No More Learning

The person who on this occasion came forward as the champion of the
colonists, the forerunner of Swift and of Grattan, was William Molyneux.
He would have rejected the name of Irishman as indignantly as a citizen
of Marseilles or Cyrene, proud of his pure Greek blood, and fully
qualified to send a chariot to the Olympic race course, would have
rejected the name of Gaul or Libyan. He was, in the phrase of that
time, an English gentleman of family and fortune born in Ireland. He had
studied at the Temple, had travelled on the Continent, had become
well known to the most eminent scholars and philosophers of Oxford and
Cambridge, had been elected a member of the Royal Society of London, and
had been one of the founders of the Royal Society of Dublin. In the days
of Popish ascendancy he had taken refuge among his friends here; he
had returned to his home when the ascendancy of his own caste had been
reestablished; and he had been chosen to represent the University of
Dublin in the House of Commons. He had made great efforts to promote the
manufactures of the kingdom in which he resided; and he had found those
efforts impeded by an Act of the English Parliament which laid severe
restrictions on the exportation of woollen goods from Ireland. In
principle this Act was altogether indefensible. Practically it was
altogether unimportant. Prohibitions were not needed to prevent the
Ireland of the seventeenth century from being a great manufacturing
country; nor could the most liberal bounties have made her so. The
jealousy of commerce, however, is as fanciful and unreasonable as the
jealousy of love. The clothiers of Wilts and Yorkshire were weak enough
to imagine that they should be ruined by the competition of a half
barbarous island, an island where there was far less capital than in
England, where there was far less security for life and property than
in England, and where there was far less industry and energy among the
labouring classes than in England. Molyneux, on the other hand, had
the sanguine temperament of a projector. He imagined that, but for
the tyrannical interference of strangers, a Ghent would spring up
in Connemara, and a Bruges in the Bog of Allen. And what right had
strangers to interfere? Not content with showing that the law of which
he complained was absurd and unjust, he undertook to prove that it was
null and void. Early in the year 1698 he published and dedicated to the
King a treatise in which it was asserted in plain terms that the English
Parliament had no authority over Ireland.

Whoever considers without passion or prejudice the great constitutional
question which was thus for the first time raised will probably be
of opinion that Molyneux was in error. The right of the Parliament of
England to legislate for Ireland rested on the broad general principle
that the paramount authority of the mother country extends over all
colonies planted by her sons in all parts of the world. This principle
was the subject of much discussion at the time of the American troubles,
and was then maintained, without any reservation, not only by the
English Ministers, but by Burke and all the adherents of Rockingham,
and was admitted, with one single reservation, even by the Americans
themselves. Down to the moment of separation the Congress fully
acknowledged the competency of the King, Lords and Commons to make laws,
of any kind but one, for Massachusetts and Virginia. The only power
which such men as Washington and Franklin denied to the Imperial
legislature was the power of taxing. Within living memory, Acts which
have made great political and social revolutions in our Colonies have
been passed in this country; nor has the validity of those Acts ever
been questioned; and conspicuous among them were the law of 1807 which
abolished the slave trade, and the law of 1833 which abolished slavery.

The doctrine that the parent state has supreme power over the colonies
is not only borne out by authority and by precedent, but will appear,
when examined, to be in entire accordance with justice and with policy.
During the feeble infancy of colonies independence would be pernicious,
or rather fatal, to them. Undoubtedly, as they grow stronger and
stronger, it will be wise in the home government to be more and more
indulgent. No sensible parent deals with a son of twenty in the same way
as with a son of ten. Nor will any government not infatuated treat such
a province as Canada or Victoria in the way in which it might be proper
to treat a little band of emigrants who have just begun to build their
huts on a barbarous shore, and to whom the protection of the flag of
a great nation is indispensably necessary. Nevertheless, there cannot
really be more than one supreme power in a society. If, therefore, a
time comes at which the mother country finds it expedient altogether to
abdicate her paramount authority over a colony, one of two courses
ought to be taken. There ought to be complete incorporation, if
such incorporation be possible. If not, there ought to be complete
separation. Very few propositions in polities can be so perfectly
demonstrated as this, that parliamentary government cannot be carried on
by two really equal and independent parliaments in one empire.

And, if we admit the general rule to be that the English parliament is
competent to legislate for colonies planted by English subjects, what
reason was there for considering the case of the colony in Ireland as an
exception? For it is to be observed that the whole question was between
the mother country and the colony. The aboriginal inhabitants, more than
five sixths of the population, had no more interest in the matter than
the swine or the poultry; or, if they had an interest, it was for
their interest that the caste which domineered over them should not be
emancipated from all external control. They were no more represented in
the parliament which sate at Dublin than in the parliament which sate at
Westminster. They had less to dread from legislation at Westminster than
from legislation at Dublin. They were, indeed, likely to obtain but a
very scanty measure of justice from the English Tories, a more scanty
measure still from the English Whigs; but the most acrimonious English
Whig did not feel towards them that intense antipathy, compounded of
hatred, fear and scorn, with which they were regarded by the Cromwellian
who dwelt among them. [8] For the Irishry Molyneux, though boasting that
he was the champion of liberty, though professing to have learned his
political principles from Locke's writings, and though confidently
expecting Locke's applause, asked nothing but a more cruel and more
hopeless slavery. What he claimed was that, as respected the colony to
which he belonged, England should forego rights which she has exercised
and is still exercising over every other colony that she has ever
planted. And what reason could be given for making such a distinction?
No colony had owed so much to England. No colony stood in such need of
the support of England. Twice, within the memory of men then living, the
natives had attempted to throw off the alien yoke; twice the intruders
had been in imminent danger of extirpation; twice England had come to
the rescue, and had put down the Celtic population under the feet of
her own progeny. Millions of English money had been expended in the
struggle. English blood had flowed at the Boyne and at Athlone, at
Aghrim and at Limerick. The graves of thousands of English soldiers
had been dug in the pestilential morass of Dundalk. It was owing to the
exertions and sacrifices of the English people that, from the basaltic
pillars of Ulster to the lakes of Kerry, the Saxon settlers were
trampling on the children of the soil. The colony in Ireland was
therefore emphatically a dependency; a dependency, not merely by the
common law of the realm, but by the nature of things. It was absurd to
claim independence for a community which could not cease to be dependent
without ceasing to exist.

