiment. The limit had been reached. Even a small increase might
be fatal. [371] Not less gloomy was the view which George Grenville,
a minister eminently diligent and practical, took of our financial
situation.
Jacobite lords had promised him immense rewards if he would, at the head
of his gang, fall upon the King at a stag hunt in Windsor Forest. There
was nothing intrinsically improbable in Whitney's story. Indeed a design
very similar to that which he imputed to the malecontents was, only
three years later, actually formed by some of them, and was all but
carried into execution. But it was far better that a few bad men should
go unpunished than that all honest men should live in fear of being
falsely accused by felons sentenced to the gallows. Chief Justice Holt
advised the King to let the law take its course. William, never much
inclined to give credit to stories about conspiracies, assented. The
Captain, as he was called, was hanged in Smithfield, and made a most
penitent end. [343]
Meanwhile, in the midst of discontent, distress and disorder, had begun
a session of Parliament singularly eventful, a session from which dates
a new era in the history of English finance, a session in which some
grave constitutional questions, not yet entirely set at rest, were for
the first time debated.
It is much to be lamented that any account of this session which can
be framed out of the scanty and dispersed materials now accessible must
leave many things obscure. The relations of the parliamentary factions
were, during this year, in a singularly complicated state. Each of the
two Houses was divided and subdivided by several lines. To omit minor
distinctions, there was the great line which separated the Whig party
from the Tory party; and there was the great line which separated the
official men and their friends and dependents, who were sometimes
called the Court party, from those who were sometimes nicknamed the
Grumbletonians and sometimes honoured with the appellation of the
Country party. And these two great lines were intersecting lines. For
of the servants of the Crown and of their adherents about one half were
Whigs and one half Tories. It is also to be remembered that there was,
quite distinct from the feud between Whigs and Tories, quite distinct
also from the feud between those who were in and those who were out, a
feud between the Lords as Lords and the Commons as Commons. The spirit
both of the hereditary and of the elective chamber had been thoroughly
roused in the preceding session by the dispute about the Court of the
Lord High Steward; and they met in a pugnacious mood.
The speech which the King made at the opening of the session was
skilfully framed for the purpose of conciliating the Houses. He came, he
told them, to ask for their advice and assistance. He congratulated them
on the victory of La Hogue. He acknowledged with much concern that the
operations of the allies had been less successful by land than by sea;
but he warmly declared that, both by land and by sea, the valour of his
English subjects had been preeminently conspicuous. The distress of his
people, he said, was his own; his interest was inseparable from theirs;
it was painful to him to call on them to make sacrifices; but from
sacrifices which were necessary to the safety of the English nation and
of the Protestant religion no good Englishman and no good Protestant
would shrink. [344]
The Commons thanked the King in cordial terms for his gracious speech.
[345] But the Lords were in a bad humour. Two of their body, Marlborough
and Huntingdon, had, during the recess, when an invasion and an
insurrection were hourly expected, been sent to the Tower, and were
still under recognisances. Had a country gentleman or a merchant been
taken up and held to bail on even slighter grounds at so alarming a
crisis, the Lords would assuredly not have interfered. But they were
easily moved to anger by any thing that looked like an indignity offered
to their own order. They not only crossexamined with great severity
Aaron Smith, the Solicitor of the Treasury, whose character, to say the
truth, entitled him to little indulgence, but passed; by thirty-five
votes to twenty-eight, a resolution implying a censure on the judges of
the King's Bench, men certainly not inferior in probity, and very far
superior in legal learning, to any peer of the realm. The King thought
it prudent to soothe the wounded pride of the nobility by ordering the
recognisances to be cancelled; and with this concession the House was
satisfied, to the great vexation of the Jacobites, who had hoped that
the quarrel would be prosecuted to some fatal issue, and who, finding
themselves disappointed, vented their spleen by railing at the tameness
of the degenerate barons of England. [346]
Both Houses held long and earnest deliberations on the state of the
nation. The King, when he requested their advice, had, perhaps, not
foreseen that his words would be construed into an invitation to
scrutinise every part of the administration, and to offer suggestions
touching matters which parliaments have generally thought it expedient
to leave entirely to the Crown. Some of the discontented peers proposed
that a Committee, chosen partly by the Lords and partly by the Commons,
should be authorised to inquire into the whole management of public
affairs. But it was generally apprehended that such a Committee would
become a second and more powerful Privy Council, independent of the
Crown, and unknown to the Constitution. The motion was therefore
rejected by forty-eight votes to thirty-six. On this occasion the
ministers, with scarcely an exception, voted in the majority. A protest
was signed by eighteen of the minority, among whom were the bitterest
Whigs and the bitterest Tories in the whole peerage. [347]
The Houses inquired, each for itself, into the causes of the public
calamities. The Commons resolved themselves into a Grand Committee
to consider of the advice to be given to the King. From the concise
abstracts and fragments which have come down to us it seems that, in
this Committee, which continued to sit many days, the debates wandered
over a vast space. One member spoke of the prevalence of highway
robbery; another deplored the quarrel between the Queen and the
Princess, and proposed that two or three gentlemen should be deputed to
wait on Her Majesty and try to make matters up. A third described the
machinations of the Jacobites in the preceding spring. It was notorious,
he said, that preparations had been made for a rising, and that arms and
horses had been collected; yet not a single traitor had been brought to
justice. [348]
The events of the war by land and sea furnished matter for several
