No More Learning

Justices were
unwilling to commit. Witnesses were unwilling to tell the whole truth.
Juries were unwilling to pronounce the word Guilty. It was vain to tell
the common people that the mutilators of the coin were causing far more
misery than all the highwaymen and housebreakers in the island. For,
great as the aggregate of the evil was, only an infinitesimal part of
that evil was brought home to the individual malefactor. There was,
therefore, a general conspiracy to prevent the law from taking its
course. The convictions, numerous as they might seem, were few indeed
when compared with the offences; and the offenders who were convicted
looked on themselves as murdered men, and were firm in the belief that
their sin, if sin it were, was as venial as that of a schoolboy who goes
nutting in the wood of a neighbour. All the eloquence of the ordinary
could seldom induce them to conform to the wholesome usage of
acknowledging in their dying speeches the enormity of their wickedness.
[633]

The evil proceeded with constantly accelerating velocity. At length in
the autumn of 1695 it could hardly be said that the country possessed,
for practical purposes, any measure of the value of commodities. It was
a mere chance whether what was called a shilling was really tenpence,
sixpence or a groat. The results of some experiments which were tried at
that time deserve to be mentioned. The officers of the Exchequer weighed
fifty-seven thousand two hundred pounds of hammered money which had
recently been paid in. The weight ought to have been above two hundred
and twenty thousand ounces. It proved to be under one hundred and
fourteen thousand ounces. [634] Three eminent London goldsmiths were
invited to send a hundred pounds each in current silver to be tried by
the balance. Three hundred pounds ought to have weighed about twelve
hundred ounces. The actual weight proved to be six hundred and
twenty-four ounces. The same test was applied in various parts of the
kingdom. It was found that a hundred pounds, which should have weighed
about four hundred ounces, did actually weigh at Bristol two hundred and
forty ounces, at Cambridge two hundred and three, at Exeter one hundred
and eighty, and at Oxford only one hundred and sixteen. [635] There
were, indeed, some northern districts into which the clipped money had
only begun to find its way. An honest Quaker, who lived in one of these
districts, recorded, in some notes which are still extant, the amazement
with which, when he travelled southward, shopkeepers and innkeepers
stared at the broad and heavy halfcrowns with which he paid his way.
They asked whence he came, and where such money was to be found. The
guinea which he purchased for twenty-two shillings at Lancaster bore a
different value at every stage of his journey. When he reached London
it was worth thirty shillings, and would indeed have been worth more had
not the government fixed that rate as the highest at which gold should
be received in the payment of taxes. [636]

The evils produced by this state of the currency were not such as have
generally been thought worthy to occupy a prominent place in history.
Yet it may well be doubted whether all the misery which had been
inflicted on the English nation in a quarter of a century by bad Kings,
bad Ministers, bad Parliaments and bad judges, was equal to the misery
caused in a single year by bad crowns and bad shillings. Those events
which furnish the best themes for pathetic or indignant eloquence are
not always those which most affect the happiness of the great body of
the people. The misgovernment of Charles and James, gross as it had
been, had not prevented the common business of life from going steadily
and prosperously on. While the honour and independence of the State
were sold to a foreign power, while chartered rights were invaded, while
fundamental laws were violated, hundreds of thousands of quiet, honest
and industrious families laboured and traded, ate their meals and
lay down to rest, in comfort and security. Whether Whigs or Tories,
Protestants or Jesuits were uppermost, the grazier drove his beasts to
market; the grocer weighed out his currants; the draper measured out
his broadcloth; the hum of buyers and sellers was as loud as ever in
the towns; the harvest home was celebrated as joyously as ever in the
hamlets; the cream overflowed the pails of Cheshire; the apple juice
foamed in the presses of Herefordshire; the piles of crockery glowed in
the furnaces of the Trent; and the barrows of coal rolled fast along the
timber railways of the Tyne. But when the great instrument of exchange
became thoroughly deranged, all trade, all industry, were smitten as
with a palsy. The evil was felt daily and hourly in almost every place
and by almost every class, in the dairy and on the threshing floor, by
the anvil and by the loom, on the billows of the ocean and in the depths
of the mine. Nothing could be purchased without a dispute. Over every
counter there was wrangling from morning to night. The workman and his
employer had a quarrel as regularly as the Saturday came round. On a
fair day or a market day the clamours, the reproaches, the taunts, the
curses, were incessant; and it was well if no booth was overturned
and no head broken. [637] No merchant would contract to deliver goods
without making some stipulation about the quality of the coin in which
he was to be paid. Even men of business were often bewildered by the
confusion into which all pecuniary transactions were thrown. The simple
and the careless were pillaged without mercy by extortioners whose
demands grew even more rapidly than the money shrank. The price of
the necessaries of life, of shoes, of ale, of oatmeal, rose fast. The
labourer found that the bit of metal which when he received it was
called a shilling would hardly, when he wanted to purchase a pot of beer
or a loaf of rye bread, go as far as sixpence. Where artisans of more
than usual intelligence were collected together in great numbers, as in
the dockyard at Chatham, they were able to make their complaints heard
and to obtain some redress. [638] But the ignorant and helpless peasant
was cruelly ground between one class which would give money only by
tale and another which would take it only by weight. Yet his sufferings
hardly exceeded those of the unfortunate race of authors. Of the way in
which obscure writers were treated we may easily form a judgment from
the letters, still extant, of Dryden to his bookseller Tonson. One day
Tonson sends forty brass shillings, to say nothing of clipped money.
Another day he pays a debt with pieces so bad that none of them will go.
The great poet sends them all back, and demands in their place guineas
at twenty-nine shillings each. "I expect," he says in one letter, "good
silver, not such as I have had formerly. " "If you have any silver that
will go," he says in another letter, "my wife will be glad of it. I lost
thirty shillings or more by the last payment of fifty pounds. " These
complaints and demands, which have been preserved from destruction only
by the eminence of the writer, are doubtless merely a fair sample of the
correspondence which filled all the mail bags of England during several
months.

