No More Learning

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. The nation must, he conceived, sink under a debt of a hundred
and forty millions, unless a portion of the load were borne by the
American colonies. The attempt to lay a portion of the load on the
American colonies produced another war. That war left us with an
additional hundred millions of debt, and without the colonies whose help
had been represented as indispensable. Again England was given over;
and again the strange patient persisted in becoming stronger and more
blooming in spite of all the diagnostics and prognostics of State
physicians. As she had been visibly more prosperous with a debt of a
hundred and forty millions than with a debt of fifty millions, so she,
as visibly more prosperous with a debt of two hundred and forty millions
than with a debt of a hundred and forty millions. Soon however the wars
which sprang from the French Revolution, and which far exceeded in cost
any that the world had ever seen, tasked the powers of public credit to
the utmost. When the world was again at rest the funded debt of England
amounted to eight hundred millions. If the most enlightened man had been
told, in 1792, that, in 1815, the interest on eight hundred millions
would be duly paid to the day at the Bank, he would have been as hard of
belief as if he had been told that the government would be in possession
of the lamp of Aladdin or of the purse of Fortunatus. It was in truth
a gigantic, a fabulous debt; and we can hardly wonder that the cry of
despair should have been louder than ever. But again that cry was found
to have been as unreasonable as ever. After a few years of exhaustion,
England recovered herself. Yet, like Addison's valetudinarian, who
continued to whimper that he was dying of consumption till he became so
fat that he was shamed into silence, she went on complaining that she
was sunk in poverty till her wealth showed itself by tokens which made
her complaints ridiculous. The beggared, the bankrupt society not
only proved able to meet all its obligations, but, while meeting those
obligations, grew richer and richer so fast that the growth could almost
be discerned by the eye. In every county, we saw wastes recently turned
into gardens; in every city, we saw new streets, and squares, and
markets, more brilliant lamps, more abundant supplies of water; in the
suburbs of every great seat of industry, we saw villas multiplying fast,
each embosomed in its gay little paradise of lilacs and roses. While
shallow politicians were repeating that the energies of the people were
borne down by the weight of the public burdens, the first journey was
performed by steam on a railway. Soon the island was intersected by
railways. A sum exceeding the whole amount of the national debt at the
end of the American war was, in a few years, voluntarily expended by
this ruined people in viaducts, tunnels, embankments, bridges, stations,
engines. Meanwhile taxation was almost constantly becoming lighter
and lighter; yet still the Exchequer was full. It may be now affirmed
without fear of contradiction that we find it as easy to pay the
interest of eight hundred millions as our ancestors found it, a century
ago, to pay the interest of eighty millions.

It can hardly be doubted that there must have been some great fallacy
in the notions of those who uttered and of those who believed that long
succession of confident predictions, so signally falsified by a long
succession of indisputable facts. To point out that fallacy is the
office rather of the political economist than of the historian. Here
it is sufficient to say that the prophets of evil were under a double
delusion. They erroneously imagined that there was an exact analogy
between the case of an individual who is in debt to another individual
and the case of a society which is in debt to a part of itself; and this
analogy led them into endless mistakes about the effect of the system
of funding. They were under an error not less serious touching the
resources of the country. They made no allowance for the effect produced
by the incessant progress of every experimental science, and by the
incessant efforts of every man to get on in life. They saw that the debt
grew; and they forgot that other things grew as well as the debt.

A long experience justifies us in believing that England may, in the
twentieth century, be better able to bear a debt of sixteen hundred
millions than she is at the present time to bear her present load. But
be this as it may, those who so confidently predicted that she must
sink, first under a debt of fifty millions, then under a debt of eighty
millions then under a debt of a hundred and forty millions, then under a
debt of two hundred and forty millions, and lastly under a debt of eight
hundred millions, were beyond all doubt under a twofold mistake. They
greatly overrated the pressure of the burden; they greatly underrated
the strength by which the burden was to be borne.

