No More Learning

Never had the Jacobite pamphleteers
been so savagely scurrilous as during this unfortunate summer. The
police was consequently more active than ever in seeking for the dens
from which so much treason proceeded. With great difficulty and after
long search the most important of all the unlicensed presses was
discovered. This press belonged to a Jacobite named William Anderton,
whose intrepidity and fanaticism marked him out as fit to be employed
on services from which prudent men and scrupulous men shrink. During two
years he had been watched by the agents of the government; but where
he exercised his craft was an impenetrable mystery. At length he was
tracked to a house near Saint James's Street, where he was known by a
feigned name, and where he passed for a working jeweller. A messenger
of the press went thither with several assistants, and found Anderton's
wife and mother posted as sentinels at the door. The women knew the
messenger, rushed on him, tore his hair, and cried out "Thieves"
and "Murder. " The alarm was thus given to Anderton. He concealed the
instruments of his calling, came forth with an assured air, and bade
defiance to the messenger, the Censor, the Secretary, and Little
Hooknose himself. After a struggle he was secured. His room was
searched; and at first sight no evidence of his guilt appeared. But
behind the bed was soon found a door which opened into a dark closet.
The closet contained a press, types and heaps of newly printed papers.
One of these papers, entitled Remarks on the Present Confederacy and the
Late Revolution, is perhaps the most frantic of all the Jacobite libels.
In this tract the Prince of Orange is gravely accused of having ordered
fifty of his wounded English soldiers to be burned alive. The governing
principle of his whole conduct, it is said, is not vainglory, or
ambition, or avarice, but a deadly hatred of Englishmen and a desire
to make them miserable. The nation is vehemently adjured, on peril of
incurring the severest judgments, to rise up and free itself from this
plague, this curse, this tyrant, whose depravity makes it difficult to
believe that he can have been procreated by a human pair. Many copies
were also found of another paper, somewhat less ferocious but perhaps
more dangerous, entitled A French Conquest neither desirable nor
practicable. In this tract also the people are exhorted to rise in
insurrection. They are assured that a great part of the army is with
them. The forces of the Prince of Orange will melt away; he will be glad
to make his escape; and a charitable hope is sneeringly expressed that
it may not be necessary to do him any harm beyond sending him back to
Loo, where he may live surrounded by luxuries for which the English have
paid dear.

The government, provoked and alarmed by the virulence of the Jacobite
pamphleteers, determined to make Anderton an example. He was indicted
for high treason, and brought to the bar of the Old Bailey. Treby,
now Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and Powell, who had honourably
distinguished himself on the day of the trial of the bishops, were on
the Bench. It is unfortunate that no detailed report of the evidence has
come down to us, and that we are forced to content ourselves with such
fragments of information as can be collected from the contradictory
narratives of writers evidently partial, intemperate and dishonest. The
indictment, however, is extant; and the overt acts which it imputes to
the prisoner undoubtedly amount to high treason. [457] To exhort the
subjects of the realm to rise up and depose the King by force, and to
add to that exhortation the expression, evidently ironical, of a hope
that it may not be necessary to inflict on him any evil worse than
banishment, is surely an offence which the least courtly lawyer will
admit to be within the scope of the statute of Edward the Third. On this
point indeed there seems to have been no dispute, either at the trial or
subsequently.

The prisoner denied that he had printed the libels. On this point it
seems reasonable that, since the evidence has not come down to us,
we should give credit to the judges and the jury who heard what the
witnesses had to say.

One argument with which Anderton had been furnished by his advisers,
and which, in the Jacobite pasquinades of that time, is represented as
unanswerable, was that, as the art of printing had been unknown in the
reign of Edward the Third, printing could not be an overt act of treason
under a statute of that reign. The judges treated this argument very
lightly; and they were surely justified in so treating it. For it is
an argument which would lead to the conclusion that it could not be an
overt act of treason to behead a King with a guillotine or to shoot him
with a Minie rifle.

It was also urged in Anderton's favour,--and this was undoubtedly an
argument well entitled to consideration,--that a distinction ought to
be made between the author of a treasonable paper and the man who merely
printed it. The former could not pretend that he had not understood the
meaning of the words which he had himself selected. But to the latter
those words might convey no idea whatever. The metaphors, the allusions,
the sarcasms, might be far beyond his comprehension; and, while his
hands were busy among the types, his thoughts might be wandering to
things altogether unconnected with the manuscript which was before him.
It is undoubtedly true that it may be no crime to print what it would be
a great crime to write. But this is evidently a matter concerning
which no general rule can be laid down. Whether Anderton had, as a mere
mechanic, contributed to spread a work the tendency of which he did
not suspect, or had knowingly lent his help to raise a rebellion, was
a question for the jury; and the jury might reasonably infer from his
change of his name, from the secret manner in which he worked, from the
strict watch kept by his wife and mother, and from the fury with which,
even in the grasp of the messengers, he railed at the government,
that he was not the unconscious tool, but the intelligent and zealous
accomplice of traitors. The twelve, after passing a considerable time
in deliberation, informed the Court that one of them entertained doubts.
Those doubts were removed by the arguments of Treby and Powell; and a
verdict of Guilty was found.