In the midst of the public distress one class prospered greatly, the
bankers; and among the bankers none could in skill or in luck bear a
comparison with Charles Duncombe. He had been, not many years before, a
goldsmith of very moderate wealth. He had probably, after the fashion of
his craft, plied for customers under the arcades of the Royal Exchange,
had saluted merchants with profound bows, and had begged to be allowed
the honour of keeping their cash. But so dexterously did he now avail
himself of the opportunities of profit which the general confusion of
prices gave to a moneychanger, that, at the moment when the trade of
the kingdom was depressed to the lowest point, he laid down near ninety
thousand pounds for the estate of Helmsley in the North Riding of
Yorkshire. That great property had, in a troubled time, been bestowed by
the Commons of England on their victorious general Fairfax, and had been
part of the dower which Fairfax's daughter had brought to the brilliant
and dissolute Buckingham. Thither Buckingham, having wasted in mad
intemperance, sensual and intellectual, all the choicest bounties of
nature and of fortune, had carried the feeble ruins of his fine person
and of his fine mind; and there he had closed his chequered life under
that humble roof and on that coarse pallet which the great satirist
of the succeeding generation described in immortal verse. The spacious
domain passed to a new race; and in a few years a palace more splendid
and costly than had ever been inhabited by the magnificent Villiers rose
amidst the beautiful woods and waters which had been his, and was called
by the once humble name of Duncombe.

Since the Revolution the state of the currency had been repeatedly
discussed in Parliament. In 1689 a committee of the Commons had been
appointed to investigate the subject, but had made no report. In 1690
another committee had reported that immense quantities of silver were
carried out of the country by Jews, who, it was said, would do any thing
for profit. Schemes were formed for encouraging the importation and
discouraging the exportation of the precious metals. One foolish bill
after another was brought in and dropped. At length, in the beginning of
the year 1695, the question assumed so serious an aspect that the Houses
applied themselves to it in earnest. The only practical result of their
deliberations, however, was a new penal law which, it was hoped, would
prevent the clipping of the hammered coin and the melting and exporting
of the milled coin. It was enacted that every person who informed
against a clipper should be entitled to a reward of forty pounds, that
every clipper who informed against two clippers should be entitled to a
pardon, and that whoever should be found in possession of silver filings
or parings should be burned in the cheek with a redhot iron. Certain
officers were empowered to search for bullion. If bullion were found in
a house or on board of a ship, the burden of proving that it had never
been part of the money of the realm was thrown on the owner. If he
failed in making out a satisfactory history of every ingot he was
liable to severe penalties. This Act was, as might have been expected,
altogether ineffective. During the following summer and autumn, the
coins went on dwindling, and the cry of distress from every county in
the realm became louder and more piercing.

But happily for England there were among her rulers some who clearly
perceived that it was not by halters and branding irons that her
decaying industry and commerce could be restored to health. The state of
the currency had during some time occupied the serious attention of four
eminent men closely connected by public and private ties. Two of
them were politicians who had never, in the midst of official and
parliamentary business, ceased to love and honour philosophy; and
two were philosophers, in whom habits of abstruse meditation had not
impaired the homely good sense without which even genius is mischievous
in politics. Never had there been an occasion which more urgently
required both practical and speculative abilities; and never had the
world seen the highest practical and the highest speculative abilities
united in an alliance so close, so harmonious, and so honourable as that
which bound Somers and Montague to Locke and Newton.

It is much to be lamented that we have not a minute history of the
conferences of the men to whom England owed the restoration of her
currency and the long series of prosperous years which dates from
that restoration. It would be interesting to see how the pure gold of
scientific truth found by the two philosophers was mingled by the two
statesmen with just that quantity of alloy which was necessary for
the working. It would be curious to study the many plans which were
propounded, discussed and rejected, some as inefficacious, some as
unjust, some as too costly, some as too hazardous, till at length a
plan was devised of which the wisdom was proved by the best evidence,
complete success.

Newton has left to posterity no exposition of his opinions touching
the currency. But the tracts of Locke on this subject are happily still
extant; and it may be doubted whether in any of his writings, even in
those ingenious and deeply meditated chapters on language which form
perhaps the most valuable part of the Essay on the Human Understanding,
the force of his mind appears more conspicuously. Whether he had ever
been acquainted with Dudley North is not known. In moral character
the two men bore little resemblance to each other. They belonged to
different parties. Indeed, had not Locke taken shelter from tyranny in
Holland, it is by no means impossible that he might have been sent to
Tyburn by a jury which Dudley North had packed. Intellectually, however,
there was much in common between the Tory and the Whig. They had
laboriously thought out, each for himself, a theory of political
economy, substantially the same with that which Adam Smith afterwards
expounded. Nay, in some respects the theory of Locke and North was more
complete and symmetrical than that of their illustrious successor. Adam
Smith has often been justly blamed for maintaining, in direct opposition
to all his own principles, that the rate of interest ought to be
regulated by the State; and he is the more blamable because, long before
he was born, both Locke and North had taught that it was as absurd to
make laws fixing the price of money as to make laws fixing the price of
cutlery or of broadcloth. [639]

Dudley North died in 1693. A short time before his death he published,
without his name, a small tract which contains a concise sketch of a
plan for the restoration of the currency. This plan appears to have been
substantially the same with that which was afterwards fully developed
and ably defended by Locke.

