No More Learning

He determined, therefore, to comply with the wish of his people, and
at the same time to give them a weighty and serious but friendly
admonition. Never had he succeeded better in suppressing the outward
signs of his emotions than on the day on which he carried this
determination into effect. The public mind was much excited. The crowds
in the parks and streets were immense. The Jacobites came in troops,
hoping to enjoy the pleasure of reading shame and rage on the face of
him whom they most hated and dreaded. The hope was disappointed. The
Prussian Minister, a discerning observer, free from the passions which
distracted English society, accompanied the royal procession from St.
James's Palace to Westminster Hall. He well knew how bitterly William
had been mortified, and was astonished to see him present himself to the
public gaze with a serene and cheerful aspect.

The speech delivered from the throne was much admired; and the
correspondent of the States General acknowledged that he despaired
of exhibiting in a French translation the graces of style which
distinguished the original. Indeed that weighty, simple and dignified
eloquence which becomes the lips of a sovereign was seldom wanting
in any composition of which the plan was furnished by William and the
language by Somers. The King informed the Lords and Commons that he had
come down to pass their bill as soon as it was ready for him. He could
not indeed but think that they had carried the reduction of the army
to a dangerous extent. He could not but feel that they had treated him
unkindly in requiring him to part with those guards who had come over
with him to deliver England, and who had since been near him on every
field of battle. But it was his fixed opinion that nothing could be so
pernicious to the State as that he should be regarded by his people with
distrust, distrust of which he had not expected to be the object after
what he had endeavoured, ventured, and acted, to restore and to secure
their liberties. He had now, he said, told the Houses plainly the
reason, the only reason, which had induced him to pass their bill; and
it was his duty to tell them plainly, in discharge of his high trust,
and in order that none might hold him accountable for the evils which he
had vainly endeavoured to avert, that, in his judgment, the nation was
left too much exposed.

When the Commons had returned to their chamber, and the King's speech
had been read from the chair, Howe attempted to raise a storm. A gross
insult had been offered to the House. The King ought to be asked who
had put such words into his mouth. But the spiteful agitator found no
support. The majority were so much pleased with the King for promptly
passing the bill that they were not disposed to quarrel with him
for frankly declaring that he disliked it. It was resolved without
a division that an address should be presented, thanking him for his
gracious speech and for his ready compliance with the wishes of his
people, and assuring him that his grateful Commons would never forget
the great things which he had done for the country, would never give him
cause to think them unkind or undutiful, and would, on all occasions,
stand by him against all enemies.

Just at this juncture tidings arrived which might well raise misgivings
in the minds of those who had voted for reducing the national means of
defence. The Electoral Prince of Bavaria was no more. The Gazette
which announced that the Disbanding Bill had received the royal assent
informed the public that he was dangerously ill at Brussels. The next
Gazette contained the news of his death. Only a few weeks had elapsed
since all who were anxious for the peace of the world had learned with
joy that he had been named heir to the Spanish throne. That the boy
just entering upon life with such hopes should die, while the wretched
Charles, long ago half dead, continued to creep about between his
bedroom and his chapel, was an event for which, notwithstanding the
proverbial uncertainty of life, the minds of men were altogether
unprepared. A peaceful solution of the great question now seemed
impossible. France and Austria were left confronting each other. Within
a month the whole Continent might be in arms. Pious men saw in this
stroke, so sudden and so terrible, the plain signs of the divine
displeasure. God had a controversy with the nations. Nine years of fire,
of slaughter and of famine had not been sufficient to reclaim a guilty
world; and a second and more severe chastisement was at hand. Others
muttered that the event which all good men lamented was to be ascribed
to unprincipled ambition. It would indeed have been strange if, in that
age, so important a death, happening at so critical a moment, had not
been imputed to poison. The father of the deceased Prince loudly accused
the Court of Vienna; and the imputation, though not supported by the
slightest evidence, was, during some time, believed by the vulgar.

The politicians at the Dutch embassy imagined that now at length the
parliament would listen to reason. It seemed that even the country
gentlemen must begin to contemplate the probability of an alarming
crisis. The merchants of the Royal Exchange, much better acquainted than
the country gentlemen with foreign lands, and much more accustomed than
the country gentlemen to take large views, were in great agitation.
Nobody could mistake the beat of that wonderful pulse which had recently
begun, and has during five generations continued, to indicate the
variations of the body politic. When Littleton was chosen speaker, the
stocks rose. When it was resolved that the army should be reduced to
seven thousand men, the stocks fell. When the death of the Electoral
Prince was known, they fell still lower. The subscriptions to a new
loan, which the Commons had, from mere spite to Montague, determined to
raise on conditions of which he disapproved, came in very slowly. The
signs of a reaction of feeling were discernible both in and out of
Parliament. Many men are alarmists by constitution. Trenchard and Howe
had frightened most men by writing and talking about the danger to which
liberty and property would be exposed if the government were allowed to
keep a large body of Janissaries in pay. The danger had ceased to exist;
and those people who must always be afraid of something, as they could
no longer be afraid of a standing army, began to be afraid of the French
King. There was a turn in the tide of public opinion; and no part of
statesmanship is more important than the art of taking the tide of
public opinion at the turn. On more than one occasion William showed
himself a master of that art. But, on the present occasion, a sentiment,
in itself amiable and respectable, led him to commit the greatest
mistake of his whole life. Had he at this conjuncture again earnestly
pressed on the Houses the importance of providing for the defence of the
kingdom, and asked of them an additional number of English troops, it is
not improbable that he might have carried his point; it is certain
that, if he had failed, there would have been nothing ignominious in his
failure. Unhappily, instead of raising a great public question, on which
he was in the right, on which he had a good chance of succeeding, and on
which he might have been defeated without any loss of dignity, he chose
to raise a personal question, on which he was in the wrong, on which,
right or wrong, he was sure to be beaten, and on which he could not
be beaten without being degraded. Instead of pressing for more English
regiments, he exerted all his influence to obtain for the Dutch guards
permission to remain in the island.

