No More Learning

The connections which had been
the strength and boast of the corporation were now its weakness and its
shame. The King who had been one of its members was an exile. The
judge by whom all its most exorbitant pretensions had been pronounced
legitimate was a prisoner. All the old enemies of the Company,
reinforced by those great Whig merchants whom Child had expelled from
the direction, demanded justice and vengeance from the Whig House of
Commons, which had just placed William and Mary on the throne. No voice
was louder in accusation than that of Papillon, who had, some years
before, been more zealous for the charter than any man in London. [170]
The Commons censured in severe terms the persons who had inflicted death
by martial law at Saint Helena, and even resolved that some of those
offenders should be excluded from the Act of Indemnity. [171] The great
question, how the trade with the East should for the future be carried
on, was referred to a Committee. The report was to have been made on
the twenty-seventh of January 1690; but on that very day the Parliament
ceased to exist.

The first two sessions of the succeeding Parliament were so short and
so busy that little was said about India in either House. But, out
of Parliament, all the arts both of controversy and of intrigue were
employed on both sides. Almost as many pamphlets were published about
the India trade as about the oaths. The despot of Leadenhall Street was
libelled in prose and verse. Wretched puns were made on his name. He was
compared to Cromwell, to the King of France, to Goliath of Gath, to the
Devil. It was vehemently declared to be necessary that, in any Act which
might be passed for the regulation of our traffic with the Eastern seas,
Sir Josiah should be by name excluded from all trust. [172]

There were, however, great differences of opinion among those who agreed
in hating Child and the body of which he was the head. The manufacturers
of Spitalfields, of Norwich, of Yorkshire, and of the Western counties,
considered the trade with the Eastern seas as rather injurious than
beneficial to the kingdom. The importation of Indian spices, indeed, was
admitted to be harmless, and the importation of Indian saltpetre to be
necessary. But the importation of silks and of Bengals, as shawls were
then called, was pronounced to be a curse to the country. The effect of
the growing taste for such frippery was that our gold and silver went
abroad, and that much excellent English drapery lay in our warehouses
till it was devoured by the moths. Those, it was said, were happy days
for the inhabitants both of our pasture lands and of our manufacturing
towns, when every gown, every hanging, every bed, was made of materials
which our own flocks had furnished to our own looms. Where were now
the brave old hangings of arras which had adorned the walls of lordly
mansions in the days of Elizabeth? And was it not a shame to see a
gentleman, whose ancestors had worn nothing but stuffs made by English
workmen out of English fleeces, flaunting in a calico shirt and a pair
of silk stockings? Clamours such as these had, a few years before,
extorted from Parliament the Act which required that the dead should
be wrapped in woollen; and some sanguine clothiers hoped that the
legislature would, by excluding all Indian textures from our ports,
impose the same necessity on the living. [173]

But this feeling was confined to a minority. The public was, indeed,
inclined rather to overrate than to underrate the benefits which might
be derived by England from the Indian trade. What was the most effectual
mode of extending that trade was a question which excited general
interest, and which was answered in very different ways.

A small party, consisting chiefly of merchants resident at Bristol and
other provincial seaports, maintained that the best way to extend trade
was to leave it free. They urged the well known arguments which prove
that monopoly is injurious to commerce; and, having fully established
the general law, they asked why the commerce between England and India
was to be considered as an exception to that law. Any trader ought, they
said, to be permitted to send from any port a cargo to Surat or Canton
as freely as he now sent a cargo to Hamburg or Lisbon. [174] In our time
these doctrines may probably be considered, not only as sound, but
as trite and obvious. In the seventeenth century, however, they were
thought paradoxical. It was then generally held to be a certain, and
indeed an almost selfevident truth, that our trade with the countries
lying beyond the Cape of Good Hope could be advantageously carried on
only by means of a great Joint Stock Company. There was no analogy,
it was said, between our European trade and our Indian trade. Our
government had diplomatic relations with the European States. If
necessary, a maritime force could easily be sent from hence to the mouth
of the Elbe or of the Tagus. But the English Kings had no envoy at the
Court of Agra or Pekin. There was seldom a single English man of war
within ten thousand miles of the Bay of Bengal or of the Gulf of Siam.
As our merchants could not, in those remote seas, be protected by
their Sovereign, they must protect themselves, and must, for that
end, exercise some of the rights of sovereignty. They must have forts,
garrisons and armed ships. They must have power to send and receive
embassies, to make a treaty of alliance with one Asiatic prince, to wage
war on another. It was evidently impossible that every merchant should
have this power independently of the rest. The merchants trading to
India must therefore be joined together in a corporation which could act
as one man. In support of these arguments the example of the Dutch was
cited, and was generally considered as decisive. For in that age the
immense prosperity of Holland was every where regarded with admiration,
not the less earnest because it was largely mingled with envy and
hatred. In all that related to trade, her statesmen were considered as
oracles, and her institutions as models.

The great majority, therefore, of those who assailed the Company
assailed it, not because it traded on joint funds and possessed
exclusive privileges, but because it was ruled by one man, and because
his rule had been mischievous to the public, and beneficial only to
himself and his creatures. The obvious remedy, it was said, for the
evils which his maladministration had produced was to transfer the
monopoly to a new corporation so constituted as to be in no danger of
falling under the dominion either of a despot or of a narrow oligarchy.
Many persons who were desirous to be members of such a corporation,
formed themselves into a society, signed an engagement, and entrusted
the care of their interests to a committee which contained some of the
chief traders of the City. This society, though it had, in the eye of
the law, no personality, was early designated, in popular speech, as
the New Company; and the hostilities between the New Company and the Old
Company soon caused almost as much excitement and anxiety, at least
in that busy hive of which the Royal Exchange was the centre, as the
hostilities between the Allies and the French King. The headquarters of
the younger association were in Dowgate; the Skinners lent their stately
hall; and the meetings were held in a parlour renowned for the fragrance
which exhaled from a magnificent wainscot of cedar. [175]

