The History of England from the Accession of James II, Vol. 2

T >> Thomas Babington Macaulay >> The History of England from the Accession of James II, Vol. 2

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The Commons had at the close of the last session tacked to the
Land Tax Bill a clause impowering seven Commissioners, who were
designated by name, to take account of the Irish forfeitures; and
the Lords and the King, afraid of losing the Land Tax Bill, had
reluctantly consented to this clause. During the recess, the
commissioners had visited Ireland. They had since returned to
England. Their report was soon laid before both Houses. By the
Tories, and by their allies the republicans, it was eagerly
hailed. It had, indeed, been framed for the express purpose of
flattering and of inflaming them. Three of the commissioners had
strongly objected to some passages as indecorous, and even
calumnious; but the other four had overruled every objection. Of
the four the chief was Trenchard. He was by calling a
pamphleteer, and seems not to have been aware that the sharpness
of style and of temper which may be tolerated in a pamphlet is
inexcusable in a state paper. He was certain that he should be
protected and rewarded by the party to which he owed his
appointment, and was delighted to have it in his power to
publish, with perfect security and with a semblance of official
authority, bitter reflections on King and ministry, Dutch
favourites, French refugees, and Irish Papists. The consequence
was that only four names were subscribed to the report. The three
dissentients presented a separate memorial. As to the main facts,
however, there was little or no dispute. It appeared that more
than a million of Irish acres, or about seventeen hundred
thousand English acres, an area equal to that of Middlesex,
Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, and Huntingdonshire
together, had been forfeited during the late troubles. But of the
value of this large territory very different estimates were
formed. The commissioners acknowledged that they could obtain no
certain information. In the absence of such information they
conjectured the annual rent to be about two hundred thousand
pounds, and the fee simple to be worth thirteen years' purchase,
that is to say, about two millions six hundred thousand pounds.
They seem not to have been aware that much of the land had been
let very low on perpetual leases, and that much was burdened with
mortgages. A contemporary writer, who was evidently well
acquainted with Ireland, asserted that the authors of the report
had valued the forfeited property in Carlow at six times the real
market price, and that the two million six hundred thousand
pounds, of which they talked, would be found to shrink to about
half a million, which, as the exchanges then stood between Dublin
and London, would have dwindled to four hundred thousand pounds
by the time that it reached the English Exchequer. It was
subsequently proved, beyond all dispute, that this estimate was
very much nearer the truth than that which had been formed by
Trenchard and Trenchard's colleagues.

Of the seventeen hundred thousand acres which had been forfeited,
above a fourth part had been restored to the ancient proprietors
in conformity with the civil articles of the treaty of Limerick.
About one seventh of the remaining three fourths had been given
back to unhappy families, which, though they could not plead the
letter of the treaty, had been thought fit objects of clemency.
The rest had been bestowed, partly on persons whose seances
merited all and more than all that they obtained, but chiefly on
the King's personal friends. Romney had obtained a considerable
share of the royal bounty. But of all the grants the largest was
to Woodstock, the eldest son of Portland; the next was to
Albemarle. An admirer of William cannot relate without pain that
he divided between these two foreigners an extent of country
larger than Hertfordshire.

This fact, simply reported, would have sufficed to excite a
strong feeling of indignation in a House of Commons less
irritable and querulous than that which then sate at Westminster.
But Trenchard and his confederates were not content with simply
reporting the fact. They employed all their skill to inflame the
passions of the majority. They at once applied goads to its anger
and held out baits to its cupidity.

They censured that part of William's conduct which deserved high
praise even more severely than that part of his conduct for which
it is impossible to set up any defence. They fold the Parliament
that the old proprietors of the soil had been treated with
pernicious indulgence; that the capitulation of Limerick had been
construed in a manner far too favourable to the conquered race;
and that the King had suffered his compassion to lead him into
the error of showing indulgence to many who could not pretend
that they were within the terms of the capitulation. Even now,
after the lapse of eight years, it might be possible, by
instituting a severe inquisition, and by giving proper
encouragement to informers, to prove that many Papists, who were
still permitted to enjoy their estates, had taken the side of
James during the civil war. There would thus be a new and
plentiful harvest of confiscations. The four bitterly complained
that their task had been made more difficult by the hostility of
persons who held office in Ireland, and by the secret influence
of great men who were interested in concealing the truth. These
grave charges were made in general terms. No name was mentioned;
no fact was specified; no evidence was tendered.