One question, which was doubtless the subject of many anxious
deliberations, was whether any thing should be done while the war
lasted. In whatever way the restoration of the coin might be effected,
great sacrifices must be made, the whole community or by a part of the
community. And to call for such sacrifices at a time when the nation was
already paying taxes such as, ten years before, no financier would have
thought it possible to raise, was undoubtedly a course full of danger.
Timorous politicians were for delay; but the deliberate conviction of
the great Whig leaders was that something must be hazarded, or that
every thing was lost. Montague, in particular, is said to have expressed
in strong language his determination to kill or cure. If indeed there
had been any hope that the evil would merely continue to be what it was,
it might have been wise to defer till the return of peace an experiment
which must severely try the strength of the body politic. But the evil
was one which daily made progress almost visible to the eye. There might
have been a recoinage in 1691 with half the risk which must be run
in 1696; and, great as would be the risk in 1696, that risk would be
doubled if the coinage were postponed till 1698.

Those politicians whose voice was for delay gave less trouble than
another set of politicians, who were for a general and immediate
recoinage, but who insisted that the new shilling should be worth only
ninepence or ninepence halfpenny. At the head of this party was William
Lowndes, Secretary of the Treasury, and member of Parliament for the
borough of Seaford, a most respectable and industrious public servant,
but much more versed in the details of his office than in the higher
parts of political philosophy. He was not in the least aware that a
piece of metal with the King's head on it was a commodity of which the
price was governed by the same laws which govern the price of a piece of
metal fashioned into a spoon or a buckle, and that it was no more in
the power of Parliament to make the kingdom richer by calling a crown
a pound than to make the kingdom larger by calling a furlong a mile.
He seriously believed, incredible as it may seem, that, if the ounce
of silver were divided into seven shillings instead of five, foreign
nations would sell us their wines and their silks for a smaller number
of ounces. He had a considerable following, composed partly of dull men
who really believed what he told them, and partly of shrewd men who were
perfectly willing to be authorised by law to pay a hundred pounds with
eighty. Had his arguments prevailed, the evils of a vast confiscation
would have been added to all the other evils which afflicted the nation;
public credit, still in its tender and sickly infancy, would have been
destroyed; and there would have been much risk of a general mutiny of
the fleet and army. Happily Lowndes was completely refuted by Locke in
a paper drawn up for the use of Somers. Somers was delighted with this
little treatise, and desired that it might be printed. It speedily
became the text book of all the most enlightened politicians in the
kingdom, and may still be read with pleasure and profit. The effect of
Locke's forcible and perspicuous reasoning is greatly heightened by his
evident anxiety to get at the truth, and by the singularly generous
and graceful courtesy with which he treats an antagonist of powers far
inferior to his own. Flamsteed, the Astronomer Royal, described the
controversy well by saying that the point in dispute was whether five
was six or only five. [640]

Thus far Somers and Montague entirely agreed with Locke; but as to the
manner in which the restoration of the currency ought to be effected
there was some difference of opinion. Locke recommended, as Dudley North
had recommended, that the King should by proclamation fix a near day
after which the hammered money should in all payments pass only by
weight. The advantages of this plan were doubtless great and obvious. It
was most simple, and, at the same time, most efficient. What searching,
fining, branding, hanging, burning, had failed to do would be done in an
instant. The clipping of the hammered pieces, the melting of the milled
pieces would cease. Great quantities of good coin would come forth from
secret drawers and from behind the panels of wainscots. The mutilated
silver would gradually flow into the mint, and would come forth again in
a form which would make mutilation impossible. In a short time the
whole currency of the realm would be in a sound state, and, during the
progress of this great change, there would never at any moment be any
scarcity of money.

These were weighty considerations; and to the joint authority of North
and Locke on such a question great respect is due. Yet it must be owned
that their plan was open to one serious objection, which did not indeed
altogether escape their notice, but of which they seem to have thought
too lightly. The restoration of the currency was a benefit to the whole
community. On what principle then was the expense of restoring the
currency to be borne by a part of the community? It was most desirable
doubtless that the words pound and shilling should again have a fixed
signification, that every man should know what his contracts meant and
what his property was worth. But was it just to attain this excellent
end by means of which the effect would be that every farmer who had
put by a hundred pounds to pay his rent, every trader who had scraped
together a hundred pounds to meet his acceptances, would find his
hundred pounds reduced in a moment to fifty or sixty? It was not
the fault of such a farmer or of such a trader that his crowns and
halfcrowns were not of full weight. The government itself was to blame.
The evil which the State had caused the State was bound to repair, and
it would evidently have been wrong to throw the charge of the reparation
on a particular class, merely because that class was so situated that
it could conveniently be pillaged. It would have been as reasonable to
require the timber merchants to bear the whole cost of fitting out the
Channel fleet, or the gunsmiths to bear the whole cost of supplying arms
to the regiments in Flanders, as to restore the currency of the kingdom
at the expense of those individuals in whose hands the clipped sliver
happened at a particular moment to be.

Locke declared that he regretted the loss which, if his advice were
taken, would fall on the holders of the short money. But it appeared to
him that the nation must make a choice between evils. And in truth it
was much easier to lay down the general proposition that the expenses
of restoring the currency ought to be borne by the public than to devise
any mode in which they could without extreme inconvenience and danger be
so borne. Was it to be announced that every person who should within a
term of a year or half a year carry to the mint a clipped crown should
receive in exchange for it a milled crown, and that the difference
between the value of the two pieces should be made good out of the
public purse? That would be to offer a premium for clipping. The shears
would be more busy than ever. The short money would every day become
shorter. The difference which the taxpayers would have to make good
would probably be greater by a million at the end of the term than
at the beginning; and the whole of this million would go to reward
malefactors. If the time allowed for the bringing in of the hammered
coin were much shortened, the danger of further clipping would be
proportionally diminished; but another danger would be incurred. The
silver would flow into the mint so much faster than it could possibly
flow out, that there must during some months be a grievous scarcity of
money.