earnest debates. Many members complained of the preference given to
aliens over Englishmen. The whole battle of Steinkirk was fought over
again; and severe reflections were thrown on Solmes. "Let English
soldiers be commanded by none but English generals," was the almost
universal cry. Seymour, who had once been distinguished by his hatred of
the foreigners, but who, since he had been at the Board of Treasury,
had reconsidered his opinions, asked where English generals were to
be found. "I have no love for foreigners as foreigners; but we have no
choice. Men are not born generals; nay, a man may be a very valuable
captain or major, and not be equal to the conduct of an army. Nothing
but experience will form great commanders. Very few of our countrymen
have that experience; and therefore we must for the present employ
strangers. " Lowther followed on the same side. "We have had a long
peace; and the consequence is that we have not a sufficient supply of
officers fit for high commands. The parks and the camp at Hounslow were
very poor military schools, when compared with the fields of battle
and the lines of contravallation in which the great commanders of the
continental nations have learned their art. " In reply to these arguments
an orator on the other side was so absurd as to declare that he could
point out ten Englishmen who, if they were in the French service, would
be made Marshals. Four or five colonels who had been at Steinkirk took
part in the debate. It was said of them that they showed as much modesty
in speech as they had shown courage in action; and, from the very
imperfect report which has come down to us, the compliment seems to have
been not undeserved. They did not join in the vulgar cry against the
Dutch. They spoke well of the foreign officers generally, and did full
justice to the valour and conduct with which Auverquerque had rescued
the shattered remains of Mackay's division from what seemed certain
destruction. But in defence of Solmes not a word was said. His severity,
his haughty manners, and, above all, the indifference with which he had
looked on while the English, borne down by overwhelming numbers, were
fighting hand to hand with the French household troops, had made him so
odious that many members were prepared to vote for an address requesting
that he might be removed, and that his place might be filled by Talmash,
who, since the disgrace of Marlborough, was universally allowed to
be the best officer in the army. But Talmash's friends judiciously
interfered. "I have," said one of them, "a true regard for that
gentleman; and I implore you not to do him an injury under the notion of
doing him a kindness. Consider that you are usurping what is peculiarly
the King's prerogative. You are turning officers out and putting
officers in. " The debate ended without any vote of censure on Solmes.
But a hope was expressed, in language not very parliamentary, that what
had been said in the Committee would be reported to the King, and that
His Majesty would not disregard the general wish of the representatives
of his people. [349]
The Commons next proceeded to inquire into the naval administration, and
very soon came to a quarrel with the Lords on that subject. That there
had been mismanagement somewhere was but too evident. It was hardly
possible to acquit both Russell and Nottingham; and each House stood
by its own member. The Commons had, at the opening of the session,
unanimously passed a vote of thanks to Russell for his conduct at
La Hogue. They now, in the Grand Committee of Advice, took into
consideration the miscarriages which had followed the battle. A motion
was made so vaguely worded that it could hardly be said to mean any
thing. It was understood however to imply a censure on Nottingham, and
was therefore strongly opposed by his friends. On the division the Ayes
were a hundred and sixty-five, the Noes a hundred and sixty-four. [350]
On the very next day Nottingham appealed to the Lords. He told his story
with all the skill of a practised orator, and with all the authority
which belongs to unblemished integrity. He then laid on the table a
great mass of papers, which he requested the House to read and consider.
The Peers seem to have examined the papers seriously and diligently. The
result of the examination was by no means favourable to Russell. Yet
it was thought unjust to condemn him unheard; and it was difficult to
devise any way in which their Lordships could hear him. At last it was
resolved to send the papers down to the Commons with a message which
imported that, in the opinion of the Upper House, there was a case
against the Admiral which he ought to be called upon to answer. With the
papers was sent an abstract of the contents. [351]
The message was not very respectfully received. Russell had, at that
moment, a popularity which he little deserved, but which will not
surprise us when we remember that the public knew nothing of his
treasons, and knew that he was the only living Englishman who had won a
great battle. The abstract of the papers was read by the clerk. Russell
then spoke with great applause; and his friends pressed for an immediate
decision. Sir Christopher Musgrave very justly observed that it was
impossible to pronounce judgment on such a pile of despatches without
perusing them; but this objection was overruled. The Whigs regarded the
accused member as one of themselves; many of the Tories were dazzled by
the splendour of his recent victory; and neither Whigs nor Tories were
disposed to show any deference for the authority of the Peers. The
House, without reading the papers, passed an unanimous resolution
expressing warm approbation of Russell's whole conduct. The temper of
the assembly was such that some ardent Whigs thought that they might
now venture to propose a vote of censure on Nottingham by name. But the
attempt failed. "I am ready," said Lowther,--and he doubtless expressed
what many felt,--"I am ready to support any motion that may do honour to
the Admiral; but I cannot join in an attack on the Secretary of State.
For, to my knowledge, their Majesties have no more zealous, laborious
or faithful servant than my Lord Nottingham. " Finch exerted all his
mellifluous eloquence in defence of his brother, and contrived, without
directly opposing himself to the prevailing sentiment, to insinuate
that Russell's conduct had not been faultless. The vote of censure on
Nottingham was not pressed. The vote which pronounced Russell's conduct
to have been deserving of all praise was communicated to the Lords; and
the papers which they had sent down were very unceremoniously returned.
[352] The Lords, much offended, demanded a free conference. It was
granted; and the managers of the two Houses met in the Painted Chamber.
