CHAPTER XVI

ON THE STATE OF THE CONSTITUTION IN THE REIGNS OF ANNE, GEORGE I., AND GEORGE II.

The act of settlement was the seal of our constitutional laws, the complement of the revolution itself and the bill of rights, the last great statute which restrains the power of the Crown, and manifests, in any conspicuous degree, a jealousy of parliament in behalf of its own and the subject's privileges. The battle had been fought and gained; the statute-book, as it becomes more voluminous, is less interesting in the history of our constitution; the voice of petition, complaint, or remonstrance is seldom to be traced in the Journals; the Crown in return desists altogether, not merely from the threatening or objurgatory tone of the Stuarts, but from that dissatisfaction sometimes apparent in the language of William; and the vessel seems riding in smooth water, moved by other impulses, and liable perhaps to other dangers, than those of the ocean-wave and the tempest. The reigns, accordingly, of Anne, George I., and George II., afford rather materials for dissertation, than consecutive facts for such a work as the present; and may be sketched in a single chapter, though by no means the least important, which the reader's study and reflection must enable him to fill up. Changes of an essential nature were in operation during the sixty years of these three reigns, as well as in that beyond the limits of this undertaking, which in length measures them all; some of them greatly enhancing the authority of the Crown, or rather of the executive government, while others had so opposite a tendency, that philosophical speculators have not been uniform in determining on which side was the sway of the balance.

_Distinctive principles of whigs and tories._--No clear understanding can be acquired of the political history of England without distinguishing, with some accuracy of definition, the two great parties of whig and tory. But this is not easy; because those denominations being sometimes applied to factions in the state, intent on their own aggrandisement, sometimes to the principles they entertained or professed, have become equivocal, and do by no means, at all periods and on all occasions, present the same sense; an ambiguity which has been increased by the lax and incorrect use of familiar language. We may consider the words, in the first instance, as expressive of a political theory or principle, applicable to the English government. They were originally employed at the time of the bill of exclusion, though the distinction of the parties they denote is evidently at least as old as the long parliament. Both of these parties, it is material to observe, agreed in the maintenance of the constitution; that is, in the administration of government by an hereditary sovereign, and in the concurrence of that sovereign with the two houses of parliament in legislation, as well as in those other institutions which have been reckoned most ancient and fundamental. A favourer of unlimited monarchy was not a tory, neither was a republican a whig. Lord Clarendon was a tory, Hobbes was not; Bishop Hoadley was a whig, Milton was not. But they differed mainly in this; that to a tory the constitution, inasmuch as it was the constitution, was an ultimate point, beyond which he never looked, and from which he thought it altogether impossible to swerve; whereas the whig deemed all forms of government subordinate to the public good, and therefore liable to change when they should cease to promote that object. Within those bounds which he, as well as his antagonist, meant not to transgress, and rejecting all unnecessary innovation, the whig had a natural tendency to political improvement, the tory an aversion to it. The one loved to descant on liberty and the rights of mankind, the other on the mischiefs of sedition and the rights of kings. Though both, as I have said, admitted a common principle, the maintenance of the constitution, yet this made the privileges of the subject, that the Crown's prerogative, his peculiar care. Hence it seemed likely that, through passion and circumstance, the tory might aid in establishing despotism, or the whig in subverting monarchy. The former was generally hostile to the liberty of the press, and to freedom of enquiry, especially in religion; the latter their friend. The principle of the one, in short, was melioration; of the other, conservation.

But the distinctive characters of whig and tory were less plainly seen, after the revolution and act of settlement, in relation to the Crown, than to some other parts of our polity. The tory was ardently, and in the first place, the supporter of the church in as much pre-eminence and power as he could give it. For the church's sake, when both seemed as it were on one plank, he sacrificed his loyalty; for her he was always ready to persecute the catholic, and if the times permitted not to persecute, yet to restrain and discountenance, the nonconformist. He came unwillingly into the toleration, which the whig held up as one of the great trophies of the revolution. The whig spurned at the haughty language of the church, and treated the dissenters with moderation, or perhaps with favour. This distinction subsisted long after the two parties had shifted their ground as to civil liberty and royal power. Again; a predilection for the territorial aristocracy, and for a government chiefly conducted by their influence, a jealousy of new men, of the mercantile interest, of the commonalty, never failed to mark the genuine tory. It has been common to speak of the whigs as an aristocratical faction. Doubtless the majority of the peerage from the revolution downwards to the death of George II. were of that denomination. But this is merely an instance wherein the party and the principle are to be distinguished. The natural bias of the aristocracy is towards the Crown; but, except in most part of the reign of Anne, the Crown might be reckoned with the whig party. No one who reflects on the motives which are likely to influence the judgment of classes in society, would hesitate to predict that an English House of Lords would contain a larger proportion of men inclined to the tory principle than of the opposite school; and we do not find that experience contradicts this anticipation.

It will be obvious that I have given to each of these political principles a moral character; and have considered them as they would subsist in upright and conscientious men, not as we may find them "in the dregs of Romulus," suffocated by selfishness or distorted by faction. The whigs appear to have taken a far more comprehensive view of the nature and ends of civil society; their principle is more virtuous, more flexible to the variations of time and circumstance, more congenial to large and masculine intellects. But it may probably be no small advantage that the two parties, or rather the sentiments which have been presumed to actuate them, should have been mingled, as we find them, in the complex mass of the English nation, whether the proportions may or not have been always such as we might desire. They bear some analogy to the two forces which retain the planetary bodies in their orbits; the annihilation of one would disperse them into chaos, that of the other would drag them to a centre. And, though I cannot reckon these old appellations by any means characteristic of our political factions in the nineteenth century, the names whig and tory are often well applied to individuals. Nor can it be otherwise; since they are founded not only on our laws and history, with which most have some acquaintance, but in the diversities of condition and of moral temperament generally subsisting among mankind.

It is, however, one thing to prefer the whig principle, another to justify, as an advocate, the party which bore that name. So far as they were guided by that principle, I hold them far more friendly to the great interests of the commonwealth than their adversaries. But, in truth, the peculiar circumstances of these four reigns after the revolution, the spirit of faction, prejudice, and animosity, above all, the desire of obtaining or retaining power, which, if it be ever sought as a means, is soon converted into an end, threw both parties very often into a false position, and gave to each the language and sentiments of the other; so that the two principles are rather to be traced in writings, and those not wholly of a temporary nature, than in the debates of parliament. In the reigns of William and Anne, the whigs, speaking of them generally as a great party, had preserved their original character unimpaired far more than their opponents. All that had passed in the former reign served to humble the tories, and to enfeeble their principle. The revolution itself, and the votes upon which it was founded, the bill of recognition in 1690, the repeal of the non-resisting test, the act of settlement, the oath of abjuration, were solemn adjudications, as it were, against their creed. They took away the old argument, that the letter of the law was on their side. If this indeed were all usurpation, the answer was ready; but those who did not care to make it, or by their submission put it out of their power, were compelled to sacrifice not a little of that which had entered into the definition of a tory. Yet even this had not a greater effect than that systematic jealousy and dislike of the administration, which made them encroach, according to ancient notions, and certainly their own, on the prerogative of William. They learned in this no unpleasing lesson to popular assemblies, to magnify their own privileges and the rights of the people. This tone was often assumed by the friends of the exiled family, and in them it was without any dereliction of their object. It was natural that a jacobite should use popular topics in order to thwart and subvert an usurping government. His faith was to the crown, but to the crown on a right head. In a tory who voluntarily submitted to the reigning prince, such an opposition to the prerogative was repugnant to the maxims of his creed, and placed him, as I have said, in a false position. This is of course applicable to the reigns of George I. and II., and in a greater degree in proportion as the tory and jacobite were more separated than they had been perhaps under William.

The tories gave a striking proof how far they might be brought to abandon their theories, in supporting an address to the queen that she would invite the Princess Sophia to take up her residence in England; a measure so unnatural as well as imprudent that some have ascribed it to a subtlety of politics which I do not comprehend. But we need not, perhaps, look farther than to the blind rage of a party just discarded, who, out of pique towards their sovereign, made her more irreconcilably their enemy, and while they hoped to brand their opponents with inconsistency, forgot that the imputation would redound with tenfold force on themselves. The whigs justly resisted a proposal so little called for at that time; but it led to an act for the security of the succession, designating a regency in the event of the queen's decease, and providing that the actual parliament, or the last, if none were in being, should meet immediately, and continue for six months, unless dissolved by the successor.[294]

In the conduct of this party, generally speaking, we do not, I think, find any abandonment of the cause of liberty. The whigs appear to have been zealous for bills excluding placemen from the house, or limiting their numbers in it; and the abolition of the Scots privy council, an odious and despotic tribunal, was owing in a great measure to the authority of Lord Somers.[295] In these measures however the tories generally co-operated, and it is certainly difficult in the history of any nation, to separate the influence of sincere patriotism from that of animosity and thirst of power. But one memorable event in the reign of Anne gave an opportunity for bringing the two theories of government into collision, to the signal advantage of that which the Whigs professed; I mean, the impeachment of Dr. Sacheverell. Though with a view to the interests of their ministry, this prosecution was very unadvised, and has been deservedly censured, it was of high importance in a constitutional light, and is not only the most authentic exposition, but the most authoritative ratification, of the principles upon which the revolution is to be defended.[296]

The charge against Sacheverell was, not for impugning what was done at the revolution, which he affected to vindicate, but for maintaining that it was not a case of resistance to the supreme power, and consequently no exception to his tenet of an unlimited passive obedience. The managers of the impeachment had therefore not only to prove that there was resistance in the revolution, which could not of course be sincerely disputed, but to assert the lawfulness, in great emergencies, or what is called in politics necessity, of taking arms against the law--a delicate matter to treat of at any time, and not least so by ministers of state and law officers of the Crown, in the very presence, as they knew, of their sovereign.[297] We cannot praise too highly their speeches upon this charge; some shades, rather of discretion than discordance, may be perceptible; and we may distinguish the warmth of Lechmere, or the openness of Stanhope, from the caution of Walpole, who betrays more anxiety than his colleagues to give no offence in the highest quarter; but in every one the same fundamental principles of the whig creed, except on which indeed the impeachment could not rest, are unambiguously proclaimed. "Since we must give up our right to the laws and liberties of this kingdom," says Sir Joseph Jekyll, "or, which is all one, be precarious in the enjoyment of them, and hold them only during pleasure, if this doctrine of unlimited non-resistance prevails, the Commons have been content to undertake this prosecution."[298]--"The doctrine of unlimited, unconditional, passive obedience," says Mr. Walpole, "was first invented to support arbitrary and despotic power, and was never promoted or countenanced by any government that had not designs some time or other of making use of it."[299] And thus General Stanhope still more vigorously: "As to the doctrine itself of absolute non-resistance, it should seem needless to prove by arguments that it is inconsistent with the law of reason, with the law of nature, and with the practice of all ages and countries. Nor is it very material what the opinions of some particular divines, or even the doctrine generally preached in some particular reigns, may have been concerning it. It is sufficient for us to know what the practice of the church of England has been, when it found itself oppressed. And indeed one may appeal to the practice of all churches, of all states, and of all nations in the world, how they behaved themselves when they found their civil and religious constitutions invaded and oppressed by tyranny. I believe we may further venture to say, that there is not at this day subsisting any nation or government in the world, whose first original did not receive its foundation either from resistance or compact; and as to our purpose, it is equal if the latter be admitted. For wherever compact is admitted, there must be admitted likewise a right to defend the rights accruing by such compact. To argue the municipal laws of a country in this case is idle. Those laws were only made for the common course of things, and can never be understood to have been designed to defeat the end of all laws whatsoever; which would be the consequence of a nation's tamely submitting to a violation of all their divine and human rights."[300] Mr. Lechmere argues to the same purpose in yet stronger terms.[301]

But, if these managers for the commons were explicit in their assertion of the whig principle, the counsel for Sacheverell by no means unfurled the opposite banner with equal courage. In this was chiefly manifested the success of the former. His advocates had recourse to the petty chicane of arguing that he had laid down a general rule of obedience without mentioning its exceptions, that the revolution was a case of necessity, and that they fully approved what was done therein. They set up a distinction, which, though at that time perhaps novel, has sometimes since been adopted by tory writers; that resistance to the supreme power was indeed utterly illegal on any pretence whatever, but that the supreme power in this kingdom was the legislature, not the king; and that the revolution took effect by the concurrence of the Lords and Commons.[302] This is of itself a descent from the high ground of toryism, and would not have been held by the sincere bigots of that creed. Though specious, however, the argument is a sophism, and does not meet the case of the revolution. For, though the supreme power may be said to reside in the legislature, yet the prerogative within its due limits is just as much part of the constitution, and the question of resistance to lawful authority remains as before. Even if this resistance had been made by the two houses of parliament, it was but the case of the civil war, which had been explicitly condemned by more than one statute of Charles II. But, as Mr. Lechmere said in reply, it was undeniable that the Lords and Commons did not join in that resistance at the revolution as part of the legislative and supreme power, but as part of the collective body of the nation.[303] And Sir John Holland had before observed, "that there was a resistance at the revolution was most plain, if taking up arms in Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Cheshire, and almost all the counties of England; if the desertion of a prince's own troops to an invading prince, and turning their arms against their sovereign, be resistance."[304] It might in fact have been asked whether the Dukes of Leeds and Shrewsbury, then sitting in judgment on Sacheverell (and who afterwards voted him not guilty) might not have been convicted of treason, if the Prince of Orange had failed of success?[305] The advocates indeed of the prisoner made so many concessions as amounted to an abandonment of all the general question. They relied chiefly on numerous passages in the homilies, and most approved writers of the Anglican church, asserting the duty of unbounded passive obedience. But the managers eluded these in their reply with decent respect.[306] The Lords voted Sacheverell guilty by a majority of 67 to 59; several voting on each side rather according to their present faction than their own principles. They passed a slight sentence, interdicting him only from preaching for three years. This was deemed a sort of triumph by his adherents; but a severe punishment on a wretch so insignificant would have been misplaced; and the sentence may be compared to the nominal damages sometimes given in a suit instituted for the trial of a great right.

_Revolution in the ministry under Anne._--The shifting combinations of party in the reign of Anne, which affected the original distinctions of whig and tory, though generally known, must be shortly noticed. The queen, whose understanding and fitness for government were below mediocrity, had been attached to the tories, and bore an antipathy to her predecessor. Her first ministry, her first parliament, gave presage of a government to be wholly conducted by that party. But this prejudice was counteracted by the persuasions of that celebrated favourite, the wife of Marlborough, who, probably from some personal resentments, had thrown her influence into the scale of the whigs. The well known records of their conversation and correspondence present a strange picture of good-natured feebleness on one side, and of ungrateful insolence on the other. But the interior of a court will rarely endure daylight. Though Godolphin and Marlborough, in whom the queen reposed her entire confidence, had been thought tories, they became gradually alienated from that party, and communicated their own feelings to the queen. The House of Commons very reasonably declined to make an hereditary grant to the latter out of the revenues of the post-office in 1702, when he had performed no extraordinary services; though they acceded to it without hesitation after the battle of Blenheim.[307] This gave some offence to Anne; and the chief tory leaders in the cabinet, Rochester, Nottingham, and Buckingham, displaying a reluctance to carry on the war with such vigour as Marlborough knew to be necessary, were soon removed from office. Their revengeful attack on the queen, in the address to invite the Princess Sophia, made a return to power hopeless for several years. Anne however entertained a desire very natural to an English sovereign, yet in which none but a weak one will expect to succeed, of excluding chiefs of parties from her councils. Disgusted with the tories, she was loth to admit the whigs; and thus Godolphin's administration, from 1704 to 1708, was rather suddenly supported, sometimes indeed thwarted, by that party. Cowper was made chancellor against the queen's wishes;[308] but the junto, as it was called, of five eminent whig peers, Somers, Halifax, Wharton, Orford, and Sunderland, were kept out through the queen's dislike, and in some measure, no question, through Godolphin's jealousy. They forced themselves into the cabinet about 1708; and effected the dismissal of Harley and St. John, who, though not of the regular tory school in connection or principle, had already gone along with that faction in the late reign, and were now reduced by their dismissal to unite with it.[309] The whig ministry of Queen Anne, so often talked of, cannot in fact be said to have existed more than two years, from 1708 to 1710; her previous administration having been at first tory, and afterwards of a motley complexion, though depending for existence on the great whig interest which it in some degree proscribed. Every one knows that this ministry was precipitated from power through the favourite's abuse of her ascendancy, become at length intolerable to the most forbearing of queens and mistresses, conspiring with another intrigue of the bedchamber, and the popular clamour against Sacheverell's impeachment. It seems rather an humiliating proof of the sway which the feeblest prince enjoys even in a limited monarchy, that the fortunes of Europe should have been changed by nothing more noble than the insolence of one waiting-woman and the cunning of another. It is true that this was effected by throwing the weight of the Crown into the scale of a powerful faction; yet the house of Bourbon would probably not have reigned beyond the Pyrenees, but for Sarah and Abigail at Queen Anne's toilet.

_War of the succession._--The object of the war, as it is commonly called, of the Grand Alliance, commenced in 1702, was, as expressed in an address of the House of Commons, for preserving the liberties of Europe and reducing the exorbitant power of France.[310] The occupation of the Spanish dominions by the Duke of Anjou, on the authority of the late king's will, was assigned as its justification, together with the acknowledgment of the pretended Prince of Wales as successor to his father James. Charles, Archduke of Austria, was recognised as King of Spain; and as early as 1705 the restoration of that monarchy to his house is declared in a speech from the throne to be not only safe and advantageous, but glorious to England.[311] Louis XIV. had perhaps at no time much hope of retaining for his grandson the whole inheritance he claimed; and on several occasions made overtures for negotiation, but such as indicated his design of rather sacrificing the detached possessions of Italy and the Netherlands than Spain itself and the Indies.[312] After the battle of Oudenarde, however, and the loss of Lille in the campaign of 1708, the exhausted state of France and discouragement of his court induced him to acquiesce in the cession of the Spanish monarchy as a basis of treaty. In the conferences of the Hague in 1709, he struggled for a time to preserve Naples and Sicily; but ultimately admitted the terms imposed by the allies, with the exception of the famous thirty-seventh article of the preliminaries, binding him to procure by force or persuasion the resignation of the Spanish crown by his grandson within two months. This proposition he declared to be both dishonourable and impracticable; and, the allies refusing to give way, the negotiation was broken off. It was renewed the next year at Gertruydenburg; but the same obstacle still proved insurmountable.[313]

It has been the prevailing opinion in modern times that the English ministry, rather against the judgment of their allies of Holland, insisted upon a condition not indispensable to their security, and too ignominious for their fallen enemy to accept. Some may perhaps incline to think that, even had Philip of Anjou been suffered to reign in Naples, a possession rather honourable than important, the balance of power would not have been seriously affected, and the probability of durable peace been increased. This, however, it was not necessary to discuss. The main question is as to the power which the allies possessed of securing the Spanish monarchy for the archduke, if they had consented to waive the thirty-seventh article of the preliminaries. If indeed they could have been considered as a single potentate, it was doubtless possible, by means of keeping up great armies on the frontier, and by the delivery of cautionary towns, to have prevented the King of France from lending assistance to his grandson. But, self-interested and disunited as confederacies generally are, and as the grand alliance had long since become, this appeared a very dangerous course of policy, if Louis should be playing an underhand game against his engagements. And this it was not then unreasonable to suspect, even if we should believe, in despite of some plausible authorities, that he was really sincere in abandoning so favourite an interest. The obstinate adherence of Godolphin and Somers to the preliminaries may possibly have been erroneous; but it by no means deserves the reproach that has been unfairly bestowed on it; nor can the whigs be justly charged with protracting the war to enrich Marlborough, or to secure themselves in power.[314]

_Treaty of peace broken off._--The conferences at Gertruydenburg were broken off in July 1710, because an absolute security for the evacuation of Spain by Philip appeared to be wanting; and within six months a fresh negotiation was secretly on foot, the basis of which was his retention of that kingdom. For the administration presided over by Godolphin had fallen meanwhile; new counsellors, a new parliament, new principles of government. The tories had from the beginning come very reluctantly into the schemes of the grand alliance; though no opposition to the war had ever been shown in parliament, it was very soon perceived that the majority of that denomination had their hearts bent on peace.[315] But instead of renewing the negotiation in concert with the allies (which indeed might have been impracticable), the new ministers fell upon the course of a clandestine arrangement, in exclusion of all the other powers, which led to the signature of preliminaries in September 1711, and afterwards to the public congress of Utrecht, and the celebrated treaty named from that town. Its chief provisions are too well known to be repeated.

_Arguments for and against the treaty of Utrecht._--The arguments in favour of a treaty of pacification, which should abandon the great point of contest, and leave Philip in possession of Spain and America, were neither few nor inconsiderable. 1. The kingdom had been impoverished by twenty years of uninterruptedly augmented taxation; the annual burthens being triple in amount of those paid before the revolution. Yet, amidst these sacrifices, we had the mortification of finding a debt rapidly increasing, whereof the mere interest far exceeded the ancient revenues of the Crown, to be bequeathed, like an hereditary curse, to unborn ages. Though the supplies had been raised with less difficulty than in the late reign, and the condition of trade was less unsatisfactory, the landed proprietors saw with indignation the silent transfer of their wealth to new men, and hated the glory that was bought by their own degradation. Was it not to be feared that they might hate also the revolution, and the protestant succession that depended on it, when they tasted these fruits it had borne? Even the army had been recruited by violent means unknown to our constitution, yet such as the continual loss of men, with a population at the best stationary, had perhaps rendered necessary.[316]

2. The prospect of reducing Spain to the archduke's obedience was grown unfavourable. It was at best an odious work, and not very defensible on any maxims of national justice, to impose a sovereign on a great people in despite of their own repugnance, and what they deemed their loyal obligation. Heaven itself might shield their righteous cause, and baffle the selfish rapacity of human politics. But what was the state of the war at the close of 1710? The surrender of 7000 English under Stanhope at Brihuega had ruined the affairs of Charles, which in fact had at no time been truly prosperous, and confined him to the single province sincerely attached to him, Catalonia. As it was certain that Philip had spirit enough to continue the war, even if abandoned by his grandfather, and would have the support of almost the entire nation, what remained but to carry on a very doubtful contest for the subjugation of that extensive kingdom? In Flanders, no doubt, the genius of Marlborough kept still the ascendant; yet France had her Fabius in Villars; and the capture of three or four small fortresses in a whole campaign did not presage a rapid destruction of the enemy's power.

3. It was acknowledged that the near connection of the monarchs on the thrones of France and Spain could not be desired from Europe. Yet the experience of ages had shown how little such ties of blood determined the policy of courts; a Bourbon on the throne of Spain could not but assert the honour, and even imbibe the prejudices, of his subjects; and as the two nations were in all things opposite, and must clash in their public interests, there was little reason to fear a subserviency in the cabinet of Madrid, which, even in that absolute monarchy, could not be displayed against the general sentiment.

4. The death of the Emperor Joseph, and election of the Archduke Charles in his room, which took place in the spring of 1711, changed in no small degree the circumstances of Europe. It was now a struggle to unite the Spanish and Austrian monarchies under one head. Even if England might have little interest to prevent this, could it be indifferent to the smaller states of Europe that a family not less ambitious and encroaching than that of Bourbon should be so enormously aggrandised? France had long been to us the only source of apprehension; but to some states, to Savoy, to Switzerland, to Venice, to the principalities of the empire, she might justly appear a very necessary bulwark against the aggressions of Austria. The alliance could not be expected to continue faithful and unanimous, after so important an alteration in the balance of power.

5. The advocates of peace and adherents of the new ministry stimulated the national passions of England by vehement reproaches of the allies. They had thrown, it was contended, in despite of all treaties, an unreasonable proportion of expense upon a country not directly concerned in their quarrel, and rendered a negligent or criminal administration their dupes or accomplices. We were exhausting our blood and treasure to gain kingdoms for the house of Austria which insulted, and the best towns of Flanders for the states-general who cheated us. The barrier treaty of Lord Townshend was so extravagant, that one might wonder at the presumption of Holland in suggesting its articles, much more at the folly of our government in acceding to them. It laid the foundation of endless dissatisfaction on the side of Austria, thus reduced to act as the vassal of a little republic in her own territories, and to keep up fortresses at her own expense, which others were to occupy. It might be anticipated that, at some time, a sovereign of that house would be found more sensible to ignominy than to danger, who would remove this badge of humiliation by dismantling the fortifications which were thus to be defended. Whatever exaggeration might be in these clamours, they were sure to pass for undeniable truths with a people jealous of foreigners, and prone to believe itself imposed upon, from a consciousness of general ignorance and credulity.