While the contention was hottest, important news arrived from India,
and was announced in the London Gazette as in the highest degree
satisfactory. Peace had been concluded between the great Mogul and the
English. That mighty potentate had not only withdrawn his troops from
the factories, but had bestowed on the Company privileges such as it had
never before enjoyed. Soon, however, appeared a very different version
of the story. The enemies of Child had, before this time, accused him
of systematically publishing false intelligence. He had now, they said,
outlied himself. They had obtained a true copy of the Firman which had
put an end to the war; and they printed a translation of it. It
appeared that Aurengzebe had contemptuously granted to the English, in
consideration of their penitence and of a large tribute, his forgiveness
for their past delinquency, had charged them to behave themselves better
for the future, and had, in the tone of a master, laid on them his
commands to remove the principal offender, Sir John Child, from power
and trust. The death of Sir John occurred so seasonably that these
commands could not be obeyed. But it was only too evident that the
pacification which the rulers of the India House had represented
as advantageous and honourable had really been effected on terms
disgraceful to the English name. [176]

During the summer of 1691, the controversy which raged on this subject
between the Leadenhall Street Company and the Dowgate Company kept the
City in constant agitation. In the autumn, the Parliament had no sooner
met than both the contending parties presented petitions to the House
of Commons. [177] The petitions were immediately taken into serious
consideration, and resolutions of grave importance were passed. The
first resolution was that the trade with the East Indies was beneficial
to the kingdom; the second was that the trade with the East Indies
would be best carried on by a joint stock company possessed of
exclusive privileges. [178] It was plain, therefore, that neither those
manufacturers who wished to prohibit the trade, nor those merchants at
the outports who wished to throw it open, had the smallest chance of
attaining their objects. The only question left was the question
between the Old and the New Company. Seventeen years elapsed before that
question ceased to disturb both political and commercial circles. It was
fatal to the honour and power of one great minister, and to the peace
and prosperity of many private families. The tracts which the rival
bodies put forth against each other were innumerable. If the drama of
that age may be trusted, the feud between the India House and Skinners'
Hall was sometimes as serious an impediment to the course of true love
in London as the feud of the Capulets and Montagues had been at Verona.
[179] Which of the two contending parties was the stronger it is not
easy to say. The New Company was supported by the Whigs, the Old Company
by the Tories. The New Company was popular; for it promised largely,
and could not be accused of having broken its promises; it made no
dividends, and therefore was not envied; it had no power to oppress,
and had therefore been guilty of no oppression. The Old Company, though
generally regarded with little favour by the public, had the immense
advantage of being in possession, and of having only to stand on the
defensive. The burden of framing a plan for the regulation of the India
trade, and of proving that plan to be better than the plan hitherto
followed, lay on the New Company. The Old Company had merely to find
objections to every change that was proposed; and such objections there
was little difficulty in finding. The members of the New Company were
ill provided with the means of purchasing support at Court and in
Parliament. They had no corporate existence, no common treasury. If
any of them gave a bribe, he gave it out of his own pocket, with little
chance of being reimbursed. But the Old Company, though surrounded
by dangers, still held its exclusive privileges, and still made its
enormous profits. Its stock had indeed gone down greatly in value since
the golden days of Charles the Second; but a hundred pounds still sold
for a hundred and twenty-two. [180] After a large dividend had been paid
to the proprietors, a surplus remained amply sufficient, in those
days, to corrupt half a cabinet; and this surplus was absolutely at the
disposal of one able, determined and unscrupulous man, who maintained
the fight with wonderful art and pertinacity.

The majority of the Commons wished to effect a compromise, to retain the
Old Company, but to remodel it, to impose on it new conditions, and to
incorporate with it the members of the New Company. With this view it
was, after long and vehement debates and close divisions, resolved that
the capital should be increased to a million and a half. In order to
prevent a single person or a small junto from domineering over the whole
society, it was determined that five thousand pounds of stock should
be the largest quantity that any single proprietor could hold, and that
those who held more should be required to sell the overplus at any price
not below par. In return for the exclusive privilege of trading to the
Eastern seas, the Company was to be required to furnish annually five
hundred tons of saltpetre to the Crown at a low price, and to export
annually English manufactures to the value of two hundred thousand
pounds. [181]

A bill founded on these resolutions was brought in, read twice, and
committed, but was suffered to drop in consequence of the positive
refusal of Child and his associates to accept the offered terms. He
objected to every part of the plan; and his objections are highly
curious and amusing. The great monopolist took his stand on the
principles of free trade. In a luminous and powerfully written paper he
exposed the absurdity of the expedients which the House of Commons had
devised. To limit the amount of stock which might stand in a single name
would, he said, be most unreasonable. Surely a proprietor whose whole
fortune was staked on the success of the Indian trade was far more
likely to exert all his faculties vigorously for the promotion of that
trade than a proprietor who had risked only what it would be no great
disaster to lose. The demand that saltpetre should be furnished to the
Crown for a fixed sum Child met by those arguments, familiar to our
generation, which prove that prices should be left to settle themselves.
To the demand that the Company should bind itself to export annually two
hundred thousand pounds' worth of English manufactures he very properly
replied that the Company would most gladly export two millions' worth
if the market required such a supply, and that, if the market were
overstocked, it would be mere folly to send good cloth half round the
world to be eaten by white ants. It was never, he declared with much
spirit, found politic to put trade into straitlaced bodices, which,
instead of making it grow upright and thrive, must either kill it or
force it awry.

The Commons, irritated by Child's obstinacy, presented an address
requesting the King to dissolve the Old Company, and to grant a charter
to a new Company on such terms as to His Majesty's wisdom might seem
fit. [182] It is plainly implied in the terms of this address that
the Commons thought the King constitutionally competent to grant an
exclusive privilege of trading to the East Indies.