A singularly bold and ingenious expedient occurred to Somers and was
approved by William. It was that a proclamation should be prepared with
great secresy, and published at once in all parts of the kingdom. This
proclamation was to announce that hammered coins would thenceforth pass
only by weight. But every possessor of such coins was to be invited to
deliver them up within three days, in a sealed packet, to the public
authorities. The coins were to be examined, numbered, weighed, and
returned to the owner with a promissory note entitling him to receive
from the Treasury at a future time the difference between the actual
quantity of silver in his pieces and the quantity of silver which,
according to the standard, those pieces ought to have contained. [641]
Had this plan been adopted an immediate stop would have been put to
the clipping, the melting and the exporting; and the expense of the
restoration of the currency would have been borne, as was right, by the
public. The inconvenience arising from a scarcity of money would have
been of very short duration; for the mutilated pieces would have been
detained only till they could be told and weighed; they would then have
been sent back into circulation, and the recoinage would have taken
place gradually and without any perceptible suspension or disturbance
of trade. But against these great advantages were to be set off hazards,
which Somers was prepared to brave, but from which it is not strange
that politicians of less elevated character should have shrunk. The
course which he recommended to his colleagues was indeed the safest for
the country, but was by no means the safest for themselves. His plan
could not be successful unless the execution were sudden; the execution
could not be sudden if the previous sanction of Parliament were asked
and obtained; and to take a step of such fearful importance without
the previous sanction of Parliament was to run the risk of censure,
impeachment, imprisonment, ruin. The King and the Lord Keeper were
alone in the Council. Even Montague quailed; and it was determined to do
nothing without the authority of the legislature. Montague undertook to
submit to the Commons a scheme, which was not indeed without dangers and
inconveniences, but which was probably the best which he could hope to
carry.

On the twenty-second of November the Houses met. Foley was on that
day again chosen Speaker. On the following day he was presented and
approved. The King opened the session with a speech very skilfully
framed. He congratulated his hearers on the success of the campaign on
the Continent. That success he attributed, in language which must have
gratified their feelings, to the bravery of the English army. He spoke
of the evils which had arisen from the deplorable state of the coin, and
of the necessity of applying a speedy remedy. He intimated very plainly
his opinion that the expense of restoring the currency ought to be borne
by the State; but he declared that he referred the whole matter to the
wisdom of his Great Council. Before he concluded he addressed himself
particularly to the newly elected House of Commons, and warmly expressed
his approbation of the excellent choice which his people had made. The
speech was received with a low but very significant hum of assent both
from above and from below the bar, and was as favourably received by the
public as by the Parliament. [642] In the Commons an address of thanks
was moved by Wharton, faintly opposed by Musgrave, adopted without a
division, and carried up by the whole House to Kensington. At the palace
the loyalty of the crowd of gentlemen showed itself in a way which
would now be thought hardly consistent with senatorial gravity. When
refreshments were handed round in the antechamber, the Speaker filled
his glass, and proposed two toasts, the health of King William, and
confusion to King Lewis; and both were drunk with loud acclamations. Yet
near observers could perceive that, though the representatives of the
nation were as a body zealous for civil liberty and for the Protestant
religion, and though they were prepared to endure every thing rather
than see their country again reduced to vassalage, they were anxious and
dispirited. All were thinking of the state of the coin; all were saying
that something must be done; and all acknowledged that they did not know
what could be done. "I am afraid," said a member who expressed what many
felt, "that the nation can bear neither the disease nor the cure. " [643]

There was indeed a minority by which the difficulties and dangers of
that crisis were seen with malignant delight; and of that minority the
keenest, boldest and most factious leader was Howe, whom poverty had
made more acrimonious than ever. He moved that the House should resolve
itself into a Committee on the State of the Nation; and the Ministry,
for that word may now with propriety be used, readily consented. Indeed
the great question touching the currency could not be brought forward
more conveniently than in such a Committee. When the Speaker had left
the chair, Howe harangued against the war as vehemently as he had in
former years harangued for it. He called for peace, peace on any terms.
The nation, he said, resembled a wounded man, fighting desperately on,
with blood flowing in torrents. During a short time the spirit might
bear up the frame; but faintness must soon come on. No moral energy
could long hold out against physical exhaustion. He found very little
support. The great majority of his hearers were fully determined to put
every thing to hazard rather than submit to France. It was sneeringly
remarked that the state of his own finances had suggested to him
the image of a man bleeding to death, and that, if a cordial were
administered to him in the form of a salary, he would trouble himself
little about the drained veins of the commonwealth. "We did not," said
the Whig orators, "degrade ourselves by suing for peace when our flag
was chased out of our own Channel, when Tourville's fleet lay at anchor
in Torbay, when the Irish nation was in arms against us, when every
post from the Netherlands brought news of some disaster, when we had to
contend against the genius of Louvois in the Cabinet and of Luxemburg in
the field. And are we to turn suppliants now, when no hostile squadron
dares to show itself even in the Mediterranean, when our arms are
victorious on the Continent, when God has removed the great statesman
and the great soldier whose abilities long frustrated our efforts, and
when the weakness of the French administration indicates, in a manner
not to be mistaken, the ascendency of a female favourite? " Howe's
suggestion was contemptuously rejected; and the Committee proceeded to
take into consideration the state of the currency. [644]

Meanwhile the newly liberated presses of the capital never rested a
moment. Innumerable pamphlets and broadsides about the coin lay on the
counters of the booksellers, and were thrust into the hands of members
of Parliament in the lobby. In one of the most curious and amusing of
these pieces Lewis and his ministers are introduced, expressing the
greatest alarm lest England should make herself the richest country in
the world by the simple expedient of calling ninepence a shilling, and
confidently predicting that, if the old standard were maintained, there
would be another revolution. Some writers vehemently objected to the
proposition that the public should bear the expense of restoring
the currency; some urged the government to take this opportunity of
assimilating the money of England to the money of neighbouring nations;
one projector was for coining guilders; another for coining dollars.
[645]

