The History of England from the Accession of James II, Vol. 4

T >> Thomas Babington Macaulay >> The History of England from the Accession of James II, Vol. 4

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The most popular actress of the time was Anne Bracegirdle. There
were on the stage many women of more faultless beauty, but none
whose features and deportment had such power to fascinate the
senses and the hearts of men. The sight of her bright black eyes
and of her rich brown cheek sufficed to put the most turbulent
audience into good humour. It was said of her that in the crowded
theatre she had as many lovers as she had male spectators. Yet no
lover, however rich, however high in rank, had prevailed on her
to be his mistress. Those who are acquainted with the parts which
she was in the habit of playing, and with the epilogues which it
was her especial business to recite, will not easily give her
credit for any extraordinary measure of virtue or of delicacy.
She seems to have been a cold, vain and interested coquette, who
perfectly understood how much the influence of her charms was
increased by the fame of a severity which cost her nothing, and
who could venture to flirt with a succession of admirers in the
just confidence that no flame which she might kindle in them
would thaw her own ice.359 Among those who pursued her with an
insane desire was a profligate captain in the army named Hill.
With Hill was closely bound in a league of debauchery and
violence Charles Lord Mohun, a young nobleman whose life was one
long revel and brawl. Hill, finding that the beautiful brunette
was invincible, took it into his head that he was rejected for a
more favoured rival, and that this rival was the brilliant
Mountford. The jealous lover swore over his wine at a tavern that
he would stab the villain. "And I," said Mohun, "will stand by my
friend." From the tavern the pair went, with some soldiers whose
services Hill had secured, to Drury Lane where the lady resided.
They lay some time in wait for her. As soon as she appeared in
the street she was seized and hurried to a coach. She screamed
for help; her mother clung round her; the whole neighbourhood
rose; and she was rescued. Hill and Mohun went away vowing
vengeance. They swaggered sword in hand during two hours about
the streets near Mountford's dwelling. The watch requested them
to put up their weapons. But when the young lord announced that
he was a peer, and bade the constables touch him if they durst,
they let him pass. So strong was privilege then; and so weak was
law. Messengers were sent to warn Mountford of his danger; but
unhappily they missed him. He came. A short altercation took
place between him and Mohun; and, while they were wrangling, Hill
ran the unfortunate actor through the body, and fled.

The grand jury of Middlesex, consisting of gentlemen of note,
found a bill of murder against Hill and Mohun. Hill escaped.
Mohun was taken. His mother threw herself at William's feet, but
in vain. "It was a cruel act," said the King; "I shall leave it
to the law." The trial came on in the Court of the Lord High
Steward; and, as Parliament happened to be sitting, the culprit
had the advantage of being judged by the whole body of the
peerage. There was then no lawyer in the Upper House. It
therefore became necessary, for the first time since Buckhurst
had pronounced sentence on Essex and Southampton, that a peer who
had never made jurisprudence his special study should preside
over that grave tribunal. Caermarthen, who, as Lord President,
took precedence of all the nobility, was appointed Lord High
Steward. A full report of the proceedings has come down to us. No
person, who carefully examines that report, and attends to the
opinion unanimously given by the judges in answer to a question
which Nottingham drew up, and in which the facts brought out by
the evidence are stated with perfect fairness, can doubt that the
crime of murder was fully brought home to the prisoner. Such was
the opinion of the King who was present during the trial; and
such was the almost unanimous opinion of the public. Had the
issue been tried by Holt and twelve plain men at the Old Bailey,
there can be no doubt that a verdict of Guilty would have been
returned. The Peers, however, by sixty-nine votes to fourteen,
acquitted their accused brother. One great nobleman was so brutal
and stupid as to say, "After all the fellow was but a player; and
players are rogues." All the newsletters, all the coffeehouse
orators, complained that the blood of the poor was shed with
impunity by the great. Wits remarked that the only fair thing
about the trial was the show of ladies in the galleries. Letters
and journals are still extant in which men of all shades of
opinion, Whigs, Tories, Nonjurors, condemn the partiality of the
tribunal. It was not to be expected that, while the memory of
this scandal was fresh in the public mind, the Commons would be
induced to give any new advantage to accused peers.360

The Commons had, in the meantime, resumed the consideration of
another highly important matter, the state of the trade with
India. They had, towards the close of the preceding session,
requested the King to dissolve the old Company and to constitute
a new Company on such terms as he should think fit; and he had
promised to take their request into his serious consideration. He
now sent a message to inform them that it was out of his power to
do what they had asked. He had referred the charter of the old
Company to the Judges, and the judges had pronounced that, under
the provisions of that charter, the old Company could not be
dissolved without three years' notice, and must retain during
those three years the exclusive privilege of trading to the East
Indies. He added that, being sincerely desirous to gratify the
Commons, and finding himself unable to do so in the way which they
had pointed out, he had tried to prevail on the old Company to
agree to a compromise; but that body stood obstinately on its
extreme rights; and his endeavours had been frustrated.361