Rochester, in the name of his brethren, expressed a wish to be informed
of the grounds on which the Admiral had been declared faultless. To this
appeal the gentlemen who stood on the other side of the table answered
only that they had not been authorised to give any explanation, but that
they would report to those who had sent them what had been said. [353]
By this time the Commons were thoroughly tired of the inquiry into the
conduct of the war. The members had got rid of much of the ill humour
which they had brought up with them from their country seats by the
simple process of talking it away. Burnet hints that those arts of which
Caermarthen and Trevor were the great masters were employed for the
purpose of averting votes which would have seriously embarrassed the
government. But, though it is not improbable that a few noisy pretenders
to patriotism may have been quieted with bags of guineas, it would
be absurd to suppose that the House generally was influenced in this
manner. Whoever has seen anything of such assemblies knows that the
spirit with which they enter on long inquiries very soon flags, and that
their resentment, if not kept alive by injudicious opposition, cools
fast. In a short time every body was sick of the Grand Committee of
Advice. The debates had been tedious and desultory. The resolutions
which had been carried were for the most part merely childish. The King
was to be humbly advised to employ men of ability and integrity. He was
to be humbly advised to employ men who would stand by him against James.
The patience of the House was wearied out by long discussions ending in
the pompous promulgation of truisms like these. At last the explosion
came. One of the grumblers called the attention of the Grand Committee
to the alarming fact that two Dutchmen were employed in the Ordnance
department, and moved that the King should be humbly advised to dismiss
them. The motion was received with disdainful mockery. It was remarked
that the military men especially were loud in the expression of
contempt. "Do we seriously think of going to the King and telling him
that, as he has condescended to ask our advice at this momentous crisis,
we humbly advise him to turn a Dutch storekeeper out of the Tower?
Really, if we have no more important suggestion to carry up to the
throne, we may as well go to our dinners. " The members generally were
of the same mind. The chairman was voted out of the chair, and was not
directed to ask leave to sit again. The Grand Committee ceased to exist.
The resolutions which it had passed were formally reported to the House.
One of them was rejected; the others were suffered to drop; and the
Commons, after considering during several weeks what advice they should
give to the King, ended by giving him no advice at all. [354]
The temper of the Lords was different. From many circumstances it
appears that there was no place where the Dutch were, at this time, so
much hated as in the Upper House. The dislike with which an Englishman
of the middle class regarded the King's foreign friends was merely
national. But the dislike with which an English nobleman regarded them
was personal. They stood between him and Majesty. They intercepted from
him the rays of royal favour. The preference given to them wounded him
both in his interests and in his pride. His chance of the Garter was
much smaller since they had become his competitors. He might have been
Master of the Horse but for Auverquerque, Master of the Robes but for
Zulestein, Groom of the Stole but for Bentinck. [355] The ill humour of
the aristocracy was inflamed by Marlborough, who, at this time, affected
the character of a patriot persecuted for standing up against the Dutch
in defence of the interests of his native land, and who did not foresee
that a day would come when he would be accused of sacrificing the
interests of his native land to gratify the Dutch. The Peers determined
to present an address, requesting William not to place his English
troops under the command of a foreign general. They took up very
seriously that question which had moved the House of Commons to
laughter, and solemnly counselled their Sovereign not to employ
foreigners in his magazines. At Marlborough's suggestion they urged the
King to insist that the youngest English general should take precedence
of the oldest general in the service of the States General. It was, they
said, derogatory to the dignity of the Crown, that an officer who held
a commission from His Majesty should ever be commanded by an officer
who held a similar commission from a republic. To this advice, evidently
dictated by an ignoble malevolence to Holland, William, who troubled
himself little about votes of the Upper House which were not backed by
the Lower, returned, as might have been expected, a very short and dry
answer. [356]
While the inquiry into the conduct of the war was pending, the Commons
resumed the consideration of an important subject which had occupied
much of their attention in the preceding year. The Bill for the
Regulation of Trials in cases of High Treason was again brought in, but
was strongly opposed by the official men, both Whigs and Tories. Somers,
now Attorney General, strongly recommended delay. That the law, as
it stood, was open to grave objections, was not denied; but it was
contended that the proposed reform would, at that moment, produce more
harm than good. Nobody would assert that, under the existing government,
the lives of innocent subjects were in any danger. Nobody would deny
that the government itself was in great danger. Was it the part of wise
men to increase the perils of that which was already in serious peril
for the purpose of giving new security to that which was already
perfectly secure? Those who held this language were twitted with their
inconsistency, and asked why they had not ventured to oppose the bill
in the preceding session. They answered very plausibly that the events
which had taken place during the recess had taught an important lesson
to all who were capable of learning. The country had been threatened at
once with invasion and insurrection. No rational man doubted that many
traitors had made preparations for joining the French, and had collected
arms, ammunition and horses for that purpose. Yet, though there was
abundant moral evidence against these enemies of their country, it had
not been possible to find legal evidence against a single one of them.
The law of treason might, in theory, be harsh, and had undoubtedly, in
times past, been grossly abused. But a statesman who troubled himself
less about theory than about practice, and less about times past than
about the time present, would pronounce that law not too stringent but
too lax, and would, while the commonwealth remained in extreme jeopardy,
refuse to consent to any further relaxation. In spite of all opposition,
however, the principle of the bill was approved by one hundred and
seventy-one votes to one hundred and fifty-two. But in the committee it
was moved and carried that the new rules of procedure should not come
into operation till after the end of the war with France. When the
report was brought up the House divided on this amendment, and ratified
it by a hundred and forty-five votes to a hundred and twenty-five. The
bill was consequently suffered to drop. [357] Had it gone up to the
Peers it would in all probability have been lost after causing another
quarrel between the Houses. For the Peers were fully determined that
no such bill should pass, unless it contained a clause altering the
constitution of the Lord High Steward's Court; and a clause altering
the constitution of the Lord High Steward's Court would have been less
likely than ever to find favour with the Commons. For in the course of
this session an event took place which proved that the great were only
too well protected by the law as it stood, and which well deserves to be
recorded as a striking illustration of the state of manners and morals
in that age.