It may be desirable to add a few words touching the way in which the
system of funding has affected the interests of the great commonwealth
of nations. If it be true that whatever gives to intelligence an
advantage over brute force and to honesty an advantage over dishonesty
has a tendency to promote the happiness and virtue of our race, it can
scarcely be denied that, in the largest view, the effect of this system
has been salutary. For it is manifest that all credit depends on two
things, on the power of a debtor to pay debts, and on his inclination
to pay them. The power of a society to pay debts is proportioned to the
progress which that society has made in industry, in commerce, and in
all the arts and sciences which flourish under the benignant influence
of freedom and of equal law. The inclination of a society to pay
debts is proportioned to the degree in which that society respects the
obligations of plighted faith. Of the strength which consists in extent
of territory and in number of fighting men, a rude despot who knows
no law but his own childish fancies and headstrong passions, or a
convention of socialists which proclaims all property to be robbery, may
have more than falls to the lot of the best and wisest government. But
the strength which is derived from the confidence of capitalists such a
despot, such a convention, never can possess. That strength,--and it
is a strength which has decided the event of more than one great
conflict,--flies, by the law of its nature, from barbarism and fraud,
from tyranny and anarchy, to follow civilisation and virtue, liberty and
order.

While the bill which first created the funded debt of England was
passing, with general approbation, through the regular stages, the
two Houses discussed, for the first time, the great question of
Parliamentary Reform.

It is to be observed that the object of the reformers of that generation
was merely to make the representative body a more faithful interpreter
of the sense of the constituent body. It seems scarcely to have
occurred to any of them that the constituent body might be an
unfaithful interpreter of the sense of the nation. It is true that those
deformities in the structure of the constituent body, which, at length,
in our own days, raised an irresistible storm of public indignation,
were far less numerous and far less offensive in the seventeenth century
than they had become in the nineteenth. Most of the boroughs which were
disfranchised in 1832 were, if not positively, yet relatively, much more
important places in the reign of William the Third than in the reign
of William the Fourth. Of the populous and wealthy manufacturing towns,
seaports and watering places, to which the franchise was given in the
reign of William the Fourth, some were, in the reign of William the
Third, small hamlets, where a few ploughmen or fishermen lived under
thatched roofs; some were fields covered with harvests, or moors
abandoned to grouse; With the exception of Leeds and Manchester, there
was not, at the time of the Revolution, a single town of five thousand
inhabitants which did not send two representatives to the House of
Commons. Even then, however, there was no want of startling anomalies.
Looe, East and West, which contained not half the population or half the
wealth of the smallest of the hundred parishes of London, returned
as many members as London. [372] Old Sarum, a deserted ruin which the
traveller feared to enter at night lest he should find robbers lurking
there, had as much weight in the legislature as Devonshire or Yorkshire.
[373] Some eminent individuals of both parties, Clarendon, for example,
among the Tories, and Pollexfen among the Whigs, condemned this system.
Yet both parties were, for very different reasons, unwilling to alter
it. It was protected by the prejudices of one faction and by the
interests of the other. Nothing could be more repugnant to the genius of
Toryism than the thought of destroying at a blow institutions which
had stood through ages, for the purpose of building something more
symmetrical out of the ruins. The Whigs, on the other hand, could not
but know that they were much more likely to lose than to gain by a
change in this part of our polity. It would indeed be a great mistake
to imagine that a law transferring political power from small to large
constituent bodies would have operated in 1692 as it operated in 1832.

In 1832 the effect of the transfer was to increase the power of the town
population. In 1692 the effect would have been to make the power of the
rural population irresistible. Of the one hundred and forty-two members
taken away in 1832 from small boroughs more than half were given to
large and flourishing towns. But in 1692 there was hardly one large and
flourishing town which had not already as many members as it could, with
any show of reason, claim. Almost all therefore that was taken from the
small boroughs must have been given to the counties; and there can be
no doubt that whatever tended to raise the counties and to depress the
towns must on the whole have tended to raise the Tories and to depress
the Whigs. From the commencement of our civil troubles the towns had
been on the side of freedom and progress, the country gentlemen and
the country clergymen on the side of authority and prescription. If
therefore a reform bill, disfranchising small constituent bodies and
giving additional members to large constituent bodies, had become law
soon after the Revolution, there can be little doubt that a decided
majority of the House of Commons would have consisted of rustic baronets
and squires, high Churchmen, high Tories, and half Jacobites. With such
a House of Commons it is almost certain that there would have been a
persecution of the Dissenters; it is not easy to understand how there
could have been an union with Scotland; and it is not improbable that
there would have been a restoration of the Stuarts. Those parts of
our constitution therefore which, in recent times, politicians of
the liberal school have generally considered as blemishes, were, five
generations ago, regarded with complacency by the men who were most
zealous for civil and religious freedom.