These arguments were met by answers not less confident, though less successful at the moment, than they had been deemed convincing by the majority of politicians in later ages. It was denied that the resources of the kingdom were so much enfeebled; the supplies were still raised without difficulty; commerce had not declined; public credit stood high under the Godolphin ministry; and it was especially remarkable that the change of administration, notwithstanding the prospect of peace, was attended by a great fall in the price of stocks. France, on the other hand, was notoriously reduced to the utmost distress; and, though it were absurd to allege the misfortunes of our enemy by way of consolation for our own, yet the more exhausted of the two combatants was naturally that which ought to yield; and it was not for the honour of our free government that we should be outdone in magnanimous endurance for the sake of the great interests of ourselves and our posterity by the despotism we so boastfully scorned.[317] The King of France had now for half a century been pursuing a system of encroachment on the neighbouring states, which the weakness of the two branches of the Austrian house, and the perfidiousness of the Stuarts, not less than the valour of his troops and skill of his generals, had long rendered successful. The tide had turned for the first time in the present war; victories more splendid than were recorded in modern warfare had illustrated the English name. Were we spontaneously to relinquish these great advantages, and two years after Louis had himself consented to withdraw his forces from Spain, our own arms having been in the meantime still successful on the most important scene of the contest, to throw up the game in despair, and leave him far more the gainer at the termination of this calamitous war, than he had been after those triumphant campaigns which his vaunting medals commemorate? Spain of herself could not resist the confederates, even if united in support of Philip; which was denied as to the provinces composing the kingdom of Arragon, and certainly as to Catalonia; it was in Flanders that Castile was to be conquered; it was France that we were to overcome; and now that her iron barrier had been broken through, when Marlborough was preparing to pour his troops upon the defenceless plains of Picardy, could we doubt that Louis must in good earnest abandon the cause of his grandson, as he had already pledged himself in the conferences of Gertruydenburg?

2. It was easy to slight the influence which the ties of blood exert over kings. Doubtless they are often torn asunder by ambition or wounded pride. But it does not follow that they have no efficacy; and the practice of courts in cementing alliances by intermarriage seems to show that they are not reckoned indifferent. It might, however, be admitted that a king of Spain, such as she had been a hundred years before, would probably be led by the tendency of his ambition into a course of policy hostile to France. But that monarchy had long been declining; great rather in name and extent of dominion than intrinsic resources, she might perhaps rally for a short period under an enterprising minister; but with such inveterate abuses of government, and so little progressive energy among the people, she must gradually sink lower in the scale of Europe, till it might become the chief pride of her sovereigns that they were the younger branches of the house of Bourbon. To cherish this connection would be the policy of the court of Versailles; there would result from it a dependent relation, an habitual subserviency of the weaker power, a family compact of perpetual union, always opposed to Great Britain. In distant ages, and after fresh combinations of the European commonwealth should have seemed almost to efface the recollection of Louis XIV. and the war of the succession, the Bourbons on the French throne might still claim a sort of primogenitary right to protect the dignity of the junior branch by interference with the affairs of Spain; and a late posterity of those who witnessed the peace of Utrecht might be entangled by its improvident concessions.

3. That the accession of Charles to the empire rendered his possession of the Spanish monarchy in some degree less desirable, need not be disputed; though it would not be easy to prove that it could endanger England, or even the smaller states, since it was agreed on all hands that he was to be master of Milan and Naples. But against this, perhaps imaginary, mischief the opponents of the treaty set the risk of seeing the crowns of France and Spain united on the head of Philip. In the years 1711 and 1712 the dauphin, the Duke of Burgundy, and the Duke of Berry, were swept away. An infant stood alone between the King of Spain and the French succession. The latter was induced, with some unwillingness, to sign a renunciation of this contingent inheritance. But it was notoriously the doctrine of the French court that such renunciations were invalid; and the sufferings of Europe were chiefly due to this tenet of indefeasible royalty. It was very possible that Spain would never consent to this union, and that a fresh league of the great powers might be formed to prevent it; but, if we had the means of permanently separating the two kingdoms in our hands, it was strange policy to leave open this door for a renewal of the quarrel.

But whatever judgment we may be disposed to form as to the political necessity of leaving Spain and America in the possession of Philip, it is impossible to justify the course of that negotiation which ended in the peace of Utrecht. It was at best a dangerous and inauspicious concession, demanding every compensation that could be devised, and which the circumstances of the war entitled us to require. France was still our formidable enemy; the ambition of Louis was still to be dreaded, his intrigues to be suspected. That an English minister should have thrown himself into the arms of this enemy at the first overture of negotiation; that he should have renounced advantages upon which he might have insisted; that he should have restored Lille, and almost attempted to procure the sacrifice of Tournay; that throughout the whole correspondence and in all personal interviews with Torcy he should have shown the triumphant Queen of Great Britain more eager for peace than her vanquished adversary; that the two courts should have been virtually conspiring against those allies, without whom we had bound ourselves to enter on no treaty; that we should have withdrawn our troops in the midst of a campaign, and even seized upon the towns of our confederates while we left them exposed to be overcome by a superior force; that we should have first deceived those confederates by the most direct falsehood in denying our clandestine treaty, and then dictated to them its acceptance, are facts so disgraceful to Bolingbroke, and in somewhat a less degree to Oxford, that they can hardly be palliated by establishing the expediency of the treaty itself.

_Intrigues of the Jacobites._--For several years after the treaty of Ryswick the intrigues of ambitious and discontented statesmen, and of a misled faction in favour of the exiled family, grew much colder; the old age of James and the infancy of his son being alike incompatible with their success. The jacobites yielded a sort of provisional allegiance to the daughter of their king, deeming her, as it were, a regent in the heir's minority, and willing to defer the consideration of his claim till he should be competent to make it, or to acquiesce in her continuance upon the throne, if she could be induced to secure his reversion.[318] Meanwhile, under the name of tories and high-church men, they carried on a more dangerous war by sapping the bulwarks of the revolution settlement. The disaffected clergy poured forth sermons and libels, to impugn the principles of the whigs or traduce their characters. Twice a year especially, on the 30th of January and 29th of May, they took care that every stroke upon rebellion and usurpation should tell against the expulsion of the Stuarts and the Hanover succession. They inveighed against the dissenters and the toleration. They set up pretences of loyalty towards the queen, descanting sometimes on her hereditary right, in order to throw a slur on the settlement. They drew a transparent veil over their designs, which might screen them from prosecution, but could not impose, nor was meant to impose, on the reader. Among these the most distinguished was Leslie, author of a periodical sheet called the _Rehearsal_, printed weekly from 1704 to 1708; and as he, though a non-juror, and unquestionable jacobite, held only the same language as Sacheverell, and others who affected obedience to the government, we cannot much be deceived in assuming that their views were entirely the same.[319]

The court of St. Germains, in the first years of the queen, preserved a secret connection with Godolphin and Marlborough, though justly distrustful of their sincerity; nor is it by any means clear that they made any strong professions.[320] Their evident determination to reduce the power of France, their approximation towards the whigs, the averseness of the duchess to jacobite principles, taught at length that unfortunate court how little it had to expect from such ancient friends. The Scotch jacobites, on the other hand, were eager for the young king's immediate restoration; and their assurances finally produced his unsuccessful expedition to the coast in 1708.[321] This alarmed the queen, who at least had no thoughts of giving up any part of her dominions, and probably exasperated the two ministers.[322] Though Godolphin's partiality to the Stuart cause was always suspected, the proofs of his intercourse with their emissaries are not so strong as against Marlborough; who, so late as 1711, declared himself more positively than he seems hitherto to have done in favour of their restoration.[323] But the extreme selfishness and treachery of his character makes it difficult to believe that he had any further view than to secure himself in the event of a revolution which he judged probable. His interest, which was always his deity, did not lie in that direction; and his great sagacity must have perceived it.

_Just alarm for the Hanover succession._--A more promising overture had by this time been made to the young claimant from an opposite quarter. Mr. Harley, about the end of 1710, sent the Abbé Gaultier to Marshal Berwick (natural son of James II. by Marlborough's sister), with authority to treat about the restoration; Anne of course retaining the Crown for her life, and securities being given for the national religion and liberties. The conclusion of peace was a necessary condition. The jacobites in the English parliament were directed in consequence to fall in with the court, which rendered it decidedly superior. Harley promised to send over in the next year a plan for carrying that design into effect. But neither at that time, nor during the remainder of the queen's life, did this dissembling minister take any further measures, though still in strict connection with that party at home, and with the court of St. Germains.[324] It was necessary, he said, to proceed gently, to make the army their own, to avoid suspicions which would be fatal. It was manifest that the course of his administration was wholly inconsistent with his professions; the friends of the house of Stuart felt that he betrayed, though he did not delude them; but it was the misfortune of this minister, or rather the just and natural reward of crooked counsels, that those he meant to serve could neither believe in his friendship, nor forgive his appearances of enmity. It is doubtless not easy to pronounce on the real intentions of men so destitute of sincerity as Harley and Marlborough; but, in believing the former favourable to the protestant succession, which he had so eminently contributed to establish, we accede to the judgment of those contemporaries who were best able to form one, and especially of the very jacobites with whom he tampered. And this is so powerfully confirmed by most of his public measures, his averseness to the high tories, and their consequent hatred of him, his irreconcilable disagreement with those of his colleagues who looked most to St. Germains, his frequent attempts to renew a connection with the whigs, his contempt of the jacobite creed of government, and the little prospect he could have had of retaining power on such a revolution, that, so far at least as may be presumed from what has hitherto become public, there seems no reason for counting the Earl of Oxford among those from whom the house of Hanover had any enmity to apprehend.[325]

The pretender, meanwhile, had friends in the tory government more sincere probably and zealous than Oxford. In the year 1712 Lord Bolingbroke, the Duke of Buckingham, president of the council, and the Duke of Ormond, were engaged in this connection.[326] The last of these, being in the command of the army, little glory as that brought him, might become an important auxiliary. Harcourt, the chancellor, though the proofs are not, I believe, so direct, has always been reckoned in the same interest. Several of the leading Scots peers, with little disguise, avowed their adherence to it; especially the Duke of Hamilton, who, luckily perhaps for the kingdom, lost his life in a duel, at the moment when he was setting out on an embassy to France. The rage expressed by that faction at his death betrays the hopes they had entertained from him. A strong phalanx of tory members, called the October Club, though by no means entirely jacobite, were chiefly influenced by those who were such. In the new parliament of 1713, the queen's precarious health excited the Stuart partisans to press forward with more zeal. The masque was more than half drawn aside; and, vainly urging the ministry to fulfil their promises while yet in time, they cursed the insidious cunning of Harley and the selfish cowardice of the queen. Upon her they had for some years relied. Lady Masham, the bosom favourite, was entirely theirs; and every word, every look of the sovereign, had been anxiously observed, in the hope of some indication that she would take the road which affection and conscience, as they fondly argued, must dictate. But, whatever may have been the sentiments of Anne, her secret was never divulged, nor is there, as I apprehend, however positively the contrary is sometimes asserted, any decisive evidence whence we may infer that she even intended her brother's restoration.[327] The weakest of mankind have generally an instinct of self-preservation which leads them right, and perhaps more than stronger minds possess; and Anne could scarcely help perceiving that her own deposition from the throne would be the natural consequence of once admitting the reversionary right of one whose claim was equally good to the possession. The assertors of hereditary descent could acquiesce in her usurpation no longer than they found it necessary for their object; if her life should be protracted to an ordinary duration, it was almost certain that Scotland first, and afterwards England, would be wrested from her impotent grasp. Yet, though I believe the queen to have been sensible of this, it is impossible to pronounce with certainty that either through pique against the house of Hanover, or inability to resist her own counsellors, she might not have come into the scheme of altering the succession.

But, if neither the queen nor her lord treasurer were inclined to take that vigorous course which one party demanded, they at least did enough to raise just alarm in the other; and it seems strange to deny that the protestant succession was in danger. As Lord Oxford's ascendancy diminished, the signs of impending revolution became less equivocal. Adherents of the house of Stuart were placed in civil and military trust; an Irish agent of the pretender was received in the character of envoy from the court of Spain; the most audacious manifestations of disaffection were overlooked.[328] Several even in parliament spoke with contempt and aversion of the house of Hanover.[329] It was surely not unreasonable in the whig party to meet these assaults of the enemy with something beyond the ordinary weapons of an opposition. They affected no apprehensions that it was absurd to entertain. Those of the opposite faction, who wished well to the protestant interest, and were called Hanoverian tories, came over to their side, and joined them on motions that the succession was in danger.[330] No one hardly, who either hoped or dreaded the consequences, had any doubts upon this score; and it is only a few moderns who have assumed the privilege of setting aside the persuasion of contemporaries upon a subject which contemporaries were best able to understand.[331] Are we then to censure the whigs for urging on the elector of Hanover, who, by a strange apathy or indifference, seemed negligent of the great prize reserved for him; or is the bold step of demanding a writ of summons for the electoral prince as Duke of Cambridge to pass for a factious insult on the queen, because, in her imbecility, she was leaving the Crown to be snatched at by the first comer, even if she were not, as they suspected, in some conspiracy to bestow it on a proscribed heir?[332] I am much inclined to believe, that the great majority of the nation were in favour of the protestant succession; but, if the princes of the house of Brunswick had seemed to retire from the contest, it might have been impracticable to resist a predominant faction in the council and in parliament; especially if the son of James, listening to the remonstrances of his English adherents, could have been induced to renounce a faith which, in the eyes of too many, was the sole pretext for his exclusion.[333]

_Accession of George I._--The queen's death, which came at last perhaps rather more quickly than was foreseen, broke for ever the fair prospects of her family. George I., unknown and absent, was proclaimed without a single murmur, as if the Crown had passed in the most regular descent. But this was a momentary calm. The jacobite party, recovering from the first consternation, availed itself of its usual arms, and of those with which the new king injudiciously supplied it. Many of the tories who would have acquiesced in the act of settlement, seem to have looked on a leading share in the administration as belonging of right to what was called the church party, and complained of the formation of a ministry on the whig principle. In later times also, it has been not uncommon to censure George I. for governing, as it is called, by a faction. Nothing can be more unreasonable than this reproach. Was he to select those as his advisers, who had been, as we know and as he believed, in a conspiracy with his competitor? Was Lord Oxford, even if the king thought him faithful, capable of uniting with any public men, hated as he was on each side? Were not the tories as truly a faction as their adversaries, and as intolerant during their own power?[334] Was there not, above all, a danger that, if some of one denomination were drawn by pique and disappointment into the ranks of the jacobites, the whigs, on the other hand, so ungratefully and perfidiously recompensed for their arduous services to the house of Hanover, might think all royalty irreconcilable with the principles of freedom, and raise up a republican party, of which the scattered elements were sufficiently discernible in the nation?[335] The exclusion indeed of the whigs would have been so monstrous both in honour and policy, that the censure has generally fallen on their alleged monopoly of public offices. But the mischiefs of a disunited, hybrid ministry had been sufficiently manifest in the two last reigns; nor could George, a stranger to his people and their constitution, have undertaken without ruin that most difficult task of balancing parties and persons, to which the great mind of William had proved unequal. Nor is it true that the tories, as such, were proscribed; those who chose to serve the court met with court favour; and in the very outset the few men of sufficient eminence, who had testified their attachment to the succession, received equitable rewards; but, most happily for himself and the kingdom, most reasonably according to the principles on which alone his throne could rest, the first prince of the house of Brunswick gave a decisive preponderance in his favour to Walpole and Townshend above Harcourt and Bolingbroke.

_Great disaffection in the kingdom._--The strong symptoms of disaffection which broke out in a few months after the king's accession, and which can be ascribed to no grievance, unless the formation of a whig ministry was to be termed one, prove the taint of the late times to have been deep seated and extensive.[336] The clergy, in very many instances, were a curse rather than a blessing to those over whom they were set; and the people, while they trusted that from those polluted fountains they could draw the living waters of truth, became the dupes of factious lies and sophistry. Thus encouraged, the heir of the Stuarts landed in Scotland; and the spirit of that people being in a great measure jacobite, and very generally averse to the union, he met with such success as, had their independence subsisted, would probably have established him on the throne. But Scotland was now doomed to wait on the fortunes of her more powerful ally; and, on his invasion of England, the noisy partisans of hereditary right discredited their faction by its cowardice. Few rose in arms to support the rebellion, compared with those who desired its success, and did not blush to see the gallant savages of the Highlands shed their blood that a supine herd of priests and country gentlemen might enjoy the victory. The severity of the new government after the rebellion has been often blamed; but I know not whether, according to the usual rules of policy, it can be proved that the execution of two peers and thirty other persons, taken with arms in flagrant rebellion, was an unwarrantable excess of punishment. There seems a latent insinuation in those who have argued on the other side, as if the jacobite rebellion, being founded on an opinion of right, was more excusable than an ordinary treason--a proposition which it would not have been quite safe for the reigning dynasty to acknowledge. Clemency however is the standing policy of constitutional governments, as severity is of despotism; and, if the ministers of George I. might have extended it to part of the inferior sufferers (for surely those of higher rank were the first to be selected) with safety to their master, they would have done well in sparing him the odium that attends all political punishments.[337]

_Impeachment of tory ministers._--It will be admitted on all hands, at the present day, that the charge of high treason in the impeachments against Oxford and Bolingbroke was an intemperate excess of resentment at their scandalous dereliction of the public honour and interest. The danger of a sanguinary revenge inflamed by party spirit is so tremendous that the worst of men ought perhaps to escape rather than suffer by a retrospective, or, what is no better, a constructive, extension of the law. The particular charge of treason was, that in the negotiation for peace they had endeavoured to procure the city of Tournay for the King of France; which was maintained to be an adhering to the queen's enemies within the statute of Edward III.[338] But, as this construction could hardly be brought within the spirit of that law, and the motive was certainly not treasonable or rebellious, it would have been incomparably more constitutional to treat so gross a breach of duty as a misdemeanour of the highest kind. This angry temper of the Commons led ultimately to the abandonment of the whole impeachment against Lord Oxford; the upper house, though it had committed Oxford to the Tower, which seemed to prejudge the question as to the treasonable character of the imputed offence, having two years afterwards resolved that the charge of treason should be first determined, before they would enter on the articles of less importance; a decision with which the Commons were so ill satisfied that they declined to go forward with the prosecution. The resolution of the Peers was hardly conformable to precedent, to analogy, or to the dignity of the House of Commons, nor will it perhaps be deemed binding on any future occasion; but the ministers prudently suffered themselves to be beaten rather than aggravate the fever of the people by a prosecution so full of delicate and hazardous questions.[339]

One of these questions, and by no means the least important, would doubtless have arisen upon a mode of defence alleged by the Earl of Oxford in the house, when the articles of impeachment were brought up. "My lords," he said, "if ministers of state, acting by the immediate commands of their sovereign, are afterwards to be made accountable for their proceedings, it may, one day or other, be the case of all the members of this august assembly."[340] It was indeed undeniable that the queen had been very desirous of peace, and a party, as it were, to all the counsels that tended to it. Though it was made a charge against the impeached lords, that the instructions to sign the secret preliminaries of 1711 with M. Mesnager, on the part of France, were not under the great seal, nor countersigned by any minister, they were certainly under the queen's signet, and had all the authority of her personal command. This must have brought on the yet unsettled and very delicate question of ministerial responsibility in matters where the sovereign has interposed his own command; a question better reserved, it might then appear, for the loose generalities of debate than to be determined with the precision of criminal law. Each party, in fact, had in its turn made use of the queen's personal authority as a shield; the whigs availed themselves of it to parry the attack made on their ministry, after its fall, for an alleged mismanagement of the war in Spain before the battle of Almanza;[341] and the modern constitutional theory was by no means so established in public opinion as to bear the rude brunt of a legal argument. Anne herself, like all her predecessors, kept in her own hands the reins of power; jealous, as such feeble characters usually are, of those in whom she was forced to confide (especially after the ungrateful return of the Duchess of Marlborough for the most affectionate condescension), and obstinate in her judgment, from the very consciousness of its weakness, she took a share in all business, frequently presided in meetings of the cabinet, and sometimes gave directions without their advice.[342] The defence set up by Lord Oxford would undoubtedly not be tolerated at present, if alleged in direct terms, by either house of parliament; however it may sometimes be deemed a sufficient apology for a minister, by those whose bias is towards a compliance with power, to insinuate that he must either obey against his conscience, or resign against his will.

_Bill for septennial parliaments._--Upon this prevalent disaffection, and the general dangers of the established government, was founded that measure so frequently arraigned in later times, the substitution of septennial for triennial parliaments. The ministry deemed it too perilous for their master, certainly for themselves, to encounter a general election in 1717; but the arguments adduced for the alteration, as it was meant to be permanent, were drawn from its permanent expediency. Nothing can be more extravagant than what is sometimes confidently pretended by the ignorant, that the legislature exceeded its rights by this enactment; or, if that cannot legally be advanced, that it at least violated the trust of the people, and broke in upon the ancient constitution. The law for triennial parliaments was of little more than twenty years' continuance. It was an experiment which, as was argued, had proved unsuccessful; it was subject, like every other law, to be repealed entirely, or to be modified at discretion. As a question of constitutional expediency, the septennial bill was doubtless open at the time to one serious objection. Every one admitted that a parliament subsisting indefinitely during a king's life, but exposed at all times to be dissolved at his pleasure, would become far too little independent of the people, and far too much so upon the Crown. But, if the period of its continuance should thus be extended from three to seven years, the natural course of encroachment, or some momentous circumstances like the present, might lead to fresh prolongations, and gradually to an entire repeal of what had been thought so important a safeguard of its purity. Time has happily put an end to apprehensions which are not on that account to be reckoned unreasonable.[343]

Many attempts have been made to obtain a return to triennial parliaments; the most considerable of which was in 1733, when the powerful talents of Walpole and his opponents were arrayed on this great question. It has been less debated in modern times than some others connected with parliamentary reformation. So long indeed as the sacred duties of choosing the representatives of a free nation shall be perpetually disgraced by tumultuary excess, or, what is far worse, by gross corruption and ruinous profusion (evils which no effectual pains are taken to redress, and which some apparently desire to perpetuate, were it only to throw discredit upon the popular part of the constitution), it would be evidently inexpedient to curtail the present duration of parliament. But even, independently of this not insuperable objection, it may well be doubted whether triennial elections would make much perceptible difference in the course of government, and whether that difference would on the whole be beneficial. It will be found, I believe, on a retrospect of the last hundred years, that the House of Commons would have acted, in the main, on the same principles, had the elections been more frequent; and certainly the effects of a dissolution, when it has occurred in the regular order, have seldom been very important. It is also to be considered whether an assembly which so much takes to itself the character of a deliberative council on all matters of policy, ought to follow with the precision of a weather-glass the unstable prejudices of the multitude. There are many who look too exclusively at the functions of parliament, as the protector of civil liberty against the Crown; functions, it is true, most important, yet not more indispensable than those of steering a firm course in domestic and external affairs, with a circumspectness and providence for the future, which no wholly democratical government has ever yet displayed. It is by a middle position between an oligarchical senate, and a popular assembly, that the House of Commons is best preserved both in its dignity and usefulness, subject indeed to swerve towards either character by that continual variation of forces which act upon the vast machine of our commonwealth. But what seems more important than the usual term of duration, is that this should be permitted to take its course, except in cases where some great change of national policy may perhaps justify its abridgment. The Crown would obtain a very serious advantage over the House of Commons, if it should become an ordinary thing to dissolve parliament for some petty ministerial interest, or to avert some unpalatable resolution. Custom appears to have established, and with some convenience, the substitution of six for seven years as the natural life of a House of Commons; but an habitual irregularity in this respect might lead in time to consequences that most men would deprecate. And it may here be permitted to express a hope that the necessary dissolution of parliament within six months of a demise of the Crown will not long be thought congenial to the spirit of our modern government.