Molyneux soon found that he had ventured on a perilous undertaking. A
member of the English House of Commons complained in his place that
a book which attacked the most precious privileges of the supreme
legislature was in circulation. The volume was produced; some passages
were read; and a Committee was appointed to consider the whole subject.
The Committee soon reported that the obnoxious pamphlet was only one
of several symptoms which indicated a spirit such as ought to be
suppressed. The Crown of Ireland had been most improperly described in
public instruments as an imperial Crown. The Irish Lords and Commons had
presumed, not only to reenact an English Act passed expressly for
the purpose of binding them, but to reenact it with alterations. The
alterations were indeed small; but the alteration even of a letter was
tantamount to a declaration of independence. Several addresses were
voted without a division. The King was entreated to discourage all
encroachments of subordinate powers on the supreme authority of the
English legislature, to bring to justice the pamphleteer who had dared
to question that authority, to enforce the Acts which had been passed
for the protection of the woollen manufactures of England, and to direct
the industry and capital of Ireland into the channel of the linen trade,
a trade which might grow and flourish in Leinster and Ulster without
exciting the smallest jealousy at Norwich or at Halifax.

The King promised to do what the Commons asked; but in truth there was
little to be done. The Irish, conscious of their impotence, submitted
without a murmur. The Irish woollen manufacture languished and
disappeared, as it would, in all probability, have languished and
disappeared if it had been left to itself. Had Molyneux lived a few
months longer he would probably have been impeached. But the close of
the session was approaching; and before the Houses met again a timely
death had snatched him from their vengeance; and the momentous question
which had been first stirred by him slept a deep sleep till it was
revived in a more formidable shape, after the lapse of twenty-six years,
by the fourth letter of The Drapier.

Of the commercial questions which prolonged this session far into the
summer the most important respected India. Four years had elapsed since
the House of Commons had decided that all Englishmen had an equal right
to traffic in the Asiatic Seas, unless prohibited by Parliament; and in
that decision the King had thought it prudent to acquiesce. Any merchant
of London or Bristol might now fit out a ship for Bengal or for China,
without the least apprehension of being molested by the Admiralty or
sued in the Courts of Westminster. No wise man, however, was disposed
to stake a large sum on such a venture. For the vote which protected him
from annoyance here left him exposed to serious risks on the other
side of the Cape of Good Hope. The Old Company, though its exclusive
privileges were no more, and though its dividends had greatly
diminished, was still in existence, and still retained its castles and
warehouses, its fleet of fine merchantmen, and its able and zealous
factors, thoroughly qualified by a long experience to transact business
both in the palaces and in the bazaars of the East, and accustomed
to look for direction to the India House alone. The private trader
therefore still ran great risk of being treated as a smuggler, if not as
a pirate. He might indeed, if he was wronged, apply for redress to the
tribunals of his country. But years must elapse before his cause could
be heard; his witnesses must be conveyed over fifteen thousand miles
of sea; and in the meantime he was a ruined man. The experiment of free
trade with India had therefore been tried under every disadvantage, or,
to speak more correctly, had not been tried at all. The general opinion
had always been that some restriction was necessary; and that opinion
had been confirmed by all that had happened since the old restrictions
had been removed. The doors of the House of Commons were again besieged
by the two great contending factions of the City. The Old Company
offered, in return for a monopoly secured by law, a loan of seven
hundred thousand pounds; and the whole body of Tories was for accepting
the offer. But those indefatigable agitators who had, ever since the
Revolution, been striving to obtain a share in the trade of the Eastern
seas exerted themselves at this conjuncture more strenuously than ever,
and found a powerful patron in Montague.

That dexterous and eloquent statesman had two objects in view. One was
to obtain for the State, as the price of the monopoly, a sum much larger
than the Old Company was able to give. The other was to promote the
interest of his own party. Nowhere was the conflict between Whigs and
Tories sharper than in the City of London; and the influence of the City
of London was felt to the remotest corner of the realm. To elevate the
Whig section of that mighty commercial aristocracy which congregated
under the arches of the Royal Exchange, and to depress the Tory section,
had long been one of Montague's favourite schemes. He had already formed
one citadel in the heart of that great emporium; and he now thought that
it might be in his power to erect and garrison a second stronghold in a
position scarcely less commanding. It had often been said, in times of
civil war, that whoever was master of the Tower and of Tilbury Fort was
master of London. The fastnesses by means of which Montague proposed
to keep the capital obedient in times of peace and of constitutional
government were of a different kind. The Bank was one of his fortresses;
and he trusted that a new India House would be the other.