The first trial of strength was in the Upper House. A resolution was
moved there to the effect that the Lords would gladly concur in any plan
that could be suggested for retaining the services of the Dutch brigade.
The motion was carried by fifty-four votes to thirty-eight. But
a protest was entered, and was signed by all the minority. It is
remarkable that Devonshire was, and that Marlborough was not, one of the
Dissentients. Marlborough had formerly made himself conspicuous by the
keenness and pertinacity with which he had attacked the Dutch. But he
had now made his peace with the Court, and was in the receipt of a
large salary from the civil list. He was in the House on that day;
and therefore, if he voted, must have voted with the majority. The
Cavendishes had generally been strenuous supporters of the King and the
junto. But on the subject of the foreign troops Hartington in one House
and his father in the other were intractable.

This vote of the Lords caused much murmuring among the Commons. It was
said to be most unparliamentary to pass a bill one week, and the next
week to pass a resolution condemning that bill. It was true that the
bill had been passed before the death of the Electoral Prince was known
in London. But that unhappy event, though it might be a good reason for
increasing the English army, could be no reason for departing from
the principle that the English army should consist of Englishmen. A
gentleman who despised the vulgar clamour against professional soldiers,
who held the doctrine of Somers's Balancing Letter, and who was prepared
to vote for twenty or even thirty thousand men, might yet well ask why
any of those men should be foreigners. Were our countrymen naturally
inferior to men of other races in any of the qualities which, under
proper training, make excellent soldiers? That assuredly was not the
opinion of the Prince who had, at the head of Ormond's Life Guards,
driven the French household troops, till, then invincible, back over
the ruins of Neerwinden, and whose eagle eye and applauding voice had
followed Cutts's grenadiers up the glacis of Namur. Bitter spirited
malecontents muttered that, since there was no honourable service which
could not be as well performed by the natives of the realm as by alien
mercenaries, it might well be suspected that the King wanted his alien
mercenaries for some service not honourable. If it were necessary to
repel a French invasion or to put down an Irish insurrection, the Blues
and the Buffs would stand by him to the death. But, if his object were
to govern in defiance of the votes of his Parliament and of the cry
of his people, he might well apprehend that English swords and muskets
would, at the crisis, fail him, as they had failed his father in law,
and might well wish to surround himself with men who were not of our
blood, who had no reverence for our laws, and no sympathy with our
feelings. Such imputations could find credit with no body superior in
intelligence to those clownish squires who with difficulty managed to
spell out Dyer's Letter over their ale. Men of sense and temper admitted
that William had never shown any disposition to violate the solemn
compact which he had made with the nation, and that, even if he were
depraved enough to think of destroying the constitution by military
violence, he was not imbecile enough to imagine that the Dutch brigade,
or five such brigades, would suffice for his purpose. But such men,
while they fully acquitted him of the design attributed to him by
factious malignity, could not acquit him of a partiality which it was
natural that he should feel, but which it would have been wise in him
to hide, and with which it was impossible that his subjects should
sympathise. He ought to have known that nothing is more offensive to
free and proud nations than the sight of foreign uniforms and standards.
Though not much conversant with books, he must have been acquainted with
the chief events in the history of his own illustrious House; and he
could hardly have been ignorant that his great grandfather had commenced
a long and glorious struggle against despotism by exciting the States
General of Ghent to demand that all Spanish troops should be withdrawn
from the Netherlands. The final parting between the tyrant and the
future deliverer was not an event to be forgotten by any of the race
of Nassau. "It was the States, Sir," said the Prince of Orange. Philip
seized his wrist with a convulsive grasp, and exclaimed, "Not the
States, but you, you, you. "

