No More Learning

But with the tyranny of James the bitter feeling
which that tyranny had excited among them had passed away. The parson
of a parish was naturally unwilling to join in what was really a triumph
over those principles which, during twenty-eight years, his flock had
heard him proclaim on every anniversary of the Martyrdom and on every
anniversary of the Restoration.

The soldiers, too, were discontented. They hated Popery indeed; and they
had not loved the banished King. But they keenly felt that, in the short
campaign which had decided the fate of their country, theirs had been an
inglorious part. Forty fine regiments, a regular army such as had
never before marched to battle under the royal standard of England,
had retreated precipitately before an invader, and had then, without a
struggle, submitted to him. That great force had been absolutely of no
account in the late change, had done nothing towards keeping William
out, and had done nothing towards bringing him in. The clowns, who,
armed with pitchforks and mounted on carthorses, had straggled in
the train of Lovelace or Delamere, had borne a greater part in the
Revolution than those splendid household troops, whose plumed hats,
embroidered coats, and curvetting chargers the Londoners had so often
seen with admiration in Hyde Park. The mortification of the army was
increased by the taunts of the foreigners, taunts which neither orders
nor punishments could entirely restrain. [5] At several places the anger
which a brave and highspirited body of men might, in such circumstances,
be expected to feel, showed itself in an alarming manner. A battalion
which lay at Cirencester put out the bonfires, huzzaed for King James,
and drank confusion to his daughter and his nephew. The garrison of
Plymouth disturbed the rejoicings of the County of Cornwall: blows were
exchanged, and a man was killed in the fray. [6]

The ill humour of the clergy and of the army could not but be noticed by
the most heedless; for the clergy and the army were distinguished from
other classes by obvious peculiarities of garb. "Black coats and red
coats," said a vehement Whig in the House of Commons, "are the curses
of the nation. " [7] But the discontent was not confined to the black coats
and the red coats. The enthusiasm with which men of all classes had
welcomed William to London at Christmas had greatly abated before the
close of February. The new king had, at the very moment at which
his fame and fortune reached the highest point, predicted the coming
reaction. That reaction might, indeed, have been predicted by a less
sagacious observer of human affairs. For it is to be chiefly ascribed
to a law as certain as the laws which regulate the succession of the
seasons and the course of the trade winds. It is the nature of man to
overrate present evil, and to underrate present good; to long for what
he has not, and to be dissatisfied with what he has. This propensity, as
it appears in individuals, has often been noticed both by laughing
and by weeping philosophers. It was a favourite theme of Horace and
of Pascal, of Voltaire and of Johnson. To its influence on the fate
of great communities may be ascribed most of the revolutions and
counterrevolutions recorded in history. A hundred generations have
elapsed since the first great national emancipation, of which an account
has come down to us. We read in the most ancient of books that a
people bowed to the dust under a cruel yoke, scourged to toil by hard
taskmasters, not supplied with straw, yet compelled to furnish the daily
tale of bricks, became sick of life, and raised such a cry of misery as
pierced the heavens. The slaves were wonderfully set free: at the moment
of their liberation they raised a song of gratitude and triumph: but, in
a few hours, they began to regret their slavery, and to murmur against
the leader who had decoyed them away from the savoury fare of the house
of bondage to the dreary waste which still separated them from the land
flowing with milk and honey. Since that time the history of every great
deliverer has been the history of Moses retold. Down to the present
hour rejoicings like those on the shore of the Red Sea have ever been
speedily followed by murmurings like those at the Waters of Strife. [8]
The most just and salutary revolution must produce much suffering. The
most just and salutary revolution cannot produce all the good that had
been expected from it by men of uninstructed minds and sanguine tempers.
Even the wisest cannot, while it is still recent, weigh quite fairly the
evils which it has caused against the evils which it has removed. For
the evils which it has caused are felt; and the evils which it has
removed are felt no longer.

Thus it was now in England. The public was, as it always is during
the cold fits which follow its hot fits, sullen, hard to please,
dissatisfied with itself, dissatisfied with those who had lately been
its favourites. The truce between the two great parties was at an end.
Separated by the memory of all that had been done and suffered during a
conflict of half a century, they had been, during a few months, united
by a common danger. But the danger was over: the union was dissolved;
and the old animosity broke forth again in all its strength.