But, while Whigs and Tories agreed in wishing to maintain the existing
rights of election, both Whigs and Tories were forced to admit that
the relation between the elector and the representative was not what it
ought to be. Before the civil wars the House of Commons had enjoyed
the fullest confidence of the nation. A House of Commons, distrusted,
despised, hated by the Commons, was a thing unknown. The very words
would, to Sir Peter Wentworth or Sir Edward Coke, have sounded like
a contradiction in terms. But by degrees a change took place. The
Parliament elected in 1661, during that fit of joy and fondness which
followed the return of the royal family, represented, not the deliberate
sense, but the momentary caprice of the nation. Many of the members were
men who, a few months earlier or a few months later, would have had
no chance of obtaining seats, men of broken fortunes and of dissolute
habits, men whose only claim to public confidence was the ferocious
hatred which they bore to rebels and Puritans. The people, as soon as
they had become sober, saw with dismay to what an assembly they had,
during their intoxication, confided the care of their property, their
liberty and their religion. And the choice, made in a moment of frantic
enthusiasm, might prove to be a choice for life. As the law then stood,
it depended entirely on the King's pleasure whether, during his reign,
the electors should have an opportunity of repairing their error.
Eighteen years passed away. A new generation grew up. To the fervid
loyalty with which Charles had been welcomed back to Dover succeeded
discontent and disaffection. The general cry was that the kingdom was
misgoverned, degraded, given up as a prey to worthless men and more
worthless women, that our navy had been found unequal to a contest with
Holland, that our independence had been bartered for the gold of France,
that our consciences were in danger of being again subjected to the yoke
of Rome. The people had become Roundheads; but the body which alone
was authorised to speak in the name of the people was still a body of
Cavaliers. It is true that the King occasionally found even that House
of Commons unmanageable. From the first it had contained not a few true
Englishmen; others had been introduced into it as vacancies were made by
death; and even the majority, courtly as it was, could not but feel some
sympathy with the nation. A country party grew up and became formidable.
But that party constantly found its exertions frustrated by systematic
corruption. That some members of the legislature received direct bribes
was with good reason suspected, but could not be proved. That the
patronage of the Crown was employed on an extensive scale for the
purpose of influencing votes was matter of notoriety. A large proportion
of those who gave away the public money in supplies received part of
that money back in salaries; and thus was formed a mercenary band on
which the Court might, in almost any extremity, confidently rely.