This message reopened the whole question. The two factions which
divided the City were instantly on the alert. The debates in the
House were long and warm. Petitions against the old Company were
laid on the table. Satirical handbills against the new Company
were distributed in the lobby. At length, after much discussion,
it was resolved to present an address requesting the King to give
the notice which the judges had pronounced necessary. He promised
to bear the subject in mind, and to do his best to promote the
welfare of the kingdom. With this answer the House was satisfied,
and the subject was not again mentioned till the next session.362

The debates of the Commons on the conduct of the war, on the law
of treason and on the trade with India, occupied much time, and
produced no important result. But meanwhile real business was
doing in the Committee of Supply and the Committee of Ways and
Means. In the Committee of Supply the estimates passed rapidly. A
few members declared it to be their opinion that England ought to
withdraw her troops from the Continent, to carry on the war with
vigour by sea, and to keep up only such an army as might be
sufficient to repel any invader who might elude the vigilance of
her fleets. But this doctrine, which speedily became and long
continued to be the badge of one of the great parties in the
state, was as yet professed only by a small minority which did
not venture to call for a division.363

In the Committee of Ways and Means, it was determined that a
great part of the charge of the year should be defrayed by means
of an impost, which, though old in substance, was new in form.
From a very early period to the middle of the seventeenth
century, our Parliaments had provided for the extraordinary
necessities of the government chiefly by granting subsidies. A
subsidy was raised by an impost on the people of the realm in
respect of their reputed estates. Landed property was the chief
subject of taxation, and was assessed nominally at four shillings
in the pound. But the assessment was made in such a way that it
not only did not rise in proportion to the rise in the value of
land or to the fall in the value of the precious metals, but went
on constantly sinking, till at length the rate was in truth less
than twopence in the pound. In the time of Charles the First a
real tax of four shillings in the pound on land would probably
have yielded near a million and a half; but a subsidy amounted to
little more than fifty thousand pounds.364

The financiers of the Long Parliament devised a more efficient
mode of taxing estates. The sum which was to be raised was fixed.
It was then distributed among the counties in proportion to their
supposed wealth, and was levied within each county by a rate. The
revenue derived from these assessments in the time of the
Commonwealth varied from thirty-five thousand pounds to a hundred
and twenty thousand pounds a month.

After the Restoration the legislature seemed for a time inclined
to revert, in finance as in other things, to the ancient
practice. Subsidies were once or twice granted to Charles the
Second. But it soon appeared that the old system was much less
convenient than the new system. The Cavaliers condescended to
take a lesson in the art of taxation from the Roundheads; and,
during the interval between the Restoration and the Revolution,
extraordinary calls were occasionally met by assessments
resembling the assessments of the Commonwealth. After the
Revolution, the war with France made it necessary to have
recourse annually to this abundant source of revenue. In 1689, in
1690 and in 1691, great sums had been raised on the land. At
length in 1692 it was determined to draw supplies from real
property more largely than ever. The Commons resolved that a new
and more accurate valuation of estates should be made over the
whole realm, and that on the rental thus ascertained a pound rate
should be paid to the government.

Such was the origin of the existing land tax. The valuation made
in 1692 has remained unaltered down to our own time. According to
that valuation, one shilling in the pound on the rental of the
kingdom amounted, in round numbers, to half a million. During a
hundred and six years, a land tax bill was annually presented to
Parliament, and was annually passed, though not always without
murmurs from the country gentlemen. The rate was, in time of war,
four shillings in the pound. In time of peace, before the reign
of George the Third, only two or three shillings were usually
granted; and, during a short part of the prudent and gentle
administration of Walpole, the government asked for only one
shilling. But, after the disastrous year in which England drew
the sword against her American colonies, the rate was never less
than four shillings. At length, in the year 1798, the Parliament
relieved itself from the trouble of passing a new Act every
spring. The land tax, at four shillings in the pound, was made
permanent; and those who were subject to it were permitted to
redeem it. A great part has been redeemed; and at present little
more than a fiftieth of the ordinary revenue required in time of
peace is raised by that impost which was once regarded as the
most productive of all the resources of the State.365

