No More Learning

But
they soon saw reason to believe that he was in earnest. That he was in
earnest, indeed, can hardly be doubted. For, in a confidential letter to
Heinsius, whom he could have no motive for deceiving, he intimated his
intention very clearly. "I foresee," he writes, "that I shall be driven
to take an extreme course, and that I shall see you again in Holland
sooner than I had imagined. " [16] In fact he had resolved to go down to
the Lords, to send for the Commons, and to make his last speech from the
throne. That speech he actually prepared and had it translated. He meant
to tell his hearers that he had come to England to rescue their religion
and their liberties; that, for that end, he had been under the necessity
of waging a long and cruel war; that the war had, by the blessing of
God, ended in an honourable and advantageous peace; and that the nation
might now be tranquil and happy, if only those precautions were adopted
which he had on the first day of the session recommended as essential
to the public security. Since, however, the Estates of the Realm thought
fit to slight his advice, and to expose themselves to the imminent risk
of ruin, he would not be the witness of calamities which he had not
caused and which he could not avert. He must therefore request the
Houses to present to him a bill providing for the government of the
realm; he would pass that bill, and withdraw from a post in which he
could no longer be useful, but he should always take a deep interest in
the welfare of England; and, if what he foreboded should come to pass,
if in some day of danger she should again need his services, his life
should be hazarded as freely as ever in her defence.

When the King showed his speech to the Chancellor, that wise minister
forgot for a moment his habitual self-command. "This is extravagance,
Sir," he said: "this is madness. I implore your Majesty, for the sake of
your own honour, not to say to anybody else what you have said to
me. " He argued the matter during two hours, and no doubt lucidly
and forcibly. William listened patiently; but his purpose remained
unchanged.

The alarm of the ministers seems to have been increased by finding that
the King's intention had been confided to Marlborough, the very last man
to whom such a secret would have been imparted unless William had really
made up his mind to abdicate in favour of the Princess of Denmark.
Somers had another audience, and again began to expostulate. But William
cut him short. "We shall not agree, my Lord; my mind is made up. "
"Then, Sir," said Somers, "I have to request that I may be excused from
assisting as Chancellor at the fatal act which Your Majesty meditates.
It was from my King that I received this seal; and I beg that he will
take it from me while he is still my King. "

In these circumstances the ministers, though with scarcely the faintest
hope of success, determined to try what they could do to meet the King's
wishes. A select Committee had been appointed by the House of Commons to
frame a bill for the disbanding of all the troops above seven thousand.
A motion was made by one of the Court party that this Committee should
be instructed to reconsider the number of men. Vernon acquitted himself
well in the debate. Montague spoke with even more than his wonted
ability and energy, but in vain. So far was he from being able to
rally round him such a majority as that which had supported him in the
preceding Parliament, that he could not count on the support even of the
placemen who sate at the same executive board with him. Thomas Pelham,
who had, only a few months before, been made a Lord of the Treasury,
tried to answer him. "I own," said Pelham, "that last year I thought a
large land force necessary; this year I think such a force unnecessary;
but I deny that I have been guilty of any inconsistency. Last year the
great question of the Spanish succession was unsettled, and there was
serious danger of a general war. That question has now been settled in
the best possible way; and we may look forward to many years of peace. "
A Whig of still greater note and authority, the Marquess of Hartington,
separated himself on this occasion from the junto. The current was
irresistible. At last the voices of those who tried to speak for the
Instruction were drowned by clamour. When the question was put, there
was a great shout of No, and the minority submitted. To divide would
have been merely to have exposed their weakness.