The task which he had undertaken was not an easy one. For, while his
opponents were united, his adherents were divided. Most of those who
were for a New Company thought that the New Company ought, like the Old
Company, to trade on a joint stock. But there were some who held that
our commerce with India would be best carried on by means of what is
called a regulated Company. There was a Turkey Company, the members of
which contributed to a general fund, and had in return the exclusive
privilege of trafficking with the Levant; but those members trafficked,
each on his own account; they forestalled each other; they undersold
each other; one became rich; another became bankrupt. The Corporation
meanwhile watched over the common interest of all the members, furnished
the Crown with the means of maintaining an embassy at Constantinople,
and placed at several important ports consuls and vice-consuls, whose
business was to keep the Pacha and the Cadi in good humour, and to
arbitrate in disputes among Englishmen. Why might not the same system be
found to answer in regions lying still further to the east? Why should
not every member of the New Company be at liberty to export European
commodities to the countries beyond the Cape, and to bring back shawls,
saltpetre and bohea to England, while the Company, in its collective
capacity, might treat with Asiatic potentates, or exact reparation
from them, and might be entrusted with powers for the administration of
justice and for the government of forts and factories?

Montague tried to please all those whose support was necessary to him;
and this he could effect only by bringing forward a plan so intricate
that it cannot without some pains be understood. He wanted two millions
to extricate the State from its financial embarrassments. That sum he
proposed to raise by a loan at eight per cent. The lenders might be
either individuals or corporations. But they were all, individuals and
corporations, to be united in a new corporation, which was to be called
the General Society. Every member of the General Society, whether
individual or corporation, might trade separately with India to an
extent not exceeding the amount which such member had advanced to the
government. But all the members or any of them might, if they so thought
fit, give up the privilege of trading separately, and unite themselves
under a royal Charter for the purpose of trading in common. Thus the
General Society was, by its original constitution, a regulated company;
but it was provided that either the whole Society or any part of it
might become a joint stock company.

The opposition to the scheme was vehement and pertinacious. The Old
Company presented petition after petition. The Tories, with Seymour at
their head, appealed both to the good faith and to the compassion of
Parliament. Much was said about the sanctity of the existing Charter,
and much about the tenderness due to the numerous families which had,
in reliance on that Charter, invested their substance in India stock. On
the other side there was no want of plausible topics or of skill to use
them. Was it not strange that those who talked so much about the Charter
should have altogether overlooked the very clause of the Charter on
which the whole question turned? That clause expressly reserved to
the government power of revocation, after three years' notice, if the
Charter should not appear to be beneficial to the public. The Charter
had not been found beneficial to the public; the three years' notice
should be given; and in the year 1701 the revocation would take effect.
What could be fairer? If anybody was so weak as to imagine that the
privileges of the Old Company were perpetual, when the very instrument
which created those privileges expressly declared them to be terminable,
what right had he to blame the Parliament, which was bound to do the
best for the State, for not saving him, at the expense of the State,
from the natural punishment of his own folly? It was evident that
nothing was proposed inconsistent with strict justice. And what right
had the Old Company to more than strict justice? These petitioners
who implored the legislature to deal indulgently with them in their
adversity, how had they used their boundless prosperity? Had not the
India House recently been the very den of corruption, the tainted spot
from which the plague had spread to the Court and the Council, to the
House of Commons and the House of Lords? Were the disclosures of 1695
forgotten, the eighty thousand pounds of secret service money disbursed
in one year, the enormous bribes direct and indirect, Seymour's
saltpetre contracts, Leeds's bags of golds? By the malpractices which
the inquiry in the Exchequer Chamber then brought to light, the Charter
had been forfeited; and it would have been well if the forfeiture had
been immediately enforced. "Had not time then pressed," said Montague,
"had it not been necessary that the session should close, it is probable
that the petitioners, who now cry out that they cannot get justice,
would have got more justice than they desired. If they had been called
to account for great and real wrong in 1695, we should not have had them
here complaining of imaginary wrong in 1698. "

The fight was protracted by the obstinacy and dexterity of the Old
Company and its friends from the first week of May to the last week in
June. It seems that many even of Montague's followers doubted whether
the promised two millions would be forthcoming. His enemies confidently
predicted that the General Society would be as complete a failure as the
Land Bank had been in the year before the last, and that he would in the
autumn find himself in charge of an empty exchequer. His activity and
eloquence, however, prevailed. On the twenty-sixth of June, after many
laborious sittings, the question was put that this Bill do pass, and was
carried by one hundred and fifteen votes to seventy-eight. In the upper
House, the conflict was short and sharp. Some peers declared that, in
their opinion, the subscription to the proposed loan, far from amounting
to the two millions which the Chancellor of the Exchequer expected,
would fall far short of one million. Others, with much reason,
complained that a law of such grave importance should have been sent up
to them in such a shape that they must either take the whole or throw
out the whole. The privilege of the Commons with respect to money bills
had of late been grossly abused. The Bank had been created by one money
bill; this General Society was to be created by another money bill. Such
a bill the Lords could not amend; they might indeed reject it; but to
reject it was to shake the foundations of public credit and to leave
the kingdom defenceless. Thus one branch of the legislature was
systematically put under duress by the other, and seemed likely to
be reduced to utter insignificance. It was better that the government
should be once pinched for money than that the House of Peers should
cease to be part of the Constitution. So strong was this feeling that
the Bill was carried only by sixty-five to forty-eight. It received
the royal sanction on the fifth of July. The King then spoke from the
throne. This was the first occasion on which a King of England
had spoken to a Parliament of which the existence was about to be
terminated, not by his own act, but by the act of the law. He could
not, he said, take leave of the Lords and Gentlemen before him without
publicly acknowledging the great things which they had done for his
dignity and for the welfare of the nation. He recounted the chief
services which they had, during three eventful sessions, rendered to
the country. "These things will," he said, "give a lasting reputation to
this Parliament, and will be a subject of emulation to Parliaments which
shall come after. " The Houses were then prorogued.