_Peerage bill._--A far more unanimous sentence has been pronounced by posterity upon another great constitutional question, that arose under George I. Lord Sunderland persuaded the king to renounce his important prerogative of making peers; and a bill was supported by the ministry, limiting the House of Lords, after the creation of a very few more, to its actual numbers. The Scots were to have twenty-five hereditary, instead of sixteen elective, members of the house; a provision neither easily reconciled to the union, nor required by the general tenor of the bill. This measure was carried with no difficulty through the upper house, whose interests were so manifestly concerned in it. But a similar motive, concurring with the efforts of a powerful malcontent party, caused its rejection by the Commons.[344] It was justly thought a proof of the king's ignorance or indifference in everything that concerned his English Crown, that he should have consented to so momentous a sacrifice; and Sunderland was reproached for so audacious an endeavour to strengthen his private faction at the expense of the fundamental laws of the monarchy. Those who maintained the expediency of limiting the peerage, had recourse to uncertain theories as to the ancient constitution, and denied this prerogative to have been originally vested in the Crown. A more plausible argument was derived from the abuse, as it was then generally accounted, of creating at once twelve peers in the late reign, for the sole end of establishing a majority for the court; a resource which would be always at the command of successive factions, till the British nobility might become as numerous and venal as that of some European states. It was argued that there was a fallacy in concluding the collective power of the House of Lords to be augmented by its limitation, because every single peer would evidently become of more weight in the kingdom; that the wealth of the whole body must bear a less proportion to that of the nation, and would possibly not exceed that of the lower house, while on the other hand it might be indefinitely multiplied by fresh creations; that the Crown would lose one great engine of corrupt influence over the Commons, which could never be truly independent, while its principal members were looking on it as a stepping-stone to hereditary honours.[345]

Though these reasonings however are not destitute of considerable weight, and the unlimited prerogative of augmenting the peerage is liable to such abuses, at least in theory, as might overthrow our form of government; while, in the opinion of some, whether erroneous or not, it has actually been exerted with too little discretion, the arguments against any legal limitation seem more decisive. The Crown has been carefully restrained by statutes, and by the responsibility of its advisers; the Commons, if they transgress their boundaries, are annihilated by a proclamation; but against the ambition, or, what is much more likely, the perverse haughtiness of the aristocracy, the constitution has not furnished such direct securities. And, as this would be prodigiously enhanced by a consciousness of their power, and by a sense of self-importance which every peer would derive from it after the limitation of their numbers, it might break out in pretensions very galling to the people, and in an oppressive extension of privileges which were already sufficiently obnoxious and arbitrary. It is true that the resource of subduing an aristocratical faction by the creation of new peers could never be constitutionally employed, except in the case of a nearly equal balance; but it might usefully hang over the heads of the whole body, and deter them from any gross excesses of faction or oligarchical spirit. The nature of our government requires a general harmony between the two houses of parliament; and indeed any systematic opposition between them would of necessity bring on the subordination of one to the other in too marked a manner; nor had there been wanting within the memory of man, several instances of such jealous and even hostile sentiments as could only be allayed by the inconvenient remedies of a prorogation or a dissolution. These animosities were likely to revive with more bitterness, when the country gentlemen and leaders of the commons should come to look on the nobility as a class into which they could not enter, and the latter should forget more and more, in their inaccessible dignity, the near approach of that gentry to themselves in respectability of birth and extent of possessions.[346]

These innovations on the part of the new government were maintained on the score of its unsettled state, and want of hold on the national sentiment. It may seem a reproach to the house of Hanover that, connected as it ought to have been with the names most dear to English hearts, the protestant religion and civil liberty, it should have been driven to try the resources of tyranny, and to demand more authority, to exercise more control, than had been necessary for the worst of their predecessors. Much of this disaffection was owing to the cold reserve of George I., ignorant of the language, alien from the prejudices of his people, and continually absent in his electoral dominions, to which he seemed to sacrifice the nation's interest and the security of his own crown. It is certain that the acquisition of the duchies of Bremen and Verden for Hanover in 1716 exposed Great Britain to a very serious danger, by provoking the King of Sweden to join in a league for the restoration of the Pretender.[347] It might have been impossible (such was the precariousness of our revolution settlement) to have made the abdication of the electorate a condition of the house of Brunswick's succession; but the consequences of that connection, though much exaggerated by the factious and disaffected, were in various manners detrimental to English interests during these two reigns; and not the least in that they estranged the affections of the people from sovereigns whom they regarded as still foreign.

_Jacobitism among the clergy._--The tory and jacobite factions, as I have observed, were powerful in the church. This had been the case ever since the revolution. The avowed non-jurors were busy with the press; and poured forth, especially during the encouragement they received in part of Anne's reign, a multitude of pamphlets, sometimes argumentative, more often virulently libellous. Their idle cry that the church was in danger, which both houses in 1704 thought fit to deny by a formal vote, alarmed a senseless multitude. Those who took the oaths were frequently known partisans of the exiled family; and those who affected to disclaim that cause, defended the new settlement with such timid or faithless arms as served only to give a triumph to the adversary. About the end of William's reign grew up the distinction of high and low churchmen; the first distinguished by great pretensions to sacerdotal power, both spiritual and temporal, by a repugnance to toleration, and by a firm adherence to the tory principle in the state; the latter by the opposite characteristics. These were pitched against each other in the two houses of convocation, an assembly which virtually ceased to exist under George I.

_Convocation._--The convocation of the province of Canterbury (for that of York seems never to have been important) is summoned by the archbishop's writ, under the king's direction, along with every parliament, to which it bears analogy both in its constituent parts and in its primary functions. It consists (since the reformation) of the suffragan bishops, forming the upper house; of the deans, archdeacons, a proctor or proxy for each chapter, and two from each diocese, elected by the parochial clergy, who together constitute the lower house. In this assembly subsidies were granted, and ecclesiastical canons enacted. In a few instances under Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, they were consulted as to momentous questions affecting the national religion; the supremacy of the former was approved in 1533, the articles of faith were confirmed in 1562, by the convocation. But their power to enact fresh canons without the king's licence, was expressly taken away by a statute of Henry VIII.; and, even subject to this condition, is limited by several later acts of parliament (such as the acts of uniformity under Elizabeth and Charles II., that confirming, and therefore rendering unalterable, the thirty-nine articles, those relating to non-residence and other church matters), and still more perhaps by the doctrine gradually established in Westminster Hall, that new ecclesiastical canons are not binding on the laity, so greatly that it will ever be impossible to exercise it in any effectual manner. The convocation accordingly, with the exception of 1603, when they established some regulations, and of 1640 (an unfortunate precedent), when they attempted some more, had little business but to grant subsidies, which, however, were from the time of Henry VIII. always confirmed by an act of parliament; an intimation, no doubt, that the legislature did not wholly acquiesce in their power even of binding the clergy in a matter of property. This practice of ecclesiastical taxation was silently discontinued in 1664; at a time when the authority and pre-eminence of the church stood very high, so that it could not then have seemed the abandonment of an important privilege. From this time the clergy have been taxed at the same rate and in the same manner with the laity.[348]

It was the natural consequence of this cessation of all business, that the convocation, after a few formalities, either adjourned itself or was prorogued by a royal writ; nor had it ever, with the few exceptions above noticed, sat for more than a few days, till its supply could be voted. But, about the time of the revolution, the party most adverse to the new order sedulously propagated a doctrine that the convocation ought to be advised with upon all questions affecting the church, and ought even to watch over its interests as the parliament did over those of the kingdom.[349] The Commons had so far encouraged this faction as to refer to the convocation the great question of a reform in the liturgy for the sake of comprehension, as has been mentioned in the last chapter; and thus put a stop to the king's design. It was not suffered to sit much during the rest of that reign, to the great discontent of its ambitious leaders. The most celebrated of these, Atterbury, published a book, entitled _The Rights and Privileges of an English Convocation_, in answer to one by Wake, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. The speciousness of the former, sprinkled with competent learning on the subject, a graceful style, and an artful employment of topics, might easily delude, at least, the willing reader. Nothing indeed could, on reflection, appear more inconclusive than Atterbury's arguments. Were we even to admit the perfect analogy of a convocation to a parliament, it could not be doubted that the king may, legally speaking, prorogue the latter at his pleasure; and that, if neither money were required to be granted nor laws to be enacted, a session would be very short. The church had by prescription a right to be summoned in convocation; but no prescription could be set up for its longer continuance than the Crown thought expedient; and it was too much to expect that William III. was to gratify his half-avowed enemies, with a privilege of remonstrance and interposition they had never enjoyed. In the year 1701 the lower house of convocation pretended to a right of adjourning to a different day from that fixed by the upper, and consequently of holding separate sessions. They set up other unprecedented claims to independence, which were checked by a prorogation.[350] Their aim was in all respects to assimilate themselves to the House of Commons, and thus both to set up the convocation itself as an assembly collateral to parliament, and in the main independent of it, and to maintain their co-ordinate power and equality in synodical dignity to the prelates' house. The succeeding reign, however, began under tory auspices; and the convocation was in more activity for some years than at any former period. The lower house of that assembly still distinguished itself by the most factious spirit, and especially by insolence towards the bishops, who passed in general for whigs, and whom, while pretending to assert the divine rights of episcopacy, they laboured to deprive of that pre-eminence in the Anglican synod which the ecclesiastical constitution of the kingdom had bestowed on them.[351] None was more prominent in their debates than Atterbury himself, whom, in the zenith of tory influence, at the close of her reign, the queen reluctantly promoted to the see of Rochester.

The new government at first permitted the convocation to hold its sittings. But they soon excited a flame which consumed themselves by an attack on Hoadley, Bishop of Bangor, who had preached a sermon abounding with those principles concerning religious liberty, of which he had long been the courageous and powerful assertor.[352] The lower house of convocation thought fit to denounce, through the report of a committee, the dangerous tenets of this discourse, and of a work not long before published by the bishop. A long and celebrated war of pens instantly commenced, known by the name of the Bangorian controversy; managed, perhaps on both sides, with all the chicanery of polemical writers, and disgusting both from its tediousness, and from the manifest unwillingness of the disputants to speak ingenuously what they meant.[353] But, as the principles of Hoadley and his advocates appeared, in the main, little else than those of protestantism and toleration, the sentence of the laity, in the temper that was then gaining ground as to ecclesiastical subjects, was soon pronounced in their favour; and the high-church party discredited themselves by an opposition to what now pass for the incontrovertible truisms of religious liberty. In the ferment of that age, it was expedient for the state to scatter a little dust over the angry insects; the convocation was accordingly prorogued in 1717, and has never again sat for any business.[354] Those who are imbued with high notions of sacerdotal power have sometimes deplored this extinction of the Anglican great council; and though its necessity, as I have already observed, cannot possibly be defended as an ancient part of the constitution, there are not wanting specious arguments for the expediency of such a synod. It might be urged that the church, considered only as an integral member of the commonwealth, and the greatest corporation within it, might justly claim that right of managing its own affairs which belongs to every other association; that the argument from abuse is not sufficient, and is rejected with indignation when applied, as historically it might be, to representative governments and to civil liberty; that in the present state of things, no reformation even of secondary importance can be effected without difficulty, nor any looked for in greater matters, both from the indifference of the legislature, and the reluctance of the clergy to admit its interposition.

It is answered to these suggestions, that we must take experience when we possess it, rather than analogy, for our guide; that ecclesiastical assemblies have in all ages and countries been mischievous, where they have been powerful, which that of our wealthy and numerous clergy must always be; that, notwithstanding, if the convocation could be brought under the management of the state (which by the nature of its component parts might seem not unlikely), it must lead to the promotion of servile men, and the exclusion of merit still more than at present; that the severe remark of Clarendon, who observes that of all mankind none form so bad an estimate of human affairs as churchmen, is abundantly confirmed by experience; that the representation of the church in the House of Lords is sufficient for the protection of its interests; that the clergy have an influence which no other corporation enjoys over the bulk of the nation, and are apt to abuse it for the purposes of undue ascendancy, unjust restraint, or factious ambition; that the hope of any real good in reformation of the Church by its own assemblies to whatever sort of reform we may look, is utterly chimerical; finally, that as the laws now stand, which few would incline to alter, the ratification of parliament must be indispensable for any material change. It seems to admit of no doubt that these reasonings ought much to outweigh those on the opposite side.

_Infringements of the toleration by statutes under Anne._--In the last four years of the queen's reign, some inroads had been made on the toleration granted to dissenters, whom the high-church party held in abhorrence. They had for a long time inveighed against what was called occasional conformity, or the compliance of dissenters with the provisions of the test act in order merely to qualify themselves for holding office, or entering into corporations. Nothing could, in the eyes of sensible men, be more advantageous to the church, if a re-union of those who had separated from it were advantageous, than this practice. Admitting even that the motive was self-interested, has an established government, in church or state, any better ally than the self-interestedness of mankind? Was it not what a presbyterian or independent minister would denounce as a base and worldly sacrifice? and if so, was not the interest of the Anglican clergy exactly in an inverse proportion to this? Any one competent to judge of human affairs would predict, what has turned out to be the case, that when the barrier was once taken down for the sake of convenience, it would not be raised again for conscience; that the most latitudinarian theory, the most lukewarm dispositions in religion, must be prodigiously favourable to the reigning sect; and that the dissenting clergy, though they might retain, or even extend, their influence over the multitude, would gradually lose it with those classes who could be affected by the test. But, even if the tory faction had been cool-headed enough for such reflections, it has, unfortunately, been sometimes less the aim of the clergy to reconcile those who differ from them than to keep them in a state of dishonour and depression. Hence, in the first parliament of Anne, a bill to prevent occasional conformity more than once passed the Commons; and, on its being rejected by the Lords, a great majority of William's bishops voting against the measure, it was sent up again in a very reprehensible manner, tacked, as it was called, to a grant of money; so that, according to the pretension of the Commons in respect to such bills, the upper house must either refuse the supply, or consent to what they disapproved.[355] This however having miscarried, and the next parliament being of better principles, nothing farther was done till 1711, when Lord Nottingham, a vehement high-churchman, having united with the whigs against the treaty of peace, they were injudicious enough to gratify him by concurring in a bill to prevent occasional conformity.[356] This was followed up by the ministry in a more decisive attack on the toleration, an act for preventing the growth of schism, which extended and confirmed one of Charles II., enforcing on all schoolmasters, and even on all teachers in private families, a declaration of conformity to the established church, to be made before the bishop, from whom a licence for exercising that profession was also to be obtained.[357] It is impossible to doubt for an instant, that if the queen's life had preserved the tory government for a few years, every vestige of the toleration would have been effaced.

These statutes, records of their adversaries' power, the whigs, now lords of the ascendant, determined to abrogate. The dissenters were unanimously zealous for the house of Hanover and for the ministry; the church of very doubtful loyalty to the Crown, and still less affection to the whig name. In the session of 1719, accordingly, the act against occasional conformity, and that restraining education, were repealed.[358] It had been the intention to have also repealed the test act; but the disunion then prevailing among the whigs had caused so formidable an opposition even to the former measures, that it was found necessary to abandon that project. Walpole, more cautious and moderate than the ministry of 1719, perceived the advantage of reconciling the church as far as possible to the royal family and to his own government; and it seems to have been an article in the tacit compromise with the bishops, who were not backward in exerting their influence for the Crown, that he should make no attempt to abrogate the laws which gave a monopoly of power to the Anglican communion. We may presume also that the prelates undertook not to obstruct the acts of indemnity passed from time to time in favour of those who had not duly qualified themselves for the offices they held; and which, after some time becoming regular, have in effect thrown open the gates to protestant dissenters, though still subject to be closed by either house of parliament, if any jealousies should induce them to refuse their assent to this annual enactment.[359]

_Principles of toleration fully established._--Meanwhile the principles of religious liberty, in all senses of the word, gained strength by this eager controversy, naturally pleasing as they are to the proud independence of the English character, and congenial to those of civil freedom, which both parties, tory as much as whig, had now learned sedulously to maintain. The non-juring and high-church factions among the clergy produced few eminent men; and lost credit, not more by the folly of their notions than by their general want of scholarship and disregard of their duties. The university of Oxford was tainted to the core with jacobite prejudices; but it must be added that it never stood so low in respectability as a place of education.[360] The government, on the other hand, was studious to promote distinguished men; and doubtless the hierarchy in the first sixty years of the eighteenth century might very advantageously be compared, in point of conspicuous ability, with that of any equal period that ensued. The maxims of persecution were silently abandoned, as well as its practice; Warburton, and others of less name, taught those of toleration with as much boldness as Hoadley, but without some of his more invidious tenets; the more popular writers took a liberal tone; the names of Locke and Montesquieu acquired immense authority; the courts of justice discountenanced any endeavour to revive oppressive statutes; and, not long after the end of George the Second's reign, it was adjudged in the House of Lords, upon the broadest principles of toleration laid down by Lord Mansfield, that nonconformity with the established church is recognised by the law, and not an offence at which it connives.

_Banishment of Atterbury._--Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester, the most distinguished of the party denominated high-church, became the victim of his restless character and implacable disaffection to the house of Hanover. The pretended king, for some years after his competitor's accession, had fair hopes from different powers of Europe--France, Sweden, Russia, Spain, Austria--(each of whom, in its turn, was ready to make use of this instrument), and from the powerful faction who panted for his restoration. This was unquestionably very numerous; though we have not as yet the means of fixing with certainty on more than comparatively a small number of names. But a conspiracy for an invasion from Spain and a simultaneous rising was detected in 1722, which implicated three or four peers, and among them the Bishop of Rochester.[361] The evidence, however, though tolerably convincing, being insufficient for a verdict at law, it was thought expedient to pass a bill of pains and penalties against this prelate, as well as others against two of his accomplices. The proof, besides many corroborating circumstances, consisted in three letters relative to the conspiracy, supposed to be written by his secretary Kelly, and appearing to be dictated by the bishop. He was deprived of his see, and banished the kingdom for life.[362] This met with strong opposition, not limited to the enemies of the royal family, and is open to the same objection as the attainder of Sir John Fenwick; the danger of setting aside those precious securities against a wicked government which the law of treason has furnished. As a vigorous assertion of the state's authority over the church we may commend the policy of Atterbury's deprivation; but perhaps this was ill purchased by a mischievous precedent. It is however the last act of a violent nature in any important matter, which can be charged against the English legislature.

_Decline of the Jacobites._--No extensive conspiracy of the jacobite faction seems ever to have been in agitation after the fall of Atterbury. The Pretender had his emissaries perpetually alert; and it is understood that an enormous mass of letters from his English friends is in existence;[363] but very few had the courage, or rather folly, to plunge into so desperate a course as rebellion. Walpole's prudent and vigilant administration, without transgressing the boundaries of that free constitution for which alone the house of Brunswick had been preferred, kept in check the disaffected. He wisely sought the friendship of Cardinal Fleury, aware that no other power in Europe than France could effectually assist the banished family. After his own fall and the death of Fleury, new combinations of foreign policy arose; his successors returned to the Austrian connection; a war with France broke out; the grandson of James II. became master, for a moment, of Scotland, and even advanced to the centre of this peaceful and unprotected kingdom. But this was hardly more ignominious to the government than to the jacobites themselves; none of them joined the standard of their pretended sovereign; and the rebellion of 1745 was conclusive, by its own temporary success, against the possibility of his restoration.[364] From this time the government, even when in search of pretexts for alarm, could hardly affect to dread a name grown so contemptible as that of the Stuart party. It survived however for the rest of the reign of George II. in those magnanimous compotations, which had always been the best evidence of its courage and fidelity.

_Prejudices against the reigning family._--Though the jacobite party had set before its eyes an object most dangerous to the public tranquillity, and which, could it have been attained, would have brought on again the contention of the seventeenth century; though, in taking oaths to a government against which they were in conspiracy, they showed a systematic disregard of obligation, and were as little mindful of allegiance, in the years 1715 and 1745, to the prince they owned in their hearts, as they had been to him whom they had professed to acknowledge, it ought to be admitted that they were rendered more numerous and formidable than was necessary by the faults of the reigning kings or of their ministers. They were not actuated for the most part (perhaps with very few exceptions) by the slavish principles of indefeasible right, much less by those of despotic power. They had been so long in opposition to the court, they had so often spoken the language of liberty, that we may justly believe them to have been its friends. It was the policy of Walpole to keep alive the strongest prejudice in the mind of George II., obstinately retentive of prejudice, as such narrow and passionate minds always are, against the whole body of the tories. They were ill received at court, and generally excluded, not only from those departments of office which the dominant party have a right to keep in their power, but from the commission of the peace, and every other subordinate trust.[365] This illiberal and selfish course retained many, no doubt, in the Pretender's camp, who must have perceived both the improbability of his restoration, and the difficulty of reconciling it with the safety of our constitution. He was indeed, as well as his son, far less worthy of respect than the contemporary Brunswick kings: without absolutely wanting capacity or courage, he gave the most undeniable evidence of his legitimacy by constantly resisting the counsels of wise men, and yielding to those of priests; while his son, the fugitive of Culloden, despised and deserted by his own party, insulted by the court of France, lost with the advance of years even the respect and compassion which wait on unceasing misfortune, the last sad inheritance of the house of Stuart.[366] But they were little known in England, and from unknown princes men are prone to hope much: if some could anticipate a redress of every evil from Frederic Prince of Wales, whom they might discover to be destitute of respectable qualities, it cannot be wondered at that others might draw equally flattering prognostics from the accession of Charles Edward. It is almost certain that, if either the claimant or his son had embraced the protestant religion, and had also manifested any superior strength of mind, the German prejudices of the reigning family would have cost them the throne, as they did the people's affections. Jacobitism, in the great majority, was one modification of the spirit of liberty burning strongly in the nation at this period. It gave a rallying point to that indefinite discontent, which is excited by an ill opinion of rulers, and to that disinterested, though ignorant patriotism which boils up in youthful minds. The government in possession was hated, not as usurped, but as corrupt; the banished line was demanded, not so much because it was legitimate, but because it was the fancied means of redressing grievances and regenerating the constitution. Such notions were doubtless absurd; but it is undeniable that they were common, and had been so almost from the revolution. I speak only, it will be observed, of the English jacobites; in Scotland the sentiments of loyalty and national pride had a vital energy, and the Highland chieftains gave their blood, as freely as their southern allies did their wine, for the cause of their ancient kings.

No one can have looked in the most cursory manner at the political writings of these two reigns, or at the debates of parliament, without being struck by the continual predictions that our liberties were on the point of extinguishment, or at least by apprehensions of their being endangered. It might seem that little or nothing had been gained by the revolution, and by the substitution of an elective dynasty. This doubtless it was the interest of the Stuart party to maintain or insinuate; and, in the conflict of factions, those who, with far opposite views, had separated from the court, seemed to lend them aid. The declamatory exaggerations of that able and ambitious body of men who co-operated against the ministry of Sir Robert Walpole have long been rejected; and perhaps in the usual reflux of popular opinion, his domestic administration (for in foreign policy his views, so far as he was permitted to act upon them, appear to have been uniformly judicious) has obtained of late rather an undue degree of favour. I have already observed that, for the sake of his own ascendancy in the cabinet, he kept up unnecessarily the distinctions of the whig and tory parties, and thus impaired the stability of the royal house, which it was his chief care to support. And, though his government was so far from anything oppressive or arbitrary that, considered either relatively to any former times, or to the extensive disaffection known to subsist, it was uncommonly moderate; yet, feeling or feigning alarm at the jacobite intrigues on the one hand, at the democratic tone of public sentiment and of popular writings on the other, he laboured to preserve a more narrow and oligarchical spirit than was congenial to so great and brave a people, and trusted not enough, as indeed is the general fault of ministers, to the sway of good sense and honesty over disinterested minds. But, as he never had a complete influence over his master, and knew that those who opposed him had little else in view than to seize the reins of power and manage them worse, his deviations from the straight course are more pardonable.

The clamorous invectives of this opposition, combined with the subsequent dereliction of avowed principles by many among them when in power, contributed more than anything else in our history to cast obloquy and suspicion, or even ridicule, on the name and occupation of patriots. Men of sordid and venal characters always rejoice to generalise so convenient a maxim as the non-existence of public virtue. It may not however be improbable, that many of those who took a part in this long contention, were less insincere than it has been the fashion to believe, though led too far at the moment by their own passions, as well as by the necessity of colouring highly a picture meant for the multitude, and reduced afterwards to the usual compromises and concessions, without which power in this country is ever unattainable. But waiving a topic too generally historical for the present chapter, it will be worth while to consider what sort of ground there might be for some prevalent subjects of declamation; and whether the power of government had not, in several respects, been a good deal enhanced since the beginning of the century. By the power of government I mean not so much the personal authority of the sovereign as that of his ministers, acting perhaps without his directions; which, since the reign of William, is to be distinguished, if we look at it analytically, from the monarchy itself.

I. The most striking acquisition of power by the Crown in the new model of government, if I may use such an expression, is the permanence of a regular military force. The reader cannot need to be reminded that no army existed before the civil war, that the guards in the reign of Charles II. were about 5000 men, that in the breathing-time between the peace of Ryswick and the war of the Spanish succession, the Commons could not be brought to keep up more than 7000 troops. Nothing could be more repugnant to the national prejudices than a standing army. The tories, partly from regard to the ancient usage of the constitution, partly, no doubt, from a factious or disaffected spirit, were unanimous in protesting against it. The most disinterested and zealous lovers of liberty came with great suspicion and reluctance into what seemed so perilous an innovation. But the court, after the accession of the house of Hanover, had many reasons for insisting upon so great an augmentation of its power and security. It is remarkable to perceive by what stealthy advances this came on. Two long wars had rendered the army a profession for men in the higher and middling classes, and familiarised the nation to their dress and rank; it had achieved great honour for itself and the English name; and in the nature of mankind the patriotism of glory is too often an overmatch for that of liberty. The two kings were fond of warlike policy, the second of war itself; their schemes, and those of their ministers, demanded an imposing attitude in negotiation, which an army, it was thought, could best give; the cabinet was for many years entangled in alliances, shifting sometimes rapidly, but in each combination liable to produce the interruption of peace. In the new system which rendered the houses of parliament partakers in the executive administration, they were drawn themselves into the approbation of every successive measure, either on the propositions of ministers, or as often happens more indirectly, but hardly less effectually, by passing a negative on those of their opponents.