James had during the last year of his reign, been even more hated by
the Tories than by the Whigs; and not without cause for the Whigs he was
only an enemy; and to the Tories he had been a faithless and thankless
friend. But the old royalist feeling, which had seemed to be extinct in
the time of his lawless domination, had been partially revived by his
misfortunes. Many lords and gentlemen, who had, in December, taken arms
for the Prince of Orange and a Free Parliament, muttered, two months
later, that they had been drawn in; that they had trusted too much
to His Highness's Declaration; that they had given him credit for a
disinterestedness which, it now appeared, was not in his nature. They
had meant to put on King James, for his own good, some gentle force, to
punish the Jesuits and renegades who had misled him, to obtain from
him some guarantee for the safety of the civil and ecclesiastical
institutions of the realm, but not to uncrown and banish him. For his
maladministration, gross as it had been, excuses were found. Was it
strange that, driven from his native land, while still a boy, by rebels
who were a disgrace to the Protestant name, and forced to pass his
youth in countries where the Roman Catholic religion was established,
he should have been captivated by that most attractive of all
superstitions? Was it strange that, persecuted and calumniated as he
had been by an implacable faction, his disposition should have become
sterner and more severe than it had once been thought, and that, when
those who had tried to blast his honour and to rob him of his birthright
were at length in his power, he should not have sufficiently tempered
justice with mercy? As to the worst charge which had been brought
against him, the charge of trying to cheat his daughters out of their
inheritance by fathering a supposititious child, on what grounds did it
rest? Merely on slight circumstances, such as might well be imputed to
accident, or to that imprudence which was but too much in harmony with
his character. Did ever the most stupid country justice put a boy in
the stocks without requiring stronger evidence than that on which the
English people had pronounced their King guilty of the basest and most
odious of all frauds? Some great faults he had doubtless committed,
nothing could be more just or constitutional than that for those faults
his advisers and tools should be called to a severe reckoning; nor did
any of those advisers and tools more richly deserve punishment than the
Roundhead sectaries whose adulation had encouraged him to persist in the
fatal exercise of the dispensing power. It was a fundamental law of the
land that the King could do no wrong, and that, if wrong were done by
his authority, his counsellors and agents were responsible. That great
rule, essential to our polity, was now inverted. The sycophants, who
were legally punishable, enjoyed impunity: the King, who was not legally
punishable, was punished with merciless severity. Was it possible for
the Cavaliers of England, the sons of the warriors who had fought under
Rupert, not to feel bitter sorrow and indignation when they reflected
on the fate of their rightful liege lord, the heir of a long line of
princes, lately enthroned in splendour at Whitehall, now an exile, a
suppliant, a mendicant? His calamities had been greater than even those
of the Blessed Martyr from whom he sprang. The father had been slain by
avowed and mortal foes: the ruin of the son had been the work of his
own children. Surely the punishment, even if deserved, should have been
inflicted by other hands. And was it altogether deserved? Had not the
unhappy man been rather weak and rash than wicked? Had he not some of
the qualities of an excellent prince? His abilities were certainly not
of a high order: but he was diligent: he was thrifty: he had fought
bravely: he had been his own minister for maritime affairs, and had, in
that capacity, acquitted himself respectably: he had, till his spiritual
guides obtained a fatal ascendency over his mind, been regarded as a man
of strict justice; and, to the last, when he was not misled by them, he
generally spoke truth and dealt fairly. With so many virtues he might,
if he had been a Protestant, nay, if he had been a moderate Roman
Catholic, have had a prosperous and glorious reign. Perhaps it might not
be too late for him to retrieve his errors. It was difficult to believe
that he could be so dull and perverse as not to have profited by the
terrible discipline which he had recently undergone; and, if that
discipline had produced the effects which might reasonably be expected
from it, England might still enjoy, under her legitimate ruler, a larger
measure of happiness and tranquillity than she could expect from the
administration of the best and ablest usurper.

We should do great injustice to those who held this language, if we
supposed that they had, as a body, ceased to regard Popery and despotism
with abhorrence. Some zealots might indeed be found who could not bear
the thought of imposing conditions on their King, and who were ready
to recall him without the smallest assurance that the Declaration of
Indulgence should not be instantly republished, that the High Commission
should not be instantly revived, that Petre should not be again seated
at the Council Board, and that the fellows of Magdalene should not again
be ejected. But the number of these men was small. On the other hand,
the number of those Royalists, who, if James would have acknowledged
his mistakes and promised to observe the laws, were ready to rally
round him, was very large. It is a remarkable fact that two able and
experienced statesmen, who had borne a chief part in the Revolution,
frankly acknowledged, a few days after the Revolution had been
accomplished, their apprehension that a Restoration was close at hand.
"If King James were a Protestant," said Halifax to Reresby, "we could
not keep him out four months. " "If King James," said Danby to the
same person about the same time, "would but give the country some
satisfaction about religion, which he might easily do, it would be very
hard to make head against him. " [9] Happily for England, James was, as
usual, his own worst enemy. No word indicating that he took blame
to himself on account of the past, or that he intended to govern
constitutionally for the future, could be extracted from him. Every
letter, every rumour, that found its way from Saint Germains to England
made men of sense fear that, if, in his present temper, he should be
restored to power, the second tyranny would be worse than the first.
Thus the Tories, as a body, were forced to admit, very unwillingly,
that there was, at that moment, no choice but between William and public
ruin. They therefore, without altogether relinquishing the hope that he
who was King by right might at some future time be disposed to listen to
reason, and without feeling any thing like loyalty towards him who was
King in possession, discontentedly endured the new government.

It may be doubted whether that government was not, during the first
months of its existence, in more danger from the affection of the Whigs
than from the disaffection of the Tories. Enmity can hardly be more
annoying than querulous, jealous, exacting fondness; and such was the
fondness which the Whigs felt for the Sovereign of their choice. They
were loud in his praise. They were ready to support him with purse and
sword against foreign and domestic foes. But their attachment to him was
of a peculiar kind. Loyalty such as had animated the gallant gentlemen
who fought for Charles the First, loyalty such as had rescued Charles
the Second from the fearful dangers and difficulties caused by twenty
years of maladministration, was not a sentiment to which the doctrines
of Milton and Sidney were favourable; nor was it a sentiment which a
prince, just raised to power by a rebellion, could hope to inspire. The
Whig theory of government is that kings exist for the people, and not
the people for the kings; that the right of a king is divine in no
other sense than that in which the right of a member of parliament, of
a judge, of a juryman, of a mayor, of a headborough, is divine; that,
while the chief magistrate governs according to law, he ought to be
obeyed and reverenced; that, when he violates the law, he ought to be
withstood; and that, when he violates the law grossly, systematically
and pertinaciously, he ought to be deposed. On the truth of these
principles depended the justice of William's title to the throne. It is
obvious that the relation between subjects who held these principles,
and a ruler whose accession had been the triumph of these principles,
must have been altogether different from the relation which had
subsisted between the Stuarts and the Cavaliers. The Whigs loved William
indeed: but they loved him not as a King, but as a party leader; and it
was not difficult to foresee that their enthusiasm would cool fast if he
should refuse to be the mere leader of their party, and should attempt
to be King of the whole nation. What they expected from him in return
for their devotion to his cause was that he should be one of themselves,
a stanch and ardent Whig; that he should show favour to none but Whigs;
that he should make all the old grudges of the Whigs his own; and there
was but too much reason to apprehend that, if he disappointed this
expectation, the only section of the community which was zealous in his
cause would be estranged from him. [10]

Such were the difficulties by which, at the moment of his elevation, he
found himself beset. Where there was a good path he had seldom failed to
choose it. But now he had only a choice among paths every one of which
seemed likely to lead to destruction. From one faction he could hope for
no cordial support. The cordial support of the other faction he could
retain only by becoming himself the most factious man in his kingdom, a
Shaftesbury on the throne. If he persecuted the Tories, their sulkiness
would infallibly be turned into fury. If he showed favour to the Tories,
it was by no means certain that he would gain their goodwill; and it was
but too probable that he might lose his hold on the hearts of the Whigs.
Something however he must do: something he must risk: a Privy Council
must be sworn in: all the great offices, political and judicial, must be
filled. It was impossible to make an arrangement that would please every
body, and difficult to make an arrangement that would please any body;
but an arrangement must be made.