The fate of the prisoner remained during sometime in suspense. The
Ministers hoped that he might be induced to save his own neck at the
expense of the necks of the pamphleteers who had employed him. But his
natural courage was kept up by spiritual stimulants which the nonjuring
divines well understood how to administer. He suffered death with
fortitude, and continued to revile the government to the last. The
Jacobites clamoured loudly against the cruelty of the judges who had
tried him and of the Queen who had left him for execution, and, not very
consistently, represented him at once as a poor ignorant artisan who was
not aware of the nature and tendency of the act for which he suffered,
and as a martyr who had heroically laid down his life for the banished
King and the persecuted Church. [458]

The Ministers were much mistaken if they flattered themselves that the
fate of Anderton would deter others from imitating his example. His
execution produced several pamphlets scarcely less virulent than those
for which he had suffered. Collier, in what he called Remarks on the
London Gazette, exulted with cruel joy over the carnage of Landen, and
the vast destruction of English property on the coast of Spain. [459]
Other writers did their best to raise riots among the labouring people.
For the doctrine of the Jacobites was that disorder, in whatever place
or in whatever way it might begin, was likely to end in a Restoration.
A phrase which, without a commentary, may seem to be mere nonsense,
but which was really full of meaning, was often in their mouths at
this time, and was indeed a password by which the members of the party
recognised each other: "Box it about; it will come to my father. " The
hidden sense of this gibberish was, "Throw the country into confusion;
it will be necessary at last to have recourse to King James. " [460]
Trade was not prosperous; and many industrious men were out of work.
Accordingly songs addressed to the distressed classes were composed by
the malecontent street poets. Numerous copies of a ballad exhorting the
weavers to rise against the government were discovered in the house of
that Quaker who had printed James's Declaration. [461] Every art was
used for the purpose of exciting discontent in a much more formidable
body of men, the sailors; and unhappily the vices of the naval
administration furnished the enemies of the State with but too good a
choice of inflammatory topics. Some seamen deserted; some mutinied; then
came executions; and then came more ballads and broadsides representing
those executions as barbarous murders. Reports that the government
had determined to defraud its defenders of their hard earned pay were
circulated with so much effect that a great crowd of women from Wapping
and Rotherhithe besieged Whitehall, clamouring for what was due to their
husbands. Mary had the good sense and good nature to order four of
those importunate petitioners to be admitted into the room where she was
holding a Council. She heard their complaints, and herself assured them
that the rumour which had alarmed them was unfounded. [462] By this
time Saint Bartholomew's day drew near; and the great annual fair, the
delight of idle apprentices and the horror of Puritanical Aldermen,
was opened in Smithfield with the usual display of dwarfs, giants, and
dancing dogs, the man that ate fire, and the elephant that loaded and
fired a musket. But of all the shows none proved so attractive as a
dramatic performance which, in conception, though doubtless not in
execution, seems to have borne much resemblance to those immortal
masterpieces of humour in which Aristophanes held up Cleon and Lamachus
to derision. Two strollers personated Killegrew and Delaval. The
Admirals were represented as flying with their whole fleet before a few
French privateers, and taking shelter under the grins of the Tower.
The office of Chorus was performed by a Jackpudding who expressed very
freely his opinion of the naval administration. Immense crowds flocked
to see this strange farce. The applauses were loud; the receipts were
great; and the mountebanks, who had at first ventured to attack only the
unlucky and unpopular Board of Admiralty, now, emboldened by impunity
and success, and probably prompted and rewarded by persons of much
higher station than their own, began to cast reflections on other
departments of the government. This attempt to revive the license of the
Attic Stage was soon brought to a close by the appearance of a strong
body of constables who carried off the actors to prison. [463] Meanwhile
the streets of London were every night strewn with seditious handbills.
At all the taverns the zealots of hereditary right were limping about
with glasses of wine and punch at their lips. This fashion had just come
in; and the uninitiated wondered much that so great a number of jolly
gentlemen should have suddenly become lame. But, those who were in the
secret knew that the word Limp was a consecrated word, that every one
of the four letters which composed it was the initial of an august name,
and that the loyal subject who limped while he drank was taking off his
bumper to Lewis, James, Mary, and the Prince. [464]

It was not only in the capital that the Jacobites, at this time, made a
great display of their wit. They mustered strong at Bath, where the Lord
President Caermarthen was trying to recruit his feeble health. Every
evening they met, as they phrased it, to serenade the Marquess. In other
words they assembled under the sick man's window, and there sang doggrel
lampoons on him. [465]

It is remarkable that the Lord President, at the very time at which
he was insulted as a Williamite at Bath, was considered as a stanch
Jacobite at Saint Germains. How he came to be so considered is a
most perplexing question. Some writers are of opinion that he, like
Shrewsbury, Russell, Godolphin and Marlborough, entered into engagements
with one king while eating the bread of the other. But this opinion
does not rest on sufficient proofs. About the treasons of Shrewsbury,
of Russell, of Godolphin and of Marlborough, we have a great mass of
evidence, derived from various sources, and extending over several
years. But all the information which we possess about Caermarthen's
dealings with James is contained in a single short paper written by
Melfort on the sixteenth of October 1693. From that paper it is quite
clear that some intelligence had reached the banished King and his
Ministers which led them to regard Caermarthen as a friend. But there is
no proof that they ever so regarded him, either before that day or after
that day. [466] On the whole, the most probable explanation of this
mystery seems to be that Caermarthen had been sounded by some Jacobite
emissary much less artful than himself, and had, for the purpose of
getting at the bottom of the new scheme of policy devised by Middleton,
pretended to be well disposed to the cause of the banished King, that an
exaggerated account of what had passed had been sent to Saint Germains,
and that there had been much rejoicing there at a conversion which soon
proved to have been feigned. It seems strange that such a conversion
should even for a moment have been thought sincere. It was plainly
Caermarthen's interest to stand by the sovereigns in possession. He
was their chief minister. He could not hope to be the chief minister of
James. It can indeed hardly be supposed that the political conduct of a
cunning old man, insatiably ambitious and covetous, was much influenced
by personal partiality. But, if there were any person to whom
Caermarthen was partial, that person was undoubtedly Mary. That he had
seriously engaged in a plot to depose her, at the risk of his head if he
failed, and with the certainty of losing immense power and wealth if he
succeeded, was a story too absurd for any credulity but the credulity of
exiles.

Caermarthen had indeed at that moment peculiarly strong reasons for
being satisfied with the place which he held in the counsels of William
and Mary. There is but too strong reason to believe that he was then
accumulating unlawful gain with a rapidity unexampled even in his
experience.