Within the walls of Parliament the debates continued during several
anxious days. At length Montague, after defeating, first those who were
for letting things remain unaltered till the peace, and then those who
were for the little shilling, carried eleven resolutions in which the
outlines of his own plan were set forth. It was resolved that the money
of the kingdom should be recoined according to the old standard both of
weight and of fineness; that all the new pieces should be milled; that
the loss on the clipped pieces should be borne by the public; that a
time should be fixed after which no clipped money should pass, except in
payments to the government; and that a later time should be fixed, after
which no clipped money should pass at all. What divisions took place in
the Committee cannot be ascertained. When the resolutions were reported
there was one division. It was on the question whether the old standard
of weight should be maintained. The Noes were a hundred and fourteen;
the Ayes two hundred and twenty-five. [646]

It was ordered that a bill founded on the resolutions should be brought
in. A few days later the Chancellor of the Exchequer explained to the
Commons, in a Committee of Ways and Means, the plan by which he proposed
to meet the expense of the recoinage. It was impossible to estimate
with precision the charge of making good the deficiencies of the clipped
money. But it was certain that at least twelve hundred thousand pounds
would be required. Twelve hundred thousand pounds the Bank of England
undertook to advance on good security.
It was a maxim received among
financiers that no security which the government could offer was so
good as the old hearth money had been. That tax, odious as it was to the
great majority of those who paid it, was remembered with regret at the
Treasury and in the City. It occurred to the Chancellor of the Exchequer
that it might be possible to devise an impost on houses, which might be
not less productive nor less certain than the hearth money, but which
might press less heavily on the poor, and might be collected by a
less vexatious process. The number of hearths in a house could not be
ascertained without domiciliary visits. The windows a collector
might count without passing the threshold. Montague proposed that the
inhabitants of cottages, who had been cruelly harassed by the chimney
men, should be altogether exempted from the new duty. His plan was
approved by the Committee of Ways and Means, and was sanctioned by the
House without a division. Such was the origin of the window tax, a tax
which, though doubtless a great evil, must be considered as a blessing
when compared with the curse from which it rescued the nation. [647]

Thus far things had gone smoothly. But now came a crisis which required
the most skilful steering. The news that the Parliament and the
government were determined on a reform of the currency produced an
ignorant panic among the common people. Every man wished to get rid of
his clipped crowns and halfcrowns. No man liked to take them. There
were brawls approaching to riots in half the streets of London. The
Jacobites, always full of joy and hope in a day of adversity and public
danger, ran about with eager looks and noisy tongues. The health of King
James was publicly drunk in taverns and on ale benches. Many members of
Parliament, who had hitherto supported the government, began to
waver; and, that nothing might be wanting to the difficulties of the
conjuncture, a dispute on a point of privilege arose between the Houses.
The Recoinage Bill, framed in conformity with Montague's resolutions,
had gone up to the Peers and had come back with amendments, some of
which, in the opinion of the Commons, their Lordships had no right to
make. The emergency was too serious to admit of delay. Montague brought
in a new bill; which was in fact his former bill modified in some
points to meet the wishes of the Lords; the Lords, though not perfectly
contented with the new bill, passed it without any alteration; and
the royal assent was immediately given. The fourth of May, a date long
remembered over the whole kingdom and especially in the capital, was
fixed as the day on which the government would cease to receive the
clipped money in payment of taxes. [648]

The principles of the Recoinage Act are excellent. But some of the
details, both of that Act and of a supplementary Act which was passed at
a later period of the session, seem to prove that Montague had not
fully considered what legislation can, and what it cannot, effect. For
example, he persuaded the Parliament to enact that it should be penal
to give or take more than twenty-two shillings for a guinea. It may be
confidently affirmed that this enactment was not suggested or approved
by Locke. He well knew that the high price of gold was not the evil
which afflicted the State, but merely a symptom of that evil, and that a
fall in the price of gold would inevitably follow, and could by no human
power or ingenuity be made to precede, the recoinage of the silver. In
fact, the penalty seems to have produced no effect whatever, good or
bad. Till the milled silver was in circulation, the guinea continued, in
spite of the law, to pass for thirty shillings. When the milled silver
became plentiful, the guinea fell, not to twenty-two shillings, which
was the highest price allowed by the law, but to twenty-one shillings
and sixpence. [649]

Early in February the panic which had been caused by the first debates
on the currency subsided; and, from that time till the fourth of May,
the want of money was not very severely felt. The recoinage began. Ten
furnaces were erected, in the garden behind the Treasury; and every day
huge heaps of pared and defaced crowns and shillings were turned into
massy ingots which were instantly sent off to the mint in the Tower.
[650]