What is now called a ministry he did not think of forming. Indeed what
is now called a ministry was never known in England till he had been
some years on the throne. Under the Plantagenets, the Tudors, and the
Stuarts, there had been ministers; but there had been no ministry. The
servants of the Crown were not, as now, bound in frankpledge for
each other. They were not expected to be of the same opinion even on
questions of the gravest importance. Often they were politically and
personally hostile to each other, and made no secret of their hostility.
It was not yet felt to be inconvenient or unseemly that they should
accuse each other of high crimes, and demand each other's heads. No man
had been more active in the impeachment of the Lord Chancellor Clarendon
than Coventry, who was a Commissioner of the Treasury. No man had
been more active in the impeachment of the Lord Treasurer Danby
than Winnington, who was Solicitor General. Among the members of the
Government there was only one point of union, their common head,
the Sovereign. The nation considered him as the proper chief of the
administration, and blamed him severely if he delegated his high
functions to any subject. Clarendon has told us that nothing was so
hateful to the Englishmen of his time as a Prime Minister. They would
rather, he said, be subject to an usurper like Oliver, who was first
magistrate in fact as well as in name, than to a legitimate King who
referred them to a Grand Vizier. One of the chief accusations which the
country party had brought against Charles the Second was that he was
too indolent and too fond of pleasure to examine with care the balance
sheets of public accountants and the inventories of military stores.
James, when he came to the crown, had determined to appoint no Lord
High Admiral or Board of Admiralty, and to keep the entire direction of
maritime affairs in his own hands; and this arrangement, which would now
be thought by men of all parties unconstitutional and pernicious in the
highest degree, was then generally applauded even by people who were not
inclined to see his conduct in a favourable light. How completely the
relation in which the King stood to his Parliament and to his ministers
had been altered by the Revolution was not at first understood even by
the most enlightened statesmen. It was universally supposed that
the government would, as in time past, be conducted by functionaries
independent of each other, and that William would exercise a general
superintendence over them all. It was also fully expected that a prince
of William's capacity and experience would transact much important
business without having recourse to any adviser.

There were therefore no complaints when it was understood that he had
reserved to himself the direction of foreign affairs. This was indeed
scarcely matter of choice: for, with the single exception of Sir William
Temple, whom nothing would induce to quit his retreat for public life,
there was no Englishman who had proved himself capable of conducting an
important negotiation with foreign powers to a successful and honourable
issue. Many years had elapsed since England had interfered with weight
and dignity in the affairs of the great commonwealth of nations.
The attention of the ablest English politicians had long been almost
exclusively occupied by disputes concerning the civil and ecclesiastical
constitution of their own country. The contests about the Popish Plot
and the Exclusion Bill, the Habeas Corpus Act and the Test Act, had
produced an abundance, it might almost be said a glut, of those talents
which raise men to eminence in societies torn by internal factions. All
the Continent could not show such skilful and wary leaders of parties,
such dexterous parliamentary tacticians, such ready and eloquent
debaters, as were assembled at Westminister. But a very different
training was necessary to form a great minister for foreign affairs; and
the Revolution had on a sudden placed England in a situation in which
the services of a great minister for foreign affairs were indispensable
to her.

William was admirably qualified to supply that in which the most
accomplished statesmen of his kingdom were deficient. He had long been
preeminently distinguished as a negotiator. He was the author and the
soul of the European coalition against the French ascendency. The clue,
without which it was perilous to enter the vast and intricate maze
of Continental politics, was in his hands. His English counsellors,
therefore, however able and active, seldom, during his reign, ventured
to meddle with that part of the public business which he had taken as
his peculiar province. [11]

The internal government of England could be carried on only by the
advice and agency of English ministers. Those ministers William selected
in such a manner as showed that he was determined not to proscribe any
set of men who were willing to support his throne. On the day after
the crown had been presented to him in the Banqueting House, the Privy
Council was sworn in. Most of the Councillors were Whigs; but the names
of several eminent Tories appeared in the list. [12] The four highest
offices in the state were assigned to four noblemen, the representatives
of four classes of politicians.

In practical ability and official experience Danby had no superior among
his contemporaries. To the gratitude of the new Sovereigns he had a
strong claim; for it was by his dexterity that their marriage had been
brought about in spite of difficulties which had seemed insuperable. The
enmity which he had always borne to France was a scarcely less powerful
recommendation. He had signed the invitation of the thirtieth of June,
had excited and directed the northern insurrection, and had, in the
Convention, exerted all his influence and eloquence in opposition to
the scheme of Regency. Yet the Whigs regarded him with unconquerable
distrust and aversion. They could not forget that he had, in evil days,
been the first minister of the state, the head of the Cavaliers, the
champion of prerogative, the persecutor of dissenters. Even in becoming
a rebel, he had not ceased to be a Tory. If he had drawn the sword
against the Crown, he had drawn it only in defence of the Church. If he
had, in the Convention, done good by opposing the scheme of Regency, he
had done harm by obstinately maintaining that the throne was not vacant,
and that the Estates had no right to determine who should fill it. The
Whigs were therefore of opinion that he ought to think himself
amply rewarded for his recent merits by being suffered to escape the
punishment of those offences for which he had been impeached ten years
before. He, on the other hand, estimated his own abilities and services,
which were doubtless considerable, at their full value, and thought
himself entitled to the great place of Lord High Treasurer, which he had
formerly held. But he was disappointed. William, on principle, thought
it desirable to divide the power and patronage of the Treasury among
several Commissioners. He was the first English King who never, from the
beginning to the end of his reign, trusted the white staff in the hands
of a single subject. Danby was offered his choice between the Presidency
of the Council and a Secretaryship of State. He sullenly accepted the
Presidency, and, while the Whigs murmured at seeing him placed so high,
hardly attempted to conceal his anger at not having been placed higher.
[13]