During the week which followed there was some anxiety as to the result
of the subscription for the stock of the General Society. If that
subscription failed, there would be a deficit; public credit would be
shaken; and Montague would be regarded as a pretender who had owed his
reputation to a mere run of good luck, and who had tempted chance
once too often. But the event was such as even his sanguine spirit had
scarcely ventured to anticipate. At one in the afternoon of the 14th
of July the books were opened at the Hall of the Company of Mercers in
Cheapside. An immense crowd was already collected in the street. As
soon as the doors were flung wide, wealthy citizens, with their money
in their hands, pressed in, pushing and elbowing each other. The guineas
were paid down faster than the clerks could count them. Before night six
hundred thousand pounds had been subscribed. The next day the throng was
as great. More than one capitalist put down his name for thirty thousand
pounds. To the astonishment of those ill boding politicians who were
constantly repeating that the war, the debt, the taxes, the grants to
Dutch courtiers, had ruined the kingdom, the sum, which it had been
doubted whether England would be able to raise in many weeks, was
subscribed by London in a few hours. The applications from the
provincial towns and rural districts came too late. The merchants of
Bristol had intended to take three hundred thousand pounds of the stock,
but had waited to learn how the subscription went on before they gave
their final orders; and, by the time that the mail had gone down to
Bristol and returned, there was no more stock to be had.

This was the moment at which the fortunes of Montague reached the
meridian. The decline was close at hand. His ability and his constant
success were everywhere talked of with admiration and envy. That man, it
was commonly said, has never wanted, and never will want, an expedient.

During the long and busy session which had just closed, some interesting
and important events had taken place which may properly be mentioned
here. One of those events was the destruction of the most celebrated
palace in which the sovereigns of England have ever dwelt. On the
evening of the 4th of January, a woman,--the patriotic journalists
and pamphleteers of that time did not fail to note that she was a
Dutchwoman,--who was employed as a laundress at Whitehall, lighted a
charcoal fire in her room and placed some linen round it. The linen
caught fire and burned furiously. The tapestry, the bedding, the
wainscots were soon in a blaze. The unhappy woman who had done the
mischief perished. Soon the flames burst out of the windows. All
Westminster, all the Strand, all the river were in commotion. Before
midnight the King's apartments, the Queen's apartments, the Wardrobe,
the Treasury, the office of the Privy Council, the office of the
Secretary of State, had been destroyed. The two chapels perished
together; that ancient chapel where Wolsey had heard mass in the midst
of gorgeous copes, golden candlesticks, and jewelled crosses, and that
modern edifice which had been erected for the devotions of James and
had been embellished by the pencil of Verrio and the chisel of Gibbons.
Meanwhile a great extent of building had been blown up; and it was hoped
that by this expedient a stop had been put to the conflagration. But
early in the morning a new fire broke out of the heaps of combustible
matter which the gunpowder had scattered to right and left. The guard
room was consumed. No trace was left of that celebrated gallery which
had witnessed so many balls and pageants, in which so many maids of
honour had listened too easily to the vows and flatteries of gallants,
and in which so many bags of gold had changed masters at the hazard
table. During some time men despaired of the Banqueting House. The
flames broke in on the south of that beautiful hall, and were with great
difficulty extinguished by the exertions of the guards, to whom Cutts,
mindful of his honourable nickname of the Salamander, set as good an
example on this night of terror as he had set in the breach of Namur.
Many lives were lost, and many grievous wounds were inflicted by the
falling masses of stone and timber, before the fire was effectually
subdued. When day broke, the heaps of smoking ruins spread from Scotland
Yard to the Bowling Green, where the mansion of the Duke of Buccleuch
now stands. The Banqueting House was safe; but the graceful columns and
festoons designed by Inigo were so much defaced and blackened that their
form could hardly be discerned. There had been time to move the most
valuable effects which were moveable. Unfortunately some of Holbein's
finest pictures were painted on the walls, and are consequently known to
us only by copies and engravings. The books of the Treasury and of the
Privy Council were rescued, and are still preserved. The Ministers
whose offices had been burned down were provided with new offices in the
neighbourhood. Henry the Eighth had built, close to St. James's Park,
two appendages to the Palace of Whitehall, a cockpit and a tennis court.
The Treasury now occupies the site of the cockpit, the Privy Council
Office the site of the tennis court.

Notwithstanding the many associations which make the name of Whitehall
still interesting to an Englishman, the old building was little
regretted. It was spacious indeed and commodious, but mean and
inelegant. The people of the capital had been annoyed by the scoffing
way in which foreigners spoke of the principal residence of our
sovereigns, and often said that it was a pity that the great fire had
not spared the old portico of St. Paul's and the stately arcades of
Gresham's Bourse, and taken in exchange that ugly old labyrinth of dingy
brick and plastered timber. It might now be hoped that we should have
a Louvre. Before the ashes of the old palace were cold, plans for a new
palace were circulated and discussed. But William, who could not draw
his breath in the air of Westminster, was little disposed to expend
a million on a house which it would have been impossible for him
to inhabit. Many blamed him for not restoring the dwelling of his
predecessors; and a few Jacobites, whom evil temper and repeated
disappointments had driven almost mad, accused him of having burned it
down. It was not till long after his death that Tory writers ceased to
call for the rebuilding of Whitehall, and to complain that the King of
England had no better town house than St. James's, while the delightful
spot where the Tudors and the Stuarts had held their councils and their
revels was covered with the mansions of his jobbing courtiers. [9]

In the same week in which Whitehall perished, the Londoners were
supplied with a new topic of conversation by a royal visit, which, of
all royal visits, was the least pompous and ceremonious and yet the most
interesting and important. On the 10th of January a vessel from Holland
anchored off Greenwich and was welcomed with great respect. Peter the
First, Czar of Muscovy, was on board. He took boat with a few attendants
and was rowed up the Thames to Norfolk Street, where a house overlooking
the river had been prepared for his reception.