Had the report stopped here, those who drew it up might justly
have been blamed for the unfair and ill natured manner in which
they had discharged their functions; but they could not have been
accused of usurping functions which did not belong to them for
the purpose of insulting the Sovereign and exasperating the
nation. But these men well knew in what way and for what purpose
they might safely venture to exceed their commission. The Act of
Parliament from which they derived their powers authorised them
to report on estates forfeited during the late troubles. It
contained not a word which could be construed into an authority
to report on the old hereditary domain of the Crown. With that
domain they had as little to do as with the seignorage levied on
tin in the Duchy of Cornwall, or with the church patronage of the
Duchy of Lancaster. But they had discovered that a part of that
domain had been alienated by a grant which they could not deny
themselves the pleasure of publishing to the world. It was indeed
an unfortunate grant, a grant which could not be brought to light
without much mischief and much scandal. It was long since William
had ceased to be the lover of Elisabeth Villiers, long since he
had asked her counsel or listened to her fascinating conversation
except in the presence of other persons. She had been some years
married to George Hamilton, a soldier who had distinguished
himself by his courage in Ireland and Flanders, and who probably
held the courtier like doctrine that a lady is not dishonoured by
having been the paramour of a king. William was well pleased with
the marriage, bestowed on the wife a portion of the old Crown
property in Ireland, and created the husband a peer of Scotland
by the title of Earl of Orkney. Assuredly William would not have
raised his character by abandoning to poverty a woman whom he had
loved, though with a criminal love. He was undoubtedly bound, as
a man of humanity and honour, to provide liberally for her; but
he should have provided for her rather by saving from his civil
list than by alienating his hereditary revenue. The four
malecontent commissioners rejoiced with spiteful joy over this
discovery. It was in vain that the other three represented that
the grant to Lady Orkney was one with which they had nothing to
do, and that, if they went out of their way to hold it up to
obloquy, they might be justly said to fly in the King's face. "To
fly in the King's face!" said one of the majority; "our business
is to fly in the King's face. We were sent here to fly in the
King's face." With this patriotic object a paragraph about Lady
Orkney's grant was added to the report, a paragraph too in which
the value of that grant was so monstrously exaggerated that
William appeared to have surpassed the profligate extravagance of
his uncle Charles. The estate bestowed on the countess was valued
at twenty-four thousand pounds a year. The truth seems to be that
the income which she derived from the royal bounty, after making
allowance for incumbrances and for the rate of exchange, was
about four thousand pounds.

The success of the report was complete. The nation and its
representatives hated taxes, hated foreign favourites, and hated
Irish Papists; and here was a document which held out the hope
that England might, at the expense of foreign courtiers and of
popish Celts, be relieved from a great load of taxes. Many, both
within and without the walls of Parliament, gave entire faith to
the estimate which the commissioners had formed by a wild guess,
in the absence of trustworthy information. They gave entire faith
also to the prediction that a strict inquiry would detect many
traitors who had hitherto been permitted to escape with impunity,
and that a large addition would thus be made to the extensive
territory which had already been confiscated. It was popularly
said that, if vigorous measures were taken, the gain to the
kingdom would be not less than three hundred thousand pounds a
year; and almost the whole of this sum, a sum more than
sufficient to defray the whole charge of such an army as the
Commons were disposed to keep up in time of peace, would be
raised by simply taking away what had been unjustifiably given to
Dutchmen, who would still retain immense wealth taken out of
English pockets, or unjustifiably left to Irishmen, who thought
it at once the most pleasant and the most pious of all
employments to cut English throats. The Lower House went to work
with the double eagerness of rapacity and of animosity. As soon
as the report of the four and the protest of the three had been
laid on the table and read by the clerk, it was resolved that a
Resumption Bill should be brought in. It was then resolved, in
opposition to the plainest principles of justice, that no
petition from any person who might think himself aggrieved by
this bill should ever be received. It was necessary to consider
how the commissioners should be remunerated for their services;
and this question was decided with impudent injustice. It was
determined that the commissioners who had signed the report
should receive a thousand pounds each. But a large party thought
that the dissentient three deserved no recompense; and two of
them were merely allowed what was thought sufficient to cover the
expense of their journey to Ireland. This was nothing less than
to give notice to every man who should ever be employed in any
similar inquiry that, if he wished to be paid, he must report
what would please the assembly which held the purse of the state.
In truth the House was despotic, and was fast contracting the
vices of a despot. It was proud of its antipathy to courtiers;
and it was calling into existence a new set of courtiers who
would study all its humours, who would flatter all its
weaknesses, who would prophesy to it smooth things, and who would
assuredly be, in no respect, less greedy, less faithless, or less
abject than the sycophants who bow in the antechambers of kings.