The King replied that the subject was most important, that he would
consider it maturely, and that he would, at a future time, give the
House a more precise answer. [183] In Parliament nothing more was said
on the subject during that session; but out of Parliament the war was
fiercer than ever; and the belligerents were by no means scrupulous
about the means which they employed. The chief weapons of the New
Company were libels; the chief weapons of the Old Company were bribes.

In the same week in which the bill for the regulation of the Indian
trade was suffered to drop, another bill which had produced great
excitement and had called forth an almost unprecedented display of
parliamentary ability, underwent the same fate.

During the eight years which preceded the Revolution, the Whigs had
complained bitterly, and not more bitterly than justly, of the hard
measure dealt out to persons accused of political offences. Was it not
monstrous, they asked, that a culprit should be denied a sight of his
indictment? Often an unhappy prisoner had not known of what he was
accused till he had held up his hand at the bar. The crime imputed to
him might be plotting to shoot the King; it might be plotting to poison
the King. The more innocent the defendant was, the less likely he was
to guess the nature of the charge on which he was to be tried; and how
could he have evidence ready to rebut a charge the nature of which
he could not guess? The Crown had power to compel the attendance of
witnesses. The prisoner had no such power. If witnesses voluntarily came
forward to speak in his favour, they could not be sworn. Their testimony
therefore made less impression on a jury than the testimony of the
witnesses for the prosecution, whose veracity was guaranteed by the most
solemn sanctions of law and of religion. The juries, carefully selected
by Sheriffs whom the Crown had named, were men animated by the fiercest
party spirit, men who had as little tenderness for an Exclusionist of a
Dissenter as for a mad dog. The government was served by a band of able,
experienced and unprincipled lawyers, who could, by merely glancing over
a brief, distinguish every weak and every strong point of a case,
whose presence of mind never failed them, whose flow of speech was
inexhaustible, and who had passed their lives in dressing up the worse
reason so as to make it appear the better. Was it not horrible to see
three or four of these shrewd, learned and callous orators arrayed
against one poor wretch who had never in his life uttered a word in
public, who was ignorant of the legal definition of treason and of the
first principles of the law of evidence, and whose intellect, unequal
at best to a fencing match with professional gladiators, was confused by
the near prospect of a cruel and ignominious death? Such however was the
rule; and even for a man so much stupefied by sickness that he could not
hold up his hand or make his voice heard, even for a poor old woman who
understood nothing of what was passing except that she was going to be
roasted alive for doing an act of charity, no advocate was suffered to
utter a word. That a state trial so conducted was little better than a
judicial murder had been, during the proscription of the Whig party, a
fundamental article of the Whig creed. The Tories, on the other
hand, though they could not deny that there had been some hard cases,
maintained that, on the whole, substantial justice had been done.
Perhaps a few seditious persons who had gone very near to the frontier
of treason, but had not actually passed that frontier, might have
suffered as traitors. But was that a sufficient reason for enabling the
chiefs of the Rye House Plot and of the Western Insurrection to elude,
by mere chicanery, the punishment of their guilt? On what principle
was the traitor to have chances of escape which were not allowed to the
felon? The culprit who was accused of larceny was subject to all the
same disadvantages which, in the case of regicides and rebels, were
thought so unjust; ye nobody pitied him. Nobody thought it monstrous
that he should not have time to study a copy of his indictment, that his
witnesses should be examined without being sworn, that he should be
left to defend himself, without the help of counsel against the best
abilities which the Inns of Court could furnish. The Whigs, it seemed,
reserved all their compassion for those crimes which subvert government
and dissolve the whole frame of human society. Guy Faux was to be
treated with an indulgence which was not to be extended to a shoplifter.
Bradshaw was to have privileges which were refused to a boy who had
robbed a henroost.

The Revolution produced, as was natural, some change in the sentiments
of both the great parties. In the days when none but Roundheads and
Nonconformists were accused of treason, even the most humane and upright
Cavaliers were disposed to think that the laws which were the safeguard
of the throne could hardly be too severe. But, as soon as loyal Tory
gentlemen and venerable fathers of the Church were in danger of being
called in question for corresponding with Saint Germains, a new light
flashed on many understandings which had been unable to discover the
smallest injustice in the proceedings against Algernon Sidney and Alice
Lisle. It was no longer thought utterly absurd to maintain that some
advantages which were withheld from a man accused of felony might
reasonably be allowed to a man accused of treason. What probability
was there that any sheriff would pack a jury, that any barrister would
employ all the arts of sophistry and rhetoric, that any judge would
strain law and misrepresent evidence, in order to convict an innocent
person of burglary or sheep stealing? But on a trial for high treason
a verdict of acquittal must always be considered as a defeat of
the government; and there was but too much reason to fear that many
sheriffs, barristers and judges might be impelled by party spirit, or by
some baser motive, to do any thing which might save the government from
the inconvenience and shame of a defeat. The cry of the whole body
of Tories was that the lives of good Englishmen who happened to be
obnoxious to the ruling powers were not sufficiently protected; and
this cry was swelled by the voices of some lawyers who had distinguished
themselves by the malignant zeal and dishonest ingenuity with which they
had conducted State prosecutions in the days of Charles and James.

