No More Learning

No politician seems
to have been aware that these defences were no longer needed for their
original purpose, and had begun to serve a purpose very different.
The rules which had been originally designed to secure faithful
representatives against the displeasure of the Sovereign, now operated
to secure unfaithful representatives against the displeasure of the
people, and proved much more effectual for the latter end than they had
ever been for the former. It was natural, it was inevitable, that, in
a legislative body emancipated from the restraints of the sixteenth
century, and not yet subjected to the restraints of the nineteenth
century, in a legislative body which feared neither the King nor the
public, there should be corruption.

The plague spot began to be visible and palpable in the days of the
Cabal. Clifford, the boldest and fiercest of the wicked Five, had
the merit of discovering that a noisy patriot, whom it was no longer
possible to send to prison, might be turned into a courtier by a
goldsmith's note. Clifford's example was followed by his successors.
It soon became a proverb that a Parliament resembled a pump. Often, the
wits said, when a pump appears to be dry, if a very small quantity of
water is poured in, a great quantity of water gushes out: and so, when
a Parliament appears to be niggardly, ten thousand pounds judiciously
given in bribes will often produce a million in supplies. The evil was
not diminished, nay, it was aggravated, by that Revolution which freed
our country from so many other evils. The House of Commons was now more
powerful than ever as against the Crown, and yet was not more strictly
responsible than formerly to the nation. The government had a new motive
for buying the members; and the members had no new motive for refusing
to sell themselves. William, indeed, had an aversion to bribery; he
resolved to abstain from it; and, during the first year of his reign, he
kept his resolution. Unhappily the events of that year did not encourage
him to persevere in his good intentions. As soon as Caermarthen was
placed at the head of the internal administration of the realm, a
complete change took place. He was in truth no novice in the art of
purchasing votes. He had, sixteen years before, succeeded Clifford at
the Treasury, had inherited Clifford's tactics, had improved upon them,
and had employed them to an extent which would have amazed the inventor.
From the day on which Caermarthen was called a second time to the
chief direction of affairs, parliamentary corruption continued to be
practised, with scarcely any intermission, by a long succession of
statesmen, till the close of the American war. Neither of the great
English parties can justly charge the other with any peculiar guilt on
this account. The Tories were the first who introduced the system and
the last who clung to it; but it attained its greatest vigour in the
time of Whig ascendency. The extent to which parliamentary support was
bartered for money cannot be with any precision ascertained. But it
seems probable that the number of hirelings was greatly exaggerated by
vulgar report, and was never large, though often sufficient to turn the
scale on important divisions. An unprincipled minister eagerly accepted
the services of these mercenaries. An honest minister reluctantly
submitted, for the sake of the commonwealth, to what he considered as
a shameful and odious extortion. But during many years every minister,
whatever his personal character might be, consented, willingly or
unwillingly, to manage the Parliament in the only way in which the
Parliament could then be managed. It at length became as notorious that
there was a market for votes at the Treasury as that there was a market
for cattle in Smithfield. Numerous demagogues out of power declaimed
against this vile traffic; but every one of those demagogues, as soon as
he was in power, found himself driven by a kind of fatality to engage in
that traffic, or at least to connive at it. Now and then perhaps a man
who had romantic notions of public virtue refused to be himself the
paymaster of the corrupt crew, and averted his eyes while his less
scrupulous colleagues did that which he knew to be indispensable, and
yet felt to be degrading. But the instances of this prudery were
rare indeed. The doctrine generally received, even among upright and
honourable politicians, was that it was shameful to receive bribes, but
that it was necessary to distribute them. It is a remarkable fact that
the evil reached the greatest height during the administration of Henry
Pelham, a statesman of good intentions, of spotless morals in private
life, and of exemplary disinterestedness. It is not difficult to guess
by what arguments he and other well meaning men, who, like him, followed
the fashion of their age, quieted their consciences. No casuist, however
severe, has denied that it may be a duty to give what it is a crime to
take. It was infamous in Jeffreys to demand money for the lives of the
unhappy prisoners whom he tried at Dorchester and Taunton. But it was
not infamous, nay, it was laudable, in the kinsmen and friends of a
prisoner to contribute of their substance in order to make up a purse
for Jeffreys. The Sallee rover, who threatened to bastinado a Christian
captive to death unless a ransom was forthcoming, was an odious ruffian.
But to ransom a Christian captive from a Sallee rover was, not merely
an innocent, but a highly meritorious act. It would be improper in such
cases to use the word corruption. Those who receive the filthy lucre are
corrupt already. He who bribes them does not make them wicked: he finds
them so; and he merely prevents their evil propensities from producing
evil effects. And might not the same plea be urged in defence of a
minister who, when no other expedient would avail, paid greedy and
lowminded men not to ruin their country?

It was by some such reasoning as this that the scruples of William were
overcome. Honest Burnet, with the uncourtly courage which distinguished
him, ventured to remonstrate with the King. "Nobody," William answered,
"hates bribery more, than I. But I have to do with a set of men who must
be managed in this vile way or not at all. I must strain a point or the
country is lost. " [584]

It was necessary for the Lord President to have in the House of Commons
an agent for the purchase of members; and Lowther was both too awkward
and too scrupulous to be such an agent. But a man in whom craft and
profligacy were united in a high degree was without difficulty found.
This was the Master of the Rolls, Sir John Trevor, who had been Speaker
in the single Parliament held by James. High as Trevor had risen in the
world, there were people who could still remember him a strange looking
lawyer's clerk in the Inner Temple. Indeed, nobody who had ever seen
him was likely to forget him. For his grotesque features and his hideous
squint were far beyond the reach of caricature. His parts, which were
quick and vigorous, had enabled him early to master the science of
chicane. Gambling and betting were his amusements; and out of these
amusements he contrived to extract much business in the way of his
profession. For his opinion on a question arising out of a wager or
a game at chance had as much authority as a judgment of any court in
Westminster Hall. He soon rose to be one of the boon companions whom
Jeffreys hugged in fits of maudlin friendship over the bottle at night,
and cursed and reviled in court on the morrow. Under such a teacher,
Trevor rapidly became a proficient in that peculiar kind of rhetoric
which had enlivened the trials of Baxter and of Alice Lisle. Report
indeed spoke of some scolding matches between the Chancellor and his
friend, in which the disciple had been not less voluble and scurrilous
than the master. These contests, however, did not take place till the
younger adventurer had attained riches and dignities such that he no
longer stood in need of the patronage which had raised him, [585] Among
High Churchmen Trevor, in spite of his notorious want of principle, had
at this time a certain popularity, which he seems to have owed chiefly
to their conviction that, however insincere he might be in general, his
hatred of the dissenters was genuine and hearty. There was little doubt
that, in a House of Commons in which the Tories had a majority, he
might easily, with the support of the Court, be chosen Speaker. He was
impatient to be again in his old post, which he well knew how to make
one of the most lucrative in the kingdom; and he willingly undertook
that secret and shameful office for which Lowther was altogether
unqualified.