Indeed the dissentient commissioners had worse evils to apprehend
than that of being left unremunerated. One of them, Sir Richard
Levinz, had mentioned in private to his friends some
disrespectful expressions which had been used by one of his
colleagues about the King. What he had mentioned in private was,
not perhaps very discreetly, repeated by Montague in the House.
The predominant party eagerly seized the opportunity of worrying
both Montague and Levinz. A resolution implying a severe censure
on Montague was carried. Levinz was brought to the bar and
examined. The four were also in attendance. They protested that
he had misrepresented them. Trenchard declared that he had always
spoken of His Majesty as a subject ought to speak of an excellent
sovereign, who had been deceived by evil counsellors, and who
would be grateful to those who should bring the truth to his
knowledge. He vehemently denied that he had called the grant to
Lady Orkney villainous. It was a word that he never used, a word
that never came out of the mouth of a gentleman. These assertions
will be estimated at the proper value by those who are acquainted
with Trenchard's pamphlets, pamphlets in which the shocking word
villainous will without difficulty be found, and which are full
of malignant reflections on William.20 But the House was
determined not to believe Levinz. He was voted a calumniator, and
sent to the Tower, as an example to all who should be tempted to
speak truth which the Commons might not like to hear.

Meanwhile the bill had been brought in, and was proceeding
easily. It provided that all the property which had belonged to
the Crown at the time of the accession of James the Second, or
which had been forfeited to the Crown since that time, should be
vested in trustees. These trustees were named in the bill; and
among them were the four commissioners who had signed the report.
All the Irish grants of William were annulled. The legal rights
of persons other than the grantees were saved. But of those
rights the trustees were to be judges, and judges without appeal.
A claimant who gave them the trouble of attending to him, and
could not make out his case, was to be heavily fined. Rewards
were offered to informers who should discover any property which
was liable to confiscation, and which had not yet been
confiscated. Though eight years had elapsed since an arm had been
lifted up in the conquered island against the domination of the
Englishry, the unhappy children of the soil, who had been
suffered to live, submissive and obscure, on their hereditary
fields, were threatened with a new and severe inquisition into
old offences.

Objectionable as many parts of the bill undoubtedly were, nobody
who knew the House of Commons believed it to be possible to carry
any amendment. The King flattered himself that a motion for
leaving at his disposal a third part of the forfeitures would be
favourably received. There can be little doubt that a compromise
would have been willingly accepted twelve months earlier. But the
report had made all compromise impossible. William, however, was
bent on trying the experiment; and Vernon consented to go on what
he considered as a forlorn hope. He made his speech and his
motion; but the reception which he met with was such that he did
not venture to demand a division. This feeble attempt at
obstruction only made the impetuous current chafe the more. Howe
immediately moved two resolutions; one attributing the load of
debts and taxes which lay on the nation to the Irish grants; the
other censuring all who had been concerned in advising or passing
those grants. Nobody was named; not because the majority was
inclined to show any tenderness to the Whig ministers, but
because some of the most objectionable grants had been sanctioned
by the Board of Treasury when Godolphin and Seymour, who had
great influence with the country party, sate at that board.