_Permanent military force._--The number of troops for which a vote was annually demanded, after some variations, in the first years of George I., was, during the whole administration of Sir Robert Walpole, except when the state of Europe excited some apprehension of disturbance, rather more than 17,000 men, independent of those on the Irish establishment, but including the garrisons of Minorca and Gibraltar. And this continued with little alteration to be our standing army in time of peace during the eighteenth century.

This army was always understood to be kept on foot, as it is still expressed in the preamble of every mutiny bill, for better preserving the balance of power in Europe. The Commons would not for an instant admit that it was necessary as a permanent force, in order to maintain the government at home. There can be no question however that the court saw its advantage in this light; and I am not perfectly sure that some of the multiplied negotiations on the continent in that age were not intended as a pretext for keeping up the army, or at least as a means of exciting alarm for the security of the established government. In fact, there would have been rebellions in the time of George I., not only in Scotland, which perhaps could not otherwise have been preserved, but in many parts of the kingdom, had the parliament adhered with too pertinacious bigotry to their ancient maxims. Yet these had such influence that it was long before the army was admitted by every one to be perpetual; and I do not know that it has ever been recognised as such in our statutes. Mr. Pulteney, so late as 1732, a man neither disaffected nor democratical, and whose views extended no farther than a change of hands, declared that he "always had been, and always would be, against a standing army of any kind; it was to him a terrible thing, whether under the denomination of parliamentary or any other. A standing army is still a standing army, whatever name it be called by; they are a body of men distinct from the body of the people; they are governed by different laws; blind obedience and an entire submission to the orders of their commanding officer is their only principle. The nations around us are already enslaved, and have been enslaved by those very means; by means of their standing armies they have every one lost their liberties; it is indeed impossible that the liberties of the people can be preserved in any country where a numerous standing army is kept up."[367]

This wholesome jealousy, though it did not prevent what was indeed for many reasons not to be dispensed with, the establishment of a regular force, kept it within bounds which possibly the administration, if left to itself, would have gladly overleaped. A clause in the mutiny bill, first inserted in 1718, enabling courts-martial to punish mutiny and desertion with death, which had hitherto been only cognisable as capital offences by the civil magistrate, was carried by a very small majority in both houses.[368] An act was passed in 1735, directing that no troops should come within two miles of any place, except the capital or a garrisoned town, during an election;[369] and on some occasions, both the Commons and the courts of justice showed that they had not forgotten the maxims of their ancestors as to the supremacy of the civil power.[370] A more important measure was projected by men of independent principles, at once to secure the kingdom against attack, invaded as it had been by rebels in 1745, and thrown into the most ignominious panic on the rumours of a French armament in 1756, to take away the pretext for a large standing force, and perhaps to furnish a guarantee against any evil purposes to which in future times it might be subservient, by the establishment of a national militia, under the sole authority, indeed of the Crown, but commanded by gentlemen of sufficient estates, and not liable, except in war, to be marched out of its proper county. This favourite plan, with some reluctance on the part of the government, was adopted in 1757.[371] But though, during the long periods of hostilities which have unfortunately ensued, this embodied force had doubtless placed the kingdom in a more respectable state of security, it has not much contributed to diminish the number of our regular forces; and, from some defects in its constitution, arising out of too great attention to our ancient local divisions, and of too indiscriminate a dispensation with personal service, which has filled the ranks with the refuse of the community, the militia has grown unpopular and burthensome, rather considered of late by the government as a means of recruiting the army than as worthy of preservation in itself, and accordingly thrown aside in time of peace; so that the person who acquired great popularity as the author of this institution, lived to see it worn out and gone to decay, and the principles, above all, upon which he had brought it forward, just enough remembered to be turned into ridicule. Yet the success of that magnificent organisation which, in our own time, has been established in France, is sufficient to evince the possibility of a national militia; and we know with what spirit such a force was kept up for some years in this country, under the name of volunteers and yeomanry, on its only real basis, that of property, and in such local distribution as convenience pointed out.

Nothing could be more idle, at any time since the revolution, than to suppose that the regular army would pull the speaker out of his chair, or in any manner be employed to confirm a despotic power in the Crown. Such power, I think, could never have been the waking dream of either king or minister. But as the slightest inroads upon private rights and liberties are to be guarded against in any nation that deserves to be called free, we should always keep in mind not only that the military power is subordinate to the civil, but, as this subordination must cease where the former is frequently employed, that it should never be called upon in aid of the peace without sufficient cause. Nothing would more break down this notion of the law's supremacy than the perpetual interference of those who are really governed by another law; for the doctrine of some judges, that the soldier, being still a citizen, acts only in preservation of the public peace, as another citizen is bound to do, must be felt as a sophism, even by those who cannot find an answer to it. And, even in slight circumstances, it is not conformable to the principles of our government to make that vain display of military authority which disgusts us so much in some continental kingdoms. But, not to dwell on this, it is more to our immediate purpose that the executive power has acquired such a coadjutor in the regular army that it can, in no probable emergency, have much to apprehend from popular sedition. The increased facilities of transport, and several improvements in military art and science, which will occur to the reader, have in later times greatly enhanced this advantage.

II. It must be apparent to every one that since the restoration, and especially since the revolution, an immense power has been thrown into the scale of both houses of parliament, though practically in more frequent exercise by the lower, in consequence of their annual session during several months, and of their almost unlimited rights of investigation, discussion, and advice. But, if the Crown should by any means become secure of an ascendancy in this assembly, it is evident that, although the prerogative, technically speaking, might be diminished, the power might be the same, or even possibly more efficacious; and that this result must be proportioned to the degree and security of such an ascendancy. A parliament absolutely, and in all conceivable circumstances, under the control of the sovereign, whether through intimidation or corrupt subservience, could not, without absurdity, be deemed a co-ordinate power, or, indeed, in any sense, a restraint upon his will. This is however an extreme supposition, which no man, unless both grossly factious and ignorant, will ever pretend to have been realised. But, as it would equally contradict notorious truth to assert that every vote has been disinterested and independent, the degree of influence which ought to be permitted, or which has at any time existed, becomes one of the most important subjects in our constitutional policy.

I have mentioned in the last chapter both the provisions inserted in the act of settlement, with the design of excluding altogether the possessors of public office from the House of Commons, and the modifications of them by several acts of the queen. These were deemed by the country party so inadequate to restrain the dependents of power from overspreading the benches of the Commons that perpetual attempts were made to carry the exclusive principle to a far greater length. In the two next reigns, if we can trust to the uncontradicted language of debate, or even to the descriptions of individuals in the lists of each parliament, we must conclude that a very undue proportion of dependents on the favour of government were made its censors and counsellors. There was still, however, so much left of an independent spirit, that bills for restricting the number of placemen, or excluding pensioners, met always with countenance; they were sometimes rejected by very slight majorities; and, after a time, Sir Robert Walpole found it expedient to reserve his opposition for the surer field of the other house.[372] After his fall, it was imputed with some justice to his successors, that they shrunk in power from the bold reformation which they had so frequently endeavoured; the king was indignantly averse to all retrenchment of his power, and they wanted probably both the inclination and the influence to cut off all corruption. Yet we owe to this ministry the place bill of 1743, which, derided as it was at the time, seems to have had a considerable effect; excluding a great number of inferior officers from the House of Commons, which has never since contained so revolting a list of court-deputies as it did in the age of Walpole.[373]

_Secret corruption._--But while this acknowledged influence of lucrative office might be presumed to operate on many staunch adherents of the actual administration, there was always a strong suspicion, or rather a general certainty, of absolute corruption. The proofs in single instances could never perhaps be established; which, of course, is not surprising. But no one seriously called in question the reality of a systematic distribution of money by the Crown to the representatives of the people; nor did the corrupters themselves, in whom the crime seems always to be deemed less heinous, disguise it in private.[374] It is true that the appropriation of supplies, and the established course of the exchequer, render the greatest part of the public revenue secure from misapplication; but, under the head of secret service money, a very large sum was annually expended without account, and some other parts of the civil list were equally free from all public examination.[375] The committee of secrecy appointed after the resignation of Sir Robert Walpole endeavoured to elicit some distinct evidence of this misapplication; but the obscurity natural to such transactions, and the guilty collusion of subaltern accomplices, who shrouded themselves in the protection of the law, defeated every hope of punishment, or even personal disgrace.[376] This practice of direct bribery continued, beyond doubt, long afterwards, and is generally supposed to have ceased about the termination of the American war.

There is hardly any doctrine with respect to our government more in fashion than that a considerable influence of the Crown (meaning of course a corrupt influence) in both houses of parliament, and especially in the Commons, has been rendered indispensable by the vast enhancement of their own power over the public administration. It is doubtless most expedient that many servants of the Crown should be also servants of the people; and no man who values the constitution would separate the functions of ministers of state from those of legislators. The glory that waits on wisdom and eloquence in the senate should always be the great prize of an English statesman, and his high road to the sovereign's favour. But the maxim that private vices are public benefits is as sophistical as it is disgusting; and it is self-evident, both that the expectation of a clandestine recompense, or what in effect is the same thing, of a lucrative office, cannot be the motive of an upright man in his vote, and that if an entire parliament should be composed of such venal spirits, there would be an end of all control upon the Crown. There is no real cause to apprehend that a virtuous and enlightened government would find difficulty in resting upon the reputation justly due to it; especially when we throw into the scale that species of influence which must ever subsist, the sentiment of respect and loyalty to a sovereign, of friendship and gratitude to a minister, of habitual confidence in those intrusted with power, of averseness to confusion and untried change, which have in fact more extensive operation than any sordid motives, and which must almost always render them unnecessary.

III. _Commitments for breach of privilege._--The co-operation of both houses of parliament with the executive government enabled the latter to convert to its own purpose what had often in former times been employed against it, the power of inflicting punishment for breach of privilege. But as the subject of parliamentary privilege is of no slight importance, it will be convenient on this occasion to bring the whole before the reader in as concise a summary as possible, distinguishing the power, as it relates to offences committed by members of either house, or against them singly, or the houses of parliament collectively, or against the government and the public.

1. It has been the constant practice of the House of Commons to repress disorderly or indecent behaviour by a censure delivered through the speaker. Instances of this are even noticed in the journals under Edward VI. and Mary; and it is in fact essential to the regular proceedings of any assembly. In the former reign they also committed one of their members to the Tower. But in the famous case of Arthur Hall in 1581, they established the first precedent of punishing one of their own body for a printed libel derogatory to them as a part of the legislature; and they inflicted the threefold penalty of imprisonment, fine, and expulsion.[377] From this time forth it was understood to be the law and usage of parliament, that the Commons might commit to prison any one of their members for misconduct in the house, or relating to it. The right of imposing a fine was very rarely asserted after the instance of Hall. But that of expulsion, no earlier precedent whereof has been recorded, became as indubitable as frequent and unquestioned usage could render it. It was carried to a great excess by the long parliament, and again in the year 1680. These, however, were times of extreme violence; and the prevailing faction had an apology in the designs of the court, which required an energy beyond the law to counteract them. The offences, too, which the whigs thus punished in 1680, were in their effect against the power and even existence of parliament. The privilege was far more unwarrantably exerted by the opposite party in 1714, against Sir Richard Steele, expelled the house for writing the "Crisis," a pamphlet reflecting on the ministry. This was, perhaps, the first instance wherein the House of Commons so identified itself with the executive administration, independently of the sovereign's person, as to consider itself libelled by those who impugned its measures.[378]

In a few instances an attempt was made to carry this farther, by declaring the party incapable of sitting in parliament. It is hardly necessary to remark that upon this rested the celebrated question of the Middlesex election in 1769. If a few precedents, and those not before the year 1680, were to determine all controversies of constitutional law, it is plain enough from the journals that the house have assumed the power of incapacitation. But as such an authority is highly dangerous and unnecessary for any good purpose, and as, according to all legal rules, so extraordinary a power could not be supported except by a sort of prescription which cannot be shown, the final resolution of the House of Commons, which condemned the votes passed in times of great excitement, appears far more consonant to just principles.

2. The power of each house of parliament over those who do not belong to it is of a more extensive consideration, and has lain open, in some respects, to more doubt than that over its own members. It has been exercised, in the first place, very frequently, and from an early period, in order to protect the members personally, and in their properties, from anything which has been construed to interfere with the discharge of their functions. Every obstruction in these duties, by assaulting, challenging, insulting any single representative of the Commons, has from the middle of the sixteenth century downwards, that is, from the beginning of their regular journals, been justly deemed a breach of privilege, and an offence against the whole body. It has been punished generally by commitment, either to the custody of the house's officer, the serjeant-at-arms, or to the king's prison. This summary proceeding is usually defended by a technical analogy to what are called attachments for contempt, by which every court of record is entitled to punish by imprisonment, if not also by fine, any obstruction to its acts or contumacious resistance of them. But it tended also to raise the dignity of parliament in the eyes of the people, at times when the government, and even the courts of justice, were not greatly inclined to regard it; and has been also a necessary safeguard against the insolence of power. The majority are bound to respect, and indeed have respected, the rights of every member, however obnoxious to them, on all questions of privilege. Even in the case most likely to occur in the present age, that of libels, which by no unreasonable stretch come under the head of obstructions, it would be unjust that a patriotic legislator, exposed to calumny for his zeal in the public cause, should be necessarily driven to a troublesome and uncertain process at law, when the offence so manifestly affects the real interests of parliament and the nation. The application of this principle must of course require a discreet temper, which was not perhaps always observed in former times, especially in the reign of William III. Instances at least of punishment for breach of privilege by personal reflections are never so common as in the journals of that turbulent period.

The most usual mode, however, of incurring the animadversion of the house was by molestations in regard to property. It was the most ancient privilege of the Commons to be free from all legal process, during the term of the session and for forty days before and after, except on charges of treason, felony, or breach of the peace. I have elsewhere mentioned the great case of Ferrers, under Henry VIII., wherein the house first, as far as we know, exerted the power of committing to prison those who had been concerned in arresting one of its members; and have shown that, after some little intermission, this became their recognised and customary right. Numberless instances occur of its exercise.[379] It was not only a breach of privilege to serve any sort of process upon them, but to put them under the necessity of seeking redress at law for any civil injury. Thus abundant cases are found in the journals, where persons have been committed to prison for entering on the estates of members, carrying away timber, lopping trees, digging coal, fishing in their waters. Their servants, and even their tenants, if the trespass were such as to affect the landlord's property, had the same protection.[380] The grievance of so unparalleled an immunity must have been notorious, since it not only suspended at least the redress of creditors, but enabled rapacious men to establish in some measure unjust claims in respect of property; the alleged trespasses being generally founded on some disputed right. An act however was passed, rendering the members of both houses liable to civil suits during the prorogation of parliament.[381] But they long continued to avenge the private injuries, real or pretended, of their members. On a complaint of breach of privilege by trespassing on a fishery (Jan. 25, 1768), they heard evidence on both sides, and determined that no breach of privilege had been committed; thus indirectly taking on them the decision of a freehold right. A few days after they came to a resolution, "that in case of any complaint of a breach of privilege, hereafter to be made by any member of this house, if the house shall adjudge there is no ground for such complaint, the house will order satisfaction to the person complained of for his costs and expenses incurred by reason of such complaint."[382] But little opportunity was given to try the effect of this resolution, an act having passed in two years afterwards, which has altogether taken away the exemption from legal process, except as to the immunity from personal arrest, which still continues to be the privilege of both houses of parliament.[383]

3. A more important class of offences against privilege is of such as affect either house of parliament collectively. In the reign of Elizabeth we have an instance of one committed for disrespectful words against the Commons. A few others, either for words spoken or published libels, occur in the reign of Charles I. even before the long parliament; but those of 1641 can have little weight as precedents, and we may say nearly the same of the unjustifiable proceedings in 1680. Even since the revolution we find too many proofs of encroaching pride or intemperate passion, to which a numerous assembly is always prone, and which the prevalent doctrine of the house's absolute power in matters of privilege has not contributed much to restrain. The most remarkable may be briefly noticed.

The Commons of 1701, wherein a tory spirit was strongly predominant, by what were deemed its factious delays in voting supplies, and in seconding the measures of the king for the security of Europe, had exasperated all those who saw the nation's safety in vigorous preparations for war, and led at last to the most angry resolution of the Lords, which one house of parliament in a matter not affecting its privileges has ever recorded against the other.[384] The grand jury of Kent, and other freeholders of the county, presented accordingly a petition on the 8th of May 1701, imploring them to turn their loyal addresses into bills of supply (the only phrase in the whole petition that could be construed into disrespect), and to enable his majesty to assist his allies before it should be too late. The tory faction was wrought to fury by this honest remonstrance. They voted that the petition was scandalous, insolent, and seditious, tending to destroy the constitution of parliament, and to subvert the established government of this realm; and ordered that Mr. Colepepper, who had been most forward in presenting the petition, and all others concerned in it, should be taken into custody of the serjeant.[385] Though no attempt was made on this occasion to call the authority of the house into question by habeas corpus or other legal remedy, it was discussed in pamphlets and in general conversation, with little advantage to a power so arbitrary, and so evidently abused in the immediate instance.[386]

A very few years after this high exercise of authority, it was called forth in another case, still more remarkable and even less warrantable. The House of Commons had an undoubted right of determining all disputed returns to the writ of election, and consequently of judging upon the right of every vote. But, as the house could not pretend that it had given this right, or that it was not, like any other franchise, vested in the possessor by a legal title, no pretext of reason or analogy could be set up for denying that it might also come, in an indirect manner at least, before a court of justice, and be judged by the common principles of law. One Ashby, however, a burgess of Aylesbury, having sued the returning officer for refusing his vote; and three judges of the king's bench, against the opinion of Chief-Justice Holt, having determined for different reasons that it did not lie, a writ of error was brought in the House of Lords, when the judgment was reversed. The House of Commons took this up indignantly, and passed various resolutions, asserting their exclusive right to take cognisance of all matters relating to the election of their members. The Lords repelled these by contrary resolutions; That by the known laws of this kingdom, every person having a right to give his vote, and being wilfully denied by the officer who ought to receive it, may maintain an action against such officer to recover damage for the injury; That the contrary assertion is destructive of the property of the subject, and tends to encourage corruption and partiality in returning officers; That the declaring persons guilty of breach of privilege for prosecuting such actions, or for soliciting and pleading in them, is a manifest assuming a power to control the law, and hinder the course of justice, and subject the property of Englishmen to the arbitrary votes of the House of Commons. They ordered a copy of these resolutions to be sent to all the sheriffs, and to be communicated by them to all the boroughs in their respective counties.

A prorogation soon afterwards followed, but served only to give breathing time to the exasperated parties; for it must be observed, that though a sense of dignity and privilege no doubt swelled the majorities in each house, the question was very much involved in the general whig and tory course of politics. But Ashby, during the recess, having proceeded to execution on his judgment, and some other actions having been brought against the returning officer of Aylesbury, the Commons again took it up, and committed the parties to Newgate. They moved the court of king's bench for a habeas corpus; upon the return to which, the judges, except Holt, thought themselves not warranted to set them at liberty against the commitment of the house.[387] It was threatened to bring this by writ of error before the Lords; and, in the disposition of that assembly, it seems probable that they would have inflicted a severe wound on the privileges of the lower house, which must in all probability have turned out a sort of suicide upon their own. But the Commons interposed by resolving to commit to prison the counsel and agents concerned in prosecuting the habeas corpus, and by addressing the queen not to grant a writ of error. The queen properly answered, that as this matter, relating to the course of judicial proceedings, was of the highest consequence, she thought it necessary to weigh very carefully what she should do. The Lords came to some important resolutions: That neither house of parliament hath any power by any vote or declaration to create to themselves any new privilege that is not warranted by the known laws and customs of parliament; That the House of Commons, in committing to Newgate certain persons for prosecuting an action at law, upon pretence that their so doing was contrary to a declaration, a contempt of the jurisdiction, and a breach of the privileges of that house, have assumed to themselves alone a legislative power, by pretending to attribute the force of law to their declaration, have claimed a jurisdiction not warranted by the constitution, and have assumed a new privilege, to which they can show no title by the law and custom of parliament; and have thereby, as far as in them lies, subjected the rights of Englishmen, and the freedom of their persons, to the arbitrary votes of the House of Commons; That every Englishman, who is imprisoned by any authority whatsoever, has an undoubted right to a writ of habeas corpus, in order to obtain his liberty by the due course of law; That for the House of Commons to punish any person for assisting a prisoner to procure such a writ is an attempt of dangerous consequence, and a breach of the statutes provided for the liberty of the subject; That a writ of error is not of grace but of right, and ought not to be denied to the subject when duly applied for, though at the request of either house of parliament.

These vigorous resolutions produced a conference between the houses, which was managed with more temper than might have been expected from the tone taken on both sides. But, neither of them receding in the slightest degree, the Lords addressed the queen, requesting her to issue the writs of error demanded upon the refusal of the king's bench to discharge the parties committed by the House of Commons. The queen answered the same day, that she should have granted the writs of error desired by them, but finding an absolute necessity of putting an immediate end to the session, she was sensible there could have been no further proceeding upon them. The meaning of this could only be, that by a prorogation all commitments by order of the lower house of parliament are determined, so that the parties could stand in no need of a habeas corpus. But a great constitutional question was thus wholly eluded.[388]

We may reckon the proceedings against Mr. Alexander Murray, in 1751, among the instances wherein the House of Commons has been hurried by passion to an undue violence. This gentleman had been active in a contested Westminster election, on an anti-ministerial and perhaps jacobite interest. In the course of an inquiry before the house, founded on a petition against the return, the high-bailiff named Mr. Murray as having insulted him in the execution of his duty. The house resolved to hear Murray by counsel in his defence, and the high-bailiff also by counsel in support of the charge, and ordered the former to give bail for his appearance from time to time. These, especially the last, were innovations on the practice of parliament, and were justly opposed by the more cool-headed men. After hearing witnesses on both sides, it was resolved that Murray should be committed to Newgate, and should receive this sentence upon his knees. This command he steadily refused to obey, and thus drew on himself a storm of wrath at such insolence and audacity. But the times were no more, when the Commons could inflict whippings and pillories on the refractory; and they were forced to content themselves with ordering that no person should be admitted to him in prison, which, on account of his ill-health, they soon afterwards relaxed. The public voice is never favourable to such arbitrary exertions of mere power: at the expiration of the session, Mr. Murray, thus grown from an intriguing jacobite into a confessor of popular liberty, was attended home by a sort of triumphal procession amidst the applause of the people. In the next session he was again committed on the same charge; a proceeding extremely violent and arbitrary.[389]

It has been always deemed a most important and essential privilege of the houses of parliament, that they may punish in this summary manner by commitment all those who disobey their orders to attend as witnesses, or for any purposes of their constitutional duties. No inquiry could go forward before the house at large or its committees, without this power to enforce obedience; especially when the information is to be extracted from public officers against the secret wishes of the court. It is equally necessary (or rather more so, since evidence not being on oath in the lower house, there can be no punishment in the course of law) that the contumacy or prevarication of witnesses should incur a similar penalty. No man would seek to take away this authority from parliament, unless he is either very ignorant of what has occurred in other times and his own, or is a slave in the fetters of some general theory.

But far less can be advanced for several exertions of power on record in the journals, which under the name of privilege must be reckoned by impartial men irregularities and encroachments, capable only at some periods of a kind of apology from the unsettled state of the constitution. The Commons began, in the famous or infamous case of Floyd, to arrogate a power of animadverting upon political offences, which was then wrested from them by the upper house. But in the first parliament of Charles I. they committed Montagu (afterwards the noted semi-popish bishop) to the serjeant, on account of a published book, containing doctrines they did not approve.[390] For this was evidently the main point, though he was also charged with reviling two persons who had petitioned the house, which bore a distant resemblance to a contempt. In the long parliament, even from its commencement, every boundary was swept away; it was sufficient to have displeased the majority by act or word; but no precedents can be derived from a crisis of force struggling against force. If we descend to the reign of William III., it will be easy to discover instances of commitments, laudable in their purpose, but of such doubtful legality and dangerous consequence that no regard to the motive should induce us to justify the precedent. Graham and Burton, the solicitors of the treasury in all the worst state prosecutions under Charles and James, and Jenner, a baron of the exchequer, were committed to the Tower by the council immediately after the king's proclamation, with an intention of proceeding criminally against them. Some months afterwards, the suspension of the habeas corpus, which had taken place by bill, having ceased, they moved the king's bench to admit them to bail; but the House of Commons took this up, and, after a report of a committee as to precedents, put them in custody of the serjeant at arms.[391] On complaints of abuses in victualling the navy, the commissioners of that department were sent for in the serjeant's custody, and only released on bail ten days afterwards.[392] But, without minutely considering the questionable instances of privilege that we may regret to find, I will select one wherein the House of Commons appear to have gone far beyond either the reasonable or customary limits of privilege, and that with very little pretext of public necessity. In the reign of George I., a newspaper called _Mist's Journal_ was notorious as the organ of the jacobite faction. A passage full of the most impudent longings for the Pretender's restoration having been laid before the house, it was resolved, May 28, 1721, "that the said paper is a false, malicious, scandalous, infamous, and traitorous libel, tending to alienate the affections of his majesty's subjects, and to excite the people to sedition and rebellion, with an intention to subvert the present happy establishment, and to introduce popery and arbitrary power." They went on after this resolution to commit the printer Mist to Newgate, and to address the king that the authors and publishers of the libel might be prosecuted.[393] It is to be observed that no violation of privilege either was, or indeed could be alleged as the ground of this commitment; which seems to imply that the house conceived itself to be invested with a general power, at least in all political misdemeanours.