The contest between the two East India Companies was, during the autumn
of 1693, fiercer than ever. The House of Commons, finding the Old
Company obstinately averse to all compromise, had, a little before the
close of the late session, requested the King to give the three years'
warning prescribed by the Charter. Child and his fellows now began to
be seriously alarmed. They expected every day to receive the dreaded
notice. Nay, they were not sure that their exclusive privilege might not
be taken away without any notice at all; for they found that they had,
by inadvertently omitting to pay the tax lately imposed on their stock
at the precise time fixed by law, forfeited their Charter; and, though
it would, in ordinary circumstances, have been thought cruel in the
government to take advantage of such a slip, the public was not inclined
to allow the Old Company any thing more than the strict letter of the
bond. Every thing was lost if the Charter were not renewed before the
meeting of Parliament. There can be little doubt that the proceedings
of the corporation were still really directed by Child. But he had, it
should seem, perceived that his unpopularity had injuriously affected
the interests which were under his care, and therefore did not obtrude
himself on the public notice. His place was ostensibly filled by his
near kinsman Sir Thomas Cook, one of the greatest merchants of London,
and Member of Parliament for the borough of Colchester. The Directors
placed at Cook's absolute disposal all the immense wealth which lay in
their treasury; and in a short time near a hundred thousand pounds were
expended in corruption on a gigantic scale. In what proportions this
enormous sum was distributed among the great men at Whitehall, and how
much of it was embezzled by intermediate agents, is still a mystery. We
know with certainty however that thousands went to Seymour and thousands
to Caermarthen.

The effect of these bribes was that the Attorney General received orders
to draw up a charter regranting the old privileges to the old Company.
No minister, however, could, after what had passed in Parliament,
venture to advise the Crown to renew the monopoly without conditions.
The Directors were sensible that they had no choice, and reluctantly
consented to accept the new Charter on terms substantially the same with
those which the House of Commons had sanctioned.

It is probable that, two years earlier, such a compromise would have
quieted the feud which distracted the City. But a long conflict, in
which satire and calumny had not been spared, had heated the minds of
men. The cry of Dowgate against Leadenhall Street was louder than ever.
Caveats were entered; petitions were signed; and in those petitions a
doctrine which had hitherto been studiously kept in the background
was boldly affirmed. While it was doubtful on which side the royal
prerogative would be used, that prerogative had not been questioned.
But as soon as it appeared that the Old Company was likely to obtain a
regrant of the monopoly under the Great Seal, the New Company began to
assert with vehemence that no monopoly could be created except by Act
of Parliament. The Privy Council, over which Caermarthen presided, after
hearing the matter fully argued by counsel on both sides, decided in
favour of the Old Company, and ordered the Charter to be sealed. [467]

The autumn was by this time far advanced, and the armies in the
Netherlands had gone into quarters for the winter. On the last day of
October William landed in England. The Parliament was about to meet; and
he had every reason to expect a session even more stormy than the last.
The people were discontented, and not without cause. The year had been
every where disastrous to the allies, not only on the sea and in the Low
Countries, but also in Servia, in Spain, in Italy, and in Germany. The
Turks had compelled the generals of the Empire to raise the siege of
Belgrade. A newly created Marshal of France, the Duke of Noailles, had
invaded Catalonia and taken the fortress of Rosas. Another newly created
Marshal, the skilful and valiant Catinat, had descended from the Alps
on Piedmont, and had, at Marsiglia, gained a complete victory over the
forces of the Duke of Savoy. This battle is memorable as the first of
a long series of battles in which the Irish troops retrieved the honour
lost by misfortunes and misconduct in domestic war. Some of the exiles
of Limerick showed, on that day, under the standard of France, a valour
which distinguished them among many thousands of brave men. It is
remarkable that on the same day a battalion of the persecuted and
expatriated Huguenots stood firm amidst the general disorder round the
standard of Savoy, and fell fighting desperately to the last.

The Duke of Lorges had marched into the Palatinate, already twice
devastated, and had found that Turenne and Duras had left him something
to destroy. Heidelberg, just beginning to rise again from its ruins,
was again sacked, the peaceable citizens butchered, their wives and
daughters foully outraged. The very choirs of the churches were stained
with blood; the pyxes and crucifixes were torn from the altars; the
tombs of the ancient Electors were broken open; the corpses, stripped
of their cerecloths and ornaments, were dragged about the streets. The
skull of the father of the Duchess of Orleans was beaten to fragments
by the soldiers of a prince among the ladies of whose splendid Court she
held the foremost place.

And yet a discerning eye might have perceived that, unfortunate as the
confederates seemed to have been, the advantage had really been on their
side. The contest was quite as much a financial as a military contest.
The French King had, some months before, said that the last piece of
gold would carry the day; and he now began painfully to feel the truth
of the saying. England was undoubtedly hard pressed by public burdens;
but still she stood up erect. France meanwhile was fast sinking. Her
recent efforts had been too much for her strength, and had left her
spent and unnerved. Never had her rulers shown more ingenuity in
devising taxes or more severity in exacting them; but by no ingenuity,
by no severity, was it possible to raise the sums necessary for another
such campaign as that of 1693. In England the harvest had been abundant.
In France the corn and the wine had again failed. The people, as usual,
railed at the government. The government, with shameful ignorance or
more shameful dishonesty, tried to direct the public indignation
against the dealers in grain. Decrees appeared which seemed to have been
elaborately framed for the purpose of turning dearth into famine. The
nation was assured that there was no reason for uneasiness, that there
was more than a sufficient supply of food, and that the scarcity had
been produced by the villanous arts of misers, who locked up their
stores in the hope of making enormous gains. Commissioners were
appointed to inspect the granaries, and were empowered to send to
market all the corn that was not necessary for the consumption of the
proprietors. Such interference of course increased the suffering which
it was meant to relieve. But in the midst of the general distress there
was an artificial plenty in one favoured spot. The most arbitrary
prince must always stand in some awe of an immense mass of human beings
collected in the neighbourhood of his own palace. Apprehensions similar
to those which had induced the Caesars to extort from Africa and Egypt
the means of pampering the rabble of Rome induced Lewis to aggravate the
misery of twenty provinces for the purpose of keeping one huge city in
good humour. He ordered bread to be distributed in all the parishes of
the capital at less than half the market price. The English Jacobites
were stupid enough to extol the wisdom and humanity of this arrangement.
The harvest, they said, had been good in England and bad in France; and
yet the loaf was cheaper at Paris than in London; and the explanation
was simple. The French had a sovereign whose heart was French, and
who watched over his people with the solicitude of a father, while the
English were cursed with a Dutch tyrant, who sent their corn to Holland.
The truth was that a week of such fatherly government as that of Lewis
would have raised all England in arms from Northumberland to Cornwall.
That there might be abundance at Paris, the people of Normandy and Anjou
were stuffing themselves with nettles. That there might be tranquillity
at Paris, the peasantry were fighting with the bargemen and the troops
all along the Loire and the Seine. Multitudes fled from those rural
districts where bread cost five sous a pound to the happy place where
bread was to be had for two sous a pound. It was necessary to drive the
famished crowds back by force from the barriers, and to denounce the
most terrible punishments against all who should not go home and starve
quietly. [468]