The feeling of the Whigs, though it had not, like the feeling of the
Tories, undergone a complete change, was yet not quite what it had been.
Some, who had thought it most unjust that Russell should have no counsel
and that Cornish should have no copy of his indictment, now began to
mutter that the times had changed; that the dangers of the State were
extreme; that liberty, property, religion, national independence, were
all at stake; that many Englishmen were engaged in schemes of which the
object was to make England the slave of France and of Rome; and that
it would be most unwise to relax, at such a moment, the laws against
political offences. It was true that the injustice with which, in the
late reigns, State trials had been conducted, had given great scandal.
But this injustice was to be ascribed to the bad kings and bad judges
with whom the nation had been cursed. William was now on the throne;
Holt was seated for life on the bench; and William would never exact,
nor would Holt ever perform, services so shameful and wicked as those
for which the banished tyrant had rewarded Jeffreys with riches and
titles. This language however was at first held but by few. The Whigs,
as a party, seem to have felt that they could not honourably defend, in
the season of their prosperity, what, in the time of their adversity,
they had always designated as a crying grievance. A bill for regulating
trials in cases of high treason was brought into the House of Commons,
and was received with general applause. Treby had the courage to make
some objections; but no division took place. The chief enactments were
that no person should be convicted of high treason committed more than
three years before the indictment was found; that every person indicted
for high treason should be allowed to avail himself of the assistance of
counsel, and should be furnished, ten days before the trial, with a copy
of the indictment, and with a list of the freeholders from among whom
the jury was to be taken; that his witnesses should be sworn, and that
they should be cited by the same process by which the attendance of the
witnesses against him was secured.

The Bill went to the Upper House, and came back with an important
amendment. The Lords had long complained of the anomalous and iniquitous
constitution of that tribunal which had jurisdiction over them in cases
of life and death. When a grand jury has found a bill of indictment
against a temporal peer for any offence higher than a misdemeanour, the
Crown appoints a Lord High Steward; and in the Lord High Steward's
Court the case is tried. This Court was anciently composed in two very
different ways. It consisted, if Parliament happened to be sitting, of
all the members of the Upper House. When Parliament was not sitting, the
Lord High Steward summoned any twelve or more peers at his discretion
to form a jury. The consequence was that a peer accused of high treason
during a recess was tried by a jury which his prosecutors had packed.
The Lords now demanded that, during a recess as well as during a
session, every peer accused of high treason should be tried by the whole
body of the peerage.

The demand was resisted by the House of Commons with a vehemence and
obstinacy which men of the present generation may find it difficult to
understand. The truth is that some invidious privileges of peerage
which have since been abolished, and others which have since fallen
into entire desuetude, were then in full force, and were daily used.
No gentleman who had had a dispute with a nobleman could think, without
indignation, of the advantages enjoyed by the favoured caste. If His
Lordship were sued at law, his privilege enabled him to impede the
course of justice. If a rude word were spoken of him, such a word as
he might himself utter with perfect impunity, he might vindicate his
insulted dignity both by civil and criminal proceedings. If a barrister,
in the discharge of his duty to a client, spoke with severity of the
conduct of a noble seducer, if an honest squire on the racecourse
applied the proper epithets to the tricks of a noble swindler, the
affronted patrician had only to complain to the proud and powerful body
of which he was a member. His brethren made his cause their own. The
offender was taken into custody by Black Rod, brought to the bar, flung
into prison, and kept there till he was glad to obtain forgiveness by
the most degrading submissions. Nothing could therefore be more natural
than that an attempt of the Peers to obtain any new advantage for their
order should be regarded by the Commons with extreme jealousy. There is
strong reason to suspect that some able Whig politicians, who thought it
dangerous to relax, at that moment, the laws against political offences,
but who could not, without incurring the charge of inconsistency,
declare themselves adverse to any relaxation, had conceived a hope that
they might, by fomenting the dispute about the Court of the Lord High
Steward, defer for at least a year the passing of a bill which they
disliked, and yet could not decently oppose. If this really was their
plan, it succeeded perfectly. The Lower House rejected the amendment;
the Upper House persisted; a free conference was held; and the question
was argued with great force and ingenuity on both sides.

The reasons in favour of the amendment are obvious, and indeed at first
sight seem unanswerable. It was surely difficult to defend a system
under which the Sovereign nominated a conclave of his own creatures to
decide the fate of men whom he regarded as his mortal enemies. And could
any thing be more absurd than that a nobleman accused of high treason
should be entitled to be tried by the whole body of his peers if his
indictment happened to be brought into the House of Lords the minute
before a prorogation, but that, if the indictment arrived a minute after
the prorogation, he should be at the mercy of a small junto named by the
very authority which prosecuted him? That any thing could have been said
on the other side seems strange; but those who managed the conference
for the Commons were not ordinary men, and seem on this occasion to have
put forth all their powers. Conspicuous among them was Charles Montague,
who was rapidly attaining a foremost rank among the orators of that age.
To him the lead seems on this occasion to have been left; and to his pen
we owe an account of the discussion, which gives a very high notion
of his talents for debate. "We have framed"--such was in substance his
reasoning,--"we have framed a law which has in it nothing exclusive,
a law which will be a blessing to every class, from the highest to
the lowest. The new securities, which we propose to give to innocence
oppressed by power, are common between the premier peer and the humblest
day labourer. The clause which establishes a time of limitation for
prosecutions protects us all alike. To every Englishman accused of
the highest crime against the state, whatever be his rank, we give the
privilege of seeing his indictment, the privilege of being defended
by counsel, the privilege of having his witnesses summoned by writ of
subpoena and sworn on the Holy Gospels. Such is the bill which we sent
up to your Lordships; and you return it to us with a clause of which the
effect is to give certain advantages to your noble order at the expense
of the ancient prerogatives of the Crown. Surely before we consent to
take away from the King any power which his predecessors have possessed
for ages, and to give it to your Lordships, we ought to be satisfied
that you are more likely to use it well than he. Something we must risk;
somebody we must trust; and; since we are forced, much against our will,
to institute what is necessarily an invidious comparison, we must own
ourselves unable to discover any reason for believing that a prince is
less to be trusted than an aristocracy.