By this time it became clear that the relations between the executive
government and the Parliament were again what they had been before the
year 1695. The history of our polity at this time is closely connected
with the history of one man. Hitherto Montague's career had been more
splendidly and uninterruptedly successful than that of any member of the
House of Commons, since the House of Commons had begun to exist. And now
fortune had turned. By the Tories he had long been hated as a Whig; and
the rapidity of his rise, the brilliancy of his fame, and the unvarying
good luck which seemed to attend him, had made many Whigs his enemies.
He was absurdly compared to the upstart favourites of a former age, Carr
and Villiers, men whom he resembled in nothing but in the speed with
which he had mounted from a humble to a lofty position. They had,
without rendering any service to the State, without showing any
capacity for the conduct of great affairs, been elevated to the highest
dignities, in spite of the murmurs of the whole nation, by the mere
partiality of the Sovereign. Montague owed every thing to his own merit
and to the public opinion of his merit. With his master he appears to
have had very little intercourse, and none that was not official. He
was in truth a living monument of what the Revolution had done for the
Country. The Revolution had found him a young student in a cell by the
Cam, poring on the diagrams which illustrated the newly discovered laws
of centripetal and centrifugal force, writing little copies of verses,
and indulging visions of parsonages with rich glebes, and of closes in
old cathedral towns had developed in him new talents; had held out to
him the hope of prizes of a very different sort from a rectory or a
prebend. His eloquence had gained for him the ear of the legislature.
His skill in fiscal and commercial affairs had won for him the
confidence of the City. During four years he had been the undisputed
leader of the majority of the House of Commons; and every one of those
years he had made memorable by great parliamentary victories, and by
great public services. It should seem that his success ought to have
been gratifying to the nation, and especially to that assembly of
which he was the chief ornament, of which indeed he might be called
the creature. The representatives of the people ought to have been
well pleased to find that their approbation could, in the new order
of things, do for the man whom they delighted to honour all that the
mightiest of the Tudors could do for Leicester, or the most arbitrary of
the Stuarts for Strafford. But, strange to say, the Commons soon began
to regard with an evil eve that greatness which was their own work. The
fault indeed was partly Montague's. With all his ability, he had not the
wisdom to avert, by suavity and moderation, that curse, the inseparable
concomitant of prosperity and glory, which the ancients personified
under the name of Nemesis. His head, strong for all the purposes of
debate and arithmetical calculation, was weak against the intoxicating
influence of success and fame. He became proud even to insolence. Old
companions, who, a very few years before, had punned and rhymed with him
in garrets, had dined with him at cheap ordinaries, had sate with him
in the pit, and had lent him some silver to pay his seamstress's bill,
hardly knew their friend Charles in the great man who could not forget
for one moment that he was First Lord of the Treasury, that he was
Chancellor of the Exchequer, that he had been a Regent of the kingdom,
that he had founded the Bank of England and the new East India Company,
that he had restored the currency, that he had invented the Exchequer
Bills, that he had planned the General Mortgage, and that he had been
pronounced, by a solemn vote of the Commons, to have deserved all
the favours which he had received from the Crown. It was said that
admiration of himself and contempt of others were indicated by all his
gestures and written in all the lines of his face. The very way in which
the little jackanapes, as the hostile pamphleteers loved to call him,
strutted through the lobby, making the most of his small figure, rising
on his toe, and perking up his chin, made him enemies. Rash and arrogant
sayings were imputed to him, and perhaps invented for him. He was
accused of boasting that there was nothing that he could not carry
through the House of Commons, that he could turn the majority round his
finger. A crowd of libellers assailed him with much more than political
hatred. Boundless rapacity and corruption were laid to his charge. He
was represented as selling all the places in the revenue department for
three years' purchase. The opprobrious nickname of Filcher was fastened
on him. His luxury, it was said, was not less inordinate than his
avarice. There was indeed an attempt made at this time to raise against
the leading Whig politicians and their allies, the great moneyed men of
the City, a cry much resembling the cry which, seventy or eighty years
later, was raised against the English Nabobs. Great wealth, suddenly
acquired, is not often enjoyed with moderation, dignity and good taste.
It is therefore not impossible that there may have been some small
foundation for the extravagant stories with which malecontent
pamphleteers amused the leisure of malecontent squires. In such stories
Montague played a conspicuous part. He contrived, it was said, to be at
once as rich as Croesus and as riotous as Mark Antony. His stud and his
cellar were beyond all price. His very lacqueys turned up their noses at
claret. He and his confederates were described as spending the immense
sums of which they had plundered the public in banquets of four courses,
such as Lucullus might have eaten in the Hall of Apollo. A supper for
twelve Whigs, enriched by jobs, grants, bribes, lucky purchases and
lucky sales of stock, was cheap at eighty pounds. At the end of every
course all the fine linen on the table was changed. Those who saw the
pyramids of choice wild fowl imagined that the entertainment had been
prepared for fifty epicures at the least. Only six birds' nests from the
Nicobar islands were to be had in London; and all the six, bought at
an enormous price, were smoking in soup on the board. These fables were
destitute alike of probability and of evidence. But Grub Street could
devise no fable injurious to Montague which was not certain to find
credence in more than half the manor houses and vicarages of England.