Lewis was sensible that the strength of France had been overstrained by
the exertions of the last campaign. Even if her harvest and her vintage
had been abundant, she would not have been able to do in 1694 what she
had done in 1693; and it was utterly impossible that, in a season of
extreme distress, she should again send into the field armies superior
in number on every point to the armies of the coalition. New conquests
were not to be expected. It would be much if the harassed and exhausted
land, beset on all sides by enemies, should be able to sustain a
defensive war without any disaster. So able a politician as the French
King could not but feel that it would be for his advantage to treat with
the allies while they were still awed by the remembrance of the gigantic
efforts which his kingdom had just made, and before the collapse which
had followed those efforts should become visible.

He had long been communicating through various channels with some
members of the confederacy, and trying to induce them to separate
themselves from the rest. But he had as yet made no overture tending
to a general pacification. For he knew that there could be no general
pacification unless he was prepared to abandon the cause of James, and
to acknowledge the Prince and Princess of Orange as King and Queen of
England. This was in truth the point on which every thing turned. What
should be done with those great fortresses which Lewis had unjustly
seized and annexed to his empire in time of peace, Luxemburg which
overawed the Moselle, and Strasburg which domineered over the Upper
Rhine; what should be done with the places which he had recently won in
open war, Philipsburg, Mons and Namur, Huy and Charleroy; what barrier
should be given to the States General; on what terms Lorraine should be
restored to its hereditary Dukes; these were assuredly not unimportant
questions. But the all important question was whether England was to
be, as she had been under James, a dependency of France, or, as she
was under William and Mary, a power of the first rank. If Lewis really
wished for peace, he must bring himself to recognise the Sovereigns
whom he had so often designated as usurpers. Could he bring himself to
recognise them? His superstition, his pride, his regard for the unhappy
exiles who were pining at Saint Germains, his personal dislike of
the indefatigable and unconquerable adversary who had been constantly
crossing his path during twenty years, were on one side; his interests
and those of his people were on the other. He must have been sensible
that it was not in his power to subjugate the English, that he must at
last leave them to choose their government for themselves, and that what
he must do at last it would be best to do soon. Yet he could not at once
make up his mind to what was so disagreeable to him. He however opened
a negotiation with the States General through the intervention of Sweden
and Denmark, and sent a confidential emissary to confer in secret at
Brussels with Dykvelt, who possessed the entire confidence of William.
There was much discussion about matters of secondary importance; but
the great question remained unsettled. The French agent used, in private
conversation, expressions plainly implying that the government which he
represented was prepared to recognise William and Mary; but no formal
assurance could be obtained from him. Just at the same time the King
of Denmark informed the allies that he was endeavouring to prevail on
France not to insist on the restoration of James as an indispensable
condition of peace, but did not say that his endeavours had as yet
been successful. Meanwhile Avaux, who was now Ambassador at Stockholm,
informed the King of Sweden, that, as the dignity of all crowned heads
had been outraged in the person of James, the Most Christian King felt
assured that not only neutral powers, but even the Emperor, would try to
find some expedient which might remove so grave a cause of quarrel. The
expedient at which Avaux hinted doubtless was that James should waive
his rights, and that the Prince of Wales should be sent to England, bred
a Protestant, adopted by William and Mary, and declared their heir.
To such an arrangement William would probably have had no personal
objection. But we may be assured that he never would have consented to
make it a condition of peace with France. Who should reign in England
was a question to be decided by England alone. [469]

It might well be suspected that a negotiation conducted in this manner
was merely meant to divide the confederates. William understood the
whole importance of the conjuncture. He had not, it may be, the eye of a
great captain for all the turns of a battle. But he had, in the highest
perfection, the eye of a great statesman for all the turns of a war.
That France had at length made overtures to him was a sufficient proof
that she felt herself spent and sinking. That those overtures were made
with extreme reluctance and hesitation proved that she had not yet come
to a temper in which it was possible to have peace with her on fair
terms. He saw that the enemy was beginning to give ground, and that this
was the time to assume the offensive, to push forward, to bring up every
reserve. But whether the opportunity should be seized or lost it did not
belong to him to decide. The King of France might levy troops and exact
taxes without any limit save that which the laws of nature impose on
despotism. But the King of England could do nothing without the support
of the House of Commons; and the House of Commons, though it had
hitherto supported him zealously and liberally, was not a body on
which he could rely. It had indeed got into a state which perplexed
and alarmed all the most sagacious politicians of that age. There
was something appalling in the union of such boundless power and such
boundless caprice. The fate of the whole civilised world depended on
the votes of the representatives of the English people; and there was
no public man who could venture to say with confidence what those
representatives might not be induced to vote within twenty-four hours.
[470] William painfully felt that it was scarcely possible for a prince
dependent on an assembly so violent at one time, so languid at another,
to effect any thing great.
Indeed, though no sovereign did so much to
secure and to extend the power of the House of Commons, no sovereign
loved the House of Commons less. Nor is this strange; for he saw that
House at the very worst. He saw it when it had just acquired the power
and had not yet acquired the gravity of a senate. In his letters to
Heinsius he perpetually complains of the endless talking, the factious
squabbling, the inconstancy, the dilatoriness, of the body which
his situation made it necessary for him to treat with deference. His
complaints were by no means unfounded; but he had not discovered either
the cause or the cure of the evil.