Richard Hampden was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer. This
appointment was probably intended as a mark of royal gratitude for the
moderation of his conduct, and for the attempts which he had made to
curb the violence of his Whig friends, and especially of his son.

Godolphin voluntarily left the Treasury; why, we are not informed. We
can scarcely doubt that the dissolution and the result of the general
election must have given him pleasure. For his political opinions leaned
towards Toryism; and he had, in the late reign, done some things which,
though not very heinous, stood in need of an indemnity. It is probable
that he did not think it compatible with his personal dignity to sit at
the board below Lowther, who was in rank his inferior, [586]

A new Commission of Admiralty was issued. At the head of the naval
administration was placed Thomas Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, a high born
and high bred man, who had ranked among the Tories, who had voted for
a Regency, and who had married the daughter of Sawyer. That Pembroke's
Toryism, however, was not of a narrow and illiberal kind is sufficiently
proved by the fact that, immediately after the Revolution, the Essay on
the Human Understanding was dedicated to him by John Locke, in token of
gratitude for kind offices done in evil times, [587]

Nothing was omitted which could reconcile Torrington to this change.
For, though he had been found an incapable administrator, he still
stood so high in general estimation as a seaman that the government
was unwilling to lose his services. He was assured that no slight was
intended to him. He could not serve his country at once on the ocean
and at Westminster; and it had been thought less difficult to supply his
place in his office than on the deck of his flagship. He was at first
very angry, and actually laid down his commission: but some concessions
were made to his pride: a pension of three thousand pounds a year and a
grant of ten thousand acres of crown land in the Peterborough level were
irresistible baits to his cupidity; and, in an evil hour for England, he
consented to remain at the head of the naval force, on which the safety
of her coasts depended, [588]

While these changes were making in the offices round Whitehall, the
Commissions of Lieutenancy all over the kingdom were revised. The Tories
had, during twelve months, been complaining that their share in the
government of the districts in which they lived bore no proportion
to their number, to their wealth, and to the consideration which they
enjoyed in society. They now regained with great delight their former
position in their shires. The Whigs raised a cry that the King was
foully betrayed, and that he had been induced by evil counsellors to put
the sword into the hands of men who, as soon as a favourable opportunity
offered, would turn the edge against himself. In a dialogue which was
believed to have been written by the newly created Earl of Warrington,
and which had a wide circulation at the time, but has long been
forgotten, the Lord Lieutenant of a county was introduced expressing his
apprehensions that the majority of his deputies were traitors at heart,
[589] But nowhere was the excitement produced by the new distribution of
power so great as in the capital. By a Commission of Lieutenancy which
had been issued immediately after the Revolution, the train bands of the
City had been put under the command of staunch Whigs. Those powerful and
opulent citizens whose names were omitted complained that the list was
filled with elders of Puritan congregations, with Shaftesbury's brisk
boys, with Rye House plotters, and that it was scarcely possible to
find, mingled with that multitude of fanatics and levellers, a single
man sincerely attached to monarchy and to the Church. A new Commission
now appeared framed by Caermarthen and Nottingham. They had taken
counsel with Compton, the Bishop of the diocese; and Compton was not
a very discreet adviser. He had originally been a High Churchman and a
Tory. The severity with which he had been treated in the late reign had
transformed him into a Latitudinarian and a rebel; and he had now, from
jealousy of Tillotson, turned High Churchman and Tory again. The Whigs
complained that they were ungratefully proscribed by a government
which owed its existence to them; that some of the best friends of King
William had been dismissed with contumely to make room for some of
his worst enemies, for men who were as unworthy of trust as any Irish
Rapparee, for men who had delivered up to a tyrant the charter and
the immemorial privileges of the City, for men who had made themselves
notorious by the cruelty with which they had enforced the penal laws
against Protestant dissenters, nay, for men who had sate on those juries
which had found Russell and Cornish guilty, [590] The discontent was
so great that it seemed, during a short time, likely to cause pecuniary
embarrassment to the State. The supplies voted by the late Parliament
came in slowly. The wants of the public service were pressing. In such
circumstances it was to the citizens of London that the government
always looked for help; and the government of William had hitherto
looked especially to those citizens who professed Whig opinions. Things
were now changed. A few eminent Whigs, in their first anger, sullenly
refused to advance money. Nay, one or two unexpectedly withdrew
considerable sums from the Exchequer, [591] The financial difficulties
might have been serious, had not some wealthy Tories, who, if
Sacheverell's clause had become law, would have been excluded from all
municipal honours, offered the Treasury a hundred thousand pounds down,
and promised to raise a still larger sum, [592]

While the City was thus agitated, came a day appointed by royal
proclamation for a general fast. The reasons assigned for this solemn
act of devotion were the lamentable state of Ireland and the approaching
departure of the King. Prayers were offered up for the safety of His
Majesty's person and for the success of his arms. The churches of London
were crowded. The most eminent preachers of the capital, who were, with
scarcely an exception, either moderate Tories or moderate Whigs, exerted
themselves to calm the public mind, and earnestly exhorted their flocks
not to withhold, at this great conjuncture, a hearty support from the
prince, with whose fate was bound up the fate of the whole nation.
Burnet told a large congregation from the pulpit how the Greeks, when
the Great Turk was preparing to besiege Constantinople, could not be
persuaded to contribute any part of their wealth for the common defence,
and how bitterly they repented of their avarice when they were compelled
to deliver up to the victorious infidels the treasures which had been
refused to the supplications of the last Christian emperor, [593]