"Is it reasonable, you ask, that you should be tried for your lives
before a few members of your House, selected by the Crown? Is it
reasonable, we ask in our turn, that you should have the privilege of
being tried by all the members of your House, that is to say, by your
brothers, your uncles, your first cousins, your second cousins, your
fathers in law, your brothers in law, your most intimate friends? You
marry so much into each other's families, you live so much in each
other's society, that there is scarcely a nobleman who is not connected
by consanguinity or affinity with several others, and who is not on
terms of friendship with several more. There have been great men
whose death put a third or fourth part of the baronage of England into
mourning. Nor is there much danger that even those peers who may be
unconnected with an accused lord will be disposed to send him to the
block if they can with decency say 'Not Guilty, upon my honour. ' For
the ignominious death of a single member of a small aristocratical body
necessarily leaves a stain on the reputation of his fellows. If, indeed,
your Lordships proposed that every one of your body should be compelled
to attend and vote, the Crown might have some chance of obtaining
justice against a guilty peer, however strongly connected. But you
propose that attendance shall be voluntary. Is it possible to doubt what
the consequence will be? All the prisoner's relations and friends will
be in their places to vote for him. Good nature and the fear of making
powerful enemies will keep away many who, if they voted at all, would
be forced by conscience and honour to vote against him. The new system
which you propose would therefore evidently be unfair to the Crown; and
you do not show any reason for believing that the old system has been
found in practice unfair to yourselves. We may confidently affirm that,
even under a government less just and merciful than that under which we
have the happiness to live, an innocent peer has little to fear from
any set of peers that can be brought together in Westminster Hall to
try him. How stands the fact? In what single case has a guiltless head
fallen by the verdict of this packed jury? It would be easy to make out
a long list of squires, merchants, lawyers, surgeons, yeomen, artisans,
ploughmen, whose blood, barbarously shed during the late evil times,
cries for vengeance to heaven. But what single member of your House,
in our days, or in the days of our fathers, or in the days of our
grandfathers, suffered death unjustly by sentence of the Court of
the Lord High Steward? Hundreds of the common people were sent to
the gallows by common juries for the Rye House Plot and the Western
Insurrection. One peer, and one alone, my Lord Delamere, was brought
at that time before the Court of the Lord High Steward; and he was
acquitted. But, it is said, the evidence against him was legally
insufficient. Be it so. So was the evidence against Sidney, against
Cornish, against Alice Lisle; yet it sufficed to destroy them. But,
it is said, the peers before whom my Lord Delamere was brought were
selected with shameless unfairness by King James and by Jeffreys. Be it
so. But this only proves that, under the worst possible King, and under
the worst possible High Steward, a lord tried by lords has a better
chance for life than a commoner who puts himself on his country.
We
cannot, therefore, under the mild government which we now possess, feel
much apprehension for the safety of any innocent peer. Would that we
felt as little apprehension for the safety of that government! But it is
notorious that the settlement with which our liberties are inseparably
bound up is attacked at once by foreign and by domestic enemies. We
cannot consent at such a crisis to relax the restraints which have, it
may well be feared, already proved too feeble to prevent some men of
high rank from plotting the ruin of their country. To sum up the whole,
what is asked of us is that we will consent to transfer a certain power
from their Majesties to your Lordships. Our answer is that, at this
time, in our opinion, their Majesties have not too much power, and your
Lordships have quite power enough. "

These arguments, though eminently ingenious, and not without real force,
failed to convince the Upper House. The Lords insisted that every peer
should be entitled to be a Trier. The Commons were with difficulty
induced to consent that the number of Triers should never be less than
thirty-six, and positively refused to make any further concession. The
bill was therefore suffered to drop. [184]

It is certain that those who in the conference on this bill represented
the Commons, did not exaggerate the dangers to which the government was
exposed. While the constitution of the Court which was to try peers for
treason was under discussion, a treason planned with rare skill by a
peer was all but carried into execution.

Marlborough had never ceased to assure the Court of Saint Germains that
the great crime which he had committed was constantly present to his
thoughts, and that he lived only for the purpose of repentance and
reparation. Not only had he been himself converted; he had also
converted the Princess Anne. In 1688, the Churchills had, with little
difficulty, induced her to fly from her father's palace. In 1691, they,
with as little difficulty, induced her to copy out and sign a letter
expressing her deep concern for his misfortunes and her earnest wish to
atone for her breach of duty. [185] At the same time Marlborough held
out hopes that it might be in his power to effect the restoration of
his old master in the best possible way, without the help of a single
foreign soldier or sailor, by the votes of the English Lords and
Commons, and by the support of the English army. We are not fully
informed as to all the details of his plan. But the outline is known to
us from a most interesting paper written by James, of which one copy is
in the Bodleian Library, and another among the archives of the French
Foreign Office.