I have not observed any case more recent than this of Mist, wherein any one has been committed on a charge which could not possibly be interpreted on a contempt of the house, or a breach of its privilege. It became however the practice, without previously addressing the king, to direct a prosecution by the attorney-general for offences of a public nature, which the Commons had learned in the course of any inquiry, or which had been formally laid before them.[394] This seems to have been introduced about the beginning of the reign of Anne, and is undoubtedly a far more constitutional course than that of arbitrary punishment by overstraining their privilege. In some instances, libels have been publicly burned by the order of one or other house of parliament.

I have principally adverted to the powers exerted by the lower house of parliament, in punishing those guilty of violating their privileges. It will of course be understood that the Lords are at least equal in authority. In some respects indeed they have gone beyond. I do not mean that they would be supposed at present to have cognisance of any offence whatever, upon which the Commons could not animadvert. Notwithstanding what they claimed in the case of Floyd, the subsequent denial by the Commons, and abandonment by themselves, of any original jurisdiction, must stand in the way of their assuming such authority over misdemeanours, more extensively at least than the Commons, as has been shown, have in some instances exercised it. But, while the latter have, with very few exceptions, and none since the restoration, contented themselves with commitment during the session, the Lords have sometimes imposed fines, and, on some occasions in the reign of George II., as well as later, have adjudged parties to imprisonment for a certain time. In one instance, so late as that reign, they sentenced a man to the pillory; and this had been done several times before. The judgments however of earlier ages give far less credit to the jurisdiction than they take from it. Besides the ever memorable case of Floyd, one John Blount, about the same time (27th Nov. 1621), was sentenced by the Lords to imprisonment and hard labour in Bridewell during life.[395]

_Privileges of the house not controllable by courts of law._--It may surprise those who have heard of the happy balance of the English constitution, of the responsibility of every man to the law, and of the security of the subject from all unlimited power, especially as to personal freedom, that this power of awarding punishment at discretion of the houses of parliament is generally reputed to be universal and uncontrollable. This indeed was by no means received at the time when the most violent usurpations under the name of privilege were first made; the power was questioned by the royalist party who became its victims, and, among others, by the gallant Welshman, Judge Jenkins, whom the long parliament had shut up in the Tower. But it has been several times brought into discussion before the ordinary tribunals; and the result has been, that if the power of parliament is not unlimited in right, there is at least no remedy provided against its excesses.

The House of Lords in 1677 committed to the Tower four peers, among whom was the Earl of Shaftesbury, for a high contempt; that is, for calling in question, during a debate, the legal continuance of parliament after a prorogation of more than twelve months. Shaftesbury moved the court of king's bench to release him upon a writ of habeas corpus. But the judges were unanimously of opinion that they had no jurisdiction to inquire into a commitment by the Lords of one of their body, or to discharge the party during the session, even though there might be, as appears to have been the case, such technical informality on the face of the commitment as would be sufficient in an ordinary case to set it aside.[396]

Lord Shaftesbury was at this time in vehement opposition to the court. Without insinuating that this had any effect upon the judges, it is certain that a few years afterwards they were less inclined to magnify the privileges of parliament. Some who had been committed, very wantonly and oppressively, by the Commons in 1680, under the name of abhorrers, brought actions for false imprisonment against Topham, the serjeant-at-arms. In one of these he put in what is called a plea to the jurisdiction, denying the competence of the court of king's bench, inasmuch as the alleged trespass had been done by order of the knights, citizens, and burgesses of parliament. But the judges overruled this plea, and ordered him to plead in bar to the action. We do not find that Topham complied with this; at least judgments appear to have passed against him in these actions.[397] The Commons, after the revolution, entered on the subject, and summoned two of the late judges, Pemberton and Jones, to their bar. Pemberton answered that he remembered little of the case; but if the defendant should plead that he did arrest the plaintiff by order of the house, and should plead that to the jurisdiction of the king's bench, he thought, with submission, he could satisfy the house that such a plea ought to be overruled, and that he took the law to be so very clearly. The house pressed for his reasons, which he rather declined to give. But on a subsequent day he fully admitted that the order of the house was sufficient to take any one into custody, but that it ought to be pleaded in bar, and not to the jurisdiction, which would be of no detriment to the party, nor affect his substantial defence. It did not appear however that he had given any intimation from the bench of so favourable a leaning towards the rights of parliament; and his present language might not uncharitably be ascribed to the change of times. The house resolved that the orders and proceedings of this house being pleaded to the jurisdiction of the court of king's bench, ought not to be overruled; that the judges had been guilty of a breach of privilege, and should be taken into custody.[398]

I have already mentioned that, in the course of the controversy between the two houses on the case of Ashby and White, the Commons had sent some persons to Newgate, for suing the returning officer of Aylesbury in defiance of their resolutions; and that, on their application to the king's bench to be discharged on their habeas corpus, the majority of the judges had refused it. Three judges, Powis, Gould, and Powell, held that the courts of Westminster Hall could have no power to judge of the commitments of the houses of parliament; that they had no means of knowing what were the privileges of the Commons, and consequently could not know their boundaries; that the law and custom of parliament stood on its own basis, and was not to be decided by the general rules of law; that no one had ever been discharged from such a commitment, which was an argument that it could not be done. Holt, the chief justice, on the other hand, maintained that no privilege of parliament could destroy a man's right, such as that of bringing an action for a civil injury; that neither house of parliament could separately dispose of the liberty and property of the people, which could only be done by the whole legislature; that the judges were bound to take notice of the customs of parliament, because they are part of the law of the land, and might as well be learned as any other part of the law. "It is the law," he said, "that gives the queen her prerogative; it is the law gives jurisdiction to the House of Lords, as it is the law limits the jurisdiction of the House of Commons." The eight other judges having been consulted, though not judicially, are stated to have gone along with the majority of the court, in holding that a commitment by either house of parliament was not cognisable at law. But from some of the resolutions of the Lords on this occasion which I have quoted above, it may seem probable that, if a writ of error had been ever heard before them, they would have leaned to the doctrine of Holt, unless indeed withheld by the reflection that a similar principle might easily be extended to themselves.[399]

It does not appear that any commitment for breach of privilege was disputed until the year 1751; when Mr. Alexander Murray, of whom mention has been made, caused himself to be brought before the court of king's bench on a habeas corpus. But the judges were unanimous in refusing to discharge him. "The House of Commons," said Mr. Justice Wright, "is a high court, and it is agreed on all hands that they have power to judge of their own privileges; it need not appear to us what the contempt is for; if it did appear, we could not judge thereof."--"This court," said Mr. Justice Denison, "has no jurisdiction in the present case. We granted the habeas corpus, not knowing what the commitment was; but now it appears to be for a contempt of the privileges of the House of Commons. What the privileges of either house are we do not know; nor need they tell us what the contempt was, because we cannot judge of it; for I must call this court inferior to the Commons with respect to judging of their privileges, and contempts against them." Mr. Justice Foster agreed with the two others, that the house could commit for a contempt, which, he said, "Holt had never denied in such a case as this before them."[400] It would be unnecessary to produce later cases which have occurred since the reign of George II., and elicited still stronger expressions from the judges of their incapacity to take cognisance of what may be done by the Houses of Parliament.

Notwithstanding such imposing authorities, there have not been wanting some who have thought that the doctrine of uncontrollable privilege is both eminently dangerous in a free country, and repugnant to the analogy of our constitution. The manly language of Lord Holt[401] has seemed to rest on better principles of public utility, and even perhaps of positive law. It is not however to be inferred that the right of either house of parliament to commit persons, even not of their own body, to prison, for contempts or breaches of privilege, ought to be called in question. In some cases this authority is as beneficial, and even indispensable, as it is ancient and established. Nor do I by any means pretend that if the warrant of commitment merely recites the party to have been guilty of a contempt or breach of privilege, the truth of such allegation could be examined upon a return to a writ of habeas corpus, any more than in an ordinary case of felony. Whatever injustice may thus be done cannot have redress by any legal means; because the House of Commons (or the Lords, as it may be) are the fit judges of the fact, and must be presumed to have determined it according to right.

But it is a more doubtful question, whether, if they should pronounce an offence to be a breach of privilege, as in the case of the Aylesbury men, which a court of justice should perceive to be clearly none, or if they should commit a man on a charge of misdemeanour, and for no breach of privilege at all, as in the case of Mist the printer, such excesses of jurisdiction might not legally be restrained by the judges. If the resolutions of the Lords in the business of Ashby and White are constitutional and true, neither house of parliament can create to itself any new privilege; a proposition surely so consonant to the rules of English law, which require prescription or statute as the basis for every right, that few will dispute it; and it must be still less lawful to exercise a jurisdiction over misdemeanours, by committing a party who would regularly be only held to bail on such a charge. Of this I am very certain, that if Mist, in the year 1721, had applied for his discharge on a habeas corpus, it would have been far more difficult to have opposed it on the score of precedent or of constitutional right, than it was for the attorney-general of Charles I., nearly one hundred years before, to resist the famous arguments of Selden and Littleton, in the case of the Buckinghamshire gentlemen committed by the council. If a few scattered acts of power can make such precedents as a court of justice must take as its rule, I am sure the decision, neither in this case nor in that of ship-money, was so unconstitutional as we usually suppose: it was by dwelling on all authorities in favour of liberty, and by setting aside those which made against it, that our ancestors overthrew the claims of unbounded prerogative. Nor is this parallel less striking when we look at the tone of implicit obedience, respect, and confidence with which the judges of the eighteenth century have spoken of the houses of parliament, as if their sphere were too low for the cognisance of such a transcendant authority.[402] The same language, almost to the words, was heard from the lips of the Hydes and Berkeleys in the preceding age, in reference to the king and to the privy council. But as, when the spirit of the government was almost wholly monarchical, so since it has turned chiefly to an aristocracy, the courts of justice have been swayed towards the predominant influence, not, in general, by any undue motives, but because it is natural for them to support power, to shun offence, and to shelter themselves behind precedent. They have also sometimes had in view the analogy of parliamentary commitments to their own power of attachment for contempt, which they hold to be equally uncontrollable; a doctrine by no means so dangerous to the subject's liberty, but liable also to no trifling objections.[403]

The consequences of this utter irresponsibility in each of the two houses will appear still more serious, when we advert to the unlimited power of punishment which it draws with it. The Commons indeed do not pretend to imprison beyond the session; but the Lords have imposed fines and definite imprisonment; and attempts to resist these have been unsuccessful.[404] If the matter is to rest upon precedent, or upon what overrides precedent itself, the absolute failure of jurisdiction in the ordinary courts, there seems nothing (decency and discretion excepted) to prevent their repeating the sentences of James I.'s reign, whipping, branding, hard labour for life. Nay, they might order the usher of the black rod to take a man from their bar, and hang him up in the lobby. Such things would not be done, and, being done, would not be endured; but it is much that any sworn ministers of the law should, even by indefinite language, have countenanced the legal possibility of tyrannous power in England. The temper of government itself, in modern times, has generally been mild; and this is probably the best ground of confidence in the discretion of parliament; but popular, that is, numerous bodies, are always prone to excess, both from the reciprocal influences of their passions, and the consciousness of irresponsibility; for which reasons a democracy, that is, the absolute government of the majority, is in general the most tyrannical of any. Public opinion, it is true, in this country, imposes a considerable restraint; yet this check is somewhat less powerful in that branch of the legislature which has gone the farthest in chastising breaches of privilege. I would not be understood, however, to point at any more recent discussions on this subject; were it not, indeed, beyond the limits prescribed to me, it might be shown that the House of Commons, in asserting its jurisdiction, has receded from much of the arbitrary power which it once arrogated, and which some have been disposed to bestow upon it.

IV. It is commonly and justly said that civil liberty is not only consistent with, but in its terms implies, the restrictive limitations of natural liberty which are imposed by law. But, as these are not the less real limitations of liberty, it can hardly be maintained that the subject's condition is not impaired by very numerous restraints upon his will, even without reference to their expediency. The price may be well paid; but it is still a price that it costs some sacrifice to pay. Our statutes have been growing in bulk and multiplicity with the regular session of parliament, and with the new system of government; all abounding with prohibitions and penalties, which every man is presumed to know, but which no man, the judges themselves included, can really know with much exactness. We literally walk amidst the snares and pitfalls of the law. The very doctrine of the more rigid casuists, that men are bound in conscience to observe all the laws of their country, has become impracticable through their complexity and inconvenience; and most of us are content to shift off their penalties in the _mala prohibita_ with as little scruple as some feel in risking those of graver offences. But what more peculiarly belongs to the present subject is the systematic encroachment upon ancient constitutional principles, which has for a long time been made through new enactments, proceeding from the Crown, chiefly in respect to the revenue.[405] These may be traced indeed in the statute-book, at least as high as the restoration, and really began in the arbitrary times of revolution which preceded it. They have, however, been gradually extended along with the public burthens, and as the severity of these has prompted fresh artifices of evasion. It would be curious, but not within the scope of this work, to analyse our immense fiscal law, and to trace the history of its innovations. These consist, partly in taking away the cognisance of offences against the revenue from juries, whose partiality in such cases there was in truth much reason to apprehend, and vesting it either in commissioners of the revenue itself or in magistrates; partly in anomalous and somewhat arbitrary power with regard to the collection; partly in deviations from the established rules of pleading and evidence, by throwing on the accused party in fiscal causes the burthen of proving his innocence, or by superseding the necessity of rigorous proof as to matters wherein it is ordinarily required; and partly in shielding the officers of the Crown, as far as possible, from their responsibility for illegal actions, by permitting special circumstances of justification to be given in evidence without being pleaded, or by throwing impediments of various kinds in the way of the prosecutor, or by subjecting him to unusual costs in the event of defeat.

_Extension of penal laws._--These restraints upon personal liberty, and what is worse, these endeavours, as they seem, to prevent the fair administration of justice between the Crown and the subject, have in general, more especially in modern times, excited little regard as they have passed through the houses of parliament. A sad necessity has over-ruled the maxims of ancient law; nor is it my business to censure our fiscal code, but to point out that it is to be counted as a set-off against the advantages of the revolution, and has in fact diminished the freedom and justice which we claim for our polity. And, that its provisions have sometimes gone so far as to give alarm to not very susceptible minds, may be shown from a remarkable debate in the year 1737. A bill having been brought in by the ministers to prevent smuggling, which contained some unusual clauses, it was strongly opposed, among other peers, by Lord Chancellor Talbot himself, of course, in the cabinet, and by Lord Hardwicke, then chief justice, a regularly bred Crown lawyer, and in his whole life disposed to hold very high the authority of government. They objected to a clause subjecting any three persons travelling with arms, to the penalty of transportation, on proof by two witnesses that their intention was to assist in the clandestine landing, or carrying away prohibited or uncustomed goods. "We have in our laws," said one of the opposing lords, "no such thing as a crime by implication, nor can a malicious intention ever be proved by witnesses. Facts only are admitted to be proved, and from those facts the judge and jury are to determine with what intention they were committed; but no judge or jury can ever, by our laws, suppose, much less determine, that an action, in itself innocent or indifferent, was attended with a criminal and malicious intention. Another security for our liberties is, that no subject can be imprisoned unless some felonious and high crime be sworn against him. This, with respect to private men, is the very foundation stone of all our liberties; and, if we remove it, if we but knock off a corner, we may probably overturn the whole fabric. A third guard for our liberties is that right which every subject has, not only to provide himself with arms proper for his defence, but to accustom himself to the use of those arms, and to travel with them whenever he has a mind." But the clause in question, it was contended, was repugnant to all the maxims of free government. No presumption of a crime could be drawn from the mere wearing of arms, an act not only innocent, but highly commendable; and therefore the admitting of witnesses to prove that any of these men were armed, in order to assist in smuggling, would be the admitting of witnesses to prove an intention, which was inconsistent with the whole tenor of our laws.[406] They objected to another provision, subjecting a party against whom information should be given that he intended to assist in smuggling, to imprisonment without bail, though the offence itself were in its nature bailable; to another, which made informations for assault upon officers of the revenue triable in any county of England; and to a yet more startling protection thrown round the same favoured class, that the magistrates should be bound to admit them to bail on charges of killing or wounding any one in the execution of their duty. The bill itself was carried by no great majority; and the provisions subsist at this day, or perhaps have received a further extension.

It will thus appear to every man who takes a comprehensive view of our constitutional history, that the executive government, though shorn of its lustre, has not lost so much of its real efficacy by the consequences of the revolution as is often supposed; at least, that with a regular army to put down insurrection, and an influence sufficient to obtain fresh statutes of restriction, if such should ever be deemed necessary, it is not exposed, in the ordinary course of affairs, to any serious hazard. But we must here distinguish the executive government, using that word in its largest sense, from the Crown itself, or the personal authority of the sovereign. This is a matter of rather delicate inquiry, but too material to be passed by.

_Diminution of personal authority of the Crown._--The real power of the prince, in the most despotic monarchy, must have its limits from nature, and bear some proportion to his courage, his activity, and his intellect. The tyrants of the East become puppets or slaves of their vizirs; or it turns to a game of cunning, wherein the winner is he who shall succeed in tying the bow-string round the other's neck. After some ages of feeble monarchs, the titular royalty is found wholly separated from the power of command, and glides on to posterity in its languid channel, till some usurper or conqueror stops up the stream for ever. In the civilised kingdoms of Europe, those very institutions which secure the permanence of royal families, and afford them a guarantee against manifest subjection to a minister, take generally out of the hands of the sovereign the practical government of his people. Unless his capacities are above the level of ordinary kings, he must repose on the wisdom and diligence of the statesmen he employs, with the sacrifice, perhaps, of his own prepossessions in policy, and against the bent of his personal affections. The power of a king of England is not to be compared with an ideal absoluteness, but with that which could be enjoyed in the actual state of society by the same person in a less bounded monarchy.

The descendants of William the Conqueror on the English throne, down to the end of the seventeenth century, have been a good deal above the average in those qualities which enable or at least induce, kings to take on themselves a large share of the public administration; as will appear by comparing their line with that of the house of Capet, or perhaps most others during an equal period. Without going farther back, we know that Henry VII., Henry VIII., Elizabeth, the four kings of the house of Stuart, though not always with as much ability as diligence, were the master-movers of their own policy, not very susceptible of advice, and always sufficiently acquainted with the details of government to act without it. This was eminently the case also with William III., who was truly his own minister, and much better fitted for that office than those who served him. The king, according to our constitution, is supposed to be present in council, and was in fact usually, or very frequently, present, so long as the council remained as a deliberative body for matters of domestic and foreign policy. But, when a junto or cabinet came to supersede that ancient and responsible body, the king himself ceased to preside, and received their advice separately, according to their respective functions of treasurer, secretary, or chancellor, or that of the whole cabinet through one of its leading members. This change however was gradual; for cabinet councils were sometimes held in the presence of William and Anne; to which other counsellors, not strictly of that select number, were occasionally summoned.

But on the accession of the house of Hanover, this personal superintendence of the sovereign necessarily came to an end. The fact is hardly credible that, George I. being incapable of speaking English, as Sir Robert Walpole was of conversing in French, the monarch and his minister held discourse with each other in Latin.[407] It is impossible that, with so defective a means of communication (for Walpole, though by no means an illiterate man, cannot be supposed to have spoken readily a language very little familiar in this country), George could have obtained much insight into his domestic affairs, or been much acquainted with the characters of his subjects. We know, in truth, that he nearly abandoned the consideration of both, and trusted his ministers with the entire management of this kingdom, content to employ its great name for the promotion of his electoral interests. This continued in a less degree to be the case with his son, who, though better acquainted with the language and circumstances of Great Britain, and more jealous of his prerogative, was conscious of his incapacity to determine on matters of domestic government, and reserved almost his whole attention for the politics of Germany.

_Party connections._--The broad distinctions of party contributed to weaken the real supremacy of the sovereign. It had been usual before the revolution, and in the two succeeding reigns, to select ministers individually at discretion; and, though some might hold themselves at liberty to decline office, it was by no means deemed a point of honour and fidelity to do so. Hence men in the possession of high posts had no strong bond of union, and frequently took opposite sides on public measures of no light moment. The queen particularly was always loth to discard a servant on account of his vote in parliament; a conduct generous perhaps, but feeble, inconvenient, when carried to such excess, in our constitution, and in effect holding out a reward to ingratitude and treachery. But the whigs having come exclusively into office under the line of Hanover (which, as I have elsewhere observed, was inevitable), formed a sort of phalanx, which the Crown was not always able to break, and which never could have been broken, but for that internal force of repulsion by which personal cupidity and ambition are ever tending to separate the elements of factions. It became the point of honour among public men to fight uniformly under the same banner, though not perhaps for the same cause; if indeed there was any cause really fought for, but the advancement of a party. In this preference of certain denominations, or of certain leaders, to the real principles which ought to be the basis of political consistency, there was an evident deviation from the true standard of public virtue; but the ignominy attached to the dereliction of friends for the sake of emolument, though it was every day incurred, must have tended gradually to purify the general character of parliament. Meanwhile the Crown lost all that party attachments gained; a truth indisputable on reflection, though while the Crown and the party in power act in the same direction, the relative efficiency of the two forces is not immediately estimated. It was seen, however, very manifestly in the year 1746; when, after long bickering between the Pelhams and Lord Granville, the king's favourite minister, the former, in conjunction with a majority of the cabinet, threw up their offices, and compelled the king, after an abortive effort at a new administration, to sacrifice his favourite, and replace those in power whom he could not exclude from it. The same took place in a later period of his reign, when after many struggles he submitted to the ascendency of Mr. Pitt.[408]

It seems difficult for any king of England, however conscientiously observant of the lawful rights of his subjects, and of the limitations they impose on his prerogative, to rest always very content with this practical condition of the monarchy. The choice of his counsellors, the conduct of government, are intrusted, he will be told, by the constitution to his sole pleasure. Yet both in the one and the other he finds a perpetual disposition to restrain his exercise of power; and, though it is easy to demonstrate that the public good is far better promoted by the virtual control of parliament and the nation over the whole executive government, than by adhering to the letter of the constitution, it is not to be expected that the argument will be conclusive to a royal understanding. Hence, he may be tempted to play rather a petty game, and endeavour to regain, by intrigue and insincerity, that power of acting by his own will, which he thinks unfairly wrested from him. A king of England, in the calculations of politics, is little more than one among the public men of the day; taller indeed, like Saul or Agamemnon, by the head and shoulders, and therefore with no slight advantages in the scramble; but not a match for the many, unless he can bring some dexterity to second his strength, and make the best of the self-interest and animosities of those with whom he has to deal. And of this there will generally be so much, that in the long run he will be found to succeed in the greater part of his desires. Thus George I. and George II., in whom the personal authority seems to have been at the lowest point it has ever reached, drew their ministers, not always willingly, into that course of continental politics which was supposed to serve the purposes of Hanover far better than of England. It is well known that the Walpoles and the Pelhams condemned in private this excessive predilection of their masters for their native country, which alone could endanger their English throne.[409] Yet after the two latter brothers had inveighed against Lord Granville, and driven him out of power for seconding the king's pertinacity in continuing the war of 1743, they went on themselves in the same track for at least two years, to the imminent hazard of losing for ever the Low Countries and Holland, if the French government, so indiscriminately charged with ambition, had not displayed extraordinary moderation at the treaty of Aix la Chapelle. The twelve years that ensued gave more abundant proofs of the submissiveness with which the schemes of George II. for the good of Hanover were received by his ministers, though not by his people; but the most striking instance of all is the abandonment by Mr. Pitt himself of all his former professions in pouring troops into Germany. I do not inquire whether a sense of national honour might not render some of these measures justifiable, though none of them were advantageous; but it is certain that the strong bent of the king's partiality forced them on against the repugnance of most statesmen, as well as of the great majority in parliament and out of it.

Comparatively however with the state of prerogative before the revolution, we can hardly dispute that there has been a systematic diminution of the reigning prince's control, which, though it may be compensated or concealed in ordinary times by the general influence of the executive administration, is of material importance in a constitutional light. Independently of other consequences which might be pointed out as probable or contingent, it affords a real security against endeavours by the Crown to subvert or essentially impair the other parts of our government. For, though a king may believe himself and his posterity to be interested in obtaining arbitrary power, it is far less likely that a minister should desire to do so--I mean arbitrary, not in relation to temporary or partial abridgments of the subject's liberty, but to such projects as Charles I. and James II. attempted to execute. What indeed might be effected by a king, at once able, active, popular, and ambitious, should such ever unfortunately appear in this country, it is not easy to predict; certainly his reign would be dangerous, on one side or other, to the present balance of the constitution. But against this contingent evil, or the far more probable encroachments of ministers, which, though not going the full length of despotic power, might slowly undermine and contract the rights of the people, no positive statutes can be devised so effectual as the vigilance of the people themselves and their increased means of knowing and estimating the measures of their government.