Halifax, the most illustrious man of that small party which boasted that
it kept the balance even between Whigs and Tories, took charge of the
Privy Seal, and continued to be Speaker of the House of Lords. [14] He
had been foremost in strictly legal opposition to the late Government,
and had spoken and written with great ability against the dispensing
power: but he had refused to know any thing about the design of
invasion: he had laboured, even when the Dutch were in full march
towards London, to effect a reconciliation; and he had never deserted
James till James had deserted the throne. But, from the moment of that
shameful flight, the sagacious Trimmer, convinced that compromise was
thenceforth impossible, had taken a decided part. He had distinguished
himself preeminently in the Convention: nor was it without a peculiar
propriety that he had been appointed to the honourable office of
tendering the crown, in the name of all the Estates of England, to the
Prince and Princess of Orange; for our Revolution, as far as it can
be said to bear the character of any single mind, assuredly bears the
character of the large yet cautious mind of Halifax. The Whigs, however,
were not in a temper to accept a recent service as an atonement for an
old offence; and the offence of Halifax had been grave indeed. He had
long before been conspicuous in their front rank during a hard fight
for liberty. When they were at length victorious, when it seemed that
Whitehall was at their mercy, when they had a near prospect of dominion
and revenge, he had changed sides; and fortune had changed sides with
him. In the great debate on the Exclusion Bill, his eloquence had struck
them dumb, and had put new life into the inert and desponding party of
the Court. It was true that, though he had left them in the day of
their insolent prosperity, he had returned to them in the day of their
distress. But, now that their distress was over, they forgot that he had
returned to them, and remembered only that he had left them. [15]

The vexation with which they saw Danby presiding in the Council, and
Halifax bearing the Privy Seal, was not diminished by the news that
Nottingham was appointed Secretary of State. Some of those zealous
churchmen who had never ceased to profess the doctrine of nonresistance,
who thought the Revolution unjustifiable, who had voted for a Regency,
and who had to the last maintained that the English throne could never
be one moment vacant, yet conceived it to be their duty to submit to the
decision of the Convention. They had not, they said, rebelled against
James. They had not selected William. But, now that they saw on the
throne a Sovereign whom they never would have placed there, they were
of opinion that no law, divine or human, bound them to carry the contest
further. They thought that they found, both in the Bible and in the
Statute Book, directions which could not be misunderstood. The Bible
enjoins obedience to the powers that be. The Statute Book contains an
act providing that no subject shall be deemed a wrongdoer for adhering
to the King in possession. On these grounds many, who had not concurred
in setting up the new government, believed that they might give it
their support without offence to God or man. One of the most eminent
politicians of this school was Nottingham. At his instance the
Convention had, before the throne was filled, made such changes in the
oath of allegiance as enabled him and those who agreed with him to take
that oath without scruple. "My principles," he said, "do not permit me
to bear any part in making a King. But when a King has been made, my
principles bind me to pay him an obedience more strict than he can
expect from those who have made him. " He now, to the surprise of some
of those who most esteemed him, consented to sit in the council, and
to accept the seals of Secretary. William doubtless hoped that this
appointment would be considered by the clergy and the Tory country
gentlemen as a sufficient guarantee that no evil was meditated against
the Church. Even Burnet, who at a later period felt a strong antipathy
to Nottingham, owned, in some memoirs written soon after the Revolution,
that the King had judged well, and that the influence of the Tory
Secretary, honestly exerted in support of the new Sovereigns, had saved
England from great calamities. [16]

The other Secretary was Shrewsbury. [17] No man so young had within
living memory occupied so high a post in the government. He had but just
completed his twenty-eighth year. Nobody, however, except the solemn
formalists at the Spanish embassy, thought his youth an objection to his
promotion. [18] He had already secured for himself a place in history
by the conspicuous part which he had taken in the deliverance of his
country. His talents, his accomplishments, his graceful manners, his
bland temper, made him generally popular. By the Whigs especially he
was almost adored. None suspected that, with many great and many amiable
qualities, he had such faults both of head and of heart as would
make the rest of a life which had opened under the fairest auspices
burdensome to himself and almost useless to his country.

The naval administration and the financial administration were confided
to Boards. Herbert was First Commissioner of the Admiralty. He had in
the late reign given up wealth and dignities when he found that he could
not retain them with honour and with a good conscience. He had carried
the memorable invitation to the Hague. He had commanded the Dutch fleet
during the voyage from Helvoetsluys to Torbay. His character for courage
and professional skill stood high. That he had had his follies and vices
was well known. But his recent conduct in the time of severe trial had
atoned for all, and seemed to warrant the hope that his future career
would be glorious. Among the commissioners who sate with him at the
Admiralty were two distinguished members of the House of Commons,
William Sacheverell, a veteran Whig, who had great authority in his
party, and Sir John Lowther, an honest and very moderate Tory, who in
fortune and parliamentary interest was among the first of the English
gentry. [19]

Mordaunt, one of the most vehement of the Whigs, was placed at the head
of the Treasury; why, it is difficult to say. His romantic courage, his
flighty wit, his eccentric invention, his love of desperate risks and
startling effects, were not qualities likely to be of much use to him in
financial calculations and negotiations. Delamere, a more vehement Whig,
if possible, than Mordaunt, sate second at the board, and was Chancellor
of the Exchequer. Two Whig members of the House of Commons were in the
Commission, Sir Henry Capel, brother of that Earl of Essex who died by
his own hand in the Tower, and Richard Hampden, son of the great leader
of the Long Parliament. But the Commissioner on whom the chief weight of
business lay was Godolphin. This man, taciturn, clearminded, laborious,
inoffensive, zealous for no government and useful to every government,
had gradually become an almost indispensable part of the machinery of
the state. Though a churchman, he had prospered in a Court governed by
Jesuits. Though he had voted for a Regency, he was the real head of a
treasury filled with Whigs. His abilities and knowledge, which had in
the late reign supplied the deficiencies of Bellasyse and Dover, were
now needed to supply the deficiencies of Mordaunt and Delamere. [20]