William, however, determined to try whether a request made by himself
in earnest and almost supplicating terms would induce his subjects to
indulge his national partiality at the expense of their own. None of
his ministers could flatter him with any hope of success. But on this
subject he was too much excited to hear reason. He sent down to the
Commons a message, not merely signed by himself according to the usual
form, but written throughout with his own hand. He informed them that
the necessary preparations had been made for sending away the guards who
came with him to England, and that they would immediately embark, unless
the House should, out of consideration for him, be disposed to retain
them, which he should take very kindly. When the message had been read,
a member proposed that a day might be fixed for the consideration of the
subject. But the chiefs of the majority would not consent to any
thing which might seem to indicate hesitation, and moved the previous
question. The ministers were in a false position. It was out of their
power to answer Harley when he sarcastically declared that he did not
suspect them of having advised His Majesty on this occasion. If, he
said, those gentlemen had thought it desirable that the Dutch brigade
should remain in the kingdom, they would have done so before. There had
been many opportunities of raising the question in a perfectly
regular manner during the progress of the Disbanding Bill. Of those
opportunities nobody had thought fit to avail himself; and it was now
too late to reopen the question. Most of the other members who spoke
against taking the message into consideration took the same line,
declined discussing points which might have been discussed when the
Disbanding Bill was before the House, and declared merely that they
could not consent to any thing so unparliamentary as the repealing of an
Act which had just been passed. But this way of dealing with the message
was far too mild and moderate to satisfy the implacable malice of Howe.
In his courtly days he had vehemently called on the King to use the
Dutch for the purpose of quelling the insubordination of the English
regiments. "None but the Dutch troops," he said, "are to be trusted. " He
was now not ashamed to draw a parallel between those very Dutch troops
and the Popish Kernes whom James had brought over from Munster and
Connaught to enslave our island. The general feeling was such that
the previous question was carried without a division. A Committee was
immediately appointed to draw up an address explaining the reasons which
made it impossible for the House to comply with His Majesty's wish. At
the next sitting the Committee reported; and on the report there was
an animated debate. The friends of the government thought the proposed
address offensive. The most respectable members of the majority felt
that it would be ungraceful to aggravate by harsh language the pain
which must be caused by their conscientious opposition to the King's
wishes. Some strong expressions were therefore softened down; some
courtly phrases were inserted; but the House refused to omit one
sentence which almost reproachfully reminded the King that in his
memorable Declaration of 1688 he had promised to send back all the
foreign forces as soon as he had effected the deliverance of this
country. The division was, however, very close. There were one hundred
and fifty-seven votes for omitting this passage, and one hundred and
sixty-three for retaining it. [18]

The address was presented by the whole House. William's answer was as
good as it was possible for him, in the unfortunate position in which he
had placed himself, to return. It showed that he was deeply hurt; but it
was temperate and dignified. Those who saw him in private knew that his
feelings had been cruelly lacerated. His body sympathised with his mind.
His sleep was broken. His headaches tormented him more than ever. From
those whom he had been in the habit of considering as his friends, and
who had failed him in the recent struggle, he did not attempt to conceal
his displeasure. The lucrative see of Worcester was vacant; and some
powerful Whigs of the cider country wished to obtain it for John
Hall, Bishop of Bristol. One of the Foleys, a family zealous for the
Revolution, but hostile to standing armies, spoke to the King on the
subject. "I will pay as much respect to your wishes," said William, "as
you and yours have paid to mine. " Lloyd of St. Asaph was translated to
Worcester.

The Dutch Guards immediately began to march to the coast. After all the
clamour which had been raised against them, the populace witnessed
their departure rather with sorrow than with triumph. They had been long
domiciled here; they had been honest and inoffensive; and many of them
were accompanied by English wives and by young children who talked no
language but English. As they traversed the capital, not a single shout
of exultation was raised; and they were almost everywhere greeted with
kindness. One rude spectator, indeed, was heard to remark that Hans made
a much better figure, now that he had been living ten years on the fat
of the land, than when he first came. "A pretty figure you would have
made," said a Dutch soldier, "if we had not come. " And the retort was
generally applauded. It would not, however, be reasonable to infer from
the signs of public sympathy and good will with which the foreigners
were dismissed that the nation wished them to remain. It was probably
because they were going that they were regarded with favour by many who
would never have seen them relieve guard at St. James's without black
looks and muttered curses.

Side by side with the discussion about the land force had been
proceeding a discussion, scarcely less animated, about the naval
administration. The chief minister of marine was a man whom it had once
been useless and even perilous to attack in the Commons. It was to no
purpose that, in 1693, grave charges, resting on grave evidence, had
been brought against the Russell who had conquered at La Hogue. The name
of Russell acted as a spell on all who loved English freedom. The name
of La Hogue acted as a spell on all who were proud of the glory of
the English arms. The accusations, unexamined and unrefuted, were
contemptuously flung aside; and the thanks of the House were voted
to the accused commander without one dissentient voice. But times had
changed. The Admiral still had zealous partisans; but the fame of his
exploits had lost their gloss; people in general were quick to discern
his faults; and his faults were but too discernible. That he had carried
on a traitorous correspondence with Saint Germains had not been proved,
and had been pronounced by the representatives of the people to be
a foul calumny. Yet the imputation had left a stain on his name. His
arrogant, insolent and quarrelsome temper made him an object of hatred.
His vast and growing wealth made him an object of envy. What his
official merits and demerits really were it is not easy to discover
through the mist made up of factious abuse and factious panegyric. One
set of writers described him as the most ravenous of all the plunderers
of the poor overtaxed nation. Another set asserted that under him the
ships were better built and rigged, the crews were better disciplined
and better tempered, the biscuit was better, the beer was better, the
slops were better, than under any of his predecessors; and yet that the
charge to the public was less than it had been when the vessels were
unseaworthy, when the sailors were riotous, when the food was alive with
vermin, when the drink tasted like tanpickle, and when the clothes
and hammocks were rotten. It may, however, be observed that these two
representations are not inconsistent with each other; and there is
strong reason to believe that both are, to a great extent, true. Orford
was covetous and unprincipled; but he had great professional skill and
knowledge, great industry, and a strong will. He was therefore an useful
servant of the state when the interests of the state were not opposed to
his own; and this was more than could be said of some who had preceded
him. He was, for example, an incomparably better administrator than
Torrington. For Torrington's weakness and negligence caused ten times as
much mischief as his rapacity. But, when Orford had nothing to gain
by doing what was wrong, he did what was right, and did it ably and
diligently. Whatever Torrington did not embezzle he wasted. Orford may
have embezzled as much as Torrington; but he wasted nothing.