The jealousy with which the English regarded the Dutch was at this time
intense. There had never been a hearty friendship between the nations.
They were indeed near of kin to each other. They spoke two dialects of
one widespread language. Both boasted of their political freedom. Both
were attached to the reformed faith. Both were threatened by the same
enemy, and would be safe only while they were united. Yet there was no
cordial feeling between them. They would probably have loved each other
more, if they had, in some respects, resembled each other less. They
were the two great commercial nations, the two great maritime nations.
In every sea their flags were found together, in the Baltic and in the
Mediterranean, in the Gulf of Mexico and in the Straits of Malacca.
Every where the merchant of London and the merchant of Amsterdam were
trying to forestall each other and to undersell each other. In Europe
the contest was not sanguinary. But too often, in barbarous countries,
where there was no law but force, the competitors had met, burning with
cupidity, burning with animosity, armed for battle, each suspecting
the other of hostile designs and each resolved to give the other no
advantage. In such circumstances it is not strange that many violent
and cruel acts should have been perpetrated. What had been done in those
distant regions could seldom be exactly known in Europe. Every thing
was exaggerated and distorted by vague report and by national prejudice.
Here it was the popular belief that the English were always blameless,
and that every quarrel was to be ascribed to the avarice and inhumanity
of the Dutch. Lamentable events which had taken place in the Spice
Islands were repeatedly brought on our stage. The Englishmen were
all saints and heroes; the Dutchmen all fiends in human shape, lying,
robbing, ravishing, murdering, torturing. The angry passions which these
pieces indicated had more than once found vent in war. Thrice in the
lifetime of one generation the two nations had contended, with equal
courage and with various fortune, for the sovereignty of the German
Ocean. The tyranny of James, as it had reconciled Tories to Whigs and
Churchmen to Nonconformists, had also reconciled the English to the
Dutch. While our ancestors were looking to the Hague for deliverance,
the massacre of Amboyna and the great humiliation of Chatham had seemed
to be forgotten. But since the Revolution the old feeling had revived.
Though England and Holland were now closely bound together by treaty,
they were as far as ever from being bound together by affection. Once,
just after the battle of Beachy Head, our countrymen had seemed disposed
to be just; but a violent reaction speedily followed. Torrington, who
deserved to be shot, became a popular favourite; and the allies whom
he had shamefully abandoned were accused of persecuting him without a
cause. The partiality shown by the King to the companions of his youth
was the favourite theme of the sewers of sedition. The most lucrative
posts in his household, it was said, were held by Dutchmen; the House
of Lords was fast filling with Dutchmen; the finest manors of the Crown
were given to Dutchmen; the army was commanded by Dutchmen. That it
would have been wise in William to exhibit somewhat less obtrusively his
laudable fondness for his native country, and to remunerate his early
friends somewhat more sparingly, is perfectly true. But it will not be
easy to prove that, on any important occasion during his whole reign,
he sacrificed the interests of our island to the interests of the United
Provinces. The English, however, were on this subject prone to fits of
jealousy which made them quite incapable of listening to reason. One of
the sharpest of those fits came on in the autumn of 1691. The antipathy
to the Dutch was at that time strong in all classes, and nowhere
stronger than in the Parliament and in the army. [186]

Of that antipathy Marlborough determined to avail himself for the
purpose, as he assured James and James's adherents, of effecting a
restoration. The temper of both Houses was such that they might not
improbably be induced by skilful management to present a joint address
requesting that all foreigners might be dismissed from the service of
their Majesties. Marlborough undertook to move such an address in the
Lords; and there would have been no difficulty in finding some gentleman
of great weight to make a similar motion in the Commons.

If the address should be carried, what could William do? Would he yield?
Would he discard all his dearest, his oldest, his most trusty friends?
It was hardly possible to believe that he would make so painful, so
humiliating a concession. If he did not yield, there would be a rupture
between him and the Parliament; and the Parliament would be backed by
the people. Even a King reigning by a hereditary title might well shrink
from such a contest with the Estates of the Realm. But to a King whose
title rested on a resolution of the Estates of the Realm such a contest
must almost necessarily be fatal. The last hope of William would be in
the army. The army Marlborough undertook to manage; and it is highly
probable that what he undertook he could have performed. His courage,
his abilities, his noble and winning manners, the splendid success which
had attended him on every occasion on which he had been in command, had
made him, in spite of his sordid vices, a favourite with his brethren
in arms. They were proud of having one countryman who had shown that he
wanted nothing but opportunity to vie with the ablest Marshal of France.
The Dutch were even more disliked by the English troops than by the
English nation generally. Had Marlborough therefore, after securing the
cooperation of some distinguished officers, presented himself at the
critical moment to those regiments which he had led to victory in
Flanders and in Ireland, had he called on them to rally round him, to
protect the Parliament, and to drive out the aliens, there is strong
reason to think that the call would have been obeyed. He would then have
had it in his power to fulfil the promises which he had so solemnly made
to his old master.

Of all the schemes ever formed for the restoration of James or of his
descendants, this scheme promised the fairest. That national pride, that
hatred of arbitrary power, which had hitherto been on William's side,
would now be turned against him. Hundreds of thousands who would have
put their lives in jeopardy to prevent a French army from imposing a
government on the English, would have felt no disposition to prevent an
English army from driving out the Dutch. Even the Whigs could scarcely,
without renouncing their old doctrines, support a prince who obstinately
refused to comply with the general wish of his people signified to him
by his Parliament. The plot looked well. An active canvass was made.
Many members of the House of Commons, who did not at all suspect that
there was any ulterior design, promised to vote against the foreigners.
Marlborough was indefatigable in inflaming the discontents of the army.
His house was constantly filled with officers who heated each other into
fury by talking against the Dutch. But, before the preparations
were complete, a strange suspicion rose in the minds of some of the
Jacobites. That the author of this bold and artful scheme wished to pull
down the existing government there could be little doubt. But was it
quite certain what government he meant to set up? Might he not depose
William without restoring James? Was it not possible that a man so wise,
so aspiring, and so wicked, might be meditating a double treason, such
as would have been thought a masterpiece of statecraft by the great
Italian politicians of the fifteenth century, such as Borgia would have
envied, such as Machiavel would have extolled to the skies?

What if this consummate dissembler should cheat both the rival kings?
What if, when he found himself commander of the army and protector of
the Parliament, he should proclaim Queen Anne? Was it not possible
that the weary and harassed nation might gladly acquiesce in such a
settlement? James was unpopular because he was a Papist, influenced
by Popish priests. William was unpopular because he was a foreigner,
attached to foreign favourites. Anne was at once a Protestant and an
Englishwoman. Under her government the country would be in no danger of
being overrun either by Jesuits or by Dutchmen. That Marlborough had the
strongest motives for placing her on the throne was evident. He could
never, in the court of her father, be more than a repentant criminal,
whose services were overpaid by a pardon. In her court the husband of
her adored friend would be what Pepin Heristal and Charles Martel had
been to the Chilperics and Childeberts. He would be the chief director
of the civil and military government. He would wield the whole power
of England. He would hold the balance of Europe. Great kings and
commonwealths would bid against each other for his favour, and exhaust
their treasuries in the vain hope of satiating his avarice. The
presumption was, therefore, that, if he had the English crown in his
hands, he would put in on the head of the Princess. What evidence there
was to confirm this presumption is not known; but it is certain that
something took place which convinced some of the most devoted friends
of the exiled family that he was meditating a second perfidy, surpassing
even the feat which he had performed at Salisbury. They were afraid
that if, at that moment, they succeeded in getting rid of William, the
situation of James would be more hopeless than ever. So fully were
they persuaded of the duplicity of their accomplice, that they not only
refused to proceed further in the execution of the plan which he had
formed, but disclosed his whole scheme to Portland.