There were some difficulties in disposing of the Great Seal. The King
at first wished to confide it to Nottingham, whose father had borne it
during several years with high reputation. [21] Nottingham, however,
declined the trust; and it was offered to Halifax, but was again
declined.
Both these Lords doubtless felt that it was a trust which they
could not discharge with honour to themselves or with advantage to
the public. In old times, indeed, the Seal had been generally held by
persons who were not lawyers. Even in the seventeenth century it had
been confided to two eminent men, who had never studied at any Inn
of Court. Dean Williams had been Lord Keeper to James the First.
Shaftesbury had been Lord Chancellor to Charles the Second. But such
appointments could no longer be made without serious inconvenience.
Equity had been gradually shaping itself into a refined science, which
no human faculties could master without long and intense application.
Even Shaftesbury, vigorous as was his intellect, had painfully felt his
want of technical knowledge; [22] and, during the fifteen years which had
elapsed since Shaftesbury had resigned the Seal, technical knowledge
had constantly been becoming more and more necessary to his successors.
Neither Nottingham therefore, though he had a stock of legal learning
such as is rarely found in any person who has not received a legal
education, nor Halifax, though, in the judicial sittings of the House
of Lords, the quickness of his apprehension and the subtlety of his
reasoning had often astonished the bar, ventured to accept the highest
office which an English layman can fill. After some delay the Seal was
confided to a commission of eminent lawyers, with Maynard at their head.
[23]

The choice of judges did honour to the new government. Every Privy
Councillor was directed to bring a list. The lists were compared; and
twelve men of conspicuous merit were selected. [24] The professional
attainments and Whig principles of Pollexfen gave him pretensions to
the highest place. But it was remembered that he had held briefs for the
Crown, in the Western counties, at the assizes which followed the battle
of Sedgemoor. It seems indeed from the reports of the trials that he did
as little as he could do if he held the briefs at all, and that he
left to the Judges the business of browbeating witnesses and prisoners.
Nevertheless his name was inseparably associated in the public mind with
the Bloody Circuit. He, therefore, could not with propriety be put at
the head of the first criminal court in the realm. [25] After acting
during a few weeks as Attorney General, he was made Chief Justice of the
Common Pleas. Sir John Holt, a young man, but distinguished by learning,
integrity, and courage, became Chief Justice of the King's Bench. Sir
Robert Atkyns, an eminent lawyer, who had passed some years in rural
retirement, but whose reputation was still great in Westminster Hall,
was appointed Chief Baron. Powell, who had been disgraced on account
of his honest declaration in favour of the Bishops, again took his seat
among the judges. Treby succeeded Pollexfen as Attorney General; and
Somers was made Solicitor. [26]

Two of the chief places in the Royal household were filled by two
English noblemen eminently qualified to adorn a court. The high spirited
and accomplished Devonshire was named Lord Steward. No man had done more
or risked more for England during the crisis of her fate. In retrieving
her liberties he had retrieved also the fortunes of his own house. His
bond for thirty thousand pounds was found among the papers which James
had left at Whitehall, and was cancelled by William. [27]

Dorset became Lord Chamberlain, and employed the influence and patronage
annexed to his functions, as he had long employed his private means, in
encouraging genius and in alleviating misfortune. One of the first acts
which he was under the necessity of performing must have been painful to
a man of so generous a nature, and of so keen a relish for whatever
was excellent in arts and letters. Dryden could no longer remain Poet
Laureate. The public would not have borne to see any Papist among the
servants of their Majesties; and Dryden was not only a Papist, but
an apostate. He had moreover aggravated the guilt of his apostasy by
calumniating and ridiculing the Church which he had deserted. He had,
it was facetiously said, treated her as the Pagan persecutors of old
treated her children. He had dressed her up in the skin of a wild beast,
and then baited her for the public amusement. [28] He was removed; but
he received from the private bounty of the magnificent Chamberlain
a pension equal to the salary which had been withdrawn. The deposed
Laureate, however, as poor of spirit as rich in intellectual gifts,
continued to complain piteously, year after year, of the losses which he
had not suffered, till at length his wailings drew forth expressions
of well merited contempt from brave and honest Jacobites, who had
sacrificed every thing to their principles without deigning to utter one
word of deprecation or lamentation. [29]

In the Royal household were placed some of those Dutch nobles who stood
highest in the favour of the King. Bentinck had the great office of
Groom of the Stole, with a salary of five thousand pounds a year.
Zulestein took charge of the robes. The Master of the Horse was
Auverquerque, a gallant soldier, who united the blood of Nassau to the
blood of Horn, and who wore with just pride a costly sword presented to
him by the States General in acknowledgment of the courage with which he
had, on the bloody day of Saint Dennis, saved the life of William.

The place of Vice Chamberlain to the Queen was given to a man who had
just become conspicuous in public life, and whose name will frequently
recur in the history of this reign. John Howe, or, as he was more
commonly called, Jack Howe, had been sent up to the Convention by the
borough of Cirencester. His appearance was that of a man whose body was
worn by the constant workings of a restless and acrid mind. He was tall,
lean, pale, with a haggard eager look, expressive at once of flightiness
and of shrewdness. He had been known, during several years, as a small
poet; and some of the most savage lampoons which were handed about the
coffeehouses were imputed to him. But it was in the House of Commons
that both his parts and his illnature were most signally displayed.
Before he had been a member three weeks, his volubility, his asperity,
and his pertinacity had made him conspicuous. Quickness, energy, and
audacity, united, soon raised him to the rank of a privileged man. His
enemies, and he had many enemies, said that he consulted his personal
safety even in his most petulant moods, and that he treated soldiers
with a civility which he never showed to ladies or to Bishops. But no
man had in larger measure that evil courage which braves and even
courts disgust and hatred. No decencies restrained him: his spite was
implacable: his skill in finding out the vulnerable parts of strong
minds was consummate. All his great contemporaries felt his sting in
their turns. Once it inflicted a wound which deranged even the stern
composure of William, and constrained him to utter a wish that he were a
private gentleman, and could invite Mr. Howe to a short interview
behind Montague House. As yet, however, Howe was reckoned among the
most strenuous supporters of the new government, and directed all his
sarcasms and invectives against the malcontents. [30]