The Whigs, however, as a party, did not stand in need of such an
admonition. Grieved and angry as they were, they were perfectly sensible
that on the stability of the throne of William depended all that they
most highly prized. What some of them might, at this conjuncture, have
been tempted to do if they could have found another leader, if, for
example, their Protestant Duke, their King Monmouth, had still been
living, may be doubted. But their only choice was between the Sovereign
whom they had set up and the Sovereign whom they had pulled down. It
would have been strange indeed if they had taken part with James in
order to punish William, when the worst fault which they imputed to
William was that he did not participate in the vindictive feeling with
which they remembered the tyranny of James. Much as they disliked the
Bill of Indemnity, they had not forgotten the Bloody Circuit. They
therefore, even in their ill humour, continued true to their own King,
and, while grumbling at him, were ready to stand by him against his
adversary with their lives and fortunes, [594]

There were indeed exceptions; but they were very few; and they were
to be found almost exclusively in two classes, which, though widely
differing from each other in social position, closely resembled each
other in laxity of principle. All the Whigs who are known to have
trafficked with Saint Germains belonged, not to the main body of
the party, but either to the head or to the tail. They were either
patricians high in rank and office, or caitiffs who had long been
employed in the foulest drudgery of faction. To the former class
belonged Shrewsbury. Of the latter class the most remarkable specimen
was Robert Ferguson. From the day on which the Convention Parliament was
dissolved, Shrewsbury began to waver in his allegiance: but that he had
ever wavered was not, till long after, suspected by the public. That
Ferguson had, a few months after the Revolution, become a furious
Jacobite, was no secret to any body, and ought not to have been matter
of surprise to any body. For his apostasy he could not plead even the
miserable excuse that he had been neglected. The ignominious services
which he had formerly rendered to his party as a spy, a raiser of
riots, a dispenser of bribes, a writer of libels, a prompter of false
witnesses, had been rewarded only too prodigally for the honour of
the new government. That he should hold any high office was of course
impossible. But a sinecure place of five hundred a year had been created
for him in the department of the Excise. He now had what to him was
opulence: but opulence did not satisfy him. For money indeed he had
never scrupled to be guilty of fraud aggravated by hypocrisy; yet the
love of money was not his strongest passion. Long habits had developed
in him a moral disease from, which people who make political agitation
their calling are seldom wholly free. He could not be quiet. Sedition,
from being his business, had become his pleasure. It was as impossible
for him to live without doing mischief as for an old dram drinker or
an old opium eater to live without the daily dose of poison. The very
discomforts and hazards of a lawless life had a strange attraction for
him. He could no more be turned into a peaceable and loyal subject than
the fox can be turned into a shepherd's dog, or than the kite can be
taught the habits of the barn door fowl. The Red Indian prefers his
hunting ground to cultivated fields and stately cities: the gipsy,
sheltered by a commodious roof, and provided with meat in due season,
still pines for the ragged tent on the moor and the meal of carrion, and
even so Ferguson became weary of plenty and security, of his salary, his
house, his table and his coach, and longed to be again the president
of societies where none could enter without a password, the director of
secret presses, the distributor of inflammatory pamphlets; to see the
walls placarded with descriptions of his Person and offers of reward for
his apprehension; to have six or seven names, with a different wig and
cloak for each, and to change his lodgings thrice a week at dead
of night. His hostility was not to Popery or to Protestantism, to
monarchical government or to republican government, to the House of
Stuart or to the House of Nassau, but to whatever was at the time
established.

By the Jacobites this new ally was eagerly welcomed. They were at that
moment busied with schemes in which the help of a veteran plotter was
much needed. There had been a great stir among them from the day on
which it had been announced that William had determined to take the
command in Ireland; and they were all looking forward with impatient
hope to his departure. --He was not a prince against whom men lightly
venture to set up a standard of rebellion. His courage, his sagacity,
the secrecy of his counsels, the success which had generally crowned
his enterprises, overawed the vulgar. Even his most acrimonious
enemies feared him at least as much as they hated him. While he was at
Kensington, ready to take horse at a moment's notice, malecontents who
prized their heads and their estates were generally content to vent
their hatred by drinking confusion to his hooked nose, and by squeezing
with significant energy the orange which was his emblem. But their
courage rose when they reflected that the sea would soon roll between
him and our island. In the military and political calculations of that
age, thirty leagues of water were as important as three hundred leagues
now are. The winds and waves frequently interrupted all communication
between England and Ireland. It sometimes happened that, during a
fortnight or three weeks, not a word of intelligence from London reached
Dublin. Twenty English counties might be up in arms long before any
rumour that an insurrection was even apprehended could reach Ulster.
Early in the spring, therefore, the leading malecontents assembled in
London for the purpose of concerting an extensive plan of action, and
corresponded assiduously both with France and with Ireland.

Such was the temper of the English factions when, on the twentieth of
March, the new Parliament met. The first duty which the Commons had to
perform was that of choosing a Speaker. Trevor was proposed by Lowther,
was elected without opposition, and was presented and approved with the
ordinary ceremonial. The King then made a speech in which he especially
recommended to the consideration of the Houses two important subjects,
the settling of the revenue and the granting of an amnesty. He
represented strongly the necessity of despatch. Every day was precious,
the season for action was approaching. "Let not us," he said, "be
engaged in debates while our enemies are in the field. " [595]

The first subject which the Commons took into consideration was the
state of the revenue. A great part of the taxes had, since the accession
of William and Mary, been collected under the authority of Acts passed
for short terms, and it was now time to determine on a permanent
arrangement. A list of the salaries and pensions for which provision was
to be made was laid before the House; and the amount of the sums thus
expended called forth very just complaints from the independent members,
among whom Sir Charles Sedley distinguished himself by his sarcastic
pleasantry. A clever speech which he made against the placemen
stole into print and was widely circulated: it has since been often
republished; and it proves, what his poems and plays might make us
doubt, that his contemporaries were not mistaken in considering him as a
man of parts and vivacity. Unfortunately the ill humour which the sight
of the Civil List caused evaporated in jests and invectives without
producing any reform.