Of all the actors who were then on the English stage the most graceful
was William Mountford. He had every physical qualification for his
calling, a noble figure, a handsome face, a melodious voice. It was not
easy to say whether he succeeded better in heroic or in ludicrous parts.
He was allowed to be both the best Alexander and the best Sir Courtly
Nice that ever trod the boards. Queen Mary, whose knowledge was very
superficial, but who had naturally a quick perception of what was
excellent in art, admired him greatly. He was a dramatist as well as a
player, and has left us one comedy which is not contemptible. [358]
The most popular actress of the time was Anne Bracegirdle. There were on
the stage many women of more faultless beauty, but none whose features
and deportment had such power to fascinate the senses and the hearts
of men. The sight of her bright black eyes and of her rich brown cheek
sufficed to put the most turbulent audience into good humour. It was
said of her that in the crowded theatre she had as many lovers as she
had male spectators. Yet no lover, however rich, however high in rank,
had prevailed on her to be his mistress. Those who are acquainted with
the parts which she was in the habit of playing, and with the epilogues
which it was her especial business to recite, will not easily give her
credit for any extraordinary measure of virtue or of delicacy. She
seems to have been a cold, vain and interested coquette, who perfectly
understood how much the influence of her charms was increased by the
fame of a severity which cost her nothing, and who could venture to
flirt with a succession of admirers in the just confidence that no flame
which she might kindle in them would thaw her own ice. [359] Among those
who pursued her with an insane desire was a profligate captain in the
army named Hill. With Hill was closely bound in a league of debauchery
and violence Charles Lord Mohun, a young nobleman whose life was one
long revel and brawl. Hill, finding that the beautiful brunette was
invincible, took it into his head that he was rejected for a more
favoured rival, and that this rival was the brilliant Mountford. The
jealous lover swore over his wine at a tavern that he would stab the
villain. "And I," said Mohun, "will stand by my friend. " From the tavern
the pair went, with some soldiers whose services Hill had secured, to
Drury Lane where the lady resided. They lay some time in wait for her.
As soon as she appeared in the street she was seized and hurried to
a coach. She screamed for help; her mother clung round her; the whole
neighbourhood rose; and she was rescued. Hill and Mohun went away vowing
vengeance. They swaggered sword in hand during two hours about the
streets near Mountford's dwelling. The watch requested them to put up
their weapons. But when the young lord announced that he was a peer,
and bade the constables touch him if they durst, they let him pass. So
strong was privilege then; and so weak was law. Messengers were sent to
warn Mountford of his danger; but unhappily they missed him. He came. A
short altercation took place between him and Mohun; and, while they were
wrangling, Hill ran the unfortunate actor through the body, and fled.
The grand jury of Middlesex, consisting of gentlemen of note, found a
bill of murder against Hill and Mohun. Hill escaped. Mohun was taken.
His mother threw herself at William's feet, but in vain. "It was a cruel
act," said the King; "I shall leave it to the law. " The trial came on
in the Court of the Lord High Steward; and, as Parliament happened to be
sitting, the culprit had the advantage of being judged by the whole
body of the peerage. There was then no lawyer in the Upper House. It
therefore became necessary, for the first time since Buckhurst had
pronounced sentence on Essex and Southampton, that a peer who had never
made jurisprudence his special study should preside over that grave
tribunal. Caermarthen, who, as Lord President, took precedence of all
the nobility, was appointed Lord High Steward. A full report of the
proceedings has come down to us. No person, who carefully examines that
report, and attends to the opinion unanimously given by the judges in
answer to a question which Nottingham drew up, and in which the facts
brought out by the evidence are stated with perfect fairness, can doubt
that the crime of murder was fully brought home to the prisoner.
Such
was the opinion of the King who was present during the trial; and such
was the almost unanimous opinion of the public. Had the issue been tried
by Holt and twelve plain men at the Old Bailey, there can be no doubt
that a verdict of Guilty would have been returned. The Peers, however,
by sixty-nine votes to fourteen, acquitted their accused brother. One
great nobleman was so brutal and stupid as to say, "After all the fellow
was but a player; and players are rogues. " All the newsletters, all the
coffeehouse orators, complained that the blood of the poor was shed with
impunity by the great. Wits remarked that the only fair thing about the
trial was the show of ladies in the galleries. Letters and journals
are still extant in which men of all shades of opinion, Whigs, Tories,
Nonjurors, condemn the partiality of the tribunal. It was not to be
expected that, while the memory of this scandal was fresh in the public
mind, the Commons would be induced to give any new advantage to accused
peers. [360]
The Commons had, in the meantime, resumed the consideration of another
highly important matter, the state of the trade with India. They had,
towards the close of the preceding session, requested the King to
dissolve the old Company and to constitute a new Company on such terms
as he should think fit; and he had promised to take their request into
his serious consideration. He now sent a message to inform them that
it was out of his power to do what they had asked. He had referred the
charter of the old Company to the Judges, and the judges had pronounced
that, under the provisions of that charter, the old Company could not
be dissolved without three years' notice, and must retain during those
three years the exclusive privilege of trading to the East Indies. He
added that, being sincerely desirous to gratify the Commons, and finding
himself unable to do so in the way which they had pointed out, he had
tried to prevail on the old Company to agree to a compromise; but that
body stood obstinately on its extreme rights; and his endeavours had
been frustrated. [361]
This message reopened the whole question. The two factions which divided
the City were instantly on the alert. The debates in the House were
long and warm. Petitions against the old Company were laid on the table.