With the fate of the law which restored the currency was closely
connected the fate of another law, which had been several years under
the consideration of Parliament, and had caused several warm disputes
between the hereditary and the elective branch of the legislature. The
session had scarcely commenced when the Bill for regulating Trials in
cases of High Treason was again laid on the table of the Commons. Of
the debates to which it gave occasion nothing is known except one
interesting circumstance which has been preserved by tradition. Among
those who supported the bill appeared conspicuous a young Whig of
high rank, of ample fortune, and of great abilities which had been
assiduously improved by study. This was Anthony Ashley Cooper, Lord
Ashley, eldest son of the second Earl of Shaftesbury, and grandson of
that renowned politician who had, in the days of Charles the Second,
been at one time the most unprincipled of ministers, and at another
the most unprincipled of demagogues. Ashley had just been returned to
Parliament for the borough of Poole, and was in his twenty-fifth year.
In the course of his speech he faltered, stammered and seemed to lose
the thread of his reasoning. The House, then, as now, indulgent to
novices, and then, as now, well aware that, on a first appearance, the
hesitation which is the effect of modesty and sensibility is quite
as promising a sign as volubility of utterance and ease of manner,
encouraged him to proceed. "How can I, Sir," said the young orator,
recovering himself, "produce a stronger argument in favour of this
bill than my own failure? My fortune, my character, my life, are not at
stake. I am speaking to an audience whose kindness might well inspire me
with courage. And yet, from mere nervousness, from mere want of practice
in addressing large assemblies, I have lost my recollection; I am unable
to go on with my argument. How helpless, then, must be a poor man who,
never having opened his lips in public, is called upon to reply, without
a moment's preparation, to the ablest and most experienced advocates in
the kingdom, and whose faculties are paralysed by the thought that,
if he fails to convince his hearers, he will in a few hours die on a
gallows, and leave beggary and infamy to those who are dearest to him. "
It may reasonably be suspected that Ashley's confusion and the ingenious
use which he made of it had been carefully premeditated. His speech,
however, made a great impression, and probably raised expectations which
were not fulfilled. His health was delicate; his taste was refined even
to fastidiousness; he soon left politics to men whose bodies and
minds were of coarser texture than his own, gave himself up to mere
intellectual luxury, lost himself in the mazes of the old Academic
philosophy, and aspired to the glory of reviving the old Academic
eloquence. His diction, affected and florid, but often singularly
beautiful and melodious, fascinated many young enthusiasts. He had not
merely disciples, but worshippers. His life was short; but he lived
long enough to become the founder of a new sect of English freethinkers,
diametrically opposed in opinions and feelings to that sect of
freethinkers of which Hobbes was the oracle. During many years the
Characteristics continued to be the Gospel of romantic and sentimental
unbelievers, while the Gospel of coldblooded and hardheaded unbelievers
was the Leviathan.

The bill, so often brought in and so often lost, went through the
Commons without a division, and was carried up to the Lords. It soon
came back with the long disputed clause altering the constitution of the
Court of the Lord High Steward. A strong party among the representatives
of the people was still unwilling to grant any new privilege to the
nobility; but the moment was critical. The misunderstanding which
had arisen between the Houses touching the Recoinage Bill had produced
inconveniences which might well alarm even a bold politician. It was
necessary to purchase concession by concession. The Commons, by a
hundred and ninety-two votes to a hundred and fifty, agreed to the
amendment on which the Lords had, during four years, so obstinately
insisted; and the Lords in return immediately passed the Recoinage Bill
without any amendment.

There had been much contention as to the time at which the new system of
procedure in cases of high treason should come into operation; and the
bill had once been lost in consequence of a dispute on this point. Many
persons were of opinion that the change ought not to take place till the
close of the war. It was notorious, they said, that the foreign enemy
was abetted by too many traitors at home; and, at such a time, the
severity of the laws which protected the commonwealth against the
machinations of bad citizens ought not to be relaxed. It was at
last determined that the new regulations should take effect on the
twenty-fifth of March, the first day, according to the old Calendar, of
the year 1696.

On the twenty-first of January the Recoinage Bill and the Bill for
regulating Trials in cases of High Treason received the royal assent. On
the following day the Commons repaired to Kensington on an errand by
no means agreeable either to themselves or to the King. They were, as
a body, fully resolved to support him, at whatever cost and at whatever
hazard, against every foreign and domestic foe. But they were, as indeed
every assembly of five hundred and thirteen English gentlemen that could
by any process have been brought together must have been, jealous of the
favour which he showed to the friends of his youth. He had set his heart
on placing the house of Bentinck on a level in wealth and splendour with
the houses of Howard and Seymour, of Russell and Cavendish.

Some of the fairest hereditary domains of the Crown had been granted to
Portland, not without murmuring on the part both of Whigs and Tories.
Nothing had been done, it is true, which was not in conformity with the
letter of the law and with a long series of precedents. Every English
sovereign had from time immemorial considered the lands to which he had
succeeded in virtue of his office as his private property. Every family
that had been great in England, from the De Veres down to the Hydes,
had been enriched by royal deeds of gift. Charles the Second had carved
ducal estates for his bastards out of his hereditary domain. Nor did the
Bill of Rights contain a word which could be construed to mean that the
King was not at perfect liberty to alienate any part of the estates of
the Crown. At first, therefore, William's liberality to his countrymen,
though it caused much discontent, called forth no remonstrance from the
Parliament. But he at length went too far. In 1695 he ordered the Lords
of the Treasury to make out a warrant granting to Portland a magnificent
estate in Denbighshire. This estate was said to be worth more than a
hundred thousand pounds. The annual income, therefore, can hardly
have been less than six thousand pounds; and the annual rent which was
reserved to the Crown was only six and eightpence. This, however, was
not the worst. With the property were inseparably connected extensive
royalties, which the people of North Wales could not patiently see
in the hands of any subject. More than a century before Elizabeth had
bestowed a part of the same territory on her favourite Leicester. On
that occasion the population of Denbighshire had risen in arms; and,
after much tumult and several executions, Leicester had thought it
advisable to resign his mistress's gift back to her. The opposition to
Portland was less violent, but not less effective. Some of the chief
gentlemen of the principality made strong representations to the
ministers through whose offices the warrant had to pass, and at length
brought the subject under the consideration of the Lower House. An
address was unanimously voted requesting the King to stop the grant;
Portland begged that he might not be the cause of a dispute between his
master and the Parliament; and the King, though much mortified, yielded
to the general wish of the nation. [651]

This unfortunate affair, though it terminated without an open quarrel,
left much sore feeling. The King was angry with the Commons, and still
more angry with the Whig ministers who had not ventured to defend his
grant. The loyal affection which the Parliament had testified to him
during the first days of the session had perceptibly cooled; and he was
almost as unpopular as he had ever been, when an event took place which
suddenly brought back to him the hearts of millions, and made him for a
time as much the idol of the nation as he had been at the end of 1688.
[652]