The truth was that the change which the Revolution had made in the
situation of the House of Commons had made another change necessary;
and that other change had not yet taken place. There was parliamentary
government; but there was no Ministry; and, without a Ministry, the
working of a parliamentary government, such as ours, must always be
unsteady and unsafe.

It is essential to our liberties that the House of Commons should
exercise a control over all the departments of the executive
administration. And yet it is evident that a crowd of five or six
hundred people, even if they were intellectually much above the average
of the members of the best Parliament, even if every one of them were
a Burleigh, or a Sully, would be unfit for executive functions. It has
been truly said that every large collection of human beings, however
well educated, has a strong tendency to become a mob; and a country of
which the Supreme Executive Council is a mob is surely in a perilous
situation.

Happily a way has been found out in which the House of Commons can
exercise a paramount influence over the executive government, without
assuming functions such as can never be well discharged by a body so
numerous and so variously composed. An institution which did not exist
in the times, of the Plantagenets, of the Tudors or of the Stuarts, an
institution not known to the law, an institution not mentioned in any
statute, an institution of which such writers as De Lolme and Blackstone
take no notice, began to exist a few years after the Revolution, grew
rapidly into importance, became firmly established, and is now almost
as essential a part of our polity as the Parliament itself. This
institution is the Ministry.

The Ministry is, in fact, a committee of leading members of the two
Houses. It is nominated by the Crown; but it consists exclusively of
statesmen whose opinions on the pressing questions of the time agree,
in the main, with the opinions of the majority of the House of
Commons. Among the members of this committee are distributed the great
departments of the administration. Each Minister conducts the ordinary
business of his own office without reference to his colleagues. But the
most important business of every office, and especially such business
as is likely to be the subject of discussion in Parliament, is brought
under the consideration of the whole Ministry. In Parliament the
Ministers are bound to act as one man on all questions relating to
the executive government. If one of them dissents from the rest on a
question too important to admit of compromise, it is his duty to retire.
While the Ministers retain the confidence of the parliamentary majority,
that majority supports them against opposition, and rejects every motion
which reflects on them or is likely to embarrass them. If they forfeit
that confidence, if the parliamentary majority is dissatisfied with
the way in which patronage is distributed, with the way in which the
prerogative of mercy is used, with the conduct of foreign affairs, with
the conduct of a war, the remedy is simple. It is not necessary that the
Commons should take on themselves the business of administration, that
they should request the Crown to make this man a bishop and that man
a judge, to pardon one criminal and to execute another, to negotiate a
treaty on a particular basis or to send an expedition to a particular
place. They have merely to declare that they have ceased to trust the
Ministry, and to ask for a Ministry which they can trust.

It is by means of Ministries thus constituted, and thus changed, that
the English government has long been conducted in general conformity
with the deliberate sense of the House of Commons, and yet has been
wonderfully free from the vices which are characteristic of governments
administered by large, tumultuous and divided assemblies. A few
distinguished persons, agreeing in their general opinions, are the
confidential advisers at once of the Sovereign and of the Estates of the
Realm. In the closet they speak with the authority of men who stand high
in the estimation of the representatives of the people. In Parliament
they speak with the authority of men versed in great affairs and
acquainted with all the secrets of the State. Thus the Cabinet has
something of the popular character of a representative body; and the
representative body has something of the gravity of a cabinet.

Sometimes the state of parties is such that no set of men who can be
brought together possesses the full confidence and steady support of a
majority of the House of Commons. When this is the case, there must be
a weak Ministry; and there will probably be a rapid succession of weak
Ministries. At such times the House of Commons never fails to get into
a state which no person friendly to representative government can
contemplate without uneasiness, into a state which may enable us to form
some faint notion of the state of that House during the earlier years
of the reign of William. The notion is indeed but faint; for the weakest
Ministry has great power as a regulator of parliamentary proceedings;
and in the earlier years of the reign of William there was no Ministry
at all.

No writer has yet attempted to trace the progress of this institution,
an institution indispensable to the harmonious working of our other
institutions. The first Ministry was the work, partly of mere chance,
and partly of wisdom, not however of that highest wisdom which is
conversant with great principles of political philosophy, but of that
lower wisdom which meets daily exigencies by daily expedients. Neither
William nor the most enlightened of his advisers fully understood the
nature and importance of that noiseless revolution,--for it was no
less,--which began about the close of 1693, and was completed about the
close of 1696. But every body could perceive that, at the close of
1693, the chief offices in the government were distributed not unequally
between the two great parties, that the men who held those offices were
perpetually caballing against each other, haranguing against each
other, moving votes of censure on each other, exhibiting articles of
impeachment against each other, and that the temper of the House of
Commons was wild, ungovernable and uncertain. Everybody could perceive
that at the close of 1696, all the principal servants of the Crown were
Whigs, closely bound together by public and private ties, and prompt to
defend one another against every attack, and that the majority of the
House of Commons was arrayed in good order under those leaders, and had
learned to move, like one man, at the word of command. The history
of the period of transition and of the steps by which the change was
effected is in a high degree curious and interesting.