Satirical handbills against the new Company were distributed in the
lobby. At length, after much discussion, it was resolved to present
an address requesting the King to give the notice which the judges had
pronounced necessary. He promised to bear the subject in mind, and to
do his best to promote the welfare of the kingdom. With this answer the
House was satisfied, and the subject was not again mentioned till the
next session. [362]
The debates of the Commons on the conduct of the war, on the law of
treason and on the trade with India, occupied much time, and produced no
important result. But meanwhile real business was doing in the Committee
of Supply and the Committee of Ways and Means. In the Committee of
Supply the estimates passed rapidly. A few members declared it to
be their opinion that England ought to withdraw her troops from the
Continent, to carry on the war with vigour by sea, and to keep up only
such an army as might be sufficient to repel any invader who might elude
the vigilance of her fleets. But this doctrine, which speedily became
and long continued to be the badge of one of the great parties in the
state, was as yet professed only by a small minority which did not
venture to call for a division. [363]
In the Committee of Ways and Means, it was determined that a great part
of the charge of the year should be defrayed by means of an impost,
which, though old in substance, was new in form. From a very early
period to the middle of the seventeenth century, our Parliaments had
provided for the extraordinary necessities of the government chiefly by
granting subsidies. A subsidy was raised by an impost on the people of
the realm in respect of their reputed estates. Landed property was the
chief subject of taxation, and was assessed nominally at four shillings
in the pound. But the assessment was made in such a way that it not only
did not rise in proportion to the rise in the value of land or to
the fall in the value of the precious metals, but went on constantly
sinking, till at length the rate was in truth less than twopence in the
pound. In the time of Charles the First a real tax of four shillings in
the pound on land would probably have yielded near a million and a half;
but a subsidy amounted to little more than fifty thousand pounds. [364]
The financiers of the Long Parliament devised a more efficient mode of
taxing estates. The sum which was to be raised was fixed. It was then
distributed among the counties in proportion to their supposed wealth,
and was levied within each county by a rate. The revenue derived
from these assessments in the time of the Commonwealth varied from
thirty-five thousand pounds to a hundred and twenty thousand pounds a
month.
After the Restoration the legislature seemed for a time inclined
to revert, in finance as in other things, to the ancient practice.
Subsidies were once or twice granted to Charles the Second. But it
soon appeared that the old system was much less convenient than the
new system. The Cavaliers condescended to take a lesson in the art
of taxation from the Roundheads; and, during the interval between the
Restoration and the Revolution, extraordinary calls were occasionally
met by assessments resembling the assessments of the Commonwealth. After
the Revolution, the war with France made it necessary to have recourse
annually to this abundant source of revenue. In 1689, in 1690 and in
1691, great sums had been raised on the land. At length in 1692 it was
determined to draw supplies from real property more largely than ever.
The Commons resolved that a new and more accurate valuation of estates
should be made over the whole realm, and that on the rental thus
ascertained a pound rate should be paid to the government.
Such was the origin of the existing land tax. The valuation made in
1692 has remained unaltered down to our own time. According to that
valuation, one shilling in the pound on the rental of the kingdom
amounted, in round numbers, to half a million. During a hundred and six
years, a land tax bill was annually presented to Parliament, and was
annually passed, though not always without murmurs from the country
gentlemen. The rate was, in time of war, four shillings in the pound. In
time of peace, before the reign of George the Third, only two or three
shillings were usually granted; and, during a short part of the prudent
and gentle administration of Walpole, the government asked for only one
shilling. But, after the disastrous year in which England drew the
sword against her American colonies, the rate was never less than four
shillings. At length, in the year 1798, the Parliament relieved itself
from the trouble of passing a new Act every spring. The land tax, at
four shillings in the pound, was made permanent; and those who were
subject to it were permitted to redeem it. A great part has been
redeemed; and at present little more than a fiftieth of the ordinary
revenue required in time of peace is raised by that impost which was
once regarded as the most productive of all the resources of the State.
[365]
The land tax was fixed, for the year 1693, at four shillings in the
pound, and consequently brought about two millions into the Treasury.
That sum, small as it may seem to a generation which has expended a
hundred and twenty millions in twelve months, was such as had never
before been raised here in one year by direct taxation. It seemed
immense both to Englishmen and to foreigners. Lewis, who found it almost
impossible to wring by cruel exactions from the beggared peasantry of
France the means of supporting the greatest army and the most gorgeous
court that had existed in Europe since the downfall of the Roman empire,
broke out, it is said, into an exclamation of angry surprise when he
learned that the Commons of England had, from dread and hatred of
his power, unanimously determined to lay on themselves, in a year of
scarcity and of commercial embarrassment, a burden such as neither they
nor their fathers had ever before borne. "My little cousin of Orange,"
he said, "seems to be firm in the saddle. " He afterwards added:
"No matter, the last piece of gold will win. " This however was a
consideration from which, if he had been well informed touching the
resources of England, he would not have derived much comfort. Kensington
was certainly a mere hovel when compared to his superb Versailles. The
display of jewels, plumes and lace, led horses and gilded coaches, which
daily surrounded him, far outshone the splendour which, even on great
public occasions, our princes were in the habit of displaying. But
the condition of the majority of the people of England was, beyond all
doubt, such as the majority of the people of France might well have
envied. In truth what was called severe distress here would have been
called unexampled prosperity there.
The land tax was not imposed without a quarrel between the Houses.