Howe's two resolutions were laid before the King by the Speaker,
in whose train all the leaders of the opposition appeared at
Kensington. Even Seymour, with characteristic effrontery, showed
himself there as one of the chief authors of a vote which
pronounced him guilty of a breach of duty. William's answer was
that he had thought himself bound to reward out of the forfeited
property those who had served him well, and especially those who
had borne a principal part in the reduction of Ireland. The war,
he said, had undoubtedly left behind it a heavy debt; and he
should be glad to see that debt reduced by just and effectual
means. This answer was but a bad one; and, in truth, it was
hardly possible for him to return a good one. He had done what
was indefensible; and, by attempting to defend himself, he made
his case worse. It was not true that the Irish forfeitures, or
one fifth part of them, had been granted to men who had
distinguished themselves in the Irish war; and it was not
judicious to hint that those forfeitures could not justly be
applied to the discharge of the public debts. The Commons
murmured, and not altogether without reason. "His Majesty tells
us," they said, "that the debts fall to us and the forfeitures to
him. We are to make good out of the purses of Englishmen what was
spent upon the war; and he is to put into the purses of Dutchmen
what was got by the war." When the House met again, Howe moved
that whoever had advised the King to return such an answer was an
enemy to His Majesty and the kingdom; and this resolution was
carried with some slight modification.

To whatever criticism William's answer might be open, he had said
one thing which well deserved the attention of the House. A small
part of the forfeited property had been bestowed on men whose
services to the state well deserved a much larger recompense; and
that part could not be resumed without gross injustice and
ingratitude. An estate of very moderate value had been given,
with the title of Earl of Athlone, to Ginkell, whose skill and
valour had brought the war in Ireland to a triumphant close.
Another estate had been given, with the title of Earl of Galway,
to Rouvigny, who, in the crisis of the decisive battle, at the
very moment when Saint Ruth was waving his hat, and exclaiming
that the English should be beaten back to Dublin, had, at the
head of a gallant body of horse, struggled through the morass,
turned the left wing of the Celtic army, and retrieved the day.
But the predominant faction, drunk with insolence and animosity,
made no distinction between courtiers who had been enriched by
injudicious partiality and warriors who had been sparingly
rewarded for great exploits achieved in defence of the liberties
and the religion of our country. Athlone was a Dutchman; Galway
was a Frenchman; and it did not become a good Englishman to say a
word in favour of either.

Yet this was not the most flagrant injustice of which the Commons
were guilty. According to the plainest principles of common law
and of common sense, no man can forfeit any rights except those
which he has. All the donations which William had made he had
made subject to this limitation. But by this limitation the
Commons were too angry and too rapacious to be bound. They
determined to vest in the trustees of the forfeited lands an
estate greater than had ever belonged to the forfeiting
landholders. Thus innocent persons were violently deprived of
property which was theirs by descent or by purchase, of property
which had been strictly respected by the King and by his
grantees. No immunity was granted even to men who had fought on
the English side, even to men who had lined the walls of
Londonderry and rushed on the Irish guns at Newton Butler.

In some cases the Commons showed indulgence; but their indulgence
was not less unjustifiable, nor of less pernicious example, than
their severity. The ancient rule, a rule which is still strictly
maintained, and which cannot be relaxed without danger of
boundless profusion and shameless jobbery, is that whatever the
Parliament grants shall be granted to the Sovereign, and that no
public bounty shall be bestowed on any private person except by
the Sovereign.

The Lower House now, contemptuously disregarding both principles
and precedents, took on itself to carve estates out of the
forfeitures for persons whom it was inclined to favour. To the
Duke of Ormond especially, who ranked among the Tories and was
distinguished by his dislike of the foreigners, marked partiality
was shown. Some of his friends, indeed, hoped that they should be
able to insert in the bill a clause bestowing on him all the
confiscated estates in the county of Tipperary. But they found
that it would be prudent in them to content themselves with
conferring on him a boon smaller in amount, but equally
objectionable in principle. He had owed very large debts to
persons who had forfeited to the Crown all that belonged to them.
Those debts were therefore now due from him to the Crown. The
House determined to make him a present of the whole, that very
House which would not consent to leave a single acre to the
general who had stormed Athlone, who had gained the battle of
Aghrim, who had entered Galway in triumph, and who had received
the submission of Limerick.