His journey is an epoch in the history, not only of his own country, but
of our's, and of the world.
To the polished nations of Western Europe,
the empire which he governed had till then been what Bokhara or Siam is
to us. That empire indeed, though less extensive than at present, was
the most extensive that had ever obeyed a single chief. The dominions of
Alexander and of Trajan were small when compared with the immense
area of the Scythian desert. But in the estimation of statesmen that
boundless expanse of larch forest and morass, where the snow lay deep
during eight months of every year, and where a wretched peasantry could
with difficulty defend their hovels against troops of famished wolves,
was of less account than the two or three square miles into which were
crowded the counting houses, the warehouses, and the innumerable masts
of Amsterdam. On the Baltic Russia had not then a single port. Her
maritime trade with the other rations of Christendom was entirely
carried on at Archangel, a place which had been created and was
supported by adventurers from our island. In the days of the Tudors, a
ship from England, seeking a north east passage to the land of silk and
spice, had discovered the White Sea. The barbarians who dwelt on the
shores of that dreary gulf had never before seen such a portent as a
vessel of a hundred and sixty tons burden. They fled in terror; and,
when they were pursued and overtaken, prostrated themselves before the
chief of the strangers and kissed his feet. He succeeded in opening a
friendly communication with them; and from that time there had been a
regular commercial intercourse between our country and the subjects
of the Czar. A Russia Company was incorporated in London. An English
factory was built at Archangel. That factory was indeed, even in the
latter part of the seventeenth century, a rude and mean building. The
walls consisted of trees laid one upon another; and the roof was of
birch bark. This shelter, however, was sufficient in the long summer day
of the Arctic regions. Regularly at that season several English ships
cast anchor in the bay. A fair was held on the beach. Traders came from
a distance of many hundreds of miles to the only mart where they could
exchange hemp and tar, hides and tallow, wax and honey, the fur of the
sable and the wolverine, and the roe of the sturgeon of the Volga, for
Manchester stuffs, Sheffield knives, Birmingham buttons, sugar from
Jamaica and pepper from Malabar. The commerce in these articles was
open. But there was a secret traffic which was not less active or less
lucrative, though the Russian laws had made it punishable, and though
the Russian divines pronounced it damnable. In general the mandates of
princes and the lessons of priests were received by the Muscovite with
profound reverence. But the authority of his princes and of his priests
united could not keep him from tobacco. Pipes he could not obtain; but
a cow's horn perforated served his turn. From every Archangel fair rolls
of the best Virginia speedily found their way to Novgorod and Tobolsk.

The commercial intercourse between England and Russia made some
diplomatic intercourse necessary. The diplomatic intercourse however
was only occasional. The Czar had no permanent minister here. We had no
permanent minister at Moscow; and even at Archangel we had no consul.
Three or four times in a century extraordinary embassies were sent from
Whitehall to the Kremlin and from the Kremlin to Whitehall.

The English embassies had historians whose narratives may still be
read with interest. Those historians described vividly, and sometimes
bitterly, the savage ignorance and the squalid poverty of the barbarous
country in which they had sojourned. In that country, they said, there
was neither literature nor science, neither school nor college. It was
not till more than a hundred years after the invention of printing that
a single printing press had been introduced into the Russian empire; and
that printing press had speedily perished in a fire which was supposed
to have been kindled by the priests. Even in the seventeenth century
the library of a prelate of the first dignity consisted of a few
manuscripts. Those manuscripts too were in long rolls; for the art of
bookbinding was unknown. The best educated men could barely read and
write. It was much if the secretary to whom was entrusted the direction
of negotiations with foreign powers had a sufficient smattering of Dog
Latin to make himself understood. The arithmetic was the arithmetic of
the dark ages. The denary notation was unknown. Even in the Imperial
Treasury the computations were made by the help of balls strung on
wires. Round the person of the Sovereign there was a blaze of gold and
jewels; but even in his most splendid palaces were to be found the filth
and misery of an Irish cabin. So late as the year 1663 the gentlemen of
the retinue of the Earl of Carlisle were, in the city of Moscow, thrust
into a single bedroom, and were told that, if they did not remain
together, they would be in danger of being devoured by rats.

Such was the report which the English legations made of what they had
seen and suffered in Russia; and their evidence was confirmed by the
appearance which the Russian legations made in England. The strangers
spoke no civilised language. Their garb, their gestures, their
salutations, had a wild and barbarous character. The ambassador and the
grandees who accompanied him were so gorgeous that all London crowded to
stare at them, and so filthy that nobody dared to touch them. They came
to the court balls dropping pearls and vermin. It was said that one
envoy cudgelled the lords of his train whenever they soiled or lost
any part of their finery, and that another had with difficulty been
prevented from putting his son to death for the crime of shaving and
dressing after the French fashion.