The Commons appointed commissioners to make the assessment. These
commissioners were the principal gentlemen of every county, and were
named in the bill. The Lords thought this arrangement inconsistent with
the dignity of the peerage. They therefore inserted a clause providing
that their estates should be valued by twenty of their own order. The
Lower House indignantly rejected this amendment, and demanded an instant
conference. After some delay, which increased the ill humour of the
Commons, the conference took place. The bill was returned to the Peers
with a very concise and haughty intimation that they must not presume
to alter laws relating to money. A strong party among the Lords was
obstinate. Mulgrave spoke at great length against the pretensions of
the plebeians. He told his brethren that, if they gave way, they would
abdicate that authority which had belonged to the baronage of England
ever since the foundation of the monarchy, and that they would have
nothing left of their old greatness except their coronets and ermines.
Burnet says that this speech was the finest that he ever heard in
Parliament; and Burnet was undoubtedly a good judge of speaking, and
was neither partial to Mulgrave nor zealous for the privileges of the
aristocracy. The orator, however, though he charmed his hearers, did not
succeed in convincing them. Most of them shrank from a conflict in which
they would have had against them the Commons united as one man, and the
King, who, in case of necessity, would undoubtedly have created fifty
peers rather than have suffered the land tax bill to be lost. Two strong
protests, however, signed, the first by twenty-seven, the second by
twenty-one dissentients, show how obstinately many nobles were prepared
to contend at all hazards for the dignity of their caste. Another
conference was held; and Rochester announced that the Lords, for the
sake of the public interest, waived what they must nevertheless assert
to be their clear right, and would not insist on their amendment. [366]
The bill passed, and was followed by bills for laying additional duties
on imports, and for taxing the dividends of joint stock companies.
Still, however, the estimated revenue was not equal to the estimated
expenditure. The year 1692 had bequeathed a large deficit to the year
1693; and it seemed probable that the charge for 1693 would exceed by
about five hundred thousand pounds the charge for 1692. More than two
millions had been voted for the army and ordnance, near two millions for
the navy. [367] Only eight years before fourteen hundred thousand pounds
had defrayed the whole annual charge of government. More than four times
that sum was now required. Taxation, both direct and indirect, had been
carried to an unprecedented point; yet the income of the state still
fell short of the outlay by about a million. It was necessary to devise
something. Something was devised, something of which the effects are
felt to this day in every part of the globe.
There was indeed nothing strange or mysterious in the expedient to which
the government had recourse. It was an expedient familiar, during two
centuries, to the financiers of the Continent, and could hardly fail to
occur to any English statesman who compared the void in the Exchequer
with the overflow in the money market.
During the interval between the Restoration and the Revolution the
riches of the nation had been rapidly increasing. Thousands of busy
men found every Christmas that, after the expenses of the year's
housekeeping had been defrayed out of the year's income, a surplus
remained; and how that surplus was to be employed was a question of some
difficulty. In our time, to invest such a surplus, at something more
than three per cent. , on the best security that has ever been known in
the world, is the work of a few minutes. But in the seventeenth century
a lawyer, a physician, a retired merchant, who had saved some thousands
and who wished to place them safely and profitably, was often greatly
embarrassed. Three generations earlier, a man who had accumulated wealth
in a profession generally purchased real property or lent his savings on
mortgage. But the number of acres in the kingdom had remained the same;
and the value of those acres, though it had greatly increased, had by no
means increased so fast as the quantity of capital which was seeking for
employment. Many too wished to put their money where they could find it
at an hour's notice, and looked about for some species of property which
could be more readily transferred than a house or a field. A capitalist
might lend on bottomry or on personal security; but, if he did so, he
ran a great risk of losing interest and principal. There were a few
joint stock companies, among which the East India Company held the
foremost place; but the demand for the stock of such companies was far
greater than the supply. Indeed the cry for a new East India Company
was chiefly raised by persons who had found difficulty in placing their
savings at interest on good security. So great was that difficulty that
the practice of hoarding was common. We are told that the father of Pope
the poet, who retired from business in the City about the time of the
Revolution, carried to a retreat in the country a strong box containing
near twenty thousand pounds, and took out from time to time what was
required for household expenses; and it is highly probable that this was
not a solitary case. At present the quantity of coin which is hoarded
by private persons is so small that it would, if brought forth, make no
perceptible addition to the circulation. But, in the earlier part of the
reign of William the Third, all the greatest writers on currency were of
opinion that a very considerable mass of gold and silver was hidden in
secret drawers and behind wainscots.
The natural effect of this state of things was that a crowd of
projectors, ingenious and absurd, honest and knavish, employed
themselves in devising new schemes for the employment of redundant
capital. It was about the year 1688 that the word stockjobber was first
heard in London. In the short space of four years a crowd of companies,
every one of which confidently held out to subscribers the hope of
immense gains, sprang into existence; the Insurance Company, the Paper
Company, the Lutestring Company, the Pearl Fishery Company, the
Glass Bottle Company, the Alum Company, the Blythe Coal Company, the
Swordblade Company. There was a Tapestry Company which would soon
furnish pretty hangings for all the parlours of the middle class and
for all the bedchambers of the higher. There was a Copper Company which
proposed to explore the mines of England, and held out a hope that they
would prove not less valuable than those of Potosi. There was a Diving
Company which undertook to bring up precious effects from shipwrecked
vessels, and which announced that it had laid in a stock of wonderful
machines resembling complete suits of armour. In front of the helmet was
a huge glass eye like that of a cyclop; and out of the crest went a
pipe through which the air was to be admitted. The whole process was
exhibited on the Thames. Fine gentlemen and fine ladies were invited
to the show, were hospitably regaled, and were delighted by seeing the
divers in their panoply descend into the river and return laden with
old iron, and ship's tackle. There was a Greenland Fishing Company which
could not fail to drive the Dutch whalers and herring busses out of the
Northern Ocean. There was a Tanning Company which promised to furnish
leather superior to the best that was brought from Turkey or Russia.