The plan of assassination which had been formed in the preceding
spring had been given up in consequence of William's departure for the
Continent. The plan of insurrection which had been formed in the summer
had been given up for want of help from France. But before the end of
the autumn both plans were resumed. William had returned to England; and
the possibility of getting rid of him by a lucky shot or stab was again
seriously discussed. The French troops had gone into winter quarters;
and the force, which Charnock had in vain demanded while war was raging
round Namur, might now be spared without inconvenience. Now, therefore,
a plot was laid, more formidable than any that had yet threatened
the throne and the life of William; or rather, as has more than once
happened in our history, two plots were laid, one within the other. The
object of the greater plot was an open insurrection, an insurrection
which was to be supported by a foreign army. In this plot almost all the
Jacobites of note were more or less concerned. Some laid in arms; some
bought horses; some made lists of the servants and tenants in whom they
could place firm reliance. The less warlike members of the party could
at least take off bumpers to the King over the water, and intimate by
significant shrugs and whispers that he would not be over the water
long. It was universally remarked that the malecontents looked wiser
than usual when they were sober, and bragged more loudly than usual when
they were drunk. [653] To the smaller plot, of which the object was the
murder of William, only a few select traitors were privy.

Each of these plots was under the direction of a leader specially
sent from Saint Germains. The more honourable mission was entrusted to
Berwick. He was charged to communicate with the Jacobite nobility and
gentry, to ascertain what force they could bring into the field, and
to fix a time for the rising. He was authorised to assure them that the
French government was collecting troops and transports at Calais, and
that, as soon as it was known there that a rebellion had broken out in
England, his father would embark with twelve thousand veteran soldiers,
and would be among them in a few hours.

A more hazardous part was assigned to an emissary of lower rank, but
of great address, activity and courage. This was Sir George Barclay, a
Scotch gentleman who had served with credit under Dundee, and who,
when the war in the Highlands had ended, had retired to Saint Germains.
Barclay was called into the royal closet, and received his orders from
the royal lips. He was directed to steal across the Channel and to
repair to London. He was told that a few select officers and soldiers
should speedily follow him by twos and threes. That they might have no
difficulty in finding him, he was to walk, on Mondays and Thursdays, in
the Piazza of Covent Garden after nightfall, with a white handkerchief
hanging from his coat pocket. He was furnished with a considerable sum
of money, and with a commission which was not only signed but written
from beginning to end by James himself. This commission authorised the
bearer to do from time to time such acts of hostility against the Prince
of Orange and that Prince's adherents as should most conduce to the
service of the King. What explanation of these very comprehensive words
was orally given by James we are not informed.

Lest Barclay's absence from Saint Germains should cause any suspicion,
it was given out that his loose way of life had made it necessary for
him to put himself under the care of a surgeon at Paris. [654] He set
out with eight hundred pounds in his portmanteau, hastened to the coast,
and embarked on board of a privateer which was employed by the Jacobites
as a regular packet boat between France and England. This vessel
conveyed him to a desolate spot in Romney Marsh. About half a mile
from the landing place a smuggler named Hunt lived on a dreary and
unwholesome fen where he had no neighbours but a few rude shepherds. His
dwelling was singularly well situated for a contraband traffic in French
wares. Cargoes of Lyons silk and Valenciennes lace sufficient to load
thirty packhorses had repeatedly been landed in that dismal solitude
without attracting notice. But, since the Revolution, Hunt had
discovered that of all cargoes a cargo of traitors paid best. His lonely
abode became the resort of men of high consideration, Earls and Barons,
Knights and Doctors of Divinity. Some of them lodged many days under
his roof while waiting for a passage. A clandestine post was established
between his house and London. The couriers were constantly going and
returning; they performed their journeys up and down on foot; but they
appeared to be gentlemen, and it was whispered that one of them was the
son of a titled man. The letters from Saint Germains were few and small.
Those directed to Saint Germains were numerous and bulky; they were made
up like parcels of millinery, and were buried in the morass till they
were called for by the privateer.

Here Barclay landed in January 1696; and hence he took the road
to London. He was followed, a few days later, by a tall youth, who
concealed his name, but who produced credentials of the highest
authority. This youth too proceeded to London. Hunt afterwards
discovered that his humble roof had had the honour of sheltering the
Duke of Berwick. [655]

The part which Barclay had to perform was difficult and hazardous; and
he omitted no precaution. He had been little in London; and his face was
consequently unknown to the agents of the government. Nevertheless
he had several lodgings; he disguised himself so well that his oldest
friends would not have known him by broad daylight; and yet he seldom
ventured into the streets except in the dark. His chief agent was a monk
who, under several names, heard confessions and said masses at the risk
of his neck. This man intimated to some of the zealots with whom he
consorted a special agent of the royal family was to be spoken with in
Covent Garden, on certain nights, at a certain hour, and might be known
by certain signs. [656] In this way Barclay became acquainted with
several men fit for his purpose. The first persons to whom he fully
opened himself were Charnock and Parkyns. He talked with them about the
plot which they and some of their friends had formed in the preceding
spring against the life of William. Both Charnock and Parkyns declared
that the scheme might easily be executed, that there was no want of
resolute hearts among the Royalists, and that all that was wanting was
some sign of His Majesty's approbation.