Our ancestors therefore were not a little surprised to learn that a
young barbarian, who had, at seventeen years of age, become the autocrat
of the immense region stretching from the confines of Sweden to those
of China, and whose education had been inferior to that of an English
farmer or shopman, had planned gigantic improvements, had learned enough
of some languages of Western Europe to enable him to communicate with
civilised men, had begun to surround himself with able adventurers from
various parts of the world, had sent many of his young subjects to
study languages, arts and sciences in foreign cities, and finally had
determined to travel as a private man, and to discover, by personal
observation, the secret of the immense prosperity and power enjoyed by
some communities whose whole territory was far less than the hundredth
part of his dominions.

It might have been expected that France would have been the first object
of his curiosity. For the grace and dignity of the French King, the
splendour of the French Court, the discipline of the French armies, and
the genius and learning of the French writers, were then renowned all
over the world. But the Czar's mind had early taken a strange ply which
it retained to the last. His empire was of all empires the least capable
of being made a great naval power. The Swedish provinces lay between his
States and the Baltic. The Bosporus and the Dardanelles lay between
his States and the Mediterranean. He had access to the ocean only in
a latitude in which navigation is, during a great part of every
year, perilous and difficult. On the ocean he had only a single port,
Archangel; and the whole shipping of Archangel was foreign. There did
not exist a Russian vessel larger than a fishing-boat. Yet, from some
cause which cannot now be traced, he had a taste for maritime pursuits
which amounted to a passion, indeed almost to a monomania. His
imagination was full of sails, yardarms, and rudders. That large mind,
equal to the highest duties of the general and the statesman, contracted
itself to the most minute details of naval architecture and naval
discipline. The chief ambition of the great conqueror and legislator was
to be a good boatswain and a good ship's carpenter. Holland and England
therefore had for him an attraction which was wanting to the galleries
and terraces of Versailles. He repaired to Amsterdam, took a lodging in
the dockyard, assumed the garb of a pilot, put down his name on the list
of workmen, wielded with his own hand the caulking iron and the mallet,
fixed the pumps, and twisted the ropes. Ambassadors who came to pay
their respects to him were forced, much against their will, to clamber
up the rigging of a man of war, and found him enthroned on the cross
trees.

Such was the prince whom the populace of London now crowded to behold.
His stately form, his intellectual forehead, his piercing black eyes,
his Tartar nose and mouth, his gracious smile, his frown black with all
the stormy rage and hate of a barbarian tyrant, and above all a strange
nervous convulsion which sometimes transformed his countenance during a
few moments, into an object on which it was impossible to look without
terror, the immense quantities of meat which he devoured, the pints
of brandy which he swallowed, and which, it was said, he had carefully
distilled with his own hands, the fool who jabbered at his feet, the
monkey which grinned at the back of his chair, were, during some weeks,
popular topics of conversation. He meanwhile shunned the public gaze
with a haughty shyness which inflamed curiosity. He went to a play; but,
as soon as he perceived that pit, boxes and galleries were staring,
not at the stage, but at him, he retired to a back bench where he was
screened from observation by his attendants. He was desirous to see a
sitting of the House of Lords; but, as he was determined not to be seen,
he was forced to climb up to the leads, and to peep through a small
window. He heard with great interest the royal assent given to a bill
for raising fifteen hundred thousand pounds by land tax, and learned
with amazement that this sum, though larger by one half than the whole
revenue which he could wring from the population of the immense empire
of which he was absolute master, was but a small part of what
the Commons of England voluntarily granted every year to their
constitutional King.

William judiciously humoured the whims of his illustrious guest, and
stole to Norfolk Street so quietly that nobody in the neighbourhood
recognised His Majesty in the thin gentleman who got out of the modest
looking coach at the Czar's lodgings. The Czar returned the visit with
the same precautions, and was admitted into Kensington House by a
back door. It was afterwards known that he took no notice of the fine
pictures with which the palace was adorned. But over the chimney of
the royal sitting room was a plate which, by an ingenious machinery,
indicated the direction of the wind; and with this plate he was in
raptures.

He soon became weary of his residence. He found that he was too far from
the objects of his curiosity, and too near to the crowds to which he was
himself an object of curiosity. He accordingly removed to Deptford, and
was there lodged in the house of John Evelyn, a house which had long
been a favourite resort of men of letters, men of taste and men of
science. Here Peter gave himself up to his favourite pursuits. He
navigated a yacht every day up and down the river. His apartment was
crowded with models of three deckers and two deckers, frigates, sloops
and fireships. The only Englishman of rank in whose society he seemed to
take much pleasure was the eccentric Caermarthen, whose passion for the
sea bore some resemblance to his own, and who was very competent to
give an opinion about every part of a ship from the stem to the stern.
Caermarthen, indeed, became so great a favourite that he prevailed on
the Czar to consent to the admission of a limited quantity of tobacco
into Russia. There was reason to apprehend that the Russian clergy
would cry out against any relaxation of the ancient rule, and would
strenuously maintain that the practice of smoking was condemned by that
text which declares that man is defiled, not by those things which enter
in at the mouth, but by those which proceed out of it. This apprehension
was expressed by a deputation of merchants who were admitted to an
audience of the Czar; but they were reassured by the air with which he
told them that he knew how to keep priests in order.