There was a society which undertook the office of giving gentlemen a
liberal education on low terms, and which assumed the sounding name of
the Royal Academies Company. In a pompous advertisement it was announced
that the directors of the Royal Academies Company had engaged the best
masters in every branch of knowledge, and were about to issue twenty
thousand tickets at twenty shillings each. There was to be a lottery;
two thousand prizes were to be drawn; and the fortunate holders of the
prizes were to be taught, at the charge of the Company, Latin, Greek,
Hebrew, French, Spanish, conic sections, trigonometry, heraldry,
japanning, fortification, bookkeeping and the art of playing the
theorbo. Some of these companies took large mansions and printed their
advertisements in gilded letters. Others, less ostentatious, were
content with ink, and met at coffeehouses in the neighbourhood of the
Royal Exchange. Jonathan's and Garraway's were in a constant ferment
with brokers, buyers, sellers, meetings of directors, meetings
of proprietors. Time bargains soon came into fashion. Extensive
combinations were formed, and monstrous fables were circulated, for
the purpose of raising or depressing the price of shares. Our country
witnessed for the first time those phenomena with which a long
experience has made us familiar. A mania of which the symptoms were
essentially the same with those of the mania of 1720, of the mania of
1825, of the mania of 1845, seized the public mind. An impatience to
be rich, a contempt for those slow but sure gains which are the proper
reward of industry, patience and thrift, spread through society. The
spirit of the cogging dicers of Whitefriars took possession of the grave
Senators of the City, Wardens of Trades, Deputies, Aldermen. It was
much easier and much more lucrative to put forth a lying prospectus
announcing a new stock, to persuade ignorant people that the dividends
could not fall short of twenty per cent. , and to part with five thousand
pounds of this imaginary wealth for ten thousand solid guineas, than to
load a ship with a well chosen cargo for Virginia or the Levant. Every
day some new bubble was puffed into existence, rose buoyant, shone
bright, burst, and was forgotten. [368]
The new form which covetousness had taken furnished the comic poets
and satirists with an excellent subject; nor was that subject the
less welcome to them because some of the most unscrupulous and most
successful of the new race of gamesters were men in sad coloured clothes
and lank hair, men who called cards the Devil's books, men who thought
it a sin and a scandal to win or lose twopence over a backgammon board.
It was in the last drama of Shadwell that the hypocrisy and knavery of
these speculators was, for the first time, exposed to public ridicule.
He died in November 1692, just before his Stockjobbers came on the
stage; and the epilogue was spoken by an actor dressed in deep mourning.
The best scene is that in which four or five stern Nonconformists,
clad in the full Puritan costume, after discussing the prospects of
the Mousetrap Company and the Fleakilling Company, examine the question
whether the godly may lawfully hold stock in a Company for bringing over
Chinese ropedancers. "Considerable men have shares," says one austere
person in cropped hair and bands; "but verily I question whether it
be lawful or not. " These doubts are removed by a stout old Roundhead
colonel who had fought at Marston Moor, and who reminds his weaker
brother that the saints need not themselves see the ropedancing, and
that, in all probability, there will be no ropedancing to see. "The
thing," he says, "is like to take; the shares will sell well; and then
we shall not care whether the dancers come over or no. " It is important
to observe that this scene was exhibited and applauded before one
farthing of the national debt had been contracted. So ill informed were
the numerous writers who, at a later period, ascribed to the national
debt the existence of stockjobbing and of all the immoralities connected
with stockjobbing. The truth is that society had, in the natural course
of its growth, reached a point at which it was inevitable that there
should be stockjobbing whether there were a national debt or not, and
inevitable also that, if there were a long and costly war, there should
be a national debt.
How indeed was it possible that a debt should not have been contracted,
when one party was impelled by the strongest motives to borrow, and
another was impelled by equally strong motives to lend? A moment had
arrived at which the government found it impossible, without exciting
the most formidable discontents, to raise by taxation the supplies
necessary to defend the liberty and independence of the nation; and, at
that very moment, numerous capitalists were looking round them in vain
for some good mode of investing their savings, and, for want of such
a mode, were keeping their wealth locked up, or were lavishing it on
absurd projects. Riches sufficient to equip a navy which would sweep the
German Ocean and the Atlantic of French privateers, riches sufficient
to maintain an army which might retake Namur and avenge the disaster of
Steinkirk, were lying idle, or were passing away from the owners into
the hands of sharpers. A statesman might well think that some part of
the wealth which was daily buried or squandered might, with advantage to
the proprietor, to the taxpayer and to the State, be attracted into the
Treasury. Why meet the extraordinary charge of a year of war by seizing
the chairs, the tables, the beds of hardworking families, by compelling
one country gentleman to cut down his trees before they were ready for
the axe, another to let the cottages on his land fall to ruin, a third
to take away his hopeful son from the University, when Change Alley was
swarming with people who did not know what to do with their money and
who were pressing every body to borrow it?