The statesman who had the chief share in forming the first English
Ministry had once been but too well known, but had long hidden himself
from the public gaze, and had but recently emerged from the obscurity
in which it had been expected that he would pass the remains of an
ignominious and disastrous life. During that period of general terror
and confusion which followed the flight of James, Sunderland had
disappeared. It was high time; for of all the agents of the fallen
government he was, with the single exception of Jeffreys, the most
odious to the nation. Few knew that Sunderland's voice had in secret
been given against the spoliation of Magdalene College and the
prosecution of the Bishops; but all knew that he had signed numerous
instruments dispensing with statutes, that he had sate in the High
Commission, that he had turned or pretended to turn Papist, that he had,
a few days after his apostasy, appeared in Westminster Hall as a witness
against the oppressed fathers of the Church. He had indeed atoned for
many crimes by one crime baser than all the rest. As soon as he had
reason to believe that the day of deliverance and retribution was at
hand, he had, by a most dexterous and seasonable treason, earned his
pardon. During the three months which preceded the arrival of the Dutch
armament in Torbay, he had rendered to the cause of liberty and of the
Protestant religion services of which it is difficult to overrate either
the wickedness or the utility. To him chiefly it was owing that, at the
most critical moment in our history, a French army was not menacing the
Batavian frontier and a French fleet hovering about the English coast.
William could not, without staining his own honour, refuse to protect
one whom he had not scrupled to employ. Yet it was no easy task even for
William to save that guilty head from the first outbreak of public fury.
For even those extreme politicians of both sides who agreed in nothing
else agreed in calling for vengeance on the renegade. The Whigs hated
him as the vilest of the slaves by whom the late government had been
served, and the Jacobites as the vilest of the traitors by whom it had
been overthrown. Had he remained in England, he would probably have died
by the hand of the executioner, if indeed the executioner had not
been anticipated by the populace. But in Holland a political refugee,
favoured by the Stadtholder, might hope to live unmolested. To Holland
Sunderland fled, disguised, it is said, as a woman; and his wife
accompanied him. At Rotterdam, a town devoted to the House of Orange, he
thought himself secure. But the magistrates were not in all the secrets
of the Prince, and were assured by some busy Englishmen that His
Highness would be delighted to hear of the arrest of the Popish dog, the
Judas, whose appearance on Tower Hill was impatiently expected by all
London. Sunderland was thrown into prison, and remained there till
an order for his release arrived from Whitehall. He then proceeded to
Amsterdam, and there changed his religion again. His second apostasy
edified his wife as much as his first apostasy had edified his master.
The Countess wrote to assure her pious friends in England that her poor
dear lord's heart had at last been really touched by divine grace, and
that, in spite of all her afflictions, she was comforted by seeing him
so true a convert. We may, however, without any violation of Christian
charity, suspect that he was still the same false, callous, Sunderland
who, a few months before, had made Bonrepaux shudder by denying the
existence of a God, and had, at the same time, won the heart of James
by pretending to believe in transubstantiation. In a short time the
banished man put forth an apology for his conduct. This apology, when
examined, will be found to amount merely to a confession that he had
committed one series of crimes in order to gain James's favour, and
another series in order to avoid being involved in James's ruin. The
writer concluded by announcing his intention to pass all the rest of his
life in penitence and prayer. He soon retired from Amsterdam to Utrecht,
and at Utrecht made himself conspicuous by his regular and devout
attendance on the ministrations of Huguenot preachers. If his letters
and those of his wife were to be trusted, he had done for ever with
ambition. He longed indeed to be permitted to return from exile, not
that he might again enjoy and dispense the favours of the Crown, not
that his antechambers might again be filled by the daily swarm of
suitors, but that he might see again the turf, the trees and the family
pictures of his country seat. His only wish was to be suffered to end
his troubled life at Althorpe; and he would be content to forfeit his
head if ever he went beyond the palings of his park. [471]

While the House of Commons, which had been elected during the vacancy of
the throne, was busily engaged in the work of proscription, he could not
venture to show himself in England. But when that assembly had ceased to
exist, he thought himself safe. He returned a few days after the Act of
Grace had been laid on the table of the Lords. From the benefit of that
Act he was by name excluded; but he well knew that he had now nothing to
fear. He went privately to Kensington, was admitted into the closet,
had an audience which lasted two hours, and then retired to his country
house. [472]

During many months be led a secluded life, and had no residence in
London. Once in the spring of 1692, to the great astonishment of the
public, he showed his face in the circle at Court, and was graciously
received. [473] He seems to have been afraid that he might, on his
reappearance in Parliament, receive some marked affront. He therefore,
very prudently, stole down to Westminster, in the dead time of the year,
on a day to which the Houses stood adjourned by the royal command, and
on which they met merely for the purpose of adjourning again. Sunderland
had just time to present himself, to take the oaths, to sign the
declaration against transubstantiation, and to resume his seat. None of
the few peers who were present had an opportunity of making any remark.
[474] It was not till the year 1692 that he began to attend regularly.
He was silent; but silent he had always been in large assemblies, even
when he was at the zenith of power. His talents were not those of a
public speaker. The art in which he surpassed all men was the art of
whispering. His tact, his quick eye for the foibles of individuals,
his caressing manners, his power of insinuation, and, above all, his
apparent frankness, made him irresistible in private conversation.
By means of these qualities he had governed James, and now aspired to
govern William.