He was indeed so free from any bigoted attachment to the religion in
which he had been brought up that both Papists and Protestants hoped
at different times to make him a proselyte. Burnet, commissioned by his
brethren, and impelled, no doubt, by his own restless curiosity and
love of meddling, repaired to Deptford and was honoured with several
audiences. The Czar could not be persuaded to exhibit himself at Saint
Paul's; but he was induced to visit Lambeth palace. There he saw the
ceremony of ordination performed, and expressed warm approbation of
the Anglican ritual. Nothing in England astonished him so much as the
Archiepiscopal library. It was the first good collection of books that
he had seen; and he declared that he had never imagined that there were
so many printed volumes in the world.

The impression which he made on Burnet was not favourable. The good
bishop could not understand that a mind which seemed to be chiefly
occupied with questions about the best place for a capstan and the best
way of rigging a jury mast might be capable, not merely of ruling an
empire, but of creating a nation. He complained that he had gone to see
a great prince, and had found only an industrious shipwright. Nor does
Evelyn seem to have formed a much more favourable opinion of his august
tenant. It was, indeed, not in the character of tenant that the Czar
was likely to gain the good word of civilised men. With all the high
qualities which were peculiar to himself, he had all the filthy habits
which were then common among his countrymen. To the end of his life,
while disciplining armies, founding schools, framing codes, organising
tribunals, building cities in deserts, joining distant seas by
artificial rivers, he lived in his palace like a hog in a sty; and, when
he was entertained by other sovereigns, never failed to leave on their
tapestried walls and velvet state beds unequivocal proof that a savage
had been there. Evelyn's house was left in such a state that the
Treasury quieted his complaints with a considerable sum of money.

Towards the close of March the Czar visited Portsmouth, saw a sham
seafight at Spithead, watched every movement of the contending fleets
with intense interest, and expressed in warm terms his gratitude to the
hospitable government which had provided so delightful a spectacle for
his amusement and instruction. After passing more than three months in
England, he departed in high good humour. [10]

His visit, his singular character, and what was rumoured of his great
designs, excited much curiosity here, but nothing more than curiosity.
England had as yet nothing to hope or to fear from his vast empire. All
her serious apprehensions were directed towards a different quarter.
None could say how soon France, so lately an enemy, might be an enemy
again.

The new diplomatic relations between the two great western powers were
widely different from those which had existed before the war. During the
eighteen years which had elapsed between the signing of the Treaty
of Dover and the Revolution, all the envoys who had been sent from
Whitehall to Versailles had been mere sycophants of the great King.
In England the French ambassador had been the object of a degrading
worship. The chiefs of both the great parties had been his pensioners
and his tools. The ministers of the Crown had paid him open homage. The
leaders of the opposition had stolen into his house by the back door.
Kings had stooped to implore his good offices, had persecuted him
for money with the importunity of street beggars; and, when they
had succeeded in obtaining from him a box of doubloons or a bill of
exchange, had embraced him with tears of gratitude and joy. But those
days were past. England would never again send a Preston or a Skelton to
bow down before the majesty of France. France would never again send
a Barillon to dictate to the cabinet of England. Henceforth the
intercourse between the two states would be on terms of perfect
equality.

William thought it necessary that the minister who was to represent him
at the French Court should be a man of the first consideration, and one
on whom entire reliance could be reposed. Portland was chosen for this
important and delicate mission; and the choice was eminently judicious.
He had, in the negotiations of the preceding year, shown more ability
than was to be found in the whole crowd of formalists who had been
exchanging notes and drawing up protocols at Ryswick. Things which had
been kept secret from the plenipotentiaries who had signed the treaty
were well known to him. The clue of the whole foreign policy of England
and Holland was in his possession. His fidelity and diligence were
beyond all praise. These were strong recommendations. Yet it seemed
strange to many that William should have been willing to part, for a
considerable time, from a companion with whom he had during a quarter of
a century lived on terms of entire confidence and affection. The truth
was that the confidence was still what it had long been, but that the
affection, though it was not yet extinct, though it had not even cooled,
had become a cause of uneasiness to both parties. Till very recently,
the little knot of personal friends who had followed William from his
native land to his place of splendid banishment had been firmly united.
The aversion which the English nation felt for them had given him much
pain; but he had not been annoyed by any quarrel among themselves.
Zulestein and Auverquerque had, without a murmur, yielded to Portland
the first place in the royal favour; nor had Portland grudged to
Zulestein and Auverquerque very solid and very signal proofs of their
master's kindness. But a younger rival had lately obtained an influence
which created much jealousy. Among the Dutch gentlemen who had sailed
with the Prince of Orange from Helvoetsluys to Torbay was one named
Arnold Van Keppel. Keppel had a sweet and obliging temper, winning
manners, and a quick, though not a profound, understanding. Courage,
loyalty and secresy were common between him and Portland. In other
points they differed widely. Portland was naturally the very opposite
of a flatterer, and, having been the intimate friend of the Prince of
Orange at a time when the interval between the House of Orange and the
House of Bentinck was not so wide as it afterwards became, had acquired
a habit of plain speaking which he could not unlearn when the comrade
of his youth had become the sovereign of three kingdoms. He was a most
trusty, but not a very respectful, subject. There was nothing which he
was not ready to do or suffer for William. But in his intercourse with
William he was blunt and sometimes surly. Keppel, on the other hand, had
a great desire to please, and looked up with unfeigned admiration to
a master whom he had been accustomed, ever since he could remember,
to consider as the first of living men. Arts, therefore, which were
neglected by the elder courtier were assiduously practised by the
younger. So early as the spring of 1691 shrewd observers were struck
by the manner in which Keppel watched every turn of the King's eye, and
anticipated the King's unuttered wishes. Gradually the new servant rose
into favour. He was at length made Earl of Albemarle and Master of the
Robes. But his elevation, though it furnished the Jacobites with a fresh
topic for calumny and ribaldry, was not so offensive to the nation as
the elevation of Portland had been. Portland's manners were thought
dry and haughty; but envy was disarmed by the blandness of Albemarle's
temper and by the affability of his deportment.