The ordinary revenue by which the government had been supported before
the Revolution had been partly hereditary, and had been partly drawn
from taxes granted to each sovereign for life. The hereditary revenue
had passed, with the crown, to William and Mary. It was derived from the
rents of the royal domains, from fees, from fines, from wine licenses,
from the first fruits and tenths of benefices, from the receipts of the
Post Office, and from that part of the excise which had, immediately
after the Restoration, been granted to Charles the Second and to his
successors for ever in lieu of the feudal services due to our ancient
kings. The income from all these sources was estimated at between four
and five hundred thousand pounds, [596]

Those duties of excise and customs which had been granted to James for
life had, at the close of his reign, yielded about nine hundred thousand
pounds annually. William naturally wished to have this income on the
same terms on which his uncle had enjoyed it; and his ministers did
their best to gratify his wishes. Lowther moved that the grant should
be to the King and Queen for their joint and separate lives, and
spoke repeatedly and earnestly in defence of this motion. He set forth
William's claims to public gratitude and confidence; the nation rescued
from Popery and arbitrary power; the Church delivered from persecution;
the constitution established on a firm basis. Would the Commons deal
grudgingly with a prince who had done more for England than had ever
been done for her by any of his predecessors in so short a time, with
a prince who was now about to expose himself to hostile weapons and
pestilential air in order to preserve the English colony in Ireland,
with a prince who was prayed for in every corner of the world where a
congregation of Protestants could meet for the worship of God? [597] But
on this subject Lowther harangued in vain. Whigs and Tories were equally
fixed in the opinion that the liberality of Parliaments had been the
chief cause of the disasters of the last thirty years; that to
the liberality of the Parliament of 1660 was to be ascribed the
misgovernment of the Cabal; that to the liberality of the Parliament
of 1685 was to be ascribed the Declaration of Indulgence, and that the
Parliament of 1690 would be inexcusable if it did not profit by a long,
a painful, an unvarying experience. After much dispute a compromise
was made. That portion of the excise which had been settled for life on
James, and which was estimated at three hundred thousand pounds a year,
was settled on William and Mary for their joint and separate lives. It
was supposed that, with the hereditary revenue, and with three hundred
thousand a year more from the excise, their Majesties would have,
independent of parliamentary control, between seven and eight hundred
thousand a year. Out of this income was to be defrayed the charge both
of the royal household and of those civil offices of which a list had
been laid before the House. This income was therefore called the Civil
List. The expenses of the royal household are now entirely separated
from the expenses of the civil government; but, by a whimsical
perversion, the name of Civil List has remained attached to that portion
of the revenue which is appropriated to the expenses of the royal
household. It is still more strange that several neighbouring nations
should have thought this most unmeaning of all names worth borrowing.
Those duties of customs which had been settled for life on Charles and
James successively, and which, in the year before the Revolution, had
yielded six hundred thousand pounds, were granted to the Crown for a
term of only four years, [598]

William was by no means well pleased with this arrangement. He thought
it unjust and ungrateful in a people whose liberties he had saved to
bind him over to his good behaviour. "The gentlemen of England," he said
to Burnet, "trusted King James who was an enemy of their religion and of
their laws; and they will not trust me by whom their religion and their
laws have been preserved. " Burnet answered very properly that there was
no mark of personal confidence which His Majesty was not entitled
to demand, but that this question was not a question of personal
confidence. The Estates of the Realm wished to establish a general
principle. They wished to set a precedent which might secure a remote
posterity against evils such as the indiscreet liberality of former
Parliaments had produced. "From those evils Your Majesty has delivered
this generation. By accepting the gift of the Commons on the terms on
which it is offered Your Majesty will be also a deliverer of future
generations. " William was not convinced; but he had too much wisdom and
selfcommand to give way to his ill humour; and he accepted graciously
what he could not but consider as ungraciously given, [599]

The Civil List was charged with an annuity of twenty thousand pounds to
the Princess of Denmark, in addition to an annuity of thirty thousand
pounds which had been settled on her at the time of her marriage. This
arrangement was the result of a compromise which had been effected with
much difficulty and after many irritating disputes. The King and Queen
had never, since the commencement of their reign, been on very good
terms with their sister. That William should have been disliked by a
woman who had just sense enough to perceive that his temper was sour and
his manners repulsive, and who was utterly incapable of appreciating his
higher qualities, is not extraordinary. But Mary was made to be loved.
So lively and intelligent a woman could not indeed derive much pleasure
from the society of Anne, who, when in good humour, was meekly stupid,
and, when in bad humour, was sulkily stupid. Yet the Queen, whose
kindness had endeared her to her humblest attendants, would hardly have
made an enemy of one whom it was her duty and her interest to make a
friend, had not an influence strangely potent and strangely malignant
been incessantly at work to divide the Royal House against itself.
The fondness of the Princess for Lady Marlborough was such as, in a
superstitious age, would have been ascribed to some talisman or potion.
Not only had the friends, in their confidential intercourse with each
other, dropped all ceremony and all titles, and become plain Mrs. Morley
and plain Mrs. Freeman; but even Prince George, who cared as much for
the dignity of his birth as he was capable of caring for any thing but
claret and calvered salmon, submitted to be Mr. Morley. The Countess
boasted that she had selected the name of Freeman because it was
peculiarly suited to the frankness and boldness of her character; and,
to do her justice, it was not by the ordinary arts of courtiers that she
established and long maintained her despotic empire over the feeblest of
minds, She had little of that tact which is the characteristic talent of
her sex; she was far too violent to flatter or to dissemble: but, by
a rare chance, she had fallen in with a nature on which dictation and
contradiction acted as philtres. In this grotesque friendship all
the loyalty, the patience, the selfdevotion, was on the side of the
mistress. The whims, the haughty airs, the fits of ill temper, were on
the side of the waiting woman.