That a bill so violent, so unjust, and so unconstitutional would
pass the Lords without considerable alteration was hardly to be
expected. The ruling demagogues, therefore, resolved to join it
with the bill which granted to the Crown a land tax of two
shillings in the pound for the service of the next year, and thus
to place the Upper House under the necessity of either passing
both bills together without the change of a word, or rejecting
both together, and leaving the public creditor unpaid and the
nation defenceless.

There was great indignation among the Peers. They were not indeed
more disposed than the Commons to approve of the manner in which
the Irish forfeitures had been granted away; for the antipathy to
the foreigners, strong as it was in the nation generally, was
strongest in the highest ranks. Old barons were angry at seeing
themselves preceded by new earls from Holland and Guelders.
Garters, gold keys, white staves, rangerships, which had been
considered as peculiarly belonging to the hereditary grandees of
the realm, were now intercepted by aliens. Every English nobleman
felt that his chance of obtaining a share of the favours of the
Crown was seriously diminished by the competition of Bentincks
and Keppels, Auverquerques and Zulesteins. But, though the riches
and dignities heaped on the little knot of Dutch courtiers might
disgust him, the recent proceedings of the Commons could not but
disgust him still more. The authority, the respectability, the
existence of his order were threatened with destruction. Not
only,--such were the just complaints of the Peers,--not only are we to be
deprived of that coordinate legislative power to which we
are, by the constitution of the realm, entitled. We are not to be
allowed even a suspensive veto. We are not to dare to
remonstrate, to suggest an amendment, to offer a reason, to ask
for an explanation. Whenever the other House has passed a bill to
which it is known that we have strong objections, that bill is to
be tacked to a bill of supply. If we alter it, we are told that
we are attacking the most sacred privilege of the representatives
of the people, and that we must either take the whole or reject
the whole. If we reject the whole, public credit is shaken; the
Royal Exchange is in confusion; the Bank stops payment; the army
is disbanded; the fleet is in mutiny; the island is left, without
one regiment, without one frigate, at the mercy of every enemy.
The danger of throwing out a bill of supply is doubtless great.
Yet it may on the whole be better that we should face that
danger, once for all, than that we should consent to be, what we
are fast becoming, a body of no more importance than the
Convocation.

Animated by such feelings as these, a party in the Upper House
was eager to take the earliest opportunity of making a stand. On
the fourth of April, the second reading was moved. Near a hundred
lords were present. Somers, whose serene wisdom and persuasive
eloquence had seldom been more needed, was confined to his room
by illness; and his place on the woolsack was supplied by the
Earl of Bridgewater. Several orators, both Whig and Tory,
objected to proceeding farther. But the chiefs of both parties
thought it better to try the almost hopeless experiment of
committing the bill and sending it back amended to the Commons.
The second reading was carried by seventy
votes to twenty-three. It was remarked that both Portland and
Albemarle voted in the majority.

In the Committee and on the third reading several amendments were
proposed and carried. Wharton, the boldest and most active of the
Whig peers, and the Lord Privy Seal Lonsdale, one of the most
moderate and reasonable of the Tories, took the lead, and were
strenuously supported by the Lord President Pembroke, and by the
Archbishop of Canterbury, who seems on this occasion to have a
little forgotten his habitual sobriety and caution. Two natural
sons of Charles the Second, Richmond and Southampton, who had
strong personal reasons for disliking resumption bills, were
zealous on the same side. No peer, however, as far as can now be
discovered, ventured to defend the way in which William had
disposed of his Irish domains. The provisions which annulled the
grants of those domains were left untouched. But the words of
which the effect was to vest in the parliamentary trustees
property which had never been forfeited to the King, and had
never been given away by him, were altered; and the clauses by
which estates and sums of money were, in defiance of
constitutional principle and of immemorial practice, bestowed on
persons who were favourites of the Commons, were so far modified
as to be, in form, somewhat less exceptionable. The bill,
improved by these changes, was sent down by two judges to the
Lower House.

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