To govern William, indeed, was not easy. But Sunderland succeeded
in obtaining such a measure of favour and influence as excited much
surprise and some indignation. In truth, scarcely any mind was strong
enough to resist the witchery of his talk and of his manners. Every man
is prone to believe in the gratitude and attachment even of the most
worthless persons on whom he has conferred great benefits. It can
therefore hardly be thought strange that the most skilful of all
flatterers should have been heard with favour, when he, with every
outward sign of strong emotion, implored permission to dedicate all
his faculties to the service of the generous protector to whom he owed
property, liberty, life. It is not necessary, however, to suppose that
the King was deceived. He may have thought, with good reason, that,
though little confidence could be placed in Sunderland's professions,
much confidence might be placed in Sunderland's situation; and the truth
is that Sunderland proved, on the whole, a more faithful servant than a
much less depraved man might have been. He did indeed make, in profound
secresy, some timid overtures towards a reconciliation with James.
But it may be confidently affirmed that, even had those overtures
been graciously received,--and they appear to have been received very
ungraciously,--the twice turned renegade would never have rendered any
real service to the Jacobite cause. He well knew that he had done that
which at Saint Germains must be regarded as inexpiable. It was not
merely that he had been treacherous and ungrateful. Marlborough had been
as treacherous and ungrateful; and Marlborough had been pardoned.
But Marlborough had not been guilty of the impious hypocrisy of
counterfeiting the signs of conversion. Marlborough had not pretended
to be convinced by the arguments of the Jesuits, to be touched by divine
grace, to pine for union with the only true Church. Marlborough had not,
when Popery was in the ascendant, crossed himself, shrived himself,
done penance, taken the communion in one kind, and, as soon as a turn
of fortune came, apostatized back again, and proclaimed to all the world
that, when he knelt at the confessional and received the host, he was
merely laughing at the King and the priests. The crime of Sunderland
was one which could never be forgiven by James; and a crime which could
never be forgiven by James was, in some sense, a recommendation to
William. The Court, nay, the Council, was full of men who might hope
to prosper if the banished King were restored. But Sunderland had left
himself no retreat. He had broken down all the bridges behind him. He
had been so false to one side that he must of necessity be true to
the other. That he was in the main true to the government which now
protected him there is no reason to doubt; and, being true, he could not
but be useful. He was, in some respects, eminently qualified to be at
that time an adviser of the Crown. He had exactly the talents and the
knowledge which William wanted. The two together would have made up a
consummate statesman. The master was capable of forming and executing
large designs, but was negligent of those small arts in which the
servant excelled. The master saw farther off than other men; but what
was near no man saw so clearly as the servant. The master, though
profoundly versed in the politics of the great community of nations,
never thoroughly understood the politics of his own kingdom. The servant
was perfectly well informed as to the temper and the organization of the
English factions, and as to the strong and weak parts of the character
of every Englishman of note.

Early in 1693, it was rumoured that Sunderland was consulted on all
important questions relating to the internal administration of the
realm; and the rumour became stronger when it was known that he had come
up to London in the autumn before the meeting of Parliament and that he
had taken a large mansion near Whitehall. The coffeehouse politicians
were confident that he was about to hold some high office. As yet,
however, he had the wisdom to be content with the reality of power, and
to leave the show to others. [475]

His opinion was that, as long as the King tried to balance the two great
parties against each other, and to divide his favour equally between
them, both would think themselves ill used, and neither would lend to
the government that hearty and steady support which was now greatly
needed. His Majesty must make up his mind to give a marked preference
to one or the other; and there were three weighty reasons for giving the
preference to the Whigs.

In the first place, the Whigs were on principle attached to the reigning
dynasty. In their view the Revolution had been, not merely necessary,
not merely justifiable, but happy and glorious. It had been the triumph
of their political theory. When they swore allegiance to William, they
swore without scruple or reservation; and they were so far from having
any doubt about his title that they thought it the best of all titles.
The Tories, on the other hand, very generally disapproved of that vote
of the Convention which had placed him on the throne. Some of them were
at heart Jacobites, and had taken the oath of allegiance to him only
that they might be able to injure him. Others, though they thought
it their duty to obey him as King in fact, denied that he was King by
right, and, if they were loyal to him, were loyal without enthusiasm.
There could, therefore, be little doubt on which of the two parties it
would be safer for him to rely.

In the second place, as to the particular matter on which his heart
was at present set, the Whigs were, as a body, prepared to support him
strenuously, and the Tories were, as a body, inclined to thwart him. The
minds of men were at this time much occupied by the question, in what
way the war ought to be carried on. To that question the two parties
returned very different answers. An opinion had during many months been
growing among the Tories that the policy of England ought to be strictly
insular; that she ought to leave the defence of Flanders and the Rhine
to the States General, the House of Austria and the Princes of the
Empire; that she ought to carry on hostilities with vigour by sea, but
to keep up only such an army as might, with the help of the militia, be
sufficient to repel an invasion. It was plain that, if this system
were adopted, there might be an immediate reduction of the taxes which
pressed most heavily on the nation. But the Whigs maintained that
this relief would be dearly purchased. Many thousands of brave English
soldiers were now in Flanders. Yet the allies had not been able to
prevent the French from taking Mons in 1691, Namur in 1692, Charleroy in
1693. If the English troops were withdrawn, it was certain that Ostend,
Ghent, Liege, Brussels would fall. The German Princes would hasten to
make peace, each for himself. The Spanish Netherlands would probably be
annexed to the French monarchy. The United Provinces would be again in
as great peril as in 1672, and would accept whatever terms Lewis might
be pleased to dictate. In a few months, he would be at liberty to put
forth his whole strength against our island. Then would come a struggle
for life and death. It might well be hoped that we should be able to
defend our soil even against such a general and such an army as had
won the battle of Landen. But the fight must be long and hard. How many
fertile counties would be turned into deserts, how many flourishing
towns would be laid in ashes, before the invaders were destroyed or
driven out! One triumphant campaign in Kent and Middlesex would do more
to impoverish the nation than ten disastrous campaigns in Brabant. It is
remarkable that this dispute between the two great factions was, during
seventy years, regularly revived as often as our country was at war with
France. That England ought never to attempt great military operations on
the Continent continued to be a fundamental article of the creed of the
Tories till the French Revolution produced a complete change in their
feelings. [476] As the chief object of William was to open the
campaign of 1694 in Flanders with an immense display of force, it was
sufficiently clear to whom he must look for assistance.

In the third place, the Whigs were the stronger party in Parliament. The
general election of 1690, indeed, had not been favourable to them.
They had been, for a time, a minority; but they had ever since been
constantly gaining ground; they were now in number a full half of the
Lower House; and their effective strength was more than proportioned
to their number; for in energy, alertness and discipline, they were
decidedly superior to their opponents. Their organization was not indeed
so perfect as it afterwards became; but they had already begun to
look for guidance to a small knot of distinguished men, which was long
afterwards widely known by the name of the junto. There is, perhaps, no
parallel in history, ancient or modern, to the authority exercised by
this council, during twenty troubled years, over the Whig body. The men
who acquired that authority in the days of William and Mary continued
to possess it, without interruption, in office and out of office, till
George the First was on the throne.