Early in the session, the House of Commons resolved itself into a
Committee on the state of the Navy. This Committee sate at intervals
during more than three months. Orford's administration underwent a
close scrutiny, and very narrowly escaped a severe censure. A resolution
condemning the manner in which his accounts had been kept was lost by
only one vote. There were a hundred and forty against him, and a hundred
and forty-one for him. When the report was presented to the House,
another attempt was made to put a stigma upon him. It was moved that the
King should be requested to place the direction of maritime affairs
in other hands. There were a hundred and sixty Ayes to a hundred and
sixty-four Noes. With this victory, a victory hardly to be distinguished
from a defeat, his friends were forced to be content. An address setting
forth some of the abuses in the naval department, and beseeching King
William to correct them, was voted without a division. In one of those
abuses Orford was deeply interested. He was First Lord of the Admiralty;
and he had held, ever since the Revolution, the lucrative place of
Treasurer of the Navy. It was evidently improper that two offices, one
of which was meant to be a check on the other, should be united in the
same person; and this the Commons represented to the King.

Questions relating to the military and naval Establishments occupied
the attention of the Commons so much during the session that, until the
prorogation was at hand, little was said about the resumption of the
Crown grants. But, just before the Land Tax Bill was sent up to the
Lords, a clause was added to it by which seven Commissioners were
empowered to take account of the property forfeited in Ireland during
the late troubles. The selection of those Commissioners the House
reserved to itself. Every member was directed to bring a list containing
the names of seven persons who were not members; and the seven names
which appeared in the greatest number of lists were inserted in the
bill. The result of the ballot was unfavourable to the government. Four
of the seven on whom the choice fell were connected with the opposition;
and one of them, Trenchard, was the most conspicuous of the pamphleteers
who had been during many months employed in raising a cry against the
army.

The Land Tax Bill, with this clause tacked to it, was carried to the
Upper House. The Peers complained, and not without reason, of this mode
of proceeding. It may, they said, be very proper that Commissioners
should be appointed by Act of Parliament to take account of the
forfeited property in Ireland. But they should be appointed by a
separate Act. Then we should be able to make amendments, to ask for
conferences, to give and receive explanations. The Land Tax Bill we
cannot amend. We may indeed reject it; but we cannot reject it without
shaking public credit, without leaving the kingdom defenceless, without
raising a mutiny in the navy. The Lords yielded, but not without a
protest which was signed by some strong Whigs and some strong Tories.
The King was even more displeased than the Peers. "This Commission," he
said, in one of his private letters, "will give plenty of trouble next
winter. " It did indeed give more trouble than he at all anticipated, and
brought the nation nearer than it has ever since been to the verge of
another revolution.

And now the supplies had been voted. The spring was brightening and
blooming into summer. The lords and squires were sick of London; and
the King was sick of England. On the fourth day of May he prorogued the
Houses with a speech very different from the speeches with which he had
been in the habit of dismissing the preceding Parliament. He uttered not
one word of thanks or praise. He expressed a hope that, when they should
meet again, they would make effectual provision for the public safety.
"I wish," these were his concluding words, "no mischief may happen in
the mean time. " The gentlemen who thronged the bar withdrew in wrath,
and, as they could not take immediate vengeance, laid up his reproaches
in their hearts against the beginning of the next session.

The Houses had broken up; but there was still much to be done before the
King could set out for Loo. He did not yet perceive that the true way
to escape from his difficulties was to form an entirely new ministry
possessing the confidence of the majority which had, in the late
session, been found so unmanageable. But some partial changes he could
not help making. The recent votes of the Commons forced him seriously
to consider the state of the Board of Admiralty. It was impossible that
Orford could continue to preside at that Board and be at the same time
Treasurer of the Navy. He was offered his option. His own wish was to
keep the Treasurership, which was both the more lucrative and the more
secure of his two places. But it was so strongly represented to him that
he would disgrace himself by giving up great power for the sake of gains
which, rich and childless as he was, ought to have been beneath his
consideration, that he determined to remain at the Admiralty.
He seems
to have thought that the sacrifice which he had made entitled him to
govern despotically the department at which he had been persuaded to
remain. But he soon found that the King was determined to keep in his
own hands the power of appointing and removing the junior Lords. One of
these Lords, especially, the First Commissioner hated, and was bent on
ejecting, Sir George Rooke, who was Member of Parliament for Portsmouth.
Rooke was a brave and skilful officer, and had, therefore, though a Tory
in politics, been suffered to keep his place during the ascendency of
the Whig junto. Orford now complained to the King that Rooke had been
in correspondence with the factious opposition which had given so
much trouble, and had lent the weight of his professional and official
authority to the accusations which had been brought against the naval
administration. The King spoke to Rooke, who declared that Orford had
been misinformed. "I have a great respect for my Lord; and on proper
occasions I have not failed to express it in public. There have
certainly been abuses at the Admiralty which I am unable to defend. When
those abuses have been the subject of debate in the House of Commons, I
have sate silent. But, whenever any personal attack has been made on
my Lord, I have done him the best service that I could. " William was
satisfied, and thought that Orford should have been satisfied too.
But that haughty and perverse nature could be content with nothing but
absolute dominion. He tendered his resignation, and could not be induced
to retract it. He said that he could be of no use. It would be easy to
supply his place; and his successors should have his best wishes. He
then retired to the country, where, as was reported and may easily be
believed, he vented his ill humour in furious invectives against the
King. The Treasurership of the Navy was given to the Speaker Littleton.
The Earl of Bridgewater, a nobleman of very fair character and of some
experience in business, became First Lord of the Admiralty.