William seems to have been alarmed and provoked by this intelligence
to a degree very unusual with him. In general he was indulgent,
nay, wilfully blind to the baseness of the English statesmen whom he
employed. He suspected, indeed he knew, that some of his servants were
in correspondence with his competitor; and yet he did not punish them,
did not disgrace them, did not even frown on them. He thought meanly,
and he had but too good reason for thinking meanly, of the whole of that
breed of public men which the Restoration had formed and had bequeathed
to the Revolution. He knew them too well to complain because he did not
find in them veracity, fidelity, consistency, disinterestedness. The
very utmost that he expected from them was that they would serve him as
far as they could serve him without serious danger to themselves. If he
learned that, while sitting in his council and enriched by his bounty,
they were trying to make for themselves at Saint Germains an interest
which might be of use to them in the event of a counterrevolution he was
more inclined to bestow on them the contemptuous commendation which was
bestowed of old on the worldly wisdom of the unjust steward than to call
them to a severe account. But the crime of Marlborough was of a very
different kind. His treason was not that of a fainthearted man desirous
to keep a retreat open for himself in every event, but that of a man of
dauntless courage, profound policy and measureless ambition. William was
not prone to fear; but, if there was anything on earth that he feared,
it was Marlborough. To treat the criminal as he deserved was indeed
impossible; for those by whom his designs had been made known to the
government would never have consented to appear against him in the
witness box. But to permit him to retain high command in that army which
he was then engaged in seducing would have been madness.

Late in the evening of the ninth of January the Queen had a painful
explanation with the Princess Anne. Early the next morning Marlborough
was informed that their Majesties had no further occasion for his
services, and that he must not presume to appear in the royal presence.
He had been loaded with honours, and with what he loved better, riches.
All was at once taken away.

The real history of these events was known to very few. Evelyn, who
had in general excellent sources of information, believed that the
corruption and extortion of which Marlborough was notoriously guilty had
roused the royal indignation. The Dutch ministers could only tell
the States General that six different stories were spread abroad by
Marlborough's enemies. Some said that he had indiscreetly suffered
an important military secret to escape him; some that he had spoken
disrespectfully of their Majesties; some that he had done ill offices
between the Queen and the Princess; some that he had been forming cabals
in the army; some that he had carried on an unauthorised correspondence
with the Danish government about the general politics of Europe; and
some that he had been trafficking with the agents of the Court of Saint
Germains. [187] His friends contradicted every one of these stories, and
affirmed that his only crime was his dislike of the foreigners who were
lording it over his countrymen, and that he had fallen a victim to the
machinations of Portland, whom he was known to dislike, and whom he had
not very politely described as a wooden fellow. The mystery, which from
the first overhung the story of Marlborough's disgrace, was darkened,
after the lapse of fifty years, by the shameless mendacity of his widow.
The concise narrative of James dispels the mystery, and makes it clear,
not only why Marlborough was disgraced, but also how several of the
reports about the cause of his disgrace originated. [188]

Though William assigned to the public no reason for exercising his
undoubted prerogative by dismissing his servant, Anne had been informed
of the truth; and it had been left to her to judge whether an officer
who had been guilty of a foul treason was a fit inmate of the palace.
Three weeks passed. Lady Marlborough still retained her post and her
apartments at Whitehall. Her husband still resided with her; and still
the King and Queen gave no sign of displeasure. At length the haughty
and vindictive Countess, emboldened by their patience, determined to
brave them face to face, and accompanied her mistress one evening to the
drawingroom at Kensington. This was too much even for the gentle Mary.
She would indeed have expressed her indignation before the crowd which
surrounded the card tables, had she not remembered that her sister was
in a state which entitles women to peculiar indulgence. Nothing was
said that night; but on the following day a letter from the Queen was
delivered to the Princess. Mary declared that she was unwilling to give
pain to a sister whom she loved, and in whom she could easily pass over
any ordinary fault; but this was a serious matter. Lady Marlborough must
be dismissed. While she lived at Whitehall her lord would live there.
Was it proper that a man in his situation should be suffered to make the
palace of his injured master his home? Yet so unwilling was His Majesty
to deal severely with the worst offenders, that even this had been
borne, and might have been borne longer, had not Anne brought the
Countess to defy the King and Queen in their own presence chamber. "It
was unkind," Mary wrote, "in a sister; it would have been uncivil in an
equal; and I need not say that I have more to claim. " The Princess,
in her answer, did not attempt to exculpate or excuse Marlborough, but
expressed a firm conviction that his wife was innocent, and implored
the Queen not to insist on so heartrending a separation. "There is no
misery," Anne wrote, "that I cannot resolve to suffer rather than the
thoughts of parting from her. "