Nothing is more curious than the relation in which the two ladies stood
to Mr. Freeman, as they called Marlborough. In foreign countries people
knew in general that Anne was governed by the Churchills. They knew also
that the man who appeared to enjoy so large a share of her favour was
not only a great soldier and politician, but also one of the finest
gentlemen of his time, that his face and figure were eminently handsome,
his temper at once bland and resolute, his manners at once engaging
and noble. Nothing could be more natural than that graces and
accomplishments like his should win a female heart. On the Continent
therefore many persons imagined that he was Anne's favoured lover; and
he was so described in contemporary French libels which have long been
forgotten. In England this calumny never found credit even with the
vulgar, and is nowhere to be found even in the most ribald doggrel that
was sung about our streets. In truth the Princess seems never to have
been guilty of a thought inconsistent with her conjugal vows. To her
Marlborough, with all his genius and his valour, his beauty and his
grace, was nothing but the husband of her friend. Direct power over
Her Royal Highness he had none. He could influence her only by the
instrumentality of his wife; and his wife was no passive instrument.
Though it is impossible to discover, in any thing that she ever did,
said or wrote, any indication of superior understanding, her fierce
passions and strong will enabled her often to rule a husband who was
born to rule grave senates and mighty armies. His courage, that courage
which the most perilous emergencies of war only made cooler and more
steady, failed him when he had to encounter his Sarah's ready tears
and voluble reproaches, the poutings of her lip and the tossings of her
head. History exhibits to us few spectacles more remarkable than that
of a great and wise man, who, when he had combined vast and profound
schemes of policy, could carry them into effect only by inducing one
foolish woman, who was often unmanageable, to manage another woman who
was more foolish still.

In one point the Earl and the Countess were perfectly agreed.
They were
equally bent on getting money; though, when it was got, he loved to
hoard it, and she was not unwilling to spend it, [600] The favour of the
Princess they both regarded as a valuable estate. In her father's reign,
they had begun to grow rich by means of her bounty. She was naturally
inclined to parsimony; and, even when she was on the throne, her
equipages and tables were by no means sumptuous, [601] It might have
been thought, therefore, that, while she was a subject, thirty thousand
a year, with a residence in the palace, would have been more than
sufficient for all her wants. There were probably not in the kingdom two
noblemen possessed of such an income. But no income would satisfy the
greediness of those who governed her. She repeatedly contracted debts
which James repeatedly discharged, not without expressing much surprise
and displeasure.

The Revolution opened to the Churchills a new and boundless prospect of
gain. The whole conduct of their mistress at the great crisis had proved
that she had no will, no judgment, no conscience, but theirs. To
them she had sacrificed affections, prejudices, habits, interests. In
obedience to them, she had joined in the conspiracy against her father;
she had fled from Whitehall in the depth of winter, through ice and
mire, to a hackney coach; she had taken refuge in the rebel camp; she
had consented to yield her place in the order of succession to the
Prince of Orange. They saw with pleasure that she, over whom they
possessed such boundless influence, possessed no common influence over
others. Scarcely had the Revolution been accomplished when many Tories,
disliking both the King who had been driven out and the King who had
come in, and doubting whether their religion had more to fear from
Jesuits or from Latitudinarians, showed a strong disposition to rally
round Anne. Nature had made her a bigot. Such was the constitution of
her mind that to the religion of her nursery she could not but adhere,
without examination and without doubt, till she was laid in her coffin.
In the court of her father she had been deaf to all that could be urged
in favour of transubstantiation and auricular confession. In the court
of her brother in law she was equally deaf to all that could be urged in
favour of a general union among Protestants. This slowness and obstinacy
made her important. It was a great thing to be the only member of the
Royal Family who regarded Papists and Presbyterians with an impartial
aversion. While a large party was disposed to make her an idol, she was
regarded by her two artful servants merely as a puppet. They knew that
she had it in her power to give serious annoyance to the government; and
they determined to use this power in order to extort money, nominally
for her, but really for themselves. While Marlborough was commanding
the English forces in the Low Countries, the execution of the plan was
necessarily left to his wife; and she acted, not as he would doubtless
have acted, with prudence and temper, but, as is plain even from her own
narrative, with odious violence and insolence. Indeed she had passions
to gratify from which he was altogether free. He, though one of the most
covetous, was one of the least acrimonious of mankind; but malignity
was in her a stronger passion than avarice. She hated easily; she hated
heartily; and she hated implacably. Among the objects of her hatred were
all who were related to her mistress either on the paternal or on the
maternal side. No person who had a natural interest in the Princess
could observe without uneasiness the strange infatuation which made her
the slave of an imperious and reckless termagant. This the Countess well
knew. In her view the Royal Family and the family of Hyde, however they
might differ as to other matters, were leagued against her; and she
detested them all, James, William and Mary, Clarendon and Rochester. Now
was the time to wreak the accumulated spite of years. It was not enough
to obtain a great, a regal, revenue for Anne. That revenue must be
obtained by means which would wound and humble those whom the favourite
abhorred. It must not be asked, it must not be accepted, as a mark of
fraternal kindness, but demanded in hostile tones, and wrung by force
from reluctant hands. No application was made to the King and Queen. But
they learned with astonishment that Lady Marlborough was indefatigable
in canvassing the Tory members of Parliament, that a Princess's party
was forming, that the House of Commons would be moved to settle on Her
Royal Highness a vast income independent of the Crown. Mary asked her
sister what these proceedings meant. "I hear," said Anne, "that my
friends have a mind to make me some settlement. " It is said that the
Queen, greatly hurt by an expression which seemed to imply that she and
her husband were not among her sister's friends, replied with unwonted
sharpness, "Of what friends do you speak? What friends have you except
the King and me? " [602] The subject was never again mentioned between
the sisters. Mary was probably sensible that she had made a mistake in
addressing herself to one who was merely a passive instrument in the
hands of others. An attempt was made to open a negotiation with the
Countess. After some inferior agents had expostulated with her in
vain, Shrewsbury waited on her. It might have been expected that
his intervention would have been successful; for, if the scandalous
chronicle of those times could be trusted, he had stood high, too high,
in her favour, [603] He was authorised by the King to promise that, if
the Princess would desist from soliciting the members of the House of
Commons to support her cause, the income of Her Royal Highness should
be increased from thirty thousand pounds to fifty thousand. The Countess
flatly rejected this offer. The King's word, she had the insolence to
hint, was not a sufficient security. "I am confident," said Shrewsbury,
"that His Majesty will strictly fulfil his engagements. If he breaks
them I will not serve him an hour longer. " "That may be very honourable
in you," answered the pertinacious vixen, "but it will be very poor
comfort to the Princess. " Shrewsbury, after vainly attempting to move
the servant, was at length admitted to an audience of the mistress.
Anne, in language doubtless dictated by her friend Sarah, told him that
the business had gone too far to be stopped, and must be left to the
decision of the Commons, [604]