The servility of this Parliament had left a deep impression on the
public mind. It was the general opinion that England ought to be
protected against all risk of being ever again represented, during a
long course of years, by men who had forfeited her confidence, and who
were retained by a fee to vote against her wishes and interests. The
subject was mentioned in the Convention; and some members wished to deal
with it while the throne was still vacant. The cry for reform had ever
since been becoming more and more importunate. The people, heavily
pressed by taxes, were naturally disposed to regard those who lived on
the taxes with little favour. The war, it was generally acknowledged,
was just and necessary; and war could not be carried on without large
expenditure. But the larger the expenditure which was required for the
defence of the nation, the more important it was that nothing should
be squandered. The immense gains of official men moved envy and
indignation. Here a gentleman was paid to do nothing. There many
gentlemen were paid to do what would be better done by one. The coach,
the liveries, the lace cravat and diamond buckles of the placeman were
naturally seen with an evil eye by those who rose up early and lay down
late in order to furnish him with the means of indulging in splendour
and luxury. Such abuses it was the especial business of a House of
Commons to correct. What then had the existing House of Commons done in
the way of correction? Absolutely nothing. In 1690, indeed, while the
Civil List was settling, some sharp speeches had been made. In 1691,
when the Ways and Means were under consideration, a resolution had
been passed so absurdly framed that it had proved utterly abortive. The
nuisance continued, and would continue while it was a source of profit
to those whose duty was to abate it. Who could expect faithful and
vigilant stewardship from stewards who had a direct interest in
encouraging the waste which they were employed to check? The House
swarmed with placemen of all kinds, Lords of the Treasury, Lords of
the Admiralty, Commissioners of Customs, Commissioners of Excise,
Commissioners of Prizes, Tellers, Auditors, Receivers, Paymasters,
Officers of the Mint, Officers of the household, Colonels of regiments,
Captains of men of war, Governors of forts. We send up to Westminster,
it was said, one of our neighbours, an independent gentleman, in
the full confidence that his feelings and interests are in perfect
accordance with ours. We look to him to relieve us from every burden
except those burdens without which the public service cannot be
carried on, and which therefore, galling as they are, we patiently and
resolutely bear. But before he has been a session in Parliament we
learn that he is a Clerk of the Green Cloth or a Yeoman of the Removing
Wardrobe, with a comfortable salary. Nay, we sometimes learn that he has
obtained one of those places in the Exchequer of which the emoluments
rise and fall with the taxes which we pay. It would be strange indeed if
our interests were safe in the keeping of a man whose gains consist in a
percentage on our losses. The evil would be greatly diminished if we had
frequent opportunities of considering whether the powers of our agent
ought to be renewed or revoked. But, as the law stands, it is not
impossible that he may hold those powers twenty or thirty years. While
he lives, and while either the King or the Queen lives, it is not likely
that we shall ever again exercise our elective franchise, unless there
should be a dispute between the Court and the Parliament. The more
profuse and obsequious a Parliament is, the less likely it is to give
offence to the Court. The worse our representatives, therefore, the
longer we are likely to be cursed with them.

The outcry was loud. Odious nicknames were given to the Parliament.
Sometimes it was the Officers' Parliament; sometimes it was the Standing
Parliament, and was pronounced to be a greater nuisance than even a
standing army.

Two specifics for the distempers of the State were strongly recommended,
and divided the public favour. One was a law excluding placemen from
the House of Commons. The other was a law limiting the duration of
Parliaments to three years. In general the Tory reformers preferred
a Place Bill, and the Whig reformers a Triennial Bill; but not a few
zealous men of both parties were for trying both remedies.

Before Christmas a Place Bill was laid on the table of the Commons. That
bill has been vehemently praised by writers who never saw it, and who
merely guessed at what it contained. But no person who takes the trouble
to study the original parchment, which, embrowned with the dust of a
hundred and sixty years, reposes among the archives of the House of
Lords, will find much matter for eulogy.

About the manner in which such a bill should have been framed there
will, in our time, be little difference of opinion among enlightened
Englishmen. They will agree in thinking that it would be most pernicious
to open the House of Commons to all placemen, and not less pernicious to
close that House against all placemen. To draw with precision the
line between those who ought to be admitted and those who ought to be
excluded would be a task requiring much time, thought and knowledge of
details. But the general principles which ought to guide us are obvious.
The multitude of subordinate functionaries ought to be excluded. A
few functionaries who are at the head or near the head of the great
departments of the administration ought to be admitted.

The subordinate functionaries ought to be excluded, because their
admission would at once lower the character of Parliament and destroy
the efficiency of every public office. They are now excluded, and the
consequence is that the State possesses a valuable body of servants who
remain unchanged while cabinet after cabinet is formed and dissolved,
who instruct every successive minister in his duties, and with whom it
is the most sacred point of honour to give true information, sincere
advise, and strenuous assistance to their superior for the time being.
To the experience, the ability and the fidelity of this class of men is
to be attributed the ease and safety with which the direction of affairs
has been many times, within our own memory, transferred from Tories to
Whigs and from Whigs to Tories. But no such class would have existed if
persons who received salaries from the Crown had been suffered to sit
without restriction in the House of Commons. Those commissionerships,
assistant secretaryships, chief clerkships, which are now held for life
by persons who stand aloof from the strife of parties, would have been
bestowed on members of Parliament who were serviceable to the government
as voluble speakers or steady voters. As often as the ministry was
changed, all this crowd of retainers would have been ejected from
office, and would have been succeeded by another set of members of
Parliament who would probably have been ejected in their turn before
they had half learned their business. Servility and corruption in the
legislature, ignorance and incapacity in all the departments of the
executive administration, would have been the inevitable effects of such
a system.