The subordinate places in every public office were divided between the
two parties: but the Whigs had the larger share. Some persons, indeed,
who did little honour to the Whig name, were largely recompensed for
services which no good man would have performed. Wildman was made
Postmaster General. A lucrative sinecure in the Excise was bestowed on
Ferguson. The duties of the Solicitor of the Treasury were both very
important and very invidious. It was the business of that officer to
conduct political prosecutions, to collect the evidence, to instruct the
counsel for the Crown, to see that the prisoners were not liberated on
insufficient bail, to see that the juries were not composed of persons
hostile to the government. In the days of Charles and James, the
Solicitors of the Treasury had been with too much reason accused of
employing all the vilest artifices of chicanery against men obnoxious
to the Court. The new government ought to have made a choice which was
above all suspicion. Unfortunately Mordaunt and Delamere pitched upon
Aaron Smith, an acrimonious and unprincipled politician, who had been
the legal adviser of Titus Oates in the days of the Popish Plot, and who
had been deeply implicated in the Rye House Plot. Richard Hampden, a
man of decided opinions but of moderate temper, objected to this
appointment. His objections however were overruled. The Jacobites, who
hated Smith and had reason to hate him, affirmed that he had obtained
his place by bullying the Lords of the Treasury, and particularly by
threatening that, if his just claims were disregarded, he would be the
death of Hampden. [31]

Some weeks elapsed before all the arrangements which have been mentioned
were publicly announced: and meanwhile many important events had taken
place. As soon as the new Privy Councillors had been sworn in, it was
necessary to submit to them a grave and pressing question. Could the
Convention now assembled be turned into a Parliament? The Whigs, who had
a decided majority in the Lower House, were all for the affirmative.
The Tories, who knew that, within the last month, the public feeling had
undergone a considerable change, and who hoped that a general election
would add to their strength, were for the negative. They maintained
that to the existence of a Parliament royal writs were indispensably
necessary. The Convention had not been summoned by such writs: the
original defect could not now be supplied: the Houses were therefore
mere clubs of private men, and ought instantly to disperse.

It was answered that the royal writ was mere matter of form, and that to
expose the substance of our laws and liberties to serious hazard for the
sake of a form would be the most senseless superstition. Wherever the
Sovereign, the Peers spiritual and temporal, and the Representatives
freely chosen by the constituent bodies of the realm were met together,
there was the essence of a Parliament. Such a Parliament was now
in being; and what could be more absurd than to dissolve it at a
conjuncture when every hour was precious, when numerous important
subjects required immediate legislation, and when dangers, only to be
averted by the combined efforts of King, Lords, and Commons, menaced
the State? A Jacobite indeed might consistently refuse to recognise the
Convention as a Parliament. For he held that it had from the beginning
been an unlawful assembly, that all its resolutions were nullities,
and that the Sovereigns whom it had set up were usurpers. But with what
consistency could any man, who maintained that a new Parliament ought to
be immediately called by writs under the great seal of William and Mary,
question the authority which had placed William and Mary on the throne?
Those who held that William was rightful King must necessarily hold that
the body from which he derived his right was itself a rightful Great
Council of the Realm. Those who, though not holding him to be rightful
King, conceived that they might lawfully swear allegiance to him as King
in fact, might surely, on the same principle, acknowledge the Convention
as a Parliament in fact. It was plain that the Convention was the
fountainhead from which the authority of all future Parliaments must be
derived, and that on the validity of the votes of the Convention must
depend the validity of every future statute. And how could the
stream rise higher than the source? Was it not absurd to say that the
Convention was supreme in the state, and yet a nullity; a legislature
for the highest of all purposes, and yet no legislature for the
humblest purposes; competent to declare the throne vacant, to change
the succession, to fix the landmarks of the constitution, and yet not
competent to pass the most trivial Act for the repairing of a pier or
the building of a parish church?

These arguments would have had considerable weight, even if every
precedent had been on the other side. But in truth our history afforded
only one precedent which was at all in point; and that precedent
was decisive in favour of the doctrine that royal writs are not
indispensably necessary to the existence of a Parliament. No royal writ
had summoned the Convention which recalled Charles the Second. Yet
that Convention had, after his Restoration, continued to sit and to
legislate, had settled the revenue, had passed an Act of amnesty, had
abolished the feudal tenures. These proceedings had been sanctioned by
authority of which no party in the state could speak without reverence.
Hale had borne a considerable share in them, and had always maintained
that they were strictly legal. Clarendon, little as he was inclined to
favour any doctrine derogatory to the rights of the Crown, or to the
dignity of that seal of which he was keeper, had declared that, since
God had, at a most critical conjuncture, given the nation a good
Parliament, it would be the height of folly to look for technical flaws
in the instrument by which that Parliament was called together. Would
it be pretended by any Tory that the Convention of 1660 had a more
respectable origin than the Convention of 1689? Was not a letter written
by the first Prince of the Blood, at the request of the whole peerage,
and of hundreds of gentlemen who had represented counties and towns, at
least as good a warrant as a vote of the Rump?