The truth was that the Princess's prompters hoped to obtain from
Parliament a much larger sum than was offered by the King. Nothing less
than seventy thousand a year would content them. But their cupidity
overreached itself. The House of Commons showed a great disposition to
gratify Her Royal Highness. But, when at length her too eager adherents
ventured to name the sum which they wished to grant, the murmurs were
loud. Seventy thousand a year at a time when the necessary expenses of
the State were daily increasing, when the receipt of the customs was
daily diminishing, when trade was low, when every gentleman, every
farmer, was retrenching something from the charge of his table and
his cellar! The general opinion was that the sum which the King was
understood to be willing to give would be amply sufficient, [605] At
last something was conceded on both sides. The Princess was forced to
content herself with fifty thousand a year; and William agreed that
this sum should be settled on her by Act of Parliament. She rewarded the
services of Lady Marlborough with a pension of a thousand a year; [606]
but this was in all probability a very small part of what the Churchills
gained by the arrangement.

After these transactions the two royal sisters continued during many
months to live on terms of civility and even of apparent friendship. But
Mary, though she seems to have borne no malice to Anne, undoubtedly felt
against Lady Marlborough as much resentment as a very gentle heart is
capable of feeling. Marlborough had been out of England during a great
part of the time which his wife had spent in canvassing among the
Tories, and, though he had undoubtedly acted in concert with her, had
acted, as usual, with temper and decorum. He therefore continued to
receive from William many marks of favour which were unaccompanied by
any indication of displeasure.

In the debates on the settling of the revenue, the distinction between
Whigs and Tories does not appear to have been very clearly marked. In
truth, if there was any thing about which the two parties were agreed,
it was the expediency of granting the customs to the Crown for a time
not exceeding four years. But there were other questions which called
forth the old animosity in all its strength. The Whigs were now in a
minority, but a minority formidable in numbers, and more formidable in
ability. They carried on the parliamentary war, not less acrimoniously
than when they were a majority, but somewhat more artfully. They brought
forward several motions, such as no High Churchman could well support,
yet such as no servant of William and Mary could well oppose. The Tory
who voted for these motions would run a great risk of being pointed at
as a turncoat by the sturdy Cavaliers of his county. The Tory who voted
against those motions would run a great risk of being frowned upon at
Kensington.

It was apparently in pursuance of this policy that the Whigs laid on the
table of the House of Lords a bill declaring all the laws passed by the
late Parliament to be valid laws. No sooner had this bill been read than
the controversy of the preceeding spring was renewed. The Whigs were
joined on this occasion by almost all those noblemen who were connected
with the government. The rigid Tories, with Nottingham at their head,
professed themselves willing to enact that every statute passed in 1689
should have the same force that it would have had if it had been passed
by a parliament convoked in a regular manner; but nothing would induce
them to acknowledge that an assembly of lords and gentlemen, who
had come together without authority from the Great Seal, was
constitutionally a Parliament. Few questions seem to have excited
stronger passions than the question, practically altogether unimportant,
whether the bill should or should not be declaratory. Nottingham, always
upright and honourable, but a bigot and a formalist, was on this subject
singularly obstinate and unreasonable. In one debate he lost his temper,
forgot the decorum which in general he strictly observed, and narrowly
escaped being committed to the custody of the Black Rod, [607] After
much wrangling, the Whigs carried their point by a majority of seven,
[608] Many peers signed a strong protest written by Nottingham. In
this protest the bill, which was indeed open to verbal criticism, was
impolitely described as being neither good English nor good sense. The
majority passed a resolution that the protest should be expunged; and
against this resolution Nottingham and his followers again protested,
[609] The King was displeased by the pertinacity of his Secretary of
State; so much displeased indeed that Nottingham declared his intention
of resigning the Seals; but the dispute was soon accommodated. William
was too wise not to know the value of an honest man in a dishonest age.
The very scrupulosity which made Nottingham a mutineer was a security
that he would never be a traitor, [610]

The bill went down to the Lower House; and it was full expected that the
contest there would be long and fierce; but a single speech settled the
question. Somers, with a force and eloquence which surprised even an
audience accustomed to hear him with pleasure, exposed the absurdity of
the doctrine held by the high Tories. "If the Convention,"--it was thus
that he argued,--"was not a Parliament, how can we be a Parliament? An
Act of Elizabeth provides that no person shall sit or vote in this House
till he has taken the old oath of supremacy. Not one of us has taken
that oath. Instead of it, we have all taken the new oath of supremacy
which the late Parliament substituted for the old oath. It is therefore
a contradiction to say that the Acts of the late Parliament are not now
valid, and yet to ask us to enact that they shall henceforth be valid.
For either they already are so, or we never can make them so. " This
reasoning, which was in truth as unanswerable as that of Euclid,
brought the debate to a speedy close. The bill passed the Commons within
forty-eight hours after it had been read the first time, [611]

This was the only victory won by the Whigs during the whole session.
They complained loudly in the Lower House of the change which had been
made in the military government of the city of London. The Tories,
conscious of their strength, and heated by resentment, not only refused
to censure what had been done, but determined to express publicly and
formally their gratitude to the King for having brought in so many
churchmen and turned out so many schismatics. An address of thanks was
moved by Clarges, member for Westminster, who was known to be attached
to Caermarthen. "The alterations which have been made in the City," said
Clarges, "show that His Majesty has a tender care of us. I hope that
he will make similar alterations in every county of the realm. " The
minority struggled hard. "Will you thank the King," they said, "for
putting the sword into the hands of his most dangerous enemies? Some of
those whom he has been advised to entrust with military command have not
yet been able to bring themselves to take the oath of allegiance to him.
Others were well known, in the evil days, as stanch jurymen, who were
sure to find an Exclusionist guilty on any evidence or no evidence. "
Nor did the Whig orators refrain from using those topics on which all
factions are eloquent in the hour of distress, and which all factions
are but too ready to treat lightly in the hour of prosperity. "Let us
not," they said, "pass a vote which conveys a reflection on a large body
of our countrymen, good subjects, good Protestants. The King ought to be
the head of his whole people. Let us not make him the head of a party. "
This was excellent doctrine; but it scarcely became the lips of men who,
a few weeks before, had opposed the Indemnity Bill and voted for the
Sacheverell Clause. The address was carried by a hundred and eighty-five
votes to a hundred and thirty-six, [612]