It may seem strange that a man who loved literature passionately, and
rewarded literary merit munificently, should have been more savagely
reviled both in prose and verse than almost any other politician in our
history. But there is really no cause for wonder. A powerful, liberal
and discerning protector of genius is very likely to be mentioned with
honour long after his death, but is very likely also to be most brutally
libelled during his life. In every age there will be twenty bad writers
for one good one; and every bad writer will think himself a good one. A
ruler who neglects all men of letters alike does not wound the self love
of any man of letters. But a ruler who shows favour to the few men of
letters who deserve it inflicts on the many the miseries of disappointed
hope, of affronted pride, of jealousy cruel as the grave. All the rage
of a multitude of authors, irritated at once by the sting of want and by
the sting of vanity, is directed against the unfortunate patron. It is
true that the thanks and eulogies of those whom he has befriended will
be remembered when the invectives of those whom he has neglected are
forgotten. But in his own time the obloquy will probably make as much
noise and find as much credit as the panegyric. The name of Maecenas
has been made immortal by Horace and Virgil, and is popularly used to
designate an accomplished statesman, who lives in close intimacy with
the greatest poets and wits of his time, and heaps benefits on them with
the most delicate generosity. But it may well be suspected that, if the
verses of Alpinus and Fannius, of Bavius and Maevius, had come down
to us, we might see Maecenas represented as the most niggardly and
tasteless of human beings, nay as a man who, on system, neglected and
persecuted all intellectual superiority. It is certain that Montague
was thus represented by contemporary scribblers. They told the world in
essays, in letters, in dialogues, in ballads, that he would do nothing
for anybody without being paid either in money or in some vile services;
that he not only never rewarded merit, but hated it whenever he saw it;
that he practised the meanest arts for the purpose of depressing it;
that those whom he protected and enriched were not men of ability and
virtue, but wretches distinguished only by their sycophancy and their
low debaucheries. And this was said of the man who made the fortune of
Joseph Addison, and of Isaac Newton.

Nothing had done more to diminish the influence of Montague in the House
of Commons than a step which he had taken a few weeks before the meeting
of the Parliament. It would seem that the result of the general election
had made him uneasy, and that he had looked anxiously round him for some
harbour in which he might take refuge from the storms which seemed to
be gathering. While his thoughts were thus employed, he learned that the
Auditorship of the Exchequer had suddenly become vacant. The Auditorship
was held for life. The duties were formal and easy. The gains were
uncertain; for they rose and fell with the public expenditure; but
they could hardly, in time of peace, and under the most economical
administration, be less than four thousand pounds a year, and were
likely, in time of war, to be more than double of that sum. Montague
marked this great office for his own. He could not indeed take it, while
he continued to be in charge of the public purse. For it would have been
indecent, and perhaps illegal, that he should audit his own accounts.
He therefore selected his brother Christopher, whom he had lately made a
Commissioner of the Excise, to keep the place for him. There was, as may
easily be supposed, no want of powerful and noble competitors for such
a prize. Leeds had, more than twenty years before, obtained from Charles
the Second a patent granting the reversion to Caermarthen. Godolphin,
it was said, pleaded a promise made by William. But Montague maintained,
and was, it seems, right in maintaining, that both the patent of Charles
and the promise of William had been given under a mistake, and that the
right of appointing the Auditor belonged, not to the Crown, but to the
Board of Treasury. He carried his point with characteristic audacity
and celerity. The news of the vacancy reached London on a Sunday. On the
Tuesday the new Auditor was sworn in. The ministers were amazed. Even
the Chancellor, with whom Montague was on terms of intimate friendship,
had not been consulted. Godolphin devoured his ill temper. Caermarthen
ordered out his wonderful yacht, and hastened to complain to the King,
who was then at Loo. But what had been done could not be undone.