Weaker reasons than these would have satisfied the Whigs who formed
the majority of the Privy Council. The King therefore, on the fifth
day after he had been proclaimed, went with royal state to the House of
Lords, and took his seat on the throne. The Commons were called in; and
he, with many gracious expressions, reminded his hearers of the perilous
situation of the country, and exhorted them to take such steps as might
prevent unnecessary delay in the transaction of public business. His
speech was received by the gentlemen who crowded the bar with the deep
hum by which our ancestors were wont to indicate approbation, and which
was often heard in places more sacred than the Chamber of the Peers.
[32] As soon as he had retired, a Bill declaring the Convention a
Parliament was laid on the table of the Lords, and rapidly passed by
them. In the Commons the debates were warm. The House resolved itself
into a Committee; and so great was the excitement that, when the
authority of the Speaker was withdrawn, it was hardly possible to
preserve order. Sharp personalities were exchanged. The phrase, "hear
him," a phrase which had originally been used only to silence
irregular noises, and to remind members of the duty of attending to the
discussion, had, during some years, been gradually becoming what it
now is; that is to say, a cry indicative, according to the tone, of
admiration, acquiescence, indignation, or derision. On this occasion,
the Whigs vociferated "Hear, hear," so tumultuously that the Tories
complained of unfair usage. Seymour, the leader of the minority,
declared that there could be no freedom of debate while such clamour was
tolerated. Some old Whig members were provoked into reminding him that
the same clamour had occasionally been heard when he presided, and had
not then been repressed. Yet, eager and angry as both sides were, the
speeches on both sides indicated that profound reverence for law and
prescription which has long been characteristic of Englishmen, and
which, though it runs sometimes into pedantry and sometimes into
superstition, is not without its advantages. Even at that momentous
crisis, when the nation was still in the ferment of a revolution, our
public men talked long and seriously about all the circumstances of the
deposition of Edward the Second and of the deposition of Richard
the Second, and anxiously inquired whether the assembly which, with
Archbishop Lanfranc at its head, set aside Robert of Normandy, and put
William Rufus on the throne, did or did not afterwards continue to act
as the legislature of the realm. Much was said about the history
of writs; much about the etymology of the word Parliament. It is
remarkable, that the orator who took the most statesmanlike view of the
subject was old Maynard. In the civil conflicts of fifty eventful years
he had learned that questions affecting the highest interests of the
commonwealth were not to be decided by verbal cavils and by scraps of
Law French and Law Latin; and, being by universal acknowledgment the
most subtle and the most learned of English jurists, he could express
what he felt without the risk of being accused of ignorance and
presumption. He scornfully thrust aside as frivolous and out of place
all that blackletter learning, which some men, far less versed in such
matters than himself, had introduced into the discussion. "We are,"
he said, "at this moment out of the beaten path. If therefore we are
determined to move only in that path, we cannot move at all. A man in
a revolution resolving to do nothing which is not strictly according to
established form resembles a man who has lost himself in the wilderness,
and who stands crying 'Where is the king's highway? I will walk nowhere
but on the king's highway. ' In a wilderness a man should take the track
which will carry him home. In a revolution we must have recourse to
the highest law, the safety of the state. " Another veteran Roundhead,
Colonel Birch, took the same side, and argued with great force and
keenness from the precedent of 1660. Seymour and his supporters were
beaten in the Committee, and did not venture to divide the House on the
Report. The Bill passed rapidly, and received the royal assent on the
tenth day after the accession of William and Mary. [33]

The law which turned the Convention into a Parliament contained a clause
providing that no person should, after the first of March, sit or vote
in either House without taking the oaths to the new King and Queen. This
enactment produced great agitation throughout society. The adherents of
the exiled dynasty hoped and confidently predicted that the recusants
would be numerous. The minority in both Houses, it was said, would be
true to the cause of hereditary monarchy. There might be here and there
a traitor; but the great body of those who had voted for a Regency would
be firm. Only two Bishops at most would recognise the usurpers. Seymour
would retire from public life rather than abjure his principles. Grafton
had determined to fly to France and to throw himself at the feet of his
uncle. With such rumours as these all the coffeehouses of London were
filled during the latter part of February. So intense was the public
anxiety that, if any man of rank was missed, two days running, at his
usual haunts, it was immediately whispered that he had stolen away to
Saint Germains. [34]

The second of March arrived; and the event quieted the fears of one
party, and confounded the hopes of the other. The Primate indeed and
several of his suffragans stood obstinately aloof: but three Bishops and
seventy-three temporal peers took the oaths. At the next meeting of the
Upper House several more prelates came in. Within a week about a hundred
Lords had qualified themselves to sit. Others, who were prevented by
illness from appearing, sent excuses and professions of attachment
to their Majesties. Grafton refuted all the stories which had been
circulated about him by coming to be sworn on the first day. Two members
of the Ecclesiastical Commission, Mulgrave and Sprat, hastened to make
atonement for their fault by plighting their faith to William. Beaufort,
who had long been considered as the type of a royalist of the old
school, submitted after a very short hesitation. Aylesbury and
Dartmouth, though vehement Jacobites, had as little scruple about taking
the oath of allegiance as they afterwards had about breaking it. [35]
The Hydes took different paths. Rochester complied with the law; but
Clarendon proved refractory. Many thought it strange that the brother
who had adhered to James till James absconded should be less sturdy than
the brother who had been in the Dutch camp. The explanation perhaps
is that Rochester would have sacrificed much more than Clarendon by
refusing to take the oaths. Clarendon's income did not depend on the
pleasure of the Government but Rochester had a pension of four thousand
a year, which he could not hope to retain if he refused to acknowledge
the new Sovereigns. Indeed, he had so many enemies that, during some
months, it seemed doubtful whether he would, on any terms, be suffered
to retain the splendid reward which he had earned by persecuting the
Whigs and by sitting in the High Commission. He was saved from what
would have been a fatal blow to his fortunes by the intercession of
Burnet, who had been deeply injured by him, and who revenged himself as
became a Christian divine. [36]

In the Lower House four hundred members were sworn in on the second
of March; and among them was Seymour. The spirit of the Jacobites was
broken by his defection; and the minority with very few exceptions
followed his example. [37]

Before the day fixed for the taking of the oaths, the Commons had begun
to discuss a momentous question which admitted of no delay. During the
interregnum, William had, as provisional chief of the administration,
collected the taxes and applied them to the public service; nor could
the propriety of this course be questioned by any person who approved
of the Revolution. But the Revolution was now over: the vacancy of the
throne had been supplied: the Houses were sitting: the law was in full
force; and it became necessary immediately to decide to what revenue the
Government was entitled.

Nobody denied that all the lands and hereditaments of the Crown had
passed with the Crown to the new Sovereigns. Nobody denied that all
duties which had been granted to the Crown for a fixed term of years
might be constitutionally exacted till that term should expire. But
large revenues had been settled by Parliament on James for life; and
whether what had been settled on James for life could, while he lived,
be claimed by William and Mary, was a question about which opinions were
divided.