As soon as the numbers had been announced, the minority, smarting
from their defeat, brought forward a motion which caused no little
embarrassment to the Tory placemen. The oath of allegiance, the Whigs
said, was drawn in terms far too lax. It might exclude from public
employment a few honest Jacobites who were generally too dull to be
mischievous; but it was altogether inefficient as a means of binding the
supple and slippery consciences of cunning priests, who, while affecting
to hold the Jesuits in abhorrence, were proficients in that immoral
casuistry which was the worst part of Jesuitism. Some grave divines had
openly said, others had even dared to write, that they had sworn fealty
to William in a sense altogether different from that in which they had
sworn fealty to James. To James they had plighted the entire faith which
a loyal subject owes to a rightful sovereign; but, when they promised
to bear true allegiance to William, they meant only that they would not,
whilst he was able to hang them for rebelling or conspiring against him,
run any risk of being hanged. None could wonder that the precepts and
example of the malecontent clergy should have corrupted the malecontent
laity. When Prebendaries and Rectors were not ashamed to avow that they
had equivocated, in the very act of kissing the New Testament, it was
hardly to be expected that attorneys and taxgatherers would be more
scrupulous. The consequence was that every department swarmed with
traitors; that men who ate the King's bread, men who were entrusted with
the duty of collecting and disbursing his revenues, of victualling his
ships, of clothing his soldiers, of making his artillery ready for the
field, were in the habit of calling him an usurper, and of drinking to
his speedy downfall. Could any government be safe which was hated and
betrayed by its own servants? And was not the English government exposed
to the dangers which, even if all its servants were true, might well
excite serious apprehensions? A disputed succession, war with France,
war in Scotland, war in Ireland, was not all this enough without
treachery in every arsenal and in every custom house? There must be an
oath drawn in language too precise to be explained away, in language
which no Jacobite could repeat without the consciousness that he was
perjuring himself. Though the zealots of indefeasible hereditary right
had in general no objection to swear allegiance to William, they would
probably not choose to abjure James. On such grounds as these, an
Abjuration Bill of extreme severity was brought into the House of
Commons. It was proposed to enact that every person who held any office,
civil, military, or spiritual, should, on pain of deprivation, solemnly
abjure the exiled King; that the oath of abjuration might be tendered by
any justice of the peace to any subject of their Majesties; and that, if
it were refused, the recusant should be sent to prison, and should lie
there as long as he continued obstinate.

The severity of this last provision was generally and most justly
blamed. To turn every ignorant meddling magistrate into a state
inquisitor, to insist that a plain man, who lived peaceably, who obeyed
the laws, who paid his taxes, who had never held and who did not expect
ever to hold any office, and who had never troubled his head about
problems of political philosophy, should declare, under the sanction
of an oath, a decided opinion on a point about which the most learned
Doctors of the age had written whole libraries of controversial books,
and to send him to rot in a gaol if he could not bring himself to swear,
would surely have been the height of tyranny. The clause which required
public functionaries to abjure the deposed King was not open to the same
objections. Yet even against this clause some weighty arguments
were urged. A man, it was said, who has an honest heart and a sound
understanding is sufficiently bound by the present oath. Every such
man, when he swears to be faithful and to bear true allegiance to King
William, does, by necessary implication, abjure King James. There
may doubtless be among the servants of the State, and even among the
ministers of the Church, some persons who have no sense of honour or
religion, and who are ready to forswear themselves for lucre. There may
be others who have contracted the pernicious habit of quibbling away the
most sacred obligations of morality, and who have convinced themselves
that they can innocently make, with a mental reservation, a promise
which it would be sinful to make without such a reservation. Against
these two classes of Jacobites it is true that the present test affords
no security. But will the new test, will any test, be more efficacious?
Will a person who has no conscience, or a person whose conscience can be
set at rest by immoral sophistry, hesitate to repeat any phrase that you
can dictate? The former will kiss the book without any scruple at all.
The scruples of the latter will be very easily removed. He now swears
allegiance to one King with a mental reservation. He will then abjure
the other King with a mental reservation. Do not flatter yourselves that
the ingenuity of lawgivers will ever devise an oath which the ingenuity
of casuists will not evade. What indeed is the value of any oath in
such a matter? Among the many lessons which the troubles of the last
generation have left us none is more plain than this, that no form of
words, however precise, no imprecation, however awful, ever saved, or
ever will save, a government from destruction, Was not the Solemn League
and Covenant burned by the common hangman amidst the huzzas of tens
of thousands who had themselves subscribed it? Among the statesmen and
warriors who bore the chief part in restoring Charles the Second, how
many were there who had not repeatedly abjured him? Nay, is it not well
known that some of those persons boastfully affirmed that, if they had
not abjured him, they never could have restored him?

The debates were sharp; and the issue during a short time seemed
doubtful; for some of the Tories who were in office were unwilling to
give a vote which might be thought to indicate that they were lukewarm
in the cause of the King whom they served. William, however, took care
to let it be understood that he had no wish to impose a new test on his
subjects. A few words from him decided the event of the conflict. The
bill was rejected thirty-six hours after it had been brought in by a
hundred and ninety-two votes to a hundred and sixty-five, [613]

Even after this defeat the Whigs pertinaciously returned to the attack.
Having failed in one House they renewed the battle in the other. Five
days after the Abjuration Bill had been thrown out in the Commons,
another Abjuration Bill, somewhat milder, but still very severe, was
laid on the table of the Lords, [614] What was now proposed was that
no person should sit in either House of Parliament or hold any office,
civil, military, or judicial, without making a declaration that he would
stand by William and Mary against James and James's adherents. Every
male in the kingdom who had attained the age of sixteen was to make the
same declaration before a certain day. If he failed to do so he was
to pay double taxes and to be incapable of exercising the elective
franchise.