This bold stroke placed Montague's fortune, in the lower sense of the
word, out of hazard, but increased the animosity of his enemies and
cooled the zeal of his adherents. In a letter written by one of his
colleagues, Secretary Vernon, on the day after the appointment, the
Auditorship is described as at once a safe and lucrative place. "But I
thought," Vernon proceeds, "Mr. Montague was too aspiring to stoop
to any thing below the height he was in, and that he least considered
profit. " This feeling was no doubt shared by many of the friends of
the ministry. It was plain that Montague was preparing a retreat for
himself. This flinching of the captain, just on the eve of a perilous
campaign, naturally disheartened the whole army. It deserves to be
remarked that, more than eighty years later, another great parliamentary
leader was placed in a very similar situation. The younger William Pitt
held in 1784 the same offices which Montague had held in 1698. Pitt was
pressed in 1784 by political difficulties not less than those with which
Montague had contended in 1698. Pitt was also in 1784 a much poorer man
than Montague in 1698. Pitt, in 1784, like Montage in 1698, had at his
own absolute disposal a lucrative sinecure place in the Exchequer. Pitt
gave away the office which would have made him an opulent man, and gave
it away in such a manner as at once to reward unfortunate merit, and
to relieve the country from a burden. For this disinterestedness he was
repaid by the enthusiastic applause of his followers, by the enforced
respect of his opponents, and by the confidence which, through all the
vicissitudes of a chequered and at length disastrous career, the great
body of Englishmen reposed in his public spirit and in his personal
integrity. In the intellectual qualities of a statesman Montague was
probably not inferior to Pitt. But the magnanimity, the dauntless
courage, the contempt for riches and for baubles, to which, more than to
any intellectual quality, Pitt owed his long ascendency, were wanting to
Montague.

The faults of Montague were great; but his punishment was cruel. It was
indeed a punishment which must have been more bitter than the bitterness
of death to a man whose vanity was exquisitely sensitive, and who had
been spoiled by early and rapid success and by constant prosperity.
Before the new Parliament had been a month sitting it was plain that his
empire was at an end. He spoke with the old eloquence; but his speeches
no longer called forth the old response. Whatever he proposed was
maliciously scrutinised. The success of his budget of the preceding year
had surpassed all expectation. The two millions which he had undertaken
to find had been raised with a rapidity which seemed magical. Yet for
bringing the riches of the City, in an unprecedented flood, to
overflow the Exchequer he was reviled as if his scheme had failed more
ludicrously than the Tory Land Bank. Emboldened by his unpopularity,
the Old East India Company presented a petition praying that the General
Society Act, which his influence and eloquence had induced the late
Parliament to pass, might be extensively modified. Howe took the matter
up. It was moved that leave should be given to bring in a bill according
to the prayer of the petition; the motion was carried by a hundred and
seventy-five votes to a hundred and forty-eight; and the whole question
of the trade with the Eastern seas was reopened. The bill was brought
in, but was, with great difficulty and by a very small majority, thrown
out on the second reading. [17] On other financial questions Montague,
so lately the oracle of the Committee of Supply, was now heard with
malevolent distrust. If his enemies were unable to detect any flaw in
his reasonings and calculations, they could at least whisper that Mr.
Montague was very cunning, that it was not easy to track him, but that
it might be taken for granted that for whatever he did he had some
sinister motive, and that the safest course was to negative whatever he
proposed. Though that House of Commons was economical even to a vice,
the majority preferred paying high interest to paying low interest,
solely because the plan for raising money at low interest had been
framed by him. In a despatch from the Dutch embassy the States General
were informed that many of the votes of that session which had caused
astonishment out of doors were to be ascribed to nothing but to the
bitter envy which the ability and fame of Montague had excited. It was
not without a hard struggle and a sharp pang that the first Englishman
who has held that high position which has now been long called the
Leadership of the House of Commons submitted to be deposed. But he was
set upon with cowardly malignity by whole rows of small men none of
whom singly would have dared to look him in the face. A contemporary
pamphleteer compared him to an owl in the sunshine pursued and pecked
to death by flights of tiny birds. On one occasion he was irritated into
uttering an oath. Then there was a cry of Order; and he was threatened
with the Serjeant and the Tower. On another occasion he was moved even
to shedding tears of rage and vexation, tears which only moved the
mockery of his low minded and bad hearted foes.