_Influence of political writings._--The publication of regular newspapers, partly designed for the communication of intelligence, partly for the discussion of political topics, may be referred, upon the whole, to the reign of Anne, when they obtained great circulation, and became the accredited organs of different factions. The tory ministers, towards the close of that reign, were annoyed at the vivacity of the press both in periodical and other writings, which led to a stamp-duty, intended chiefly to diminish their number, and was nearly producing more pernicious restrictions, such as renewing the licensing act, or compelling authors to acknowledge their names.[410] These however did not take place, and the government more honourably coped with their adversaries in the same warfare; nor, with Swift and Bolingbroke on their side, could they require, except indeed through the badness of their cause, any aid from the arm of power.[411]

In a single hour these two great masters of language were changed from advocates of the Crown to tribunes of the people; both more distinguished as writers in this altered scene of their fortunes, and certainly among the first political combatants with the weapons of the press whom the world has ever known. Bolingbroke's influence was of course greater in England; and, with all the signal faults of his public character, with all the factiousness which dictated most of his writings and the indefinite declamation or shallow reasoning which they frequently display, they have merits not always sufficiently acknowledged. He seems first to have made the tories reject their old tenets of exalted prerogative and hereditary right, and scorn the high-church theories which they had maintained under William and Anne. His _Dissertation on Parties_, and _Letters on the History of England_, are in fact written on whig principles (if I know what is meant by that name) in their general tendency; however a politician, who had always some particular end in view, may have fallen into several inconsistencies. The same character is due to the _Craftsman_, and to most of the temporary pamphlets directed against Sir Robert Walpole. They teemed, it is true, with exaggerated declamations on the side of liberty; but that was the side they took; it was to generous prejudices they appealed, nor did they ever advert to the times before the revolution but with contempt or abhorrence. Libels there were indeed of a different class, proceeding from the jacobite school; but these obtained little regard; the jacobites themselves, or such as affected to be so, having more frequently espoused that cause from a sense of dissatisfaction with the conduct of the reigning family than from much regard to the pretensions of the other. Upon the whole matter it must be evident to every person who is at all conversant with the publications of George II.'s reign, with the poems, the novels, the essays, and almost all the literature of the time, that what are called the popular or liberal doctrines of government were decidedly prevalent. The supporters themselves of the Walpole and Pelham administrations, though professedly whigs, and tenacious of revolution principles, made complaints, both in parliament and in pamphlets, of the democratical spirit, the insubordination to authority, the tendency to republican sentiments, which they alleged to have gained ground among the people. It is certain that the tone of popular opinion gave some countenance to these assertions, though much exaggerated to create alarm in the aristocratical classes, and furnish arguments against redress of abuses.

_Publication of debates._--The two houses of parliament are supposed to deliberate with closed doors. It is always competent for any one member to insist that strangers be excluded; not on any special ground, but by merely enforcing the standing order for that purpose. It has been several times resolved, that it is a high breach of privilege to publish any speeches or proceedings of the Commons; though they have since directed their own votes and resolutions to be printed. Many persons have been punished by commitment for this offence; and it is still highly irregular, in any debate, to allude to the reports in newspapers, except for the purpose of animadverting on the breach of privilege.[412] Notwithstanding this pretended strictness, notices of the more interesting discussions were frequently made public; and entire speeches were sometimes circulated by those who had sought popularity in delivering them. After the accession of George I. we find a pretty regular account of debates in an annual publication, Boyer's _Historical Register_, which was continued to the year 1737. They were afterwards published monthly, and much more at length, in the _London_ and the _Gentleman's Magazines_; the latter, as is well known, improved by the pen of Johnson yet not so as to lose by any means the leading scope of the arguments. It follows of course that the restriction upon the presence of strangers had been almost entirely dispensed with. A transparent veil was thrown over this innovation by disguising the names of the speakers, or more commonly by printing only initial and final letters. This ridiculous affectation of concealment was extended to many other words in political writings, and had not wholly ceased in the American war.

It is almost impossible to over-rate the value of this regular publication of proceedings in parliament, carried as it has been in our own time to nearly as great copiousness and accuracy as is probably attainable. It tends manifestly and powerfully to keep within bounds the supineness and negligence, the partiality and corruption, to which every parliament, either from the nature of its composition or the frailty of mankind, must more or less be liable. Perhaps the constitution would not have stood so long, or rather would have stood like an useless and untenanted mansion, if this unlawful means had not kept up a perpetual intercourse, a reciprocity of influence between the parliament and the people. A stream of fresh air, boisterous perhaps sometimes as the winds of the north, yet as healthy and invigorating, flows in to renovate the stagnant atmosphere, and to prevent that _malaria_, which self-interest and oligarchical exclusiveness are always tending to generate. Nor has its importance been less perceptible in affording the means of vindicating the measures of government, and securing to them, when just and reasonable, the approbation of the majority among the middle ranks, whose weight in the scale has been gradually increasing during the last and present centuries.

_Increased influence of the middle ranks._--This augmentation of the democratical influence, using that term as applied to the commercial and industrious classes in contradistinction to the territorial aristocracy, was the slow but certain effect of accumulated wealth and diffused knowledge, acting however on the traditional notions of freedom and equality which had ever prevailed in the English people. The nation, exhausted by the long wars of William and Anne, recovered strength in thirty years of peace that ensued; and in that period, especially under the prudent rule of Walpole, the seeds of our commercial greatness were gradually ripened. It was evidently the most prosperous season that England had ever experienced; and the progression, though slow, being uniform, the reign perhaps of George II. might not disadvantageously be compared, for the real happiness of the community, with that more brilliant but uncertain and oscillatory condition which has ensued. A distinguished writer has observed that the labourer's wages have never, at least for many ages, commanded so large a portion of subsistence as in this part of the eighteenth century.[413] The public debt, though it excited alarms from its magnitude, at which we are now accustomed to smile, and though too little care was taken for redeeming it, did not press very heavily on the nation; as the low rate of interest evinces, the government securities at three per cent. having generally stood above par. In the war of 1743, which from the selfish practice of relying wholly on loans did not much retard the immediate advance of the country, and still more after the peace of Aix la Chapelle, a striking increase of wealth became perceptible.[414] This was shown in one circumstance directly affecting the character of the constitution. The smaller boroughs, which had been from the earliest time under the command of neighbouring peers and gentlemen, or sometimes of the Crown, were attempted by rich capitalists, with no other connection or recommendation than one which is generally sufficient. This appears to have been first observed in the general election of 1747 and 1754;[415] and though the prevalence of bribery is attested by the statute-book, and the journals of parliament from the revolution, it seems not to have broken down all floodgates till near the end of the reign of George II. The sale of seats in parliament, like any other transferable property, is never mentioned in any book that I remember to have seen of an earlier date than 1760. We may dispense therefore with the enquiry in what manner this extraordinary traffic has affected the constitution, observing only that its influence must have tended to counteract that of the territorial aristocracy, which is still sufficiently predominant. The country gentlemen, who claimed to themselves a character of more independence and patriotism than could be found in any other class, had long endeavoured to protect their ascendancy by excluding the rest of the community from parliament. This was the principle of the bill, which, after being frequently attempted, passed into a law during the tory administration of Anne, requiring every member of the Commons, except those for the universities, to possess, as a qualification for his seat, a landed estate, above all incumbrances, of £300 a year.[416] By a later act of George II., with which it was thought expedient, by the government of the day, to gratify the landed interest, this property must be stated on oath by every member on taking his seat, and, if required, at his election.[417] The law is however notoriously evaded; and though much might be urged in favour of rendering a competent income the condition of eligibility, few would be found at present to maintain that the freehold qualification is not required both unconstitutionally, according to the ancient theory of representation, and absurdly, according to the present state of property in England. But I am again admonished, as I have frequently been in writing these last pages, to break off from subjects that might carry me too far away from the business of this history; and, content with compiling and selecting the records of the past, to shun the difficult and ambitious office of judging the present, or of speculating upon the future.

FOOTNOTES:

[294] 4 Anne, c. 8; _Parl. Hist._ 457 _et post_; Burnet, 429.

[295] 6 Anne, c. 6; _Parl. Hist._ 613; Somerville, 296; _Hardw. Papers_, ii. 473. Cunningham attests the zeal of the whigs for abolishing the Scots privy council, though he is wrong in reckoning Lord Cowper among them, whose name appears in the protest on the other side. ii. 135, etc. The distinction of old and modern whigs appeared again in this reign; the former professing, and in general feeling, a more steady attachment to the principles of civil liberty. Sir Peter King, Sir Joseph Jekyll, Mr. Wortley, Mr. Hampden, and the historian himself, were of this description; and consequently did not always support Godolphin. P. 210, etc. Mr. Wortley brought in a bill, which passed the Commons in 1710, for voting by ballot. It was opposed by Wharton and Godolphin in the Lords, as dangerous to the constitution, and thrown out. Wortley, he says, went the next year to Venice, on purpose to inquire into the effects of the ballot which prevailed universally in that republic. P. 285.

[296] _Parl. Hist._ vi. 805; Burnet, 537; _State Trials_, xv. 1. It is said in Coxe's _Life of Marlborough_, iii. 141, that Marlborough and Somers were against this prosecution. This writer goes out of his way to make a false and impertinent remark on the managers of the impeachment, as giving encouragement by their speeches to licentiousness and sedition. _Id._ 166.

[297] "The managers appointed by the House of Commons," says an ardent jacobite, "behaved with all the insolence imaginable. In their discourse they boldly asserted, even in her majesty's presence, that, if the right to the crown was hereditary and indefeasible, the prince beyond the seas, meaning the king, and not the queen, had the legal title to it, she having no claim thereto, but what she owed to the people; and that by the revolution principles, on which the constitution was founded and to which the laws of the land agreed, the people might turn out or lay aside their sovereigns as they saw cause. Though, no doubt of it, there was a great deal of truth in these assertions, it is easy to be believed that the queen was not well pleased to hear them maintained, even in her own presence and in so solemn a manner, before such a great concourse of her subjects. For, though princes do cherish these and the like doctrines, whilst they serve as the means to advance themselves to a crown, yet being once possessed thereof, they have as little satisfaction in them as those who succeed by an hereditary unquestionable title." _Lockhart Papers_, i. 312.

It is probable enough that the last remark has its weight, and that the queen did not wholly like the speeches of some of the managers; and yet nothing can be more certain than that she owed her crown in the first instance, and the preservation of it at that very time, to those insolent doctrines which wounded her royal ear; and that the genuine loyalists would soon have lodged her in the Tower.

[298] _State Trials_, xv. 95.

[299] _Id._ 115.

[300] _Id._ 127.

[301] _Id._ 61.

[302] _State Trials_, 196, 229. It is observed by Cunningham (p. 286) that Sacheverell's counsel, except Phipps, were ashamed of him; which is really not far from the case. "The doctor," says Lockhart, "employed Sir Simon, afterwards Lord Harcourt, and Sir Constantine Phipps as his counsel, who defended him the best way they could, though they were hard put to it to maintain the hereditary right and unlimited doctrine of non-resistance, and not condemn the revolution. And the truth on it is, these are so inconsistent with one another that the chief arguments alleged in this and other parallel cases came to no more than this; that the revolution was an exception from the nature of government in general, and the constitution and laws of Britain in particular, which necessity in that particular case made expedient and lawful." _Ibid._

[303] _State Trials_, 407.

[304] _Id._ 110.

[305] Cunningham says that the Duke of Leeds spoke strongly in favour of the revolution, though he voted Sacheverell not guilty. P. 298. Lockhart observes that he added success to necessity, as an essential point for rendering the revolution lawful.

[306] The homilies are so much more vehement against resistance than Sacheverell was, that it would have been awkward to pass a rigorous sentence on him. In fact, he or any other clergyman had a right to preach the homily against rebellion instead of a sermon. As to their laying down general rules without adverting to the exceptions, an apology which the managers set up for them, it was just as good for Sacheverell; and the homilies expressly deny all possible exceptions. Tillotson had a plan of dropping these old compositions, which in some doctrinal points, as well as in the tenet of non-resistance, do not represent the sentiments of the modern church, though, in a general way, it subscribes to them. But the times were not ripe for this, or some other of that good prelate's designs. Wordsworth's _Eccles. Biog._ vol. vi. The quotations from the homilies and other approved works by Sacheverell's counsel are irresistible, and must have increased the party spirit of the clergy. "No conjuncture of circumstances whatever," says Bishop Sanderson, "can make that expedient to be done at any time that is of itself, and in the kind, unlawful. For a man to take up arms offensive or defensive against a lawful sovereign, being a thing in its nature simply and _de toto genere_ unlawful, may not be done by any man, at any time, in any case, upon any colour or pretence whatsoever." _State Trials_, 231.

[307] _Parl. Hist._ vi. 57. They did not scruple, however, to say what cost nothing but veracity and gratitude, that Marlborough had retrieved the honour of the nation. This was justly objected to, as reflecting on the late king, but carried by 180 to 80. _Id._ 58; Burnet.

[308] Coxe's _Marlborough_, i. 483. Mr. Smith was chosen speaker by 248 to 205, a slender majority; but some of the ministerial party seem to have thought him too much a whig. _Id._ 485; _Parl. Hist._ 450. The whig newspapers were long hostile to Marlborough.

[309] Burnet rather gently slides over these jealousies between Godolphin and the whig junto; and Tindal, his mere copyist, is not worth mentioning. But Cunningham's history, and still more the letters published in Coxe's _Life of Marlborough_, show better the state of party intrigues; which the _Parliamentary History_ also illustrates, as well as many pamphlets of the time. Somerville has carefully compiled as much as was known when he wrote.

[310] _Parl. Hist._ vi. 4.

[311] Nov. 27; _Parl. Hist._ 477.

[312] Coxe's _Marlborough_, i. 453, ii. 110; Cunningham, ii. 52, 83.

[313] _Mémoires de Torcy_, vol. ii. _passim_; Coxe's _Marlborough_, vol. iii.; Bolingbroke's _Letters on History_, and Lord Walpole's answer to them; Cunningham; Somerville, 840.

[314] The late biographer of Marlborough asserts that he was against breaking off the conferences in 1709, though clearly for insisting on the cession of Spain (iii. 40). Godolphin, Somers, and the whigs in general, expected Louis XIV. to yield the thirty-seventh article. Cowper, however, was always doubtful of this. _Id._ 176.

It is very hard to pronounce, as it appears to me, on the great problem of Louis's sincerity in this negotiation. No decisive evidence seems to have been brought on the contrary side. The most remarkable authority that way is a passage in the _Mémoires of St. Phelipe_, iii. 263, who certainly asserts that the King of France had, without the knowledge of any of his ministers, assured his grandson of a continued support. But the question returns as to St. Phelipe's means of knowing so important a secret. On the other hand, I cannot discover in the long correspondence between Madame de Maintenon and the Princesse des Ursins the least corroboration of these suspicions, but much to the contrary effect. Nor does Torcy drop a word, though writing when all was over, by which we should infer that the court of Versailles had any other hopes left in 1709, than what still lingered in their heart from the determined spirit of the Castilians themselves.

It appears by the _Mémoires de Noailles_, iii. 10 (edit. 1777), that Louis wrote to Philip, 26th Nov. 1708, hinting that he must reluctantly give him up, in answer to one wherein the latter had declared that he would not quit Spain while he had a drop of blood in his veins. And on the French ambassador at Madrid, Amelot, remonstrating against the abandonment of Spain, with an evident intimation that Philip could not support himself alone, the King of France answered that he must end the war at any price. 15th April 1709. _Id._ 34. In the next year, after the battle of Saragosa, which seemed to turn the scale wholly against Philip, Noailles was sent to Madrid in order to persuade that prince to abandon the contest. _Id._ 107. There were some in France who would even have accepted the thirty-seventh article, of whom Madame de Maintenon seems to have been. P. 117. We may perhaps think that an explicit offer of Naples, on the part of the allies, would have changed the scene; nay, it seems as if Louis would have been content at this time with Sardinia and Sicily. P. 108.

[315] A contemporary historian of remarkable gravity observes: "It was strange to see how much the desire of French wine, and the dearness of it, alienated many men from the Duke of Marlborough's friendship." Cunningham, ii. 220. The hard drinkers complained that they were poisoned by port; these formed almost a party: Dr. Aldrich (Dean of Christchurch, surnamed the priest of Bacchus), Dr. Ratcliffe, General Churchill, etc. "And all the bottle companions, many physicians, and great numbers of the lawyers and inferior clergy, and, in fine, the loose women too, were united together in the faction against the Duke of Marlborough."

[316] A bill was attempted in 1704 to recruit the army by a forced conscription of men from each parish, but laid aside as unconstitutional. Boyer's _Reign of Queen Anne_, p. 123. It was tried again in 1707 with like success. P. 319. But it was resolved instead to bring in a bill for raising a sufficient number of troops out of such persons as have no lawful calling or employment. Stat. 4 Anne, c. 10; _Parl. Hist._ 335. The parish officers were thus enabled to press men for the land service; a method hardly more unconstitutional than the former, and liable to enormous abuses. The act was temporary, but renewed several times during the war. It was afterwards revived in 1757 (30 Geo. 2, c. 8), but never, I believe, on any later occasion.

[317] Every contemporary writer bears testimony to the exhaustion of France, rendered still more deplorable by the unfavourable season of 1709, which produced a famine. Madame de Maintenon's letters to the Princess des Ursins are full of the public misery, which she did not soften, out of some vain hope that her inflexible correspondent might relent at length, and prevail on the King and Queen of Spain to abandon their throne.

[318] It is evident from Macpherson's _Papers_, that all hopes of a restoration in the reign of Anne were given up in England. They soon revived, however, as to Scotland, and grew stronger about the time of the union.

[319] The _Rehearsal_ is not written in such a manner as to gain over many proselytes. The scheme of fighting against liberty with her own arms had not yet come into vogue; or rather Leslie was too mere a bigot to practise it. He is wholly for arbitrary power; but the commons stuff of his journal is high-church notions of all descriptions. This could not win many in the reign of Anne.

[320] Macpherson, i. 608. If Carte's anecdotes are true, which is very doubtful, Godolphin, after he was turned out, declared his concern at not having restored the king; that he thought Harley would do it, but by French assistance, which he did not intend; that the tories had always distressed him, and his administration had passed in a struggle with the whig junto. _Id._ 170. Somerville says, he was assured that Carte was reckoned credulous and ill-informed by the jacobites. P. 273. It seems indeed, by some passages in Macpherson's _Papers_, that the Stuart agents either kept up an intercourse with Godolphin, or pretended to do so. Vol. ii. 2 _et post_. But it is evident that they had no confidence in him.

It must be observed, however, that Lord Dartmouth, in his notes on Burnet, repeatedly intimates that Godolphin's secret object in his ministry was the restoration of the house of Stuart, and that with this view he suffered the act of security in Scotland to pass, which raised such a clamour that he was forced to close with the whigs in order to save himself. It is said also by a very good authority, Lord Hardwicke (note on Burnet, Oxf. edit. v. 352) that there was something not easy to be accounted for in the conduct of the ministry, preceding the attempt on Scotland in 1708; giving us to understand in the subsequent part of the note that Godolphin was suspected of connivance with it. And this is confirmed by Ker of Kersland, who directly charges the treasurer with extreme remissness, if not something worse. _Memoirs_, i. 54. See also Lockhart's _Commentaries_ (in _Lockhart Papers_, i. 308). Yet it seems almost impossible to suspect Godolphin of such treachery, not only towards the protestant succession, but his mistress herself.

[321] Macpherson, ii. 74 _et post_; Hooke's _Negotiations_; Lockhart's _Commentaries_; Ker of Kersland's _Memoirs_, 45; Burnet; Cunningham; Somerville.

[322] Burnet, 502.

[323] Macpherson, ii. 158, 228, 283, and see Somerville, 272.

[324] _Memoirs of Berwick_, 1778 (English translation). And compare Lockhart's _Commentaries_, p. 368; Macpherson, sub. ann. 1712 and 1713, _passim_.

[325] The pamphlets on Harley's side, and probably written under his inspection, for at least the first year after his elevation to power, such as one entitled "Faults on both Sides," ascribed to Richard Harley, his relation (_Somers Tracts_, xii. 678); "Spectator's Address to the Whigs on Occasion of the stabbing Mr. Harley," or the "Secret History of the October Club," 1711 (I believe by De Foe), seem to have for their object to reconcile as many of the whigs as possible to his administration, and to display his aversion to the violent tories. There can be no doubt that his first project was to have excluded the more acrimonious whigs, such as Wharton and Sunderland, as well as the Duke of Marlborough and his wife, and coalesced with Cowper and Somers, both of whom were also in favour with the queen. But the steadiness of the whig party, and their resentment of his duplicity, forced him into the opposite quarters, though he never lost sight of his schemes for reconciliation.

The dissembling nature of this unfortunate statesman rendered his designs suspected. The whigs, at least in 1713, in their correspondence with the court of Hanover, speak of him as entirely in the jacobite interest. Macpherson, ii. 472, 509. Cunningham, who is not on the whole unfavourable to Harley, says, that "men of all parties agreed in concluding that his designs were in the Pretender's favour. And it is certain that he affected to have it thought so."--P. 303. Lockhart also bears witness to the reliance placed on him by the jacobites, and argues with some plausibility (p. 377) that the Duke of Hamilton's appointment as ambassador to France, in 1712, must have been designed to further their object; though he believed that the death of that nobleman, in a duel with Lord Mohun, just as he was setting out for Paris, put a stop to the scheme, and "questions if it was ever heartily re-assumed by Lord Oxford."--"This I know, that his lordship regretting to a friend of mine the duke's death, next day after it happened, told him that it disordered all their schemes, seeing Great Britain did not afford a person capable to discharge the trust which was committed to his grace, which sure was somewhat very extraordinary; and what other than the king's restoration could there be of so very great importance, or require such dexterity in managing, is not easy to imagine. And indeed it is more than probable that before his lordship could pitch upon one he might depend on in such weighty matters, the discord and division which happened betwixt him and the other ministers of state diverted or suspended his design of serving the king." Lockhart's _Commentaries_, p. 410. But there is more reason to doubt whether this design to serve the king ever existed.

[326] If we may trust to a book printed in 1717, with the title, "Minutes of Monsieur Mesnager's Negotiations with the Court of England towards the Close of the last Reign, written by himself," that agent of the French cabinet entered into an arrangement with Bolingbroke in March 1712, about the Pretender. It was agreed that Louis should ostensibly abandon him, but should not be obliged, in case of the queen's death, not to use endeavours for his restoration. Lady Masham was wholly for this; but owned "the rage and irreconcilable aversion of the greatest part of the common people to her (the queen's) brother was grown to a height." But I must confess that, although Macpherson has extracted the above passage, and a more judicious writer, Somerville, quotes the book freely as genuine (_Hist. of Anne_, p. 581, etc.), I found in reading it what seemed to me the strongest grounds of suspicion. It is printed in England, without a word of preface to explain how such important secrets came to be divulged, or by what means the book came before the world; the correct information as to English customs and persons frequently betrays a native pen; the truth it contains, as to jacobite intrigues, might have transpired from other sources, and in the main was pretty well suspected, as the Report of the Secret Committee on the Impeachments in 1715 shows; so that, upon the whole, I cannot but reckon it a forgery in order to injure the tory leaders.

But however this may be, we find Bolingbroke in correspondence with the Stuart agents in the later part of 1712. Macpherson, 366. And his own correspondence with Lord Strafford shows his dread and dislike of Hanover (_Bol. Corr._ ii. 487 _et alibi_). The Duke of Buckingham wrote to St. Germains in July that year, with strong expressions of his attachment to the cause, and pressing the necessity of the prince's conversion to the protestant religion. Macpherson, 327. Ormond is mentioned in the Duke of Berwick's letters as in correspondence with him; and Lockhart says there was no reason to make the least question of his affection to the king, whose friends were consequently well pleased at his appointment to succeed Marlborough in the command of the army, and thought it portended some good designs in favour of him. _Id._ 376.

Of Ormond's sincerity in this cause there can indeed be little doubt; but there is almost as much reason to suspect that of Bolingbroke as of Oxford; except that, having more rashness and less principle, he was better fitted for so dangerous a counter-revolution. But in reality he had a perfect contempt for the Stuart and tory notions of government, and would doubtless have served the house of Hanover with more pleasure, if his prospects in that quarter had been more favourable. It appears that in the session of 1714, when he had become lord of the ascendant, he disappointed the zealous royalists by his delays as much as his more cautious rival had done before. Lockhart, 470. This writer repeatedly asserts that a majority of the House of Commons, both in the parliament of 1710 and that of 1713, wanted only the least encouragement from the court to have brought about the repeal of the act of settlement. But I think this very doubtful; and I am quite convinced that the nation would not have acquiesced in it. Lockhart is sanguine, and ignorant of England.