Other changes were made at the same time. There had during some time
been really no Lord President of the Council. Leeds, indeed, was still
called Lord President, and, as such, took precedence of dukes of older
creation; but he had not performed any of the duties of his office since
the prosecution instituted against him by the Commons in 1695 had been
suddenly stopped by an event which made the evidence of his guilt at
once legally defective and morally complete. It seems strange that a
statesman of eminent ability, who had been twice Prime Minister, should
have wished to hold, by so ignominious a tenure, a place which can have
had no attraction for him but the salary. To that salary, however, Leeds
had clung, year after year; and he now relinquished it with a very bad
grace. He was succeeded by Pembroke; and the Privy Seal which Pembroke
laid down was put into the hands of a peer of recent creation, Viscount
Lonsdale. Lonsdale had been distinguished in the House of Commons as Sir
John Lowther, and had held high office, but had quitted public life in
weariness and disgust, and had passed several years in retirement at his
hereditary seat in Cumberland. He had planted forests round his house,
and had employed Verrio to decorate the interior with gorgeous
frescoes which represented the gods at their banquet of ambrosia. Very
reluctantly, and only in compliance with the earnest and almost angry
importunity of the King, Lonsdale consented to leave his magnificent
retreat, and again to encounter the vexations of public life.

Trumball resigned the Secretaryship of State; and the Seals which he
had held were given to Jersey, who was succeeded at Paris by the Earl of
Manchester.

It is to be remarked that the new Privy Seal and the new Secretary of
State were moderate Tories. The King had probably hoped that, by calling
them to his councils, he should conciliate the opposition. But the
device proved unsuccessful; and soon it appeared that the old practice
of filling the chief offices of state with men taken from various
parties, and hostile to one another, or, at least, unconnected with one
another, was altogether unsuited to the new state of affairs; and that,
since the Commons had become possessed of supreme power, the only way to
prevent them from abusing that power with boundless folly and violence
was to intrust the government to a ministry which enjoyed their
confidence.

While William was making these changes in the great offices of state, a
change in which he took a still deeper interest was taking place in his
own household. He had laboured in vain during many months to keep
the peace between Portland and Albemarle. Albemarle, indeed, was
all courtesy, good humour, and submission; but Portland would not
be conciliated. Even to foreign ministers he railed at his rival and
complained of his master. The whole Court was divided between the
competitors, but divided very unequally. The majority took the side
of Albemarle, whose manners were popular and whose power was evidently
growing. Portland's few adherents were persons who, like him, had
already made their fortunes, and who did not therefore think it worth
their while to transfer their homage to a new patron. One of these
persons tried to enlist Prior in Portland's faction, but with very
little success. "Excuse me," said the poet, "if I follow your example
and my Lord's. My Lord is a model to us all; and you have imitated him
to good purpose. He retires with half a million. You have large grants,
a lucrative employment in Holland, a fine house. I have nothing of the
kind. A court is like those fashionable churches into which we have
looked at Paris. Those who have received the benediction are instantly
away to the Opera House or the wood of Boulogne. Those who have not
received the benediction are pressing and elbowing each other to get
near the altar. You and my Lord have got your blessing, and are quite
right to take yourselves off with it. I have not been blest, and must
fight my way up as well as I can. " Prior's wit was his own. But his
worldly wisdom was common to him with multitudes; and the crowd of
those who wanted to be lords of the bedchamber, rangers of parks, and
lieutenants of counties, neglected Portland and tried to ingratiate
themselves with Albemarle.

By one person, however, Portland was still assiduously courted; and that
person was the King. Nothing was omitted which could soothe an irritated
mind. Sometimes William argued, expostulated and implored during two
hours together. But he found the comrade of his youth an altered man,
unreasonable, obstinate and disrespectful even before the public eye.
The Prussian minister, an observant and impartial witness, declared that
his hair had more than once stood on end to see the rude discourtesy
with which the servant repelled the gracious advances of the master.
Over and over William invited his old friend to take the long accustomed
seat in his royal coach, that seat which Prince George himself had never
been permitted to invade; and the invitation was over and over declined
in a way which would have been thought uncivil even between equals.
A sovereign could not, without a culpable sacrifice of his personal
dignity, persist longer in such a contest. Portland was permitted to
withdraw from the palace. To Heinsius, as to a common friend, William
announced this separation in a letter which shows how deeply his
feelings had been wounded. "I cannot tell you what I have suffered. I
have done on my side every thing that I could do to satisfy him; but it
was decreed that a blind jealousy should make him regardless of every
thing that ought to have been dear to him. " To Portland himself the King
wrote in language still more touching. "I hope that you will oblige me
in one thing. Keep your key of office. I shall not consider you as bound
to any attendance. But I beg you to let me see you as often as possible.
That will be a great mitigation of the distress which you have caused
me. For, after all that has passed, I cannot help loving you tenderly. "

Thus Portland retired to enjoy at his ease immense estates scattered
over half the shires of England, and a hoard of ready money, such, it
was said, as no other private man in Europe possessed. His fortune still
continued to grow. For, though, after the fashion of his countrymen,
he laid out large sums on the interior decoration of his houses, on his
gardens, and on his aviaries, his other expenses were regulated with
strict frugality. His repose was, however, during some years not
uninterrupted. He had been trusted with such grave secrets, and
employed in such high missions, that his assistance was still frequently
necessary to the government; and that assistance was given, not, as
formerly, with the ardour of a devoted friend, but with the exactness
of a conscientious servant. He still continued to receive letters from
William; letters no longer indeed overflowing with kindness, but always
indicative of perfect confidence and esteem.