If a minister were now to find himself thus situated in a House of
Commons which had just been elected, and from which it would therefore
be idle to appeal to the electors, he would instantly resign his office,
and his adversaries would take his place. The change would be most
advantageous to the public, even if we suppose his successor to be both
less virtuous and less able than himself. For it is much better for
the country to have a bad ministry than to have no ministry at all,
and there would be no ministry at all if the executive departments
were filled by men whom the representatives of the people took every
opportunity of thwarting and insulting. That an unprincipled man should
be followed by a majority of the House of Commons is no doubt an evil.
But, when this is the case, he will nowhere be so harmless as at the
head of affairs. As he already possesses the power to do boundless
mischief, it is desirable to give him a strong motive to abstain from
doing mischief; and such a motive he has from the moment that he
is entrusted with the administration. Office of itself does much to
equalise politicians. It by no means brings all characters to a level;
but it does bring high characters down and low characters up towards
a common standard. In power the most patriotic and most enlightened
statesman finds that he must disappoint the expectations of his
admirers; that, if he effects any good, he must effect it by compromise;
that he must relinquish many favourite schemes; that he must bear with
many abuses. On the other hand, power turns the very vices of the most
worthless adventurer, his selfish ambition, his sordid cupidity, his
vanity, his cowardice, into a sort of public spirit. The most greedy and
cruel wrecker that ever put up false lights to lure mariners to their
destruction will do his best to preserve a ship from going to pieces
on the rocks, if he is taken on board of her and made pilot; and so the
most profligate Chancellor of the Exchequer most wish that trade may
flourish, that the revenue may come in well, and that he may be able
to take taxes off instead of putting them on. The most profligate First
Lord of the Admiralty must wish to receive news of a victory like that
of the Nile rather than of a mutiny like that at the Nore. There is,
therefore, a limit to the evil which is to be apprehended from the worst
ministry that is likely ever to exist in England. But to the evil of
having no ministry, to the evil of having a House of Commons permanently
at war with the executive government, there is absolutely no limit. This
was signally proved in 1699 and 1700. Had the statesmen of the junto, as
soon as they had ascertained the temper of the new Parliament, acted as
statesmen similarly situated would now act, great calamities would have
been averted. The chiefs of the opposition must then have been called
upon to form a government. With the power of the late ministry the
responsibility of the late ministry would have been transferred to them;
and that responsibility would at once have sobered them. The orator
whose eloquence had been the delight of the Country party would have had
to exert his ingenuity on a new set of topics. There would have been
an end of his invectives against courtiers and placemen, of piteous
meanings about the intolerable weight of the land tax, of his boasts
that the militia of Kent and Sussex, without the help of a single
regular soldier, would turn the conquerors of Landen to the right about.
He would himself have been a courtier; he would himself have been a
placeman; he would have known that he should be held accountable for
all the misery which a national bankruptcy or a French invasion might
produce; and, instead of labouring to get up a clamour for the reduction
of imposts, and the disbanding of regiments, he would have employed all
his talents and influence for the purpose of obtaining from Parliament
the means of supporting public credit, and of putting the country in a
good posture of defence. Meanwhile the statesmen who were out might have
watched the new men, might have checked them when they were wrong, might
have come to their help when, by doing right, they had raised a mutiny
in their own absurd and perverse faction. In this way Montague and
Somers might, in opposition, have been really far more powerful than
they could be while they filled the highest posts in the executive
government and were outvoted every day in the House of Commons. Their
retirement would have mitigated envy; their abilities would have been
missed and regretted; their unpopularity would have passed to their
successors, who would have grievously disappointed vulgar expectation,
and would have been under the necessity of eating their own words in
every debate. The league between the Tories and the discontented Whigs
would have been dissolved; and it is probable that, in a session or
two, the public voice would have loudly demanded the recall of the best
Keeper of the Great Seal, and of the best First Lord of the Treasury,
the oldest man living could remember.