It must be admitted that part of the cabinet were steady to the protestant succession. Lord Dartmouth, Lord Powlett, Lord Trevor, and the Bishop of London were certainly so; nor can there be any reasonable doubt, as I conceive, of the Duke of Shrewsbury. On the other side, besides Ormond, Harcourt, and Bolingbroke, were the Duke of Buckingham, Sir William Wyndham, and probably Mr. Bromley.

[327] It is said that the Duke of Leeds, who was now in the Stuart interest, had sounded her in 1711, but with no success in discovering her intention. Macpherson, 212. The Duke of Buckingham pretended, in the above-mentioned letter to St. Germains, June 1712, that he had often pressed the queen on the subject of her brother's restoration, but could get no other answer than, "you see he does not make the least step to oblige me;" or, "he may thank himself for it: he knows I always loved him better than the other." _Id._ 328. This alludes to the Pretender's pertinacity, as the writer thought it, in adhering to his religion; and it may be very questionable, whether he had ever such conversation with the queen at all. But, if he had, it does not lead to the supposition, that under all circumstances she meditated his restoration. If the book under the name of Mesnager is genuine, which I much doubt, Mrs. Masham had never been able to elicit anything decisive of her majesty's inclinations; nor do any of the Stuart correspondents in Macpherson pretend to know her intentions with certainty. The following passage in Lockhart seems rather more to the purpose: On his coming to parliament in 1710, with a "high monarchical address," which he had procured from the county of Edinburgh, "the queen told me, though I had almost always opposed her measures, she did not doubt of my affection to her person, and hoped I would not concur in the design against Mrs. Masham, or for bringing over the Prince of Hanover. At first I was somewhat surprised, but recovering myself, I assured her I should never be accessary to the imposing any hardship or affront upon her; and as for the Prince of Hanover, her majesty might judge from the address I had read, that I should not be acceptable to my constituents if I gave my consent for bringing over any of that family, either now or at any time hereafter. At that she smiled, and I withdrew; and then she said to the duke (Hamilton), she believed I was an honest man and a fair dealer, and the duke replied, he could assure her I liked her majesty and all her father's bairns."--P. 317. It appears in subsequent parts of this book, that Lockhart and his friends were confident of the queen's inclinations in the last year of her life, though not of her resolution.

The truth seems to be, that Anne was very dissembling, as Swift repeatedly says in his private letters, and as feeble and timid persons in high station generally are; that she hated the house of Hanover, and in some measure feared them; but that she had no regard for the Pretender (for it is really absurd to talk like Somerville of natural affection under all the circumstances), and feared him a great deal more than the other; that she had, however, some scruples about his right, which were counterbalanced by her attachment to the church of England; consequently, that she was wavering among opposite impulses, but with a predominating timidity which would have probably kept her from any change.

[328] The Duchess of Gordon, in June 1711, sent a silver medal to the faculty of advocates at Edinburgh, with a head on one side, and the inscription, "Cujus est"; on the other, the British isles, with the word "Reddite." The dean of faculty, Dundas of Arniston, presented this medal; and there seems reason to believe that a majority of the advocates voted for its reception. Somerville, p. 452. Bolingbroke, in writing on the subject to a friend, it must be owned, speaks of the proceeding with due disapprobation. _Bolingbroke Correspondence_, i. 343. No measures, however, were taken to mark the court's displeasure.

"Nothing is more certain," says Bolingbroke in his letter to Sir William Wyndham, perhaps the finest of his writings, "than this truth, that there was at that time _no formed design_ in the party, whatever views some particular men might have, against his majesty's accession to the throne."--P. 22. This is in effect to confess a great deal; and in other parts of the same letter, he makes admissions of the same kind: though he says that he and other tories had determined, before the queen's death, to have no connection with the Pretender, on account of his religious bigotry. P. 111.

[329] Lockhart gives us a speech of Sir William Whitelock in 1714, bitterly inveighing against the elector of Hanover, who, he hoped, would never come to the crown. Some of the whigs cried out on this that he should be brought to the bar; when Whitelock said he would not recede an inch; he hoped the queen would outlive that prince, and in comparison to her he did not value all the princes of Germany one farthing. P. 469. Swift, in "Some Free Thoughts upon the present State of Affairs," 1714, speaks with much contempt of the house of Hanover and its sovereign; and suggests, in derision, that the infant son of the electoral prince might be invited to take up his residence in England. He pretends in this tract, as in all his writings, to deny entirely that there was the least tendency towards jacobitism, either in any one of the ministry, or even any eminent individual out of it; but with so impudent a disregard of truth that I am not perfectly convinced of his own innocence as to that intrigue. Thus, in his "Inquiry into the Behaviour of the Queen's last Ministry," he says, "I remember, during the late treaty of peace, discoursing at several times with some very eminent persons of the opposite side with whom I had long acquaintance. I asked them seriously, whether they or any of their friends did in earnest believe, or suspect the queen or the ministry to have any favourable regards towards the Pretender? They all confessed for themselves that they believed nothing of the matter," etc. He then tells us that he had the curiosity to ask almost every person in great employment, whether they knew or had heard of any one particular man, except professed nonjurors, that discovered the least inclination towards the Pretender; and the whole number they could muster up did not amount to above five or six; among whom one was a certain old lord lately dead, and one a private gentleman, of little consequence and of a broken fortune, etc. (vol. 15, p. 94, edit. 12mo, 1765). This acute observer of mankind well knew that lying is frequently successful in the ratio of its effrontery and extravagance. There are, however, some passages in this tract, as in others written by Swift, in relation to that time, which serve to illustrate the obscure machinations of those famous last years of the queen.

[330] On a motion in the House of Lords that the protestant succession was in danger, April 5, 1714, the ministry had only a majority of 76 to 69, several bishops and other tories voting against them. _Parl. Hist._ vi. 1334. Even in the Commons the division was but 256 to 208. _Id._ 1347.

[331] Somerville has a separate dissertation on the danger of the protestant succession, intended to prove that it was in no danger at all, except through the violence of the whigs in exasperating the queen. It is true that Lockhart's _Commentaries_ were not published at this time; but he had Macpherson before him, and the _Memoirs of Berwick_, and even gave credit to the authenticity of Mesnager, which I do not. But this sensible, and on the whole impartial writer, had contracted an excessive prejudice against the whigs of that period as a party, though he seems to adopt their principles. His dissertation is a laboured attempt to explain away the most evident facts, and to deny what no one of either party at that time would probably have in private denied.

[332] The queen was very ill about the close of 1713; in fact it became evident, as it had long been apprehended, that she could not live much longer. The Hanoverians, both whigs and tories, urged that the electoral prince should be sent for; it was thought that whichever of the competitors should have the start upon her death would succeed in securing the crown. Macpherson, 385, 546, 557 _et alibi_. Can there be a more complete justification of this measure, which Somerville and the tory writers treat as disrespectful to the queen? The Hanoverian envoy, Schutz, demanded the writ for the electoral prince without his master's orders; but it was done with the advice of all the whig leaders (_Id._ 592), and with the sanction of the Electress Sophia, who died immediately after. "All who are for Hanover believe the coming of the electoral prince to be advantageous; all those against it are frightened at it." _Id._ 596. It was doubtless a critical moment; and the court of Hanover might be excused for pausing in the choice of dangers, as the step must make the queen decidedly their enemy. She was greatly offended, and forbade the Hanoverian minister to appear at court. Indeed she wrote to the elector, on May 19, expressing her disapprobation of the prince's coming over to England, and "her determination to oppose a project so contrary to her royal authority, however fatal the consequences may be." _Id._ 621. Oxford and Bolingbroke intimate the same. _Id._ 593; and see _Bolingbroke Correspondence_, iv. 512, a very strong passage. The measure was given up, whether from unwillingness on the part of George to make the queen irreconcilable, or, as is at least equally probable, out of jealousy of his son. The former certainly disappointed his adherents by more apparent apathy than their ardour required; which will not be surprising, when we reflect that, even upon the throne, he seemed to care very little about it. Macpherson, sub ann. 1714, _passim_.

[333] He was strongly pressed by his English adherents to declare himself a protestant. He wrote a very good answer. Macpherson, 436. Madame de Maintenon says, some catholics urged him to the same course, "par une politique poussée un peu trop loin." _Lettres à la Princesse des Ursins_, ii. 428.

[334] The rage of the tory party against the queen and Lord Oxford for retaining whigs in office is notorious from Swift's private letters, and many other authorities. And Bolingbroke, in his letter to Sir W. Wyndham, very fairly owns their intention "to fill the employments of the kingdom, down to the meanest, with tories."--"We imagined," he proceeds, "that such measures, joined to the advantages of our numbers and our property, would secure us against all attempts during her reign; and that we should soon become too considerable not to make our terms in all events which might happen afterwards; concerning which, to speak truly, I believe few or none of us had any very settled resolution." P. 11. It is rather amusing to observe that those who called themselves the tory or church party, seem to have fancied they had a natural right to power and profit, so that an injury was done them when these rewards went another way; and I am not sure that something of the same prejudice has not been perceptible in times a good deal later.

[335] Though no republican party, as I have elsewhere observed, could with any propriety be said to exist, it is easy to perceive that a certain degree of provocation from the Crown might have brought one together in no slight force. These two propositions are perfectly compatible.

[336] This is well put by Bishop Willis in his speech on the bill against Atterbury. _Parl. Hist._ viii. 305. In a pamphlet, entitled "English Advice to the Freeholders" (_Somers Tracts_, xiii. 521), ascribed to Atterbury himself, a most virulent attack is made on the government, merely because what he calls the church party had been thrown out of office. "Among all who call themselves whigs," he says, "and are of any consideration as such, name me the man I cannot prove to be an inveterate enemy to the church of England; and I will be a convert that instant to their cause." It must be owned perhaps that the whig ministry might better have avoided some reflections on the late times in the addresses of both houses; and still more, some not very constitutional recommendations to the electors, in the proclamation calling the new parliament in 1714 _Parl. Hist._ vi. 44, 50. "Never was prince more universally well received by subjects than his present majesty on his arrival; and never was less done by a prince to create a change in people's affections. But so it is, a very observable change hath happened. Evil infusions were spread on the one hand; and, it may be, there was too great a stoicism or contempt of popularity on the other." "Argument to prove the Affections of the People of England to be the best Security for the Government," p. 11 (1716). This is the pamphlet written to recommend lenity towards the rebels, which Addison has answered in the _Freeholder_. It is invidious, and perhaps secretly jacobite. Bolingbroke observes, in the letter already quoted, that the Pretender's journey from Bar, in 1714, was a mere farce, no party being ready to receive him; but "the menaces of the whigs, backed by some very rash declarations [those of the king], and little circumstances of humour, which frequently offend more than real injuries, and by the entire change of all persons in employment, blew up the coals."--P. 34. Then, he owns, the tories looked to Bar. "The violence of the whigs forced them into the arms of the Pretender." It is to be remarked on all this, that, by Bolingbroke's own account, the tories, if they had no "formed design" or "settled resolution" that way, were not very determined in their repugnance before the queen's death; and that the chief violence of which they complained was, that George chose to employ his friends rather than his enemies.

[337] The trials after this rebellion were not conducted with quite that appearance of impartiality which we now exact from judges. Chief Baron Montagu reprimanded a jury for acquitting some persons indicted for treason; and Tindal, an historian very strongly on the court side, admits that the dying speeches of some of the sufferers made an impression on the people, so as to increase rather than lessen the number of jacobites. _Continuation of Rapin_, p. 501 (folio edit.). There seems, however, upon the whole, to have been greater and less necessary severity after the rebellion in 1745; and upon this latter occasion it is impossible not to reprobate the execution of Mr. Ratcliffe (brother of that Earl of Derwentwater who had lost his head in 1716), after an absence of thirty years from this country, to the sovereign of which he had never professed allegiance nor could owe any, except by the fiction of our law.

[338] _Parl. Hist._ 73. It was carried against Oxford by 247 to 127, Sir Joseph Jekyll strongly opposing it, though he had said before (_Id._ 67) that they had more than sufficient evidence against Bolingbroke on the statute of Edward III. A motion was made in the Lords, to consult the judges whether the articles amounted to treason, but lost by 84 to 52. _Id._ 154. Lord Cowper on this occasion challenged all the lawyers in England to disprove that proposition. The proposal of reference to the judges was perhaps premature; but the house must surely have done this before their final sentence, or shown themselves more passionate than in the case of Lord Strafford.

[339] _Parl. Hist._ vii. 486. The division was 88 to 56. There was a schism in the whig party at this time; yet I should suppose the ministers might have prevented this defeat, if they had been anxious to do so. It seems, however, by a letter in Coxe's _Memoirs of Walpole_, vol. ii. p. 123, that the government were for dropping the charge of treason against Oxford, "it being very certain that there is not sufficient evidence to convict him of that crime," but for pressing those of misdemeanour.

[340] _Parl. Hist._ vii. 105.

[341] _Parl. Hist._ vi. 972. Burnet, 560, makes some observations on the vote passed on this occasion, censuring the late ministers for advising an offensive war in Spain. "A resolution in council is only the sovereign's act, who upon hearing his counsellors deliver their opinions, forms his own resolution; a counsellor may indeed be liable to censure for what he may say at that board; but the resolution taken there has been hitherto treated with a silent respect; but by that precedent it will be hereafter subject to a parliamentary inquiry." Speaker Onslow justly remarks that these general and indefinite sentiments are liable to much exception, and that the bishop did not try them by his whig principles. The first instance where I find the responsibility of some one for every act of the Crown strongly laid down is in a speech of the Duke of Argyle, in 1739. _Parl. Hist._ ix. 1138. "It is true," he says, "the nature of our constitution requires that public acts should be issued out in his majesty's name; but for all that, my lords, he is not the author of them."

[342] "Lord Bolingbroke used to say that the restraining orders to the Duke of Ormond were proposed in the cabinet council, in the queen's presence, by the Earl of Oxford, who had not communicated his intention to the rest of the ministers; and that Lord Bolingbroke was on the point of giving his opinion against it, when the queen, without suffering the matter to be debated, directed these orders to be sent, and broke up the council. This story was told by the late Lord Bolingbroke to my father." Note by Lord Hardwicke on Burnet (Oxf. edit. vi. 119). The noble annotator has given us the same anecdote in the _Hardwicke State Papers_, ii. 482; but with this variance, that Lord Bolingbroke there ascribes the orders to the queen herself, though he conjectured them to have proceeded from Lord Oxford.

[343] _Parl. Hist._ vii. 292. The apprehension that parliament, having taken this step, might go on still farther to protract its own duration, was not quite idle. We find from Coxe's _Memoirs of Walpole_, ii. 217, that in 1720, when the first septennial House of Commons had nearly run its term, there was a project of once more prolonging its life.

[344] _Parl. Hist._ vii. 589.

[345] The arguments on this side are urged by Addison, in the _Old Whig_; and by the author of a tract, entitled "Six Questions Stated and Answered."

[346] The speeches of Walpole and others, in the Parliamentary Debates, contain the whole force of the arguments against the peerage bill. Steele in the _Plebeian_ opposed his old friend and coadjutor, Addison, who forgot a little in party and controversy their ancient friendship.

Lord Sunderland held out, by way of inducements to the bill, that the Lords would part with _scandalum magnatum_, and permit the Commons to administer an oath; and that the king would give up the prerogative of pardoning after an impeachment. Coxe's _Walpole_, ii. 172. Mere trifles, in comparison with the innovations projected.

[347] The letters in Coxe's _Memoirs of Walpole_, vol. ii., abundantly show the German nationality, the impolicy and neglect of his duties, the rapacity and petty selfishness of George I. The whigs were much dissatisfied; but fear of losing their places made them his slaves. Nothing can be more demonstrable than that the king's character was the main cause of preserving jacobitism, as that of his competitor was of weakening it.

The habeas corpus was several times suspended in this reign, as it had been in that of William. Though the perpetual conspiracies of the jacobites afforded a sufficient apology for this measure, it was invidiously held up as inconsistent with a government which professed to stand on the principles of liberty. _Parl. Hist._ v. 153, 267, 604; vii. 276; viii. 38. But some of these suspensions were too long, especially the last, from October 1722 to October 1723. Sir Joseph Jekyll, with his usual zeal for liberty, moved to reduce the time to six months.

[348] "It was first settled by a verbal agreement between Archbishop Sheldon and the Lord Chancellor Clarendon, and tacitly given into by the clergy in general as a great ease to them in taxations. The first public act of any kind relating to it was an act of parliament in 1665, by which the clergy were, in common with the laity, charged with the tax given in that act, and were discharged from the payment of the subsidies they had granted before in convocation; but in this act of parliament of 1665 there is an express saving of the right of the clergy to tax themselves in convocation, if they think fit; but that has been never done since, nor attempted, as I know of, and the clergy have been constantly from that time charged with laity in all public aids to the Crown by the House of Commons. In consequence of this (but from what period I cannot say), without the intervention of any particular law for it, except what I shall mention presently, the clergy (who are not lords of parliament) have assumed, and without any objection enjoyed, the privilege of voting in the election of members of the House of Commons, in virtue of their ecclesiastical freeholds. This has constantly been practised from the time it first began; there are two acts of parliament which suppose it to be now a right. The acts are 10 Anne, c. 23; 18 Geo. II. c. 18. Gibson, Bishop of London, said to me, that this (the taxation of the clergy out of convocation) was the greatest alteration in the constitution ever made without an express law." Speaker Onslow's note on Burnet (Oxf. edit. iv. 508).

[349] The first authority I have observed for this pretension is an address of the House of Lords (19 Nov. 1675) to the throne, for the frequent meeting of the convocation, and that they do make to the king such representations as may be for the safety of the religion established. Lords' Journals. This address was renewed February 22, 1677. But what took place in consequence I am not apprised. It shows, however, some degree of dissatisfaction on the part of the bishops, who must be presumed to have set forward these addresses, at the virtual annihilation of their synod which naturally followed from its relinquishment of self-taxation.

[350] Kennet, 799, 842; Burnet, 280. This assembly had been suffered to sit, probably, in consequence of the tory maxims which the ministry of that year professed.

[351] Wilkins's _Concilia_, iv.; Burnet, _passim_; Boyer's _Life of Queen Anne_, 225; Somerville, 82, 124.

[352] The lower house of convocation, in the late reign, among their other vagaries, had requested "that some synodical notice might be taken of the dishonour done to the church by a sermon preached by Mr. Benjamin Hoadley at St. Lawrence Jewry, Sept. 29, 1705, containing positions contrary to the doctrine of the church, expressed in the first and second parts of the homily against disobedience and wilful rebellion." Wilkins, iv. 634.

[353] These qualities are so apparent, that after turning over some forty or fifty tracts, and consuming a good many hours on the Bangorian controversy, I should find some difficulty in stating with precision the propositions in dispute. It is, however, evident that a dislike, not perhaps exactly to the house of Brunswick, but to the tenor of George I.'s administration, and to Hoadley himself as an eminent advocate for it, who had been rewarded accordingly, was at the bottom a leading motive with most of the church party; some of whom, such as Hare, though originally of a whig connection, might have had disappointments to exasperate them.

There was nothing whatever in Hoadley's sermon injurious to the established endowments and privileges, nor to the discipline and government, of the English church, even in theory. If this had been the case, he might be reproached with some inconsistency in becoming so large a partaker of her honours and emoluments. He even admitted the usefulness of censures for open immoralities, though denying all church authority to oblige any one to external communion, or to pass any sentence which should determine the condition of men with respect to the favour or displeasure of God. Hoadley's Works, ii. 465, 493. Another great question in this controversy was that of religious liberty, as a civil right, which the convocation explicitly denied. And another related to the much debated exercise of private judgment in religion, which, as one party meant virtually to take away, so the other perhaps unreasonably exaggerated. Some other disputes arose in the course of the combat, particularly the delicate problem of the value of sincerity as a plea for material errors.

[354] Tindal, 539.

[355] _Parl. Hist._ vi. 362.

[356] 10 Anne, c. 2.

[357] 12 Anne, c. 7; _Parl. Hist._ vi. 1349. The schism act, according to Lockhart, was promoted by Bolingbroke, in order to gratify the high tories, and to put Lord Oxford under the necessity of declaring himself one way or other. "Though the Earl of Oxford voted for it himself, he concurred with those who endeavoured to restrain some parts which they reckoned too severe; and his friends in both houses, particularly his brother auditor Harley, spoke and voted against it very earnestly."--P. 462.

[358] 5 Geo. I. c. 4. The whigs out of power, among whom was Walpole, factiously and inconsistently opposed the repeal of the schism act, so that it passed with much difficulty. _Parl. Hist._ vii. 569.

[359] The first act of this kind appears to have been in 1727. 1 Geo. II. c. 23. It was repeated next year, intermitted the next, and afterwards renewed in every year of that reign except the fifth, the seventeenth, the twenty-second, the twenty-third, the twenty-sixth, and the thirtieth. Whether these occasional interruptions were intended to prevent the nonconformists from relying upon it, or were caused by some accidental circumstance, must be left to conjecture. I believe that the renewal has been regular every year since the accession of George III. It is to be remembered, that the present work was first published before the repeal of the test act in 1828.

[360] We find in Gutch's _Collectanea Curiosa_, vol. i. p. 53, a plan, ascribed to Lord Chancellor Macclesfield, for taking away the election of heads of colleges from the fellows, and vesting the nomination in the great officers of state, in order to cure the disaffection and want of discipline which was justly complained of. This remedy would have been perhaps the substitution of a permanent for a temporary evil. It appears also that Archbishop Wake wanted to have had a bill, in 1716, for asserting the royal supremacy, and better regulating the clergy of the two universities (Coxe's _Walpole_, ii. 122); but I do not know that the precise nature of this is anywhere mentioned. I can scarcely quote Amherst's _Terræ Filius_ as authority; it is a very clever, though rather libellous, invective against the university of Oxford at that time; but from internal evidence, as well as the confirmation which better authorities afford it, I have no doubt that it contains much truth.

Those who have looked much at the ephemeral literature of these two reigns must be aware of many publications fixing the charge of prevalent disaffection on this university, down to the death of George II.; and Dr. King, the famous jacobite master of St. Mary Hall, admits that some were left to reproach him for apostasy in going to court on the accession of the late king in 1760. The general reader will remember the _Isis_ by Mason, and the _Triumph of Isis_ by Warton; the one a severe invective, the other an indignant vindication; but in this instance, notwithstanding the advantages which satire is supposed to have over panegyric, we must award the laurel to the worse cause, and, what is more extraordinary, to the worse poet.

[361] Layer, who suffered on account of this plot, had accused several peers, among others Lord Cowper, who complained to the house of the publication of his name; and indeed, though he was at that time strongly in opposition to the court, the charge seems wholly incredible. Lord Strafford, however, was probably guilty; Lords North and Orrery certainly so. _Parl. Hist._ viii. 203. There is even ground to suspect that Sunderland, to use Tindal's words, "in the latter part of his life had entered into correspondencies and designs, which would have been fatal to himself or to the public."--P. 657. This is mentioned by Coxe, i. 165; and certainly confirmed by Lockhart, ii. 68, 70. But the reader will hardly give credit to such a story as Horace Walpole has told, that he coolly consulted Sir Robert, his political rival, as to the part they should take on the king's death. Lord Orford's Works, iv. 287.

[362] _State Trials_, xvi. 324; _Parl. Hist._ viii. 195 _et post_. Most of the bishops voted against their restless brother; and Willis, Bishop of Salisbury, made a very good but rather too acrimonious a speech on the bill. _Id._ 298. Hoadley, who was no orator, published two letters in the newspaper, signed "Britannicus," in answer to Atterbury's defence; which, after all that had passed, he might better have spared. Atterbury's own speech is certainly below his fame, especially the peroration. _Id._ 267.

No one, I presume, will affect to doubt the reality of Atterbury's connections with the Stuart family, either before his attainder or during his exile. The proofs of the latter were published by Lord Hailes in 1768, and may be found also in Nicholls's edition of Atterbury's _Correspondence_, i. 148. Additional evidence is furnished by the _Lockhart Papers_, vol. ii. _passim_.

[363] The Stuart papers obtained lately from Rome, and now in his majesty's possession, are said to furnish copious evidence of the jacobite intrigues, and to affect some persons not hitherto suspected. We have reason to hope that they will not be long withheld from the public, every motive for concealment being wholly at an end.

It is said that there were not less than fifty jacobites in the parliament of 1728. Coxe, ii. 294.