It was often asserted at a later period by Tories, who hated the
national debt most of all things, and who hated Burnet most of all men,
that Burnet was the person who first advised the government to contract
a national debt. But this assertion is proved by no trustworthy
evidence, and seems to be disproved by the Bishop's silence. Of all men
he was the least likely to conceal the fact that an important fiscal
revolution had been his work. Nor was the Board of Treasury at that time
one which much needed, or was likely much to regard, the counsels of a
divine. At that Board sate Godolphin the most prudent and experienced,
and Montague the most daring and inventive of financiers. Neither of
these eminent men could be ignorant that it had long been the practice
of the neighbouring states to spread over many years of peace the
excessive taxation which was made necessary by one year of war. In Italy
this practice had existed through many generations. France had, during
the war which began in 1672 and ended in 1679, borrowed not less than
thirty millions of our money. Sir William Temple, in his interesting
work on the Batavian federation, had told his countrymen that, when he
was ambassador at the Hague, the single province of Holland, then ruled
by the frugal and prudent De Witt, owed about five millions sterling,
for which interest at four per cent. was always ready to the day, and
that when any part of the principal was paid off the public creditor
received his money with tears, well knowing that he could find no other
investment equally secure. The wonder is not that England should have at
length imitated the example both of her enemies and of her allies, but
that the fourth year of her arduous and exhausting struggle against
Lewis should have been drawing to a close before she resorted to an
expedient so obvious.
On the fifteenth of December 1692 the House of Commons resolved itself
into a Committee of Ways and Means. Somers took the chair. Montague
proposed to raise a million by way of loan; the proposition was
approved; and it was ordered that a bill should be brought in. The
details of the scheme were much discussed and modified; but the
principle appears to have been popular with all parties. The moneyed men
were glad to have a good opportunity of investing what they had hoarded.
The landed men, hard pressed by the load of taxation, were ready to
consent to any thing for the sake of present ease. No member ventured to
divide the House. On the twentieth of January the bill was read a third
time, carried up to the Lords by Somers, and passed by them without any
amendment. [369]
By this memorable law new duties were imposed on beer and other liquors.
These duties were to be kept in the Exchequer separate from all other
receipts, and were to form a fund on the credit of which a million was
to be raised by life annuities. As the annuitants dropped off, their
annuities were to be divided among the survivors, till the number of
survivors was reduced to seven. After that time, whatever fell in was to
go to the public. It was therefore certain that the eighteenth century
would be far advanced before the debt would be finally extinguished. The
rate of interest was to be ten per cent. till the year 1700, and after
that year seven per cent. The advantages offered to the public creditor
by this scheme may seem great, but were not more than sufficient to
compensate him for the risk which he ran. It was not impossible that
there might be a counterrevolution; and it was certain that, if there
were a counterrevolution, those who had lent money to William would lose
both interest and principal.
Such was the origin of that debt which has since become the greatest
prodigy that ever perplexed the sagacity and confounded the pride of
statesmen and philosophers. At every stage in the growth of that debt
the nation has set up the same cry of anguish and despair. At every
stage in the growth of that debt it has been seriously asserted by wise
men that bankruptcy and ruin were at hand. Yet still the debt went on
growing; and still bankruptcy and ruin were as remote as ever. When the
great contest with Lewis the Fourteenth was finally terminated by the
Peace of Utrecht, the nation owed about fifty millions; and that
debt was considered, not merely by the rude multitude, not merely by
foxhunting squires and coffeehouse orators, but by acute and profound
thinkers, as an incumbrance which would permanently cripple the body
politic; Nevertheless trade flourished; wealth increased; the nation
became richer and richer. Then came the war of the Austrian Succession;
and the debt rose to eighty millions. Pamphleteers, historians and
orators pronounced that now, at all events, our case was desperate.
Yet the signs of increasing prosperity, signs which could neither be
counterfeited nor concealed, ought to have satisfied observant and
reflecting men that a debt of eighty millions was less to the England
which was governed by Pelham than a debt of fifty millions had been to
the England which was governed by Oxford. Soon war again broke forth;
and, under the energetic and prodigal administration of the first
William Pitt, the debt rapidly swelled to a hundred and forty millions.
As soon as the first intoxication of victory was over, men of theory and
men of business almost unanimously pronounced that the fatal day had now
really arrived. The only statesman, indeed, active or speculative, who
did not share in the general delusion was Edmund Burke. David Hume,
undoubtedly one of the most profound political economists of his time,
declared that our madness had exceeded the madness of the Crusaders.
Richard Coeur de Lion and Saint Lewis had not gone in the face of
arithmetical demonstration. It was impossible to prove by figures that
the road to Paradise did not lie through the Holy Land; but it was
possible to prove by figures that the road to national ruin was through
the national debt. It was idle, however, now to talk about the road; we
had done with the road; we had reached the goal; all was over; all
the revenues of the island north of Trent and west of Reading were
mortgaged. Better for us to have been conquered by Prussia or Austria
than to be saddled with the interest of a hundred and forty millions.
[370] And yet this great philosopher--for such he was--had only to open
his eyes, and to see improvement all around him, cities increasing,
cultivation extending, marts too small for the crowd of buyers and
sellers, harbours insufficient to contain the shipping, artificial
rivers joining the chief inland seats of industry to the chief seaports,
streets better lighted, houses better furnished, richer wares exposed to
sale in statelier shops, swifter carriages rolling along smoother roads.
He had, indeed, only to compare the Edinburgh of his boyhood with
the Edinburgh of his old age. His prediction remains to posterity, a
memorable instance of the weakness from which the strongest minds
are not exempt. Adam Smith saw a little and but a little further.
He admitted that, immense as the burden was, the nation did actually
sustain it and thrive under it in a way which nobody could have
foreseen. But he warned his countrymen not to repeat so hazardous an
experiment. The limit had been reached. Even a small increase might
be fatal. [371] Not less gloomy was the view which George Grenville,
a minister eminently diligent and practical, took of our financial
situation.