The Princess sent for her uncle Rochester, and implored him to carry her
letter to Kensington, and to be her advocate there. Rochester declined
the office of messenger, and, though he tried to restore harmony between
his kinswomen, was by no means disposed to plead the cause of the
Churchills. He had indeed long seen with extreme uneasiness the absolute
dominion exercised over his younger niece by that unprincipled pair.
Anne's expostulation was sent to the Queen by a servant. The only
reply was a message from the Lord Chamberlain, Dorset, commanding Lady
Marlborough to leave the palace. Mrs. Morley would not be separated from
Mrs. Freeman. As to Mr. Morley, all places where he could have his three
courses and his three bottles were alike to him. The Princess and her
whole family therefore retired to Sion House, a villa belonging to the
Duke of Somerset, and situated on the margin of the Thames. In London
she occupied Berkeley House, which stood in Piccadilly, on the site
now covered by Devonshire House. [189] Her income was secured by Act of
Parliament; but no punishment which it was in the power of the Crown
to inflict on her was spared. Her guard of honour was taken away. The
foreign ministers ceased to wait upon her. When she went to Bath the
Secretary of State wrote to request the Mayor of that city not to
receive her with the ceremonial with which royal visitors were usually
welcomed. When she attended divine service at Saint James's Church she
found that the rector had been forbidden to show her the customary marks
of respect, to bow to her from his pulpit, and to send a copy of his
text to be laid on her cushion. Even the bellman of Piccadilly, it was
said, perhaps falsely, was ordered not to chaunt her praises in his
doggrel verse under the windows of Berkeley House. [190]

That Anne was in the wrong is clear; but it is not equally clear that
the King and Queen were in the right. They should have either dissembled
their displeasure, or openly declared the true reasons for it.
Unfortunately, they let every body see the punishment, and they let
scarcely any body know the provocation. They should have remembered
that, in the absence of information about the cause of a quarrel, the
public is naturally inclined to side with the weaker party, and that
this inclination is likely to be peculiarly strong when a sister is,
without any apparent reason, harshly treated by a sister. They should
have remembered, too, that they were exposing to attack what was
unfortunately the one vulnerable part of Mary's character. A cruel fate
had put enmity between her and her father. Her detractors pronounced
her utterly destitute of natural affection; and even her eulogists,
when they spoke of the way in which she had discharged the duties of the
filial relation, were forced to speak in a subdued and apologetic tone.
Nothing therefore could be more unfortunate than that she should a
second time appear unmindful of the ties of consanguinity. She was now
at open war with both the two persons who were nearest to her in blood.
Many who thought that her conduct towards her parent was justified by
the extreme danger which had threatened her country and her religion,
were unable to defend her conduct towards her sister. While Mary, who
was really guilty in this matter of nothing more than imprudence, was
regarded by the world as an oppressor, Anne, who was as culpable as her
small faculties enabled her to be, assumed the interesting character of
a meek, resigned sufferer. In those private letters, indeed, to which
the name of Morley was subscribed, the Princess expressed the sentiments
of a fury in the style of a fishwoman, railed savagely at the whole
Dutch nation, and called her brother in law sometimes the abortion,
sometimes the monster, sometimes Caliban. [191] But the nation heard
nothing of her language and saw nothing of her deportment but what was
decorous and submissive. The truth seems to have been that the rancorous
and coarseminded Countess gave the tone to Her Highness's confidential
correspondence, while the graceful, serene and politic Earl was suffered
to prescribe the course which was to be taken before the public eye.
During a short time the Queen was generally blamed. But the charm of her
temper and manners was irresistible; and in a few months she regained
the popularity which she had lost. [192]

It was a most fortunate circumstance for Marlborough that, just at the
very time when all London was talking about his disgrace, and trying to
guess at the cause of the King's sudden anger against one who had
always seemed to be a favourite, an accusation of treason was brought by
William Fuller against many persons of high consideration, was strictly
investigated, and was proved to be false and malicious. The consequence
was that the public, which rarely discriminates nicely, could not, at
that moment, be easily brought to believe in the reality of any Jacobite
conspiracy.

That Fuller's plot is less celebrated than the Popish plot is rather the
fault of the historians than of Fuller, who did all that man could do
to secure an eminent place among villains. Every person well read in
history must have observed that depravity has its temporary modes, which
come in and go out like modes of dress and upholstery. It may be doubted
whether, in our country, any man ever before the year 1678 invented and
related on oath a circumstantial history, altogether fictitious, of
a treasonable plot, for the purpose of making himself important by
destroying men who had given him no provocation. But in the year 1678
this execrable crime became the fashion, and continued to be so during
the twenty years which followed. Preachers designated it as our peculiar
national sin, and prophesied that it would draw on us some awful
national judgment. Legislators proposed new punishments of terrible
severity for this new atrocity. [193] It was not however found necessary
to resort to those punishments. The fashion changed; and during the last
century and a half there has perhaps not been a single instance of this
particular kind of wickedness.

The explanation is simple. Oates was the founder of a school. His
success proved that no romance is too wild to be received with faith by
understandings which fear and hatred have disordered. His slanders were
monstrous; but they were well timed; he spoke to a people made credulous
by their passions; and thus, by impudent and cruel lying, he raised
himself in a week from beggary and obscurity to luxury, renown and
power. He had once eked out the small tithes of a miserable vicarage by
stealing the pigs and fowls of his parishioners. [194] He was now lodged
in a palace; he was followed by admiring crowds; he had at his mercy
the estates and lives of Howards and Herberts. A crowd of imitators
instantly appeared. It seemed that much more might be got, and that
much less was risked, by testifying to an imaginary conspiracy than by
robbing on the highway or clipping the coin. Accordingly the Bedloes,
Dangerfields, Dugdales, Turberviles, made haste to transfer their
industry to an employment at once more profitable and less perilous than
any to which they were accustomed. Till the dissolution of the Oxford
Parliament Popish plots were the chief manufacture. Then, during seven
years, Whig plots were the only plots which paid. After the Revolution
Jacobite plots came in; but the public had become cautious; and though
the new false witnesses were in no respect less artful than their
predecessors, they found much less encouragement. The history of the
first great check given to the practices of this abandoned race of men
well deserves to be circumstantially related.

In 1689, and in the beginning of 1690, William Fuller had rendered to
the government service such as the best governments sometimes require,
and such as none but the worst men ever perform. His useful treachery
had been rewarded by his employers, as was meet, with money and with
contempt.