Still more noxious, if possible, would be the effects of a system
under which all the servants of the Crown, without exception, should be
excluded from the House of Commons. Aristotle has, in that treatise on
government which is perhaps the most judicious and instructive of all
his writings, left us a warning against a class of laws artfully framed
to delude the vulgar, democratic in seeming, but oligarchic in effect.
[374] Had he had an opportunity of studying the history of the English
constitution, he might easily have enlarged his list of such laws. That
men who are in the service and pay of the Crown ought not to sit in
an assembly specially charged with the duty of guarding the rights and
interests of the community against all aggression on the part of the
Crown is a plausible and a popular doctrine. Yet it is certain that if
those who, five generations ago, held that doctrine, had been able to
mould the constitution according to their wishes, the effect would have
been the depression of that branch of the legislature which springs from
the people and is accountable to the people, and the ascendency of the
monarchical and aristocratical elements of our polity. The government
would have been entirely in patrician hands. The House of Lords,
constantly drawing to itself the first abilities in the realm, would
have become the most august of senates, while the House of Commons would
have sunk almost to the rank of a vestry. From time to time undoubtedly
men of commanding genius and of aspiring temper would have made their
appearance among the representatives of the counties and boroughs. But
every such man would have considered the elective chamber merely as a
lobby through which he must pass to the hereditary chamber. The first
object of his ambition would have been that coronet without which he
could not be powerful in the state. As soon as he had shown that he
could be a formidable enemy and a valuable friend to the government, he
would have made haste to quit what would then have been in every sense
the Lower House for what would then have been in every sense the Upper.
The conflict between Walpole and Pulteney, the conflict between Pitt and
Fox, would have been transferred from the popular to the aristocratic
part of the legislature. On every great question, foreign, domestic or
colonial, the debates of the nobles would have been impatiently expected
and eagerly devoured. The report of the proceedings of an assembly
containing no person empowered to speak in the name of the government,
no person who had ever been in high political trust, would have been
thrown aside with contempt. Even the control of the purse of the nation
must have passed, not perhaps in form, but in substance, to that body in
which would have been found every man who was qualified to bring forward
a budget or explain an estimate. The country would have been governed by
Peers; and the chief business of the Commons would have been to wrangle
about bills for the inclosing of moors and the lighting of towns.

These considerations were altogether overlooked in 1692. Nobody thought
of drawing a line between the few functionaries who ought to be allowed
to sit in the House of Commons and the crowd of functionaries who ought
to be shut out. The only line which the legislators of that day took
pains to draw was between themselves and their successors. Their own
interest they guarded with a care of which it seems strange that they
should not have been ashamed. Every one of them was allowed to keep
the places which he had got, and to get as many more places as he could
before the next dissolution of Parliament, an event which might not
happen for many years. But a member who should be chosen after the first
of February 1693 was not to be permitted to accept any place whatever.
[375]

In the House of Commons the bill passed through all its stages rapidly
and without a single division. But in the Lords the contest was sharp
and obstinate. Several amendments were proposed in committee; but all
were rejected. The motion that the bill should pass was supported by
Mulgrave in a lively and poignant speech, which has been preserved, and
which proves that his reputation for eloquence was not unmerited. The
Lords who took the other side did not, it should seem, venture to deny
that there was an evil which required a remedy; but they maintained
that the proposed remedy would only aggravate the evil. The patriotic
representatives of the people had devised a reform which might perhaps
benefit the next generation; but they had carefully reserved to
themselves the privilege of plundering the present generation.