Portland, though strictly honest, was covetous; Albemarle was generous.
Portland had been naturalised here only in name and form; but Albemarle
affected to have forgotten his own country, and to have become an
Englishman in feelings and manners. The palace was soon disturbed by
quarrels in which Portland seems to have been always the aggressor, and
in which he found little support either among the English or among
his own countrymen. William, indeed, was not the man to discard an old
friend for a new one. He steadily gave, on all occasions, the preference
to the companion of his youthful days. Portland had the first place
in the bed-chamber. He held high command in the army. On all great
occasions he was trusted and consulted. He was far more powerful in
Scotland than the Lord High Commissioner, and far deeper in the secret
of foreign affairs than the Secretary of State. He wore the Garter,
which sovereign princes coveted. Lands and money had been bestowed on
him so liberally that he was one of the richest subjects in Europe.
Albemarle had as yet not even a regiment; he had not been sworn of the
Council; and the wealth which he owed to the royal bounty was a pittance
when compared with the domains and the hoards of Portland. Yet Portland
thought himself aggrieved. He could not bear to see any other person
near him, though below him, in the royal favour. In his fits of
resentful sullenness, he hinted an intention of retiring from the Court.
William omitted nothing that a brother could have done to soothe and
conciliate a brother. Letters are still extant in which he, with the
utmost solemnity, calls God to witness that his affection for Bentinck
still is what it was in their early days. At length a compromise was
made. Portland, disgusted with Kensington, was not sorry to go to France
as ambassador; and William with deep emotion consented to a separation
longer than had ever taken place during an intimacy of twenty-five
years. A day or two after the new plenipotentiary had set out on his
mission, he received a touching letter from his master. "The loss
of your society," the King wrote, "has affected me more than you can
imagine. I should be very glad if I could believe that you felt as much
pain at quitting me as I felt at seeing you depart; for then I might
hope that you had ceased to doubt the truth of what I so solemnly
declared to you on my oath. Assure yourself that I never was more
sincere. My feeling towards you is one which nothing but death can
alter. " It should seem that the answer returned to these affectionate
assurances was not perfectly gracious; for, when the King next wrote, he
gently complained of an expression which had wounded him severely.

But, though Portland was an unreasonable and querulous friend, he was
a most faithful and zealous minister. His despatches show how
indefatigably he toiled for the interests, and how punctiliously he
guarded the dignity, of the prince by whom he imagined that he had been
unjustly and unkindly treated.

The embassy was the most magnificent that England had ever sent to any
foreign court. Twelve men of honourable birth and ample fortune, some of
whom afterwards filled high offices in the State, attended the mission
at their own charge. Each of them had his own carriage, his own horses,
and his own train of servants. Two less wealthy persons, who, in
different ways, attained great note in literature, were of the company.
Rapin, whose history of England might have been found, a century ago,
in every library, was the preceptor of the ambassador's eldest son,
Lord Woodstock. Prior was Secretary of Legation. His quick parts,
his industry, his politeness, and his perfect knowledge of the French
language, marked him out as eminently fitted for diplomatic employment.
He had, however, found much difficulty in overcoming an odd prejudice
which his chief had conceived against him. Portland, with good natural
abilities and great expertness in business, was no scholar. He had
probably never read an English book; but he had a general notion,
unhappily but too well founded, that the wits and poets who congregated
at Will's were a most profane and licentious set; and, being himself a
man of orthodox opinions and regular life, he was not disposed to give
his confidence to one whom he supposed to be a ribald scoffer. Prior,
with much address, and perhaps with the help of a little hypocrisy,
completely removed this unfavourable impression. He talked on serious
subjects seriously, quoted the New Testament appositely, vindicated
Hammond from the charge of popery, and, by way of a decisive blow, gave
the definition of a true Church from the nineteenth Article. Portland
stared at him. "I am glad, Mr. Prior, to find you so good a Christian. I
was afraid that you were an atheist. " "An atheist, my good lord! " cried
Prior. "What could lead your Lordship to entertain such a suspicion? "
"Why," said Portland, "I knew that you were a poet; and I took it for
granted that you did not believe in God. " "My lord," said the wit, "you
do us poets the greatest injustice. Of all people we are the farthest
from atheism. For the atheists do not even worship the true God, whom
the rest of mankind acknowledge; and we are always invoking and hymning
false gods whom everybody else has renounced. " This jest will be
perfectly intelligible to all who remember the eternally recurring
allusions to Venus and Minerva, Mars, Cupid and Apollo, which were meant
to be the ornaments, and are the blemishers, of Prior's compositions.
But Portland was much puzzled. However, he declared himself satisfied;
and the young diplomatist withdrew, laughing to think with how little
learning a man might shine in courts, lead armies, negotiate treaties,
obtain a coronet and a garter, and leave a fortune of half a million.

The citizens of Paris and the courtiers of Versailles, though more
accustomed than the Londoners to magnificent pageantry, allowed that no
minister from any foreign state had ever made so superb an appearance
as Portland. His horses, his liveries, his plate, were unrivalled. His
state carriage, drawn by eight fine Neapolitan greys decorated with
orange ribands, was specially admired. On the day of his public entry
the streets, the balconies, and the windows were crowded with spectators
along a line of three miles.