Holt, Treby, Pollexfen, indeed all the eminent Whig lawyers, Somers
excepted, held that these revenues had been granted to the late King, in
his political capacity, but for his natural life, and ought therefore,
as long as he continued to drag on his existence in a strange land,
to be paid to William and Mary. It appears from a very concise and
unconnected report of the debate that Somers dissented from this
doctrine. His opinion was that, if the Act of Parliament which had
imposed the duties in question was to be construed according to the
spirit, the word life must be understood to mean reign, and that
therefore the term for which the grant had been made had expired. This
was surely the sound opinion: for it was plainly irrational to treat the
interest of James in this grant as at once a thing annexed to his
person and a thing annexed to his office; to say in one breath that the
merchants of London and Bristol must pay money because he was naturally
alive, and that his successors must receive that money because he was
politically defunct. The House was decidedly with Somers. The members
generally were bent on effecting a great reform, without which it was
felt that the Declaration of Rights would be but an imperfect guarantee
for public liberty. During the conflict which fifteen successive
Parliaments had maintained against four successive Kings, the chief
weapon of the Commons had been the power of the purse; and never had
the representatives of the people been induced to surrender that weapon
without having speedy cause to repent of their too credulous loyalty.
In that season of tumultuous joy which followed the Restoration, a large
revenue for life had been almost by acclamation granted to Charles the
Second. A few months later there was scarcely a respectable Cavalier in
the kingdom who did not own that the stewards of the nation would have
acted more wisely if they had kept in their hands the means of checking
the abuses which disgraced every department of the government. James
the Second had obtained from his submissive Parliament, without a
dissentient voice, an income sufficient to defray the ordinary expenses
of the state during his life; and, before he had enjoyed that income
half a year, the great majority of those who had dealt thus liberally
with him blamed themselves severely for their liberality. If experience
was to be trusted, a long and painful experience, there could be no
effectual security against maladministration, unless the Sovereign were
under the necessity of recurring frequently to his Great Council for
pecuniary aid. Almost all honest and enlightened men were therefore
agreed in thinking that a part at least of the supplies ought to be
granted only for short terms. And what time could be fitter for the
introduction of this new practice than the year 1689, the commencement
of a new reign, of a new dynasty, of a new era of constitutional
government? The feeling on this subject was so strong and general that
the dissentient minority gave way. No formal resolution was passed; but
the House proceeded to act on the supposition that the grants which had
been made to James for life had been annulled by his abdication. [38]

It was impossible to make a new settlement of the revenue without
inquiry and deliberation. The Exchequer was ordered to furnish such
returns as might enable the House to form estimates of the public
expenditure and income. In the meantime, liberal provision was made
for the immediate exigencies of the state. An extraordinary aid, to be
raised by direct monthly assessment, was voted to the King. An Act was
passed indemnifying all who had, since his landing, collected by his
authority the duties settled on James; and those duties which had
expired were continued for some months.

Along William's whole line of march, from Torbay to London, he had been
importuned by the common people to relieve them from the intolerable
burden of the hearth money. In truth, that tax seems to have united all
the worst evils which can be imputed to any tax. It was unequal, and
unequal in the most pernicious way: for it pressed heavily on the poor,
and lightly on the rich. A peasant, all whose property was not worth
twenty pounds, was charged ten shillings. The Duke of Ormond, or the
Duke of Newcastle, whose estates were worth half a million, paid only
four or five pounds. The collectors were empowered to examine the
interior of every house in the realm, to disturb families at meals,
to force the doors of bedrooms, and, if the sum demanded were not
punctually paid, to sell the trencher on which the barley loaf was
divided among the poor children, and the pillow from under the head
of the lying-in woman. Nor could the Treasury effectually restrain the
chimneyman from using his powers with harshness: for the tax was farmed;
and the government was consequently forced to connive at outrages and
exactions such as have, in every age made the name of publican a proverb
for all that is most hateful.

William had been so much moved by what he had heard of these grievances
that, at one of the earliest sittings of the Privy Council, he
introduced the subject. He sent a message requesting the House of
Commons to consider whether better regulations would effectually prevent
the abuses which had excited so much discontent. He added that he would
willingly consent to the entire abolition of the tax if it should appear
that the tax and the abuses were inseparable. [39] This communication
was received with loud applause. There were indeed some financiers of
the old school who muttered that tenderness for the poor was a fine
thing; but that no part of the revenue of the state came in so exactly
to the day as the hearth money; that the goldsmiths of the City could
not always be induced to lend on the security of the next quarter's
customs or excise, but that on an assignment of hearth money there was
no difficulty in obtaining advances. In the House of Commons, those who
thought thus did not venture to raise their voices in opposition to
the general feeling. But in the Lords there was a conflict of which the
event for a time seemed doubtful. At length the influence of the
Court, strenuously exerted, carried an Act by which the chimney tax was
declared a badge of slavery, and was, with many expressions of gratitude
to the King, abolished for ever. [40]

The Commons granted, with little dispute, and without a division,
six hundred thousand pounds for the purpose of repaying to the United
Provinces the charges of the expedition which had delivered England. The
facility with which this large sum was voted to a shrewd, diligent and
thrifty people, our allies, indeed, politically, but commercially our
most formidable rivals, excited some murmurs out of doors, and
was, during many years, a favourite subject of sarcasm with Tory
pamphleteers. [41] The liberality of the House admits however of an
easy explanation. On the very day on which the subject was under
consideration, alarming news arrived at Westminster, and convinced many,
who would at another time have been disposed to scrutinise severely any
account sent in by the Dutch, that our country could not yet dispense
with the services of the foreign troops.

France had declared war against the States General; and the States
General had consequently demanded from the King of England those
succours which he was bound by the treaty of Nimeguen to furnish. [42]
He had ordered some battalions to march to Harwich, that they might be
in readiness to cross to the Continent. The old soldiers of James
were generally in a very bad temper; and this order did not produce a
soothing effect. The discontent was greatest in the regiment which now
ranks as first of the line. Though borne on the English establishment,
that regiment, from the time when it first fought under the great
Gustavus, had been almost exclusively composed of Scotchmen; and
Scotchmen have never, in any region to which their adventurous and
aspiring temper has led them, failed to note and to resent every slight
offered to Scotland. Officers and men muttered that a vote of a foreign
assembly was nothing to them.