The chief subject of those letters was the question which had been for a
time settled in the previous autumn at Loo, and which had been reopened
in the spring by the death of the Electoral Prince of Bavaria.

As soon as that event was known at Paris, Lewis directed Tallard to
sound William as to a new treaty. The first thought which occurred to
William was that it might be possible to put the Elector of Bavaria in
his son's place. But this suggestion was coldly received at Versailles,
and not without reason. If, indeed, the young Francis Joseph had lived
to succeed Charles, and had then died a minor without issue, the
case would have been very different. Then the Elector would have been
actually administering the government of the Spanish monarchy, and,
supported by France, England and the United Provinces, might without
much difficulty have continued to rule as King the empire which he had
begun to rule as Regent. He would have had also, not indeed a right, but
something which to the vulgar would have looked like a right, to be his
son's heir. Now he was altogether unconnected with Spain. No more
reason could be given for selecting him to be the Catholic King than for
selecting the Margrave of Baden or the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Something
was said about Victor Amadeus of Savoy, and something about the King of
Portugal; but to both there were insurmountable objections. It seemed,
therefore, that the only choice was between a French Prince and an
Austrian Prince; and William learned, with agreeable surprise, that
Lewis might possibly be induced to suffer the younger Archduke to be
King of Spain and the Indies. It was intimated at the same time that the
House of Bourbon would expect, in return for so great a concession to
the rival House of Habsburg, greater advantages than had been thought
sufficient when the Dauphin consented to waive his claims in favour of
a candidate whose elevation could cause no jealousies. What Lewis
demanded, in addition to the portion formerly assigned to France, was
the Milanese. With the Milanese he proposed to buy Lorraine from
its Duke. To the Duke of Lorraine this arrangement would have been
beneficial, and to the people of Lorraine more beneficial still. They
were, and had long been, in a singularly unhappy situation. Lewis
domineered over them as if they had been his subjects, and troubled
himself as little about their happiness as if they had been his enemies.
Since he exercised as absolute a power over them as over the Normans and
Burgundians, it was desirable that he should have as great an interest
in their welfare as in the welfare of the Normans and Burgundians.

On the basis proposed by France William was willing to negotiate; and,
when, in June 1699, he left Kensington to pass the summer at Loo, the
terms of the treaty known as the Second Treaty of Partition were very
nearly adjusted. The great object now was to obtain the consent of the
Emperor. That consent, it should seem, ought to have been readily and
even eagerly given. Had it been given, it might perhaps have saved
Christendom from a war of eleven years. But the policy of Austria was,
at that time, strangely dilatory and irresolute. It was in vain that
William and Heinsius represented the importance of every hour. "The
Emperor's ministers go on dawdling," so the King wrote to Heinsius, "not
because there is any difficulty about the matter, not because they mean
to reject the terms, but solely because they are people who can make up
their minds to nothing. " While the negotiation at Vienna was thus drawn
out into endless length, evil tidings came from Madrid.

Spain and her King had long been sunk so low that it seemed impossible
for him to sink lower. Yet the political maladies of the monarchy and
the physical maladies of the monarch went on growing, and exhibited
every day some new and frightful symptom. Since the death of the
Bavarian Prince, the Court had been divided between the Austrian
faction, of which the Queen and the leading ministers Oropesa and Melgar
were the chiefs, and the French faction, of which the most important
member was Cardinal Portocarrero, Archbishop of Toledo. At length an
event which, as far as can now be judged, was not the effect of a deeply
meditated plan, and was altogether unconnected with the disputes about
the succession, gave the advantage to the adherents of France. The
government, having committed the great error of undertaking to supply
Madrid with food, committed the still greater error of neglecting to
perform what it had undertaken. The price of bread doubled. Complaints
were made to the magistrates, and were heard with the indolent apathy
characteristic of the Spanish administration from the highest to the
lowest grade. Then the populace rose, attacked the house of Oropesa,
poured by thousands into the great court of the palace, and insisted on
seeing the King. The Queen appeared in a balcony, and told the rioters
that His Majesty was asleep. Then the multitude set up a roar of fury.
"It is false; we do not believe you. We will see him. " "He has slept too
long," said one threatening voice; "and it is high time that he should
wake. " The Queen retired weeping; and the wretched being on whose
dominions the sun never set tottered to the window, bowed as he
had never bowed before, muttered some gracious promises, waved a
handkerchief in the air, bowed again, and withdrew. Oropesa, afraid of
being torn to pieces, retired to his country seat. Melgar made some
show of resistance, garrisoned his house, and menaced the rabble with
a shower of grenades, but was soon forced to go after Oropesa; and the
supreme power passed to Portocarrero.