Then Barclay produced his commission. He showed his two accomplices that
James had expressly commanded all good Englishmen, not only to rise in
arms, not only to make war on the usurping government, not only to seize
forts and towns, but also to do from time to time such other acts
of hostility against the Prince of Orange as might be for the royal
service. These words, Barclay said, plainly authorised an attack on the
Prince's person. Charnock and Parkyns were satisfied. How in truth was
it possible for them to doubt that James's confidential agent correctly
construed James's expressions? Nay, how was it possible for them to
understand the large words of the commission in any sense but one,
even if Barclay had not been there to act as commentator? If indeed the
subject had never been brought under James's consideration, it might
well be thought that those words had dropped from his pen without any
definite meaning. But he had been repeatedly apprised that some of his
friends in England meditated a deed of blood, and that they were waiting
only for his approbation. They had importuned him to speak one word,
to give one sign. He had long kept silence; and, now that he had broken
silence, he merely told them to do what ever might be beneficial to
himself and prejudicial to the usurper. They had his authority as
plainly given as they could reasonably expect to have it given in such a
case. [657]

All that remained was to find a sufficient number of courageous and
trustworthy assistants, to provide horses and weapons, and to fix the
hour and the place of the slaughter. Forty or fifty men, it was thought,
would be sufficient. Those troopers of James's guard who had already
followed Barclay across the Channel made up nearly half that number.
James had himself seen some of these men before their departure from
Saint Germains, had given them money for their journey, had told them by
what name each of them was to pass in England, had commanded them to
act as they should be directed by Barclay, and had informed them where
Barclay was to be found and by what tokens he was to be known. [658]
They were ordered to depart in small parties, and to assign different
reasons for going. Some were ill; some were weary of the service;
Cassels, one of the most noisy and profane among them, announced that,
since he could not get military promotion, he should enter at the Scotch
college and study for a learned profession. Under such pretexts about
twenty picked men left the palace of James, made their way by Romney
Marsh to London, and found their captain walking in the dim lamplight of
the Piazza with the handkerchief hanging from his pocket. One of these
men was Ambrose Rockwood, who held the rank of Brigadier, and who had a
high reputation for courage and honour; another was Major John Bernardi,
an adventurer of Genoese extraction, whose name has derived a melancholy
celebrity from a punishment so strangely prolonged that it at length
shocked a generation which could not remember his crime. [659]

It was in these adventurers from France that Barclay placed his chief
trust. In a moment of elation he once called them his Janissaries, and
expressed a hope that they would get him the George and Garter. But
twenty more assassins at least were wanted. The conspirators probably
expected valuable help from Sir John Friend, who had received a
Colonel's commission signed by James, and had been most active in
enlisting men and providing arms against the day when the French should
appear on the coast of Kent. The design was imparted to him; but he
thought it so rash, and so likely to bring reproach and disaster on the
good cause, that he would lend no assistance to his friends, though he
kept their secret religiously. [660] Charnock undertook to find eight
brave and trusty fellows. He communicated the design to Porter, not with
Barclay's entire approbation; for Barclay appears to have thought that
a tavern brawler, who had recently been in prison for swaggering drunk
about the streets and huzzaing in honour of the Prince of Wales, was
hardly to be trusted with a secret of such fearful import. Porter
entered into the plot with enthusiasm, and promised to bring in others
who would be useful. Among those whose help he engaged was his servant
Thomas Keyes. Keyes was a far more formidable conspirator than might
have been expected from his station in life. The household troops
generally were devoted to William; but there was a taint of disaffection
among the Blues. The chief conspirators had already been tampering
with some Roman Catholics who were in that regiment; and Keyes was
excellently qualified to bear a part in this work; for he had formerly
been trumpeter of the corps, and, though he had quitted the service, he
still kept up an acquaintaince with some of the old soldiers in whose
company he had lived at free quarter on the Somersetshire farmers after
the battle of Sedgemoor.

Parkyns, who was old and gouty, could not himself take a share in the
work of death. But he employed himself in providing horses, saddles and
weapons for his younger and more active accomplices. In this department
of business he was assisted by Charles Cranburne, a person who had long
acted as a broker between Jacobite plotters and people who dealt in
cutlery and firearms. Special orders were given by Barclay that the
swords should be made rather for stabbing than for slashing. Barclay
himself enlisted Edward Lowick, who had been a major in the Irish army,
and who had, since the capitulation of Limerick, been living obscurely
in London. The monk who had been Barclay's first confidant recommended
two busy Papists, Richard Fisher and Christopher Knightley; and this
recommendation was thought sufficient. Knightley drew in Edward King, a
Roman Catholic gentleman of hot and restless temper; and King procured
the assistance of a French gambler and bully named De la Rue. [661]

Meanwhile the heads of the conspiracy held frequent meetings at treason
taverns, for the purpose of settling a plan of operations. Several
schemes were proposed, applauded, and, on full consideration, abandoned.
At one time it was thought that an attack on Kensington House at dead
of night might probably be successful. The outer wall might easily be
scaled. If once forty armed men were in the garden, the palace would
soon be stormed or set on fire. Some were of opinion that it would be
best to strike the blow on a Sunday as William went from Kensington
to attend divine service at the chapel of Saint James's Palace. The
murderers might assemble near the spot where Apsley House and Hamilton
Place now stand. Just as the royal coach passed out of Hyde Park, and
was about to enter what has since been called the Green Park, thirty
of the conspirators, well mounted, might fall on the guards. The guards
were ordinarily only five and twenty. They would be taken completely
by surprise; and probably half of them would be shot or cut down before
they could strike a blow. Meanwhile ten or twelve resolute men on foot
would stop the carriage by shooting the horses, and would then without
difficulty despatch the King. At last the preference was given to a plan
originally sketched by Fisher and put into shape by Porter. William was
in the habit of going every Saturday from Kensington to hunt in Richmond
Park. There was then no bridge over the Thames between London and
Kingston. The King therefore went, in a coach escorted by some of his
body guards, through Turnham Green to the river. There he took boat,
crossed the water and found another coach and another set of guards
ready to receive him on the Surrey side. The first coach and the first
set of guards awaited his return on the northern bank. The conspirators
ascertained with great precision the whole order of these journeys, and
carefully examined the ground on both sides of the Thames. They thought
that they should attack the King with more advantage on the Middlesex
than on the Surrey bank, and when he was returning than when he was
going. For, when he was going, he was often attended to the water side
by a great retinue of lords and gentlemen; but on his return he had only
his guards about him. The place and time were fixed. The place was to be
a narrow and winding lane leading from the landingplace on the north
of the rover to Turnham Green. The spot may still be easily found.
The ground has since been drained by trenches.