On the day fixed for the second reading, the King came down to the House
of Peers. He gave his assent in form to several laws, unrobed, took his
seat on a chair of state which had been placed for him, and listened
with much interest to the debate. To the general surprise, two noblemen
who had been eminently zealous for the Revolution spoke against the
proposed test. Lord Wharton, a Puritan who had fought for the Long
Parliament, said, with amusing simplicity, that he was a very old man,
that he had lived through troubled times, that he had taken a great many
oaths in his day, and that he was afraid that he had not kept them all.
He prayed that the sin might not be laid to his charge; and he declared
that he could not consent to lay any more snares for his own soul and
for the souls of his neighbours. The Earl of Macclesfield, the captain
of the English volunteers who had accompanied William from Helvoetsluys
to Torbay, declared that he was much in the same case with Lord Wharton.
Marlborough supported the bill. He wondered, he said, that it should
be opposed by Macclesfield, who had borne so preeminent a part in the
Revolution. Macclesfield, irritated by the charge of inconsistency,
retorted with terrible severity: "The noble Earl," he said, "exaggerates
the share which I had in the deliverance of our country. I was ready,
indeed, and always shall be ready, to venture my life in defence of her
laws and liberties. But there are lengths to which, even for the sake of
her laws and liberties, I could never go. I only rebelled against a bad
King; there were those who did much more. "

Marlborough, though not easily discomposed, could not but feel the edge
of this sarcasm; William looked displeased; and the aspect of the whole
House was troubled and gloomy. It was resolved by fifty-one votes to
forty that the bill should be committed; and it was committed, but
never reported. After many hard struggles between the Whigs headed
by Shrewsbury and the Tories headed by Caermarthen, it was so much
mutilated that it retained little more than its name, and did not seem
to those who had introduced it to be worth any further contest, [615]

The discomfiture of the Whigs was completed by a communication from the
King. Caermarthen appeared in the House of Lords bearing in his hand
a parchment signed by William. It was an Act of Grace for political
offences.

Between an Act of Grace originating with the Sovereign and an Act of
Indemnity originating with the Estates of the Realm there are some
remarkable distinctions. An Act of Indemnity passes through all the
stages through which other laws pass, and may, during its progress, be
amended by either House. An Act of Grace is received with peculiar marks
of respect, is read only once by the Lords and once by the Commons,
and must be either rejected altogether or accepted as it stands,
[616] William had not ventured to submit such an Act to the preceding
Parliament. But in the new Parliament he was certain of a majority.
The minority gave no trouble. The stubborn spirit which had, during two
sessions, obstructed the progress of the Bill of Indemnity had been
at length broken by defeats and humiliations. Both Houses stood up
uncovered while the Act of Grace was read, and gave their sanction to it
without one dissentient voice.

There would not have been this unanimity had not a few great criminals
been excluded from the benefits of the amnesty. Foremost among them
stood the surviving members of the High Court of Justice which had
sate on Charles the First. With these ancient men were joined the two
nameless executioners who had done their office, with masked faces, on
the scaffold before the Banqueting House. None knew who they were, or
of what rank. It was probable that they had been long dead. Yet it
was thought necessary to declare that, if even now, after the lapse of
forty-one years, they should be discovered, they would still be liable
to the punishment of their great crime. Perhaps it would hardly have
been thought necessary to mention these men, if the animosities of the
preceding generation had not been rekindled by the recent appearance of
Ludlow in England. About thirty of the agents of the tyranny of James
were left to the law. With these exceptions, all political offences,
committed before the day on which the royal signature was affixed to the
Act, were covered with a general oblivion, [617] Even the criminals who
were by name excluded had little to fear. Many of them were in foreign
countries; and those who were in England were well assured that, unless
they committed some new fault, they would not be molested.

The Act of Grace the nation owed to William alone; and it is one of his
noblest and purest titles to renown. From the commencement of the
civil troubles of the seventeenth century down to the Revolution,
every victory gained by either party had been followed by a sanguinary
proscription. When the Roundheads triumphed over the Cavaliers, when the
Cavaliers triumphed over the Roundheads, when the fable of the Popish
plot gave the ascendency to the Whigs, when the detection of the Rye
House Plot transferred the ascendency to the Tories, blood, and more
blood, and still more blood had flowed. Every great explosion and every
great recoil of public feeling had been accompanied by severities which,
at the time, the predominant faction loudly applauded, but which, on a
calm review, history and posterity have condemned. No wise and humane
man, whatever may be his political opinions, now mentions without
reprehension the death either of Laud or of Vane, either of Stafford or
of Russell. Of the alternate butcheries the last and the worst is that
which is inseparably associated with the names of James and Jeffreys.
But it assuredly would not have been the last, perhaps it might not
have been the worst, if William had not had the virtue and the firmness
resolutely to withstand the importunity of his most zealous adherents.
These men were bent on exacting a terrible retribution for all they had
undergone during seven disastrous years. The scaffold of Sidney, the
gibbet of Cornish, the stake at which Elizabeth Gaunt had perished in
the flames for the crime of harbouring a fugitive, the porches of the
Somersetshire churches surmounted by the skulls and quarters of murdered
peasants, the holds of those Jamaica ships from which every day the
carcass of some prisoner dead of thirst and foul air had been flung to
the sharks, all these things were fresh in the memory of the party which
the Revolution had made, for a time, dominant in the State. Some chiefs
of that party had redeemed their necks by paying heavy ransom. Others
had languished long in Newgate. Others had starved and shivered, winter
after winter, in the garrets of Amsterdam. It was natural that in the
day of their power and prosperity they should wish to inflict some part
of what they had suffered. During a whole year they pursued their scheme
of revenge. They succeeded in defeating Indemnity Bill after Indemnity
Bill. Nothing stood between them and their victims, but William's
immutable resolution that the glory of the great deliverance which he
had wrought should not be sullied by cruelty. His clemency was peculiar
to himself. It was not the clemency of an ostentatious man, or of
a sentimental man, or of an easy tempered man. It was cold,
unconciliating, inflexible. It produced no fine stage effects.