Portocarrero was one of a race of men of whom we, happily for us,
have seen very little, but whose influence has been the curse of Roman
Catholic countries. He was, like Sixtus the Fourth and Alexander the
Sixth, a politician made out of an impious priest. Such politicians are
generally worse than the worst of the laity, more merciless than any
ruffian that can be found in camps, more dishonest than any pettifogger
who haunts the tribunals. The sanctity of their profession has an
unsanctifying influence on them. The lessons of the nursery, the habits
of boyhood and of early youth, leave in the minds of the great majority
of avowed infidels some traces of religion, which, in seasons of
mourning and of sickness, become plainly discernible. But it is scarcely
possible that any such trace should remain in the mind of the hypocrite
who, during many years, is constantly going through what he considers
as the mummery of preaching, saying mass, baptizing, shriving. When an
ecclesiastic of this sort mixes in the contests of men of the world, he
is indeed much to be dreaded as an enemy, but still more to be dreaded
as an ally. From the pulpit where he daily employs his eloquence to
embellish what he regards as fables, from the altar whence he daily
looks down with secret scorn on the prostrate dupes who believe that he
can turn a drop of wine into blood, from the confessional where he daily
studies with cold and scientific attention the morbid anatomy of guilty
consciences, he brings to courts some talents which may move the envy
of the more cunning and unscrupulous of lay courtiers; a rare skill in
reading characters and in managing tempers, a rare art of dissimulation,
a rare dexterity in insinuating what it is not safe to affirm or to
propose in explicit terms. There are two feelings which often prevent
an unprincipled layman from becoming utterly depraved and despicable,
domestic feeling, and chivalrous feeling. His heart may be softened by
the endearments of a family. His pride may revolt from the thought of
doing what does not become a gentleman. But neither with the domestic
feeling nor with the chivalrous feeling has the wicked priest any
sympathy. His gown excludes him from the closest and most tender of
human relations, and at the same time dispenses him from the observation
of the fashionable code of honour.

Such a priest was Portocarrero; and he seems to have been a consummate
master of his craft. To the name of statesman he had no pretensions. The
lofty part of his predecessor Ximenes was out of the range, not more of
his intellectual, than his moral capacity. To reanimate a paralysed
and torpid monarchy, to introduce order and economy into a bankrupt
treasury, to restore the discipline of an army which had become a mob,
to refit a navy which was perishing from mere rottenness, these were
achievements beyond the power, beyond even the ambition, of that ignoble
nature. But there was one task for which the new minister was admirably
qualified, that of establishing, by means of superstitious terror, an
absolute dominion over a feeble mind; and the feeblest of all minds was
that of his unhappy sovereign. Even before the riot which had made the
cardinal supreme in the state, he had succeeded in introducing into the
palace a new confessor selected by himself. In a very short time the
King's malady took a new form. That he was too weak to lift his food
to his misshapen mouth, that, at thirty-seven, he had the bald head and
wrinkled face of a man of seventy, that his complexion was turning from
yellow to green, that he frequently fell down in fits and remained long
insensible, these were no longer the worst symptoms of his malady.
He had always been afraid of ghosts and demons; and it had long been
necessary that three friars should watch every night by his restless bed
as a guard against hobgoblins. But now he was firmly convinced that he
was bewitched, that he was possessed, that there was a devil within him,
that there were devils all around him. He was exorcised according to the
forms of his Church; but this ceremony, instead of quieting him, scared
him out of almost all the little reason that nature had given him. In
his misery and despair he was induced to resort to irregular modes of
relief. His confessor brought to court impostors who pretended that they
could interrogate the powers of darkness. The Devil was called up, sworn
and examined. This strange deponent made oath, as in the presence of
God, that His Catholic Majesty was under a spell, which had been laid on
him many years before, for the purpose of preventing the continuation of
the royal line. A drug had been compounded out of the brains and kidneys
of a human corpse, and had been administered in a cup of chocolate.
This potion had dried up all the sources of life; and the best remedy
to which the patient could now resort would be to swallow a bowl of
consecrated oil every morning before breakfast. Unhappily, the authors
of this story fell into contradictions which they could excuse only by
throwing the blame on Satan, who, they said, was an unwilling witness,
and a liar from the beginning. In the midst of their conjuring, the
Inquisition came down upon them. It must be admitted that, if the Holy
Office had reserved all its terrors for such cases, it would not now
have been remembered as the most hateful judicature that was ever known
among civilised men. The subaltern impostors were thrown into dungeons.
But the chief criminal continued to be master of the King and of
the kingdom. Meanwhile, in the distempered mind of Charles one mania
succeeded another. A longing to pry into those mysteries of the grave
from which human beings avert their thoughts had long been hereditary
in his house. Juana, from whom the mental constitution of her posterity
seems to have derived a morbid taint, had sate, year after year, by the
bed on which lay the ghastly remains of her husband, apparelled in the
rich embroidery and jewels which he had been wont to wear while living.
Her son Charles found an eccentric pleasure in celebrating his own
obsequies, in putting on his shroud, placing himself in the coffin,
covering himself with the pall; and lying as one dead till the requiem
had been sung, and the mourners had departed leaving him alone in the
tomb. Philip the Second found a similar pleasure in gazing on the huge
chest of bronze in which his remains were to be laid, and especially on
the skull which, encircled with the crown of Spain, grinned at him from
the cover. Philip the Fourth, too, hankered after burials and burial
places, gratified his curiosity by gazing on the remains of his great
grandfather, the Emperor, and sometimes stretched himself out at full
length like a corpse in the niche which he had selected for himself
in the royal cemetery. To that cemetery his son was now attracted by
a strange fascination. Europe could show no more magnificent place of
sepulture. A staircase encrusted with jasper led down from the stately
church of the Escurial into an octagon situated just beneath the high
altar. The vault, impervious to the sun, was rich with gold and precious
marbles, which reflected the blaze from a huge chandelier of silver.
On the right and on the left reposed, each in a massy sarcophagus,
the departed kings and queens of Spain. Into this mausoleum the King
descended with a long train of courtiers, and ordered the coffins to be
unclosed. His mother had been embalmed with such consummate skill that
she appeared as she had appeared on her death bed. The body of his
grandfather too seemed entire, but crumbled into dust at the first
touch. From Charles neither the remains of his mother nor those of his
grandfather could draw any sign of sensibility. But, when the gentle and
graceful Louisa of Orleans, the miserable man's first wife, she who
had lighted up his dark existence with one short and pale gleam of
happiness, presented herself, after the lapse of ten years, to his eyes,
his sullen apathy gave way. "She is in heaven," he cried; "and I shall
soon be there with her;" and, with all the speed of which his limbs were
capable, he tottered back to the upper air.