One of these men was Russell. Of his shameful dealings with the Court of
Saint Germains we possess proofs which leave no room for doubt. But no
such proofs were laid before the world till he had been many years dead.
If rumours of his guilt got abroad, they were vague and improbable; they
rested on no evidence; they could be traced to no trustworthy author;
and they might well be regarded by his contemporaries as Jacobite
calumnies. What was quite certain was that he sprang from an illustrious
house, which had done and suffered great things for liberty and for the
Protestant religion, that he had signed the invitation of the thirtieth
of June, that he had landed with the Deliverer at Torbay, that he had in
Parliament, on all occasions, spoken and voted as a zealous Whig,
that he had won a great victory, that he had saved his country from an
invasion, and that, since he had left the Admiralty, every thing had
gone wrong. We cannot therefore wonder that his influence over his party
should have been considerable.

But the greatest man among the members of the junto, and, in some
respects, the greatest man of that age, was the Lord Keeper Somers. He
was equally eminent as a jurist and as a politician, as an orator and as
a writer. His speeches have perished; but his State papers remain, and
are models of terse, luminous, and dignified eloquence. He had left
a great reputation in the House of Commons, where he had, during four
years, been always heard with delight; and the Whig members still looked
up to him as their leader, and still held their meetings under his roof.
In the great place to which he had recently been promoted, he had so
borne himself that, after a very few months, even faction and envy had
ceased to murmur at his elevation. In truth, he united all the
qualities of a great judge, an intellect comprehensive, quick and acute,
diligence, integrity, patience, suavity. In council, the calm wisdom
which he possessed in a measure rarely found among men of parts so quick
and of opinions so decided as his, acquired for him the authority of
an oracle. The superiority of his powers appeared not less clearly in
private circles. The charm of his conversation was heightened by the
frankness with which he poured out his thoughts. [477] His good temper
and his good breeding never failed. His gesture, his look, his tones
were expressive of benevolence. His humanity was the more remarkable,
because he had received from nature a body such as is generally found
united with a peevish and irritable mind. His life was one long malady;
his nerves were weak; his complexion was livid; his face was prematurely
wrinkled. Yet his enemies could not pretend that he had ever once,
during a long and troubled public life, been goaded, even by sudden
provocation, into vehemence inconsistent with the mild dignity of his
character. All that was left to them was to assert that his disposition
was very far from being so gentle as the world believed, that he was
really prone to the angry passions, and that sometimes, while his voice
was soft, and his words kind and courteous, his delicate frame was
almost convulsed by suppressed emotion. It will perhaps be thought that
this reproach is the highest of all eulogies.

The most accomplished men of those times have told us that there was
scarcely any subject on which Somers was not competent to instruct and
to delight. He had never travelled; and, in that age, an Englishman who
had not travelled was generally thought incompetent to give an opinion
on works of art. But connoisseurs familiar with the masterpieces of the
Vatican and of the Florentine gallery allowed that the taste of Somers
in painting and sculpture was exquisite. Philology was one of his
favourite pursuits. He had traversed the whole vast range of polite
literature, ancient and modern. He was at once a munificent and severely
judicious patron of genius and learning. Locke owed opulence to Somers.
By Somers Addison was drawn forth from a cell in a college. In distant
countries the name of Somers was mentioned with respect and gratitude
by great scholars and poets who had never seen his face. He was the
benefactor of Leclerc. He was the friend of Filicaja. Neither political
nor religious differences prevented him from extending his powerful
protection to merit. Hickes, the fiercest and most intolerant of all
the nonjurors, obtained, by the influence of Somers, permission to
study Teutonic antiquities in freedom and safety. Vertue, a strict Roman
Catholic, was raised by the discriminating and liberal patronage of
Somers from poverty and obscurity to the first rank among the engravers
of the age.

The generosity with which Somers treated his opponents was the more
honourable to him because he was no waverer in politics. From the
beginning to the end of his public life he was a steady Whig. His voice
was indeed always raised, when his party was dominant in the State,
against violent and vindictive counsels; but he never forsook his
friends, even when their perverse neglect of his advice had brought them
to the verge of ruin.

His powers of mind and his acquirements were not denied, even by his
detractors. The most acrimonious Tories were forced to admit, with an
ungracious snarl, which increased the value of their praise, that he had
all the intellectual qualities of a great man, and that in him alone,
among his contemporaries, brilliant eloquence and wit were to be found
associated with the quiet and steady prudence which ensures success
in life. It is a remarkable fact, that, in the foulest of all the many
libels that were published against him, he was slandered under the name
of Cicero. As his abilities could not be questioned, he was charged with
irreligion and immorality. That he was heterodox all the country vicars
and foxhunting squires firmly believed; but as to the nature and extent
of his heterodoxy there were many different opinions. He seems to have
been a Low Churchman of the school of Tillotson, whom he always
loved and honoured; and he was, like Tillotson, called by bigots a
Presbyterian, an Arian, a Socinian, a Deist, and an Atheist.

The private life of this great statesman and magistrate was malignantly
scrutinised; and tales were told about his libertinism which went on
growing till they became too absurd for the credulity even of party
spirit. At last, long after he had been condemned to flannel and chicken
broth, a wretched courtesan, who had probably never seen him except in
the stage box at the theatre, when she was following her vocation below
in a mask, published a lampoon in which she described him as the master
of a haram more costly than the Great Turk's. There is, however, reason
to believe that there was a small nucleus of truth round which this
great mass of fiction gathered, and that the wisdom and selfcommand
which Somers never wanted in the senate, on the judgment seat, at the
council board, or in the society of wits, scholars and philosophers,
were not always proof against female attractions.