But these lessons, the fruits of the experience of five generations, had
never been taught to the politicians of the seventeenth century. Notions
imbibed before the Revolution still kept possession of the public mind.
Not even Somers, the foremost man of his age in civil wisdom, thought
it strange that one party should be in possession of the executive
administration while the other predominated in the legislature. Thus, at
the beginning of 1699, there ceased to be a ministry; and years elapsed
before the servants of the Crown and the representatives of the people
were again joined in an union as harmonious as that which had existed
from the general election of 1695 to the general election of 1698. The
anarchy lasted, with some short intervals of composedness, till the
general election of 1765. No portion of our parliamentary history is
less pleasing or more instructive. It will be seen that the House of
Commons became altogether ungovernable, abused its gigantic power with
unjust and insolent caprice, browbeat King and Lords, the Courts of
Common Law and the Constituent bodies, violated rights guaranteed by the
Great Charter, and at length made itself so odious that the people were
glad to take shelter, under the protection of the throne and of the
hereditary aristocracy, from the tyranny of the assembly which had been
chosen by themselves.

The evil which had brought on so much discredit on representative
institutions was of gradual though of rapid growth, and did not, in the
first session of the Parliament of 1698, take the most alarming form.
The lead of the House of Commons had, however, entirely passed away from
Montague, who was still the first minister of finance, to the chiefs
of the turbulent and discordant opposition. Among those chiefs the most
powerful was Harley, who, while almost constantly acting with the Tories
and High Churchmen, continued to use, on occasions cunningly selected,
the political and religious phraseology which he had learned in his
youth among the Roundheads. He thus, while high in the esteem of the
country gentlemen and even of his hereditary enemies, the country
parsons, retained a portion of the favour with which he and his
ancestors had long been regarded by Whigs and Nonconformists. He was
therefore peculiarly well qualified to act as mediator between the two
sections of the majority.

The bill for the disbanding of the army passed with little opposition
through the House till it reached the last stage. Then, at length, a
stand was made, but in vain. Vernon wrote the next day to Shrewsbury
that the ministers had had a division which they need not be ashamed of;
for that they had mustered a hundred and fifty-four against two hundred
and twenty-one. Such a division would not be considered as matter of
boast by a Secretary of State in our time.

The bill went up to the House of Lords, where it was regarded with no
great favour. But this was not one of those occasions on which the House
of Lords can act effectually as a check on the popular branch of the
legislature. No good would have been done by rejecting the bill for
disbanding the troops, unless the King could have been furnished with
the means of maintaining them; and with such means he could be furnished
only by the House of Commons. Somers, in a speech of which both the
eloquence and the wisdom were greatly admired, placed the question in
the true light.
He set forth strongly the dangers to which the jealousy
and parsimony of the representatives of the people exposed the country.
But any thing, he said, was better than that the King and the Peers
should engage, without hope of success, in an acrimonious conflict with
the Commons. Tankerville spoke with his usual ability on the same side.
Nottingham and the other Tories remained silent; and the bill passed
without a division.

By this time the King's strong understanding had mastered, as it seldom
failed, after a struggle, to master, his rebellious temper. He had
made up his mind to fulfil his great mission to the end. It was with
no common pain that he admitted it to be necessary for him to give his
assent to the disbanding bill. But in this case it would have been worse
than useless to resort to his veto. For, if the bill had been rejected,
the army would have been dissolved, and he would have been left without
even the seven thousand men whom the Commons were willing to allow him.
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.