[364] The tories, it is observed in the MS. journal of Mr. Yorke (second Earl of Hardwicke), showed no sign of affection to the government at the time when the invasion was expected in 1743, but treated it all with indifference. _Parl. Hist._ xiii. 668. In fact a disgraceful apathy pervaded the nation; and according to a letter from Mr. Fox to Mr. Winnington in 1745, which I only quote from recollection, it seemed perfectly uncertain, from this general passiveness, whether the revolution might not be suddenly brought about. Yet very few comparatively, I am persuaded, had the slightest attachment or prejudice in favour of the house of Stuart; but the continual absence from England, and the Hanoverian predilections of the two Georges, the feebleness and factiousness of their administration, and of public men in general, and an indefinite opinion of misgovernment, raised through the press, though certainly without oppression or arbitrary acts, had gradually alienated the mass of the nation. But this would not lead men to expose their lives and fortunes; and hence the people of England, a thing almost incredible, lay quiet and nearly unconcerned, while the little army of Highlanders came every day nearer to the capital. It is absurd, however, to suppose that they could have been really successful by marching onward; though their defeat might have been more glorious at Finchley than at Culloden.

[365] See _Parl. Hist._ xiii. 1244; and other proofs might be brought from the same work, as well as from miscellaneous authorities of the age of George II.

[366] See in the _Lockhart Papers_, ii. 565, a curious relation of Charles Edward's behaviour in refusing to quit France after the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. It was so insolent and absurd that the government was provoked to arrest him at the opera, and literally to order him to be bound hand and foot; an outrage which even his preposterous conduct could hardly excuse.

Dr. King was in correspondence with this prince for some years after the latter's foolish, though courageous, visit to London in September 1750; which he left again in five days, on finding himself deceived by some sanguine friends. King says he was wholly ignorant of our history and constitution. "I never heard him express any noble or benevolent sentiment, the certain indications of a great soul and good heart; or discover any sorrow or compassion for the misfortune of so many worthy men who had suffered in his cause." _Anecdotes of his own Times_, p. 201. He goes on to charge him with love of money and other faults. But his great folly in keeping a mistress, Mrs. Walkinshaw, whose sister was housekeeper at Leicester House, alarmed the jacobites. "These were all men of fortune and distinction, and many of them persons of the first quality, who attached themselves to the P. as to a person who they imagined might be made the instrument of saving their country. They were sensible that by Walpole's administration the English government was become a system of corruption; and that Walpole's successors, who pursued his plan without any of his abilities, had reduced us to such a deplorable situation that our commercial interest was sinking, our colonies in danger of being lost, and Great Britain, which, if her powers were properly exerted, as they were afterwards in Mr. Pitt's administration, was able to give laws to other nations, was become the contempt of all Europe."--P. 208. This is in truth the secret of the continuance of jacobitism. But possibly that party were not sorry to find a pretext for breaking off so hopeless a connection, which they seem to have done about 1755. Mr. Pitt's great successes reconciled them to the administration; and his liberal conduct brought back those who had been disgusted by an exclusive policy. On the accession of a new king they flocked to St. James's; and probably scarcely one person of the rank of a gentleman, south of the Tweed, was found to dispute the right of the house of Brunswick after 1760. Dr. King himself, it may be observed, laughs at the old passive obedience doctrine (page 193); so far was he from being a jacobite of that school.

A few nonjuring congregations lingered on far into the reign of George III., presided over by the successors of some bishops whom Lloyd of Norwich, the last of those deprived at the revolution, had consecrated in order to keep up the schism. A list of these is given in D'Oyly's _Life of Sancroft_, vol. ii. p. 34, whence it would appear that the last of them died in 1779. I can trace the line a little farther: a bishop of that separation, named Cartwright, resided at Shrewsbury in 1793, carrying on the business of a surgeon. _State Trials_, xxiii. 1073. I have heard of similar congregations in the west of England still later. He had, however, become a very loyal subject to King George: a singular proof of that tenacity of life by which religious sects, after dwindling down through neglect, excel frogs and tortoises; and that, even when they have become almost equally cold-blooded!

[367] _Parl. Hist._ viii. 904.

[368] _Id._ vii. 536.

[369] 8 Geo. 2, c. 30; _Parl. Hist._ viii. 883.

[370] The military having been called in to quell an alleged riot at Westminster election in 1741, it was resolved (Dec. 22nd) "that the presence of a regular body of armed soldiers at an election of members to serve in parliament is a high infringement of the liberties of the subject, a manifest violation of the freedom of elections, and an open defiance of the laws and constitution of this kingdom." The persons concerned in this, having been ordered to attend the house, received on their knees a very severe reprimand from the speaker. _Parl. Hist._ ix. 326. Upon some occasion, the circumstances of which I do not recollect, Chief Justice Willis uttered some laudable sentiments as to the subordination of military power.

[371] Lord Hardwicke threw out the militia bill in 1756, thinking some of its clauses rather too republican, and, in fact, being adverse to the scheme. _Parl. Hist._ xv. 704; H. Walpole's _Memoirs_, ii. 45; Coxe's _Memoirs of Lord Walpole_, 450.

[372] By the act of 6 Anne, c. 7, all persons holding pensions from the Crown during pleasure were made incapable of sitting in the House of Commons; which was extended by 1 Geo. I. c. 56, to those who held them for any term of years. But the difficulty was to ascertain the fact; the government refusing information. Mr. Sandys, accordingly proposed a bill in 1730, by which every member of the Commons was to take an oath that he did not hold any such pension, and that, in case of accepting one, he would disclose it to the house within fourteen days. This was carried by a small majority through the Commons, but rejected in the other house; which happened again in 1734 and in 1740. _Parl. Hist._ viii. 789; ix. 369; xi. 510. The king, in an angry note to Lord Townshend, on the first occasion, calls it "this villainous bill." Coxe's _Walpole_, ii. 537, 673. A bill of the same gentleman to limit the number of placemen in the house had so far worse success, that it did not reach the Serbonian bog. _Parl. Hist._ xi. 328, Bishop Sherlock made a speech against the prevention of corrupt practices by the pension bill, which, whether justly or not, excited much indignation, and even gave rise to the proposal of a bill for putting an end to the translation of bishops. _Id._ viii. 847.

[373] 25 Geo. 2, c. 22. The king came very reluctantly into this measure: in the preceding session of 1742, Sandys, now become chancellor of the exchequer, had opposed it, though originally his own; alleging, in no very parliamentary manner, that the new ministry had not yet been able to remove his majesty's prejudices. _Parl. Hist._ xii. 896.

[374] Mr. Fox declared to the Duke of Newcastle, when the office of secretary of state, and what was called the management of the House of Commons, was offered to him, "that he never desired to touch a penny of the secret service money, or to know the disposition of it farther than was necessary to _enable him to speak to the members without being ridiculous_." Dodington's _Diary_, 15th March 1754. H. Walpole confirms this in nearly the same words. _Mem. of Last Ten Years_, i. 332.

[375] In Coxe's _Memoirs of Sir R. Walpole_, iii. 609, we have the draught, by that minister, of an intended vindication of himself after his retirement from office, in order to show the impossibility of misapplying public money, which, however, he does not show; and his elaborate account of the method by which payments are made out of the exchequer, though valuable in some respects, seems rather intended to lead aside the unpractised reader.

[376] This secret committee were checked at every step for want of sufficient powers. It is absurd to assert, like Mr. Coxe, that they advanced accusations which they could not prove, when the means of proof were withheld. Scrope and Paxton, the one secretary, the other solicitor, to the treasury, being examined about very large sums traced to their hands, and other matters, refused to answer questions that might criminate themselves; and a bill to indemnify evidence was lost in the upper house. _Parl. Hist._ xii. 625 _et post_.

[377] See vol. i. pp. 254, 255.

[378] _Parl. Hist._ vi. 1265. Walpole says, in speaking for Steele, "the liberty of the press is unrestrained; how then shall a part of the legislature dare to punish that as a crime, which is not declared to be so by any law framed by the whole?"

[379] Vol. i. p. 250.

[380] The instances are so numerous, that to select a few would perhaps give an inadequate notion of the vast extension which privilege received. In fact, hardly anything could be done disagreeable to a member, of which he might inform the house, and cause it to be punished.

[381] 12 Will. 3, ch. 3.

[382] Journals, 11th Feb. It had been originally proposed, that the member making the complaint should pay the party's costs and expenses, which was amended, I presume, in consequence of some doubt as to the power of the house to enforce it.

[383] 10 G. 3, c. 50.

[384] Resolved, That whatever ill consequences may arise from the so long deferring the supplies for the year's service, are to be attributed to the fatal counsel of putting off the meeting of a parliament so long, and to unnecessary delays of the House of Commons. Lords' Journals, 23rd June 1701. The Commons had previously come to a vote, that all the ill consequences which may at this time attend the delay of the supplies granted by the Commons for the preserving the public peace, and maintaining the balance of Europe, are to be imputed to those who, to procure an indemnity for their own enormous crimes, have used their utmost endeavours to make a breach between the two houses. Commons' Journals, June 20th.

[385] Journals, 8th May; _Parl. Hist._ v. 1250; Ralph, 947. This historian, who generally affects to take the popular side, inveighs against this petition, because the tories had a majority in the Commons. His partiality, arising out of a dislike to the king, is very manifest throughout the second volume. He is forced to admit afterwards, that the house disgusted the people by their votes on this occasion. P. 976.

[386] _History of the Kentish Petition_; _Somers Tracts_, xi. 242; _Legion's Paper_; _Id._ 264; _Vindication of the Rights of the Commons_ (either by Harley or Sir Humphrey Mackworth); _Id._ 276. This contains in many respects constitutional principles; but the author holds very strong language about the right of petitioning. After quoting the statute of Charles II. against tumults on pretence of presenting petitions, he says: "By this statute it may be observed, that not only the number of persons is restrained, but the occasion also for which they may petition; which is for the alteration of matters established in church or state, for want whereof some inconvenience may arise to that county from which the petition shall be brought. For it is plain by the express words and meaning of that statute that the grievance or matter of the petition must arise in the same county as the petition itself. They may indeed petition the king for a parliament to redress their grievances; and they may petition that parliament to make one law that is advantageous, and repeal another that is prejudicial to the trade or interest of that county; but they have no power by this statute, nor by the constitution of the English government, to direct the parliament in the general proceedings concerning the whole kingdom; for the law declares that a general consultation of all the wise representatives of parliament is more for the safety of England than the hasty advice of a number of petitioners of a private county, of a grand jury, or of a few justices of the peace, who seldom have a true state of the case represented to them."--P. 313.

These are certainly what must appear in the present day very strange limitations of the subject's right to petition either house of parliament. But it is really true that such a right was not generally recognised, nor frequently exercised, in so large an extent as is now held unquestionable. We may search whole volumes of the journals, while the most animating topics were in discussion, without finding a single instance of such an interposition of the constituent with the representative body. In this particular case of the Kentish petition, the words in the resolution, that it tended to destroy the constitution of parliament and subvert the established government, could be founded on no pretence but its unusual interference with the counsels of the legislature. With this exception, I am not aware (stating this, however, with some diffidence) of any merely political petition before the Septennial bill in 1717, against which several were presented from corporate towns; one of which was rejected on account of language that the house thought indecent; and as to these it may be observed, that towns returning members to parliament had a particular concern in the measure before the house. They relate, however, no doubt, to general policy, and seem to establish a popular principle which stood on little authority. I do not of course include the petitions to the long parliament in 1640, nor one addressed to the Convention, in 1689, from the inhabitants of London and Westminster, pressing their declaration of William and Mary; both in times too critical to furnish regular precedents. But as the popular principles of government grew more established, the right of petitioning on general grounds seems to have been better recognised; and instances may be found, during the administration of Sir Robert Walpole, though still by no means frequent. _Parl. Hist._ xii. 119. The city of London presented a petition against the bill for naturalisation of the Jews, in 1753, as being derogatory to the Christian religion as well as detrimental to trade. _Id._ xiv. 1417. It caused, however, some animadversion; for Mr. Northey, in the debate next session on the proposal to repeal this bill, alluding to this very petition, and to the comments Mr. Pelham made on it, as "so like the famous Kentish petition that if they had been treated in the same manner it would have been what they deserved," observes in reply, that the "right of petitioning either the king or the parliament in a decent and submissive manner, and without any riotous appearance against anything they think may affect their religion and liberties, will never, I hope, be taken from the subject." _Id._ xv. 149; see also 376. And it is very remarkable that notwithstanding the violent clamour excited by that unfortunate statute, no petitions for its repeal are to be found in the journals. They are equally silent with regard to the marriage act, another topic of popular obloquy. Some petitions appear to have been presented against the bill for naturalisation of foreign protestants; but probably on the ground of its injurious effect on the parties themselves. The great multiplication of petitions on matters wholly unconnected with particular interests cannot, I believe, be traced higher than those for the abolition of the slave trade in 1787; though a few were presented for reform about the end of the American war, which would undoubtedly have been rejected with indignation in any earlier stage of our constitution. It may be remarked also that petitions against bills imposing duties are not received, probably on the principle that they are intended for the general interests, though affecting the parties who thus complain of them. Hatsell, iii. 200.

The convocation of public meetings for the debate of political questions, as preparatory to such addresses or petitions, is still less according to the practice and precedents of our ancestors; nor does it appear that the sheriffs or other magistrates are more invested with a right of convening or presiding in assemblies of this nature than any other persons; though, within the bounds of the public peace, it would not perhaps be contended that they have ever been unlawful. But that their origin can be distinctly traced higher than the year 1769, I am not prepared to assert. It will of course be understood, that this note is merely historical, and without reference to the expediency of that change in our constitutional theory which it illustrates.

[387] _State Trials_, xiv. 849.

[388] _Parl. Hist._ vi. 225 _et post_; _State Trials_, xiv. 695 _et post_.

[389] _Parl. Hist._ xiv. 888 _et post_, 1063; Walpole's _Memoirs of the last Ten Years of George II._, i. 15 _et post_.

[390] Journals, vii. 9th July 1725.

[391] Commons' Journals, 25th Oct. 1689.

[392] _Id._ Dec. 5.

[393] _Parl. Hist._ vii. 803.

[394] Lords' Journals, 10th Jan. 1702; _Parl. Hist._ vi. 21.

[395] Hargrave's _Juridical Arguments_, vol. i. p. 1, etc.

[396] _State Trials_, vi. 1369; 1 Modern Reports, 159.

[397] _Id._, xii. 822; T. Jones, Reports, 208.

[398] Journals, 10th, 12th, 19th July 1689.

[399] _State Trials_, xiv. 849.

[400] _Id._, viii. 30.

[401] This is very elaborately and dispassionately argued by Mr. Hargrave in his _Juridical Arguments_, above cited; also vol. ii. p. 183. "I understand it," he says, "to be clearly part of the law and custom of parliament that each house of parliament may inquire into and imprison for breaches of privilege." But this he thinks to be limited by law; and after allowing it clearly in cases of obstruction, arrest, assault, etc., on members, admits also that "the judicative power as to writing, speaking, or publishing, of gross reflections upon the whole parliament or upon either house, though perhaps originally questionable, seems now of too long a standing and of too much frequency in practice to be well counteracted." But after mentioning the opinions of the judges in Crosby's case, Mr. H. observes: "I am myself far from being convinced that commitment for contempts by a house of parliament, or by the highest court of judicature in Westminster Hall, either ought to be, or are thus wholly privileged from all examination and appeal."

[402] Mr. Justice Gould, in Crosby's case, as reported by Wilson, observes: "It is true this court did, in the instance alluded to by the counsel at the bar (Wilkes's case, 2 Wilson, 151), determine upon the privilege of parliament in the case of a libel; but then that privilege was promulged and known; it existed in records and law-books, and was allowed by parliament itself. But _even in that case we now know that we were mistaken; for the House of Commons have since determined, that privilege does not extend to matters of libel_." It appears, therefore, that Mr. Justice Gould thought a declaration of the House of Commons was better authority than a decision of the court of common pleas, as to a privilege which, as he says, existed in records and law-books.

[403] "I am far from subscribing to all the latitude of the doctrine of attachments for contempts of the king's courts of Westminster, especially the King's Bench, as it is sometimes stated, and it has been sometimes practised." Hargrave, ii. 213.

"The principle upon which attachments issue for libels on courts is of a more enlarged and important nature: it is _to keep a blaze of glory around them_, and to deter people from attempting to render them contemptible in the eyes of the people." Wilmot's _Opinions and Judgments_, p. 270. Yet the king, who seems as much entitled to this blaze of glory as his judges, is driven to the verdict of a jury before the most libellous insult on him can be punished.

[404] Hargrave, _ubi supra_.

[405] This effect of continual new statutes is well pointed out in a speech ascribed to Sir William Wyndham in 1734: "The learned gentleman spoke (he says) of the prerogative of the Crown, and asked us if it had lately been extended beyond the bounds prescribed to it by law. Sir, I will not say that there have been lately any attempts to extend it beyond the bounds prescribed by law; but I will say that these bounds have been of late so vastly enlarged that there seems to be no great occasion for any such attempt. What are the many penal laws made within these forty years, but so many extensions of the prerogative of the Crown, and as many diminutions of the liberty of the subject? And whatever the necessity was that brought us into the enacting of such laws, it was a fatal necessity; it has greatly added to the power of the Crown, and particular care ought to be taken not to throw any more weight into that scale." _Parl. Hist._ ix. 463.

Among the modern statutes which have strengthened the hands of the executive power, we should mention the riot act (1 Geo. I. stat. 2, c. 5), whereby all persons tumultuously assembled to the disturbance of the public peace, and not dispersing within one hour after proclamation made by a single magistrate, are made guilty of a capital felony. I am by no means controverting the expediency of this law; but, especially when combined with the aid of a military force, it is surely a compensation for much that may seem to have been thrown into the popular scale.

[406] 9 Geo. 2, c. 35, sect. 10, 13; _Parl. Hist._ ix. 1229. I quote this as I find it: but probably the expressions are not quite correct; for the reasoning is not so.

[407] Coxe's _Walpole_, i. 296; H. Walpole's Works, iv. 476. The former, however, seems to rest on H. Walpole's verbal communication, whose want of accuracy, or veracity, or both, is so palpable that no great stress can be laid on his testimony. I believe, however, that the fact of George I. and his minister conversing in Latin may be proved on other authority.

[408] H. Walpole's _Memoirs of the last Ten Years_; Lord Waldegrave's _Memoirs_. In this well written little book, the character of George II. in reference to his constitutional position, is thus delicately drawn: "He has more knowledge of foreign affairs than most of his ministers, and has good general notions of the constitution, strength, and interest of this country; but, being past thirty when the Hanover succession took place, and having since experienced the violence of party, the injustice of popular clamour, the corruption of parliaments, and the selfish motives of pretended patriots, it is not surprising that he should have contracted some prejudices in favour of those governments where the royal authority is under less restraint. Yet prudence has so far prevailed over these prejudices, that they have never influenced his conduct. On the contrary, many laws have been enacted in favour of public liberty; and in the course of a long reign there has not been a single attempt to extend the prerogative of the Crown beyond its proper limits. He has as much personal bravery as any man, though his political courage seems somewhat problematical; however, it is a fault on the right side; for had he always been as firm and undaunted in the closet as he showed himself at Oudenarde and Dettingen, he might not have proved quite so good a king in this limited monarchy,"--P. 5. This was written in 1757.

The real tories, those I mean who adhered to the principles expressed by that name, thought the constitutional prerogative of the Crown impaired by a conspiracy of its servants. Their notions are expressed in some "Letters on the English Nation," published about 1756, under the name of Battista Angeloni, by Dr. Shebbeare, once a jacobite, and still so bitter an enemy of William III. and George I. that he stood in the pillory, not long afterwards, for a libel on those princes (among other things); on which Horace Walpole justly animadverts, as a stretch of the law by Lord Mansfield destructive of all historical truth. _Memoirs of the last Ten Years_, ii. 328. Shebbeare, however, was afterwards pensioned, along with Johnson, by Lord Bute, and at the time when these letters were written, may possibly have been in the Leicester House interest. Certain it is, that the self-interested cabal who belonged to that little court endeavoured too successfully to persuade its chief and her son that the Crown was reduced to a state of vassalage, from which it ought to be emancipated; and the government of the Duke of Newcastle, as strong in party connection as it was contemptible in ability and reputation, afforded them no bad argument. The consequences are well known, but do not enter into the plan of this work.

[409] Many proofs of this occur in the correspondence published by Mr. Coxe. Thus Horace Walpole writing to his brother Sir Robert, in 1739, says: "King William had no other object but the liberties and balance of Europe; but, good God! what is the case now? I will tell you in confidence; little, low, partial, electoral notions are able to stop or confound the best conducted project for the public." _Memoirs of Sir R. Walpole_, iii. 535. The Walpoles had, some years before, disapproved the policy of Lord Townshend on account of his favouring the king's Hanoverian prejudices. _Id._ i. 334. And, in the preceding reign, both these whig leaders were extremely disgusted with the Germanism and continual absence of George I. (_Id._ ii. 116, 297), though first Townshend, and afterwards Walpole, according to the necessity, or supposed necessity, which controls statesmen (that is, the fear of losing their places), became in appearance the passive instruments of royal pleasure.

It is now, however, known that George II. had been induced by Walpole to come into a scheme, by which Hanover, after his decease, was to be separated from England. It stands on the indisputable authority of Speaker Onslow. "A little while before Sir Robert Walpole's fall (and as a popular act to save himself, for he went very unwillingly out of his offices and power), he took me one day aside, and said, 'What will you say, speaker, if this hand of mine shall bring a message from the king to the House of Commons, declaring his consent to having any of his family, after his death, to be made, by act of parliament, incapable of inheriting and enjoying the crown, and possessing the electoral dominions at the same time?' My answer was, 'Sir, it will be as a message from heaven.' He replied, 'It will be done.' But it was not done; and I have good reason to believe, it would have been opposed, and rejected at that time, because it came from him, and by the means of those who had always been most clamorous for it; and thus perhaps the opportunity was lost: when will it come again? It was said that the prince at that juncture would have consented to it, if he could have had the credit and popularity of the measure, and that some of his friends were to have moved it in parliament, but that the design at St. James's prevented it. Notwithstanding all this, I have had some thoughts that neither court ever really intended the thing itself; but that it came on and went off, by a jealousy of each other in it, and that both were equally pleased that it did so, from an equal fondness (very natural) for their own native country." _Notes on Burnet_ (iv. 490, Oxf. edit.). This story has been told before, but not in such a manner as to preclude doubt of its authenticity.

[410] A bill was brought in for this purpose in 1712, which Swift, in his _History of the Last Four Years_, who never printed anything with his name, naturally blames. It miscarried, probably on account of this provision. _Parl. Hist._ vi. 1141. But the queen, on opening the session, in April 1713, recommended some new law to check the licentiousness of the press. _Id._ 1173. Nothing, however, was done in consequence.

[411] Bolingbroke's letter to the _Examiner_, in 1710, excited so much attention that it was answered by Lord Cowper, then chancellor, in a letter to the _Tatler_ (_Somers Tracts_, xiii. 75), where Sir Walter Scott justly observes, that the fact of two such statesmen becoming the correspondents of periodical publications shows the influence they must have acquired over the public mind.

[412] It was resolved, _nem. con._, Feb. 26th, 1729, That it is an indignity to, and a breach of the privilege of, this house, for any person to presume to give, in written or printed newspapers, any account or minutes of the debates, or other proceedings of this house or of any committee thereof; and that upon discovery of the authors, etc., this house will proceed against the offenders with the utmost severity. _Parl. Hist._ viii. 683. There are former resolutions to the same effect. The speaker having himself brought the subject under consideration some years afterwards, in 1738, the resolution was repeated in nearly the same words, but after a debate wherein, though no one undertook to defend the practice, the danger of impairing the liberty of the press was more insisted upon than would formerly have been usual; and Sir Robert Walpole took credit to himself, justly enough, for respecting it more than his predecessors. _Id._ x. 800; Coxe's _Walpole_, i. 572. Edward Cave, the well-known editor of the _Gentleman's Magazine_, and the publisher of another magazine, was brought to the bar, April 30th, 1747, for publishing the house's debates; when the former denied that he retained any person in pay to make the speeches, and after expressing his contrition was discharged on payment of fees. _Id._ xiv. 57.

[413] Malthus, _Principles of Political Economy_ (1820), p. 279.

[414] Macpherson (or Anderson), _Hist. of Commerce_; Chalmers's _Estimate of Strength of Great Britain_; Sinclair's _Hist. of Revenue_, cum multis aliis.

[415] Tindal, apud _Parl. Hist._ xiv. 66. I have read the same in other books, but know not at present where to search for the passages. Hogarth's pictures of the election are evidence to the corruption in his time, so also are some of Smollett's novels. Addison, Swift, and Pope would not have neglected to lash this vice if it had been glaring in their age; which shows that the change took place about the time I have mentioned.

[416] 9 Anne, c. 5. A bill for this purpose had passed the Commons in 1696; the city of London and several other places petitioning against it. Journals, Nov. 21, etc. The house refused to let some of these petitions be read; I suppose on the ground that they related to a matter of general policy. These towns, however, had a very fair pretext for alleging that they were interested; and in fact a rider was added to the bill, that any merchant might serve for a place where he should be himself a voter, on making oath that he was worth £5000. _Id._ Dec. 19.

[417] 33 G. II. c. 20.