Such was the state of the Court of Spain when, in the autumn of 1699, it
became known that, since the death of the Electoral Prince of Bavaria,
the governments of France, of England and of the United Provinces, were
busily engaged in framing a second Treaty of Partition. That Castilians
would be indignant at learning that any foreign potentate meditated the
dismemberment of that empire of which Castile was the head might have
been foreseen. But it was less easy to foresee that William would be
the chief and indeed almost the only object of their indignation. If the
meditated partition really was unjustifiable, there could be no doubt
that Lewis was far more to blame than William. For it was by Lewis, and
not by William, that the partition had been originally suggested; and it
was Lewis, and not William, who was to gain an accession of territory
by the partition. Nobody could doubt that William would most gladly
have acceded to any arrangement by which the Spanish monarchy, could be
preserved entire without danger to the liberties of Europe, and that he
had agreed to the division of that monarchy solely for the purpose of
contenting Lewis. Nevertheless the Spanish ministers carefully avoided
whatever could give offence to Lewis, and indemnified themselves by
offering a gross indignity to William. The truth is that their pride
had, as extravagant pride often has, a close affinity with meanness.
They knew that it was unsafe to insult Lewis; and they believed that
they might with perfect safety insult William. Lewis was absolute master
of his large kingdom. He had at no great distance armies and fleets
which one word from him would put in motion. If he were provoked,
the white flag might in a few days be again flying on the walls of
Barcelona. His immense power was contemplated by the Castilians with
hope as well as with fear. He and he alone, they imagined, could avert
that dismemberment of which they could not bear to think. Perhaps
he might yet be induced to violate the engagements into which he had
entered with England and Holland, if one of his grandsons were named
successor to the Spanish throne. He, therefore, must be respected and
courted. But William could at that moment do little to hurt or to help.
He could hardly be said to have an army. He could take no step which
would require an outlay of money without the sanction of the House of
Commons; and it seemed to be the chief study of the House of Commons to
cross him and to humble him. The history of the late session was known
to the Spaniards principally by inaccurate reports brought by Irish
friars. And, had those reports been accurate, the real nature of a
Parliamentary struggle between the Court party and the Country party
could have been but very imperfectly understood by the magnates of
a realm in which there had not, during several generations, been any
constitutional opposition to the royal pleasure. At one time it was
generally believed at Madrid, not by the mere rabble, but by Grandees
who had the envied privilege of going in coaches and four through the
streets of the capital, that William had been deposed, that he had
retired to Holland, that the Parliament had resolved that there should
be no more kings, that a commonwealth had been proclaimed, and that a
Doge was about to be appointed and, though this rumour turned out to be
false, it was but too true that the English government was, just at
that conjuncture, in no condition to resent slights. Accordingly, the
Marquess of Canales, who represented the Catholic King at Westminster,
received instructions to remonstrate in strong language, and was not
afraid to go beyond those instructions. He delivered to the Secretary
of State a note abusive and impertinent beyond all example and all
endurance. His master, he wrote, had learnt with amazement that King
William, Holland and other powers,--for the ambassador, prudent even in
his blustering, did not choose to name the King of France,--were engaged
in framing a treaty, not only for settling the succession to the Spanish
crown, but for the detestable purpose of dividing the Spanish monarchy.
The whole scheme was vehemently condemned as contrary to the law of
nature and to the law of God. The ambassador appealed from the King of
England to the Parliament, to the nobility, and to the whole nation, and
concluded by giving notice that he should lay the whole case before the
two Houses when next they met.

The style of this paper shows how strong an impression had been made on
foreign nations by the unfortunate events of the late session. The King,
it was plain, was no longer considered as the head of the government. He
was charged with having committed a wrong; but he was not asked to make
reparation. He was treated as a subordinate officer who had been
guilty of an offence against public law, and was threatened with the
displeasure of the Commons, who, as the real rulers of the state, were
bound to keep their servants in order. The Lords justices read this
outrageous note with indignation, and sent it with all speed to Loo.