The land tax was fixed, for the year 1693, at four shillings in
the pound, and consequently brought about two millions into the
Treasury. That sum, small as it may seem to a generation which
has expended a hundred and twenty millions in twelve months, was
such as had never before been raised here in one year by direct
taxation. It seemed immense both to Englishmen and to foreigners.
Lewis, who found it almost impossible to wring by cruel exactions
from the beggared peasantry of France the means of supporting the
greatest army and the most gorgeous court that had existed in
Europe since the downfall of the Roman empire, broke out, it is
said, into an exclamation of angry surprise when he learned that
the Commons of England had, from dread and hatred of his power,
unanimously determined to lay on themselves, in a year of
scarcity and of commercial embarrassment, a burden such as
neither they nor their fathers had ever before borne. "My little
cousin of Orange," he said, "seems to be firm in the saddle." He
afterwards added: "No matter, the last piece of gold will win."
This however was a consideration from which, if he had been well
informed touching the resources of England, he would not have
derived much comfort. Kensington was certainly a mere hovel when
compared to his superb Versailles. The display of jewels, plumes
and lace, led horses and gilded coaches, which daily surrounded
him, far outshone the splendour which, even on great public
occasions, our princes were in the habit of displaying. But the
condition of the majority of the people of England was, beyond
all doubt, such as the majority of the people of France might
well have envied. In truth what was called severe distress here
would have been called unexampled prosperity there.

The land tax was not imposed without a quarrel between the
Houses. The Commons appointed commissioners to make the
assessment. These commissioners were the principal gentlemen of
every county, and were named in the bill. The Lords thought this
arrangement inconsistent with the dignity of the peerage. They
therefore inserted a clause providing that their estates should
be valued by twenty of their own order. The Lower House
indignantly rejected this amendment, and demanded an instant
conference. After some delay, which increased the ill humour of
the Commons, the conference took place. The bill was returned to
the Peers with a very concise and haughty intimation that they
must not presume to alter laws relating to money. A strong party
among the Lords was obstinate. Mulgrave spoke at great length
against the pretensions of the plebeians. He told his brethren
that, if they gave way, they would abdicate that authority which
had belonged to the baronage of England ever since the foundation
of the monarchy, and that they would have nothing left of their
old greatness except their coronets and ermines. Burnet says that
this speech was the finest that he ever heard in Parliament; and
Burnet was undoubtedly a good judge of speaking, and was neither
partial to Mulgrave nor zealous for the privileges of the
aristocracy. The orator, however, though he charmed his hearers,
did not succeed in convincing them. Most of them shrank from a
conflict in which they would have had against them the Commons
united as one man, and the King, who, in case of necessity, would
undoubtedly have created fifty peers rather than have suffered
the land tax bill to be lost. Two strong protests, however,
signed, the first by twenty-seven, the second by twenty-one
dissentients, show how obstinately many nobles were prepared to
contend at all hazards for the dignity of their caste. Another
conference was held; and Rochester announced that the Lords, for
the sake of the public interest, waived what they must
nevertheless assert to be their clear right, and would not insist
on their amendment.366 The bill passed, and was followed by bills
for laying additional duties on imports, and for taxing the
dividends of joint stock companies.

Still, however, the estimated revenue was not equal to the
estimated expenditure. The year 1692 had bequeathed a large
deficit to the year 1693; and it seemed probable that the charge
for 1693 would exceed by about five hundred thousand pounds the
charge for 1692. More than two millions had been voted for the
army and ordnance, near two millions for the navy.367 Only eight
years before fourteen hundred thousand pounds had defrayed the
whole annual charge of government. More than four times that sum
was now required. Taxation, both direct and indirect, had been
carried to an unprecedented point; yet the income of the state
still fell short of the outlay by about a million. It was
necessary to devise something. Something was devised, something
of which the effects are felt to this day in every part of the
globe.

There was indeed nothing strange or mysterious in the expedient
to which the government had recourse. It was an expedient
familiar, during two centuries, to the financiers of the
Continent, and could hardly fail to occur to any English
statesman who compared the void in the Exchequer with the
overflow in the money market.

During the interval between the Restoration and the Revolution
the riches of the nation had been rapidly increasing. Thousands
of busy men found every Christmas that, after the expenses of the
year's housekeeping had been defrayed out of the year's income, a
surplus remained; and how that surplus was to be employed was a
question of some difficulty. In our time, to invest such a
surplus, at something more than three per cent., on the best
security that has ever been known in the world, is the work of a
few minutes. But in the seventeenth century a lawyer, a
physician, a retired merchant, who had saved some thousands and
who wished to place them safely and profitably, was often greatly
embarrassed. Three generations earlier, a man who had accumulated
wealth in a profession generally purchased real property or lent
his savings on mortgage. But the number of acres in the kingdom
had remained the same; and the value of those acres, though it
had greatly increased, had by no means increased so fast as the
quantity of capital which was seeking for employment. Many too
wished to put their money where they could find it at an hour's
notice, and looked about for some species of property which could
be more readily transferred than a house or a field. A capitalist
might lend on bottomry or on personal security; but, if he did
so, he ran a great risk of losing interest and principal. There
were a few joint stock companies, among which the East India
Company held the foremost place; but the demand for the stock of
such companies was far greater than the supply. Indeed the cry
for a new East India Company was chiefly raised by persons who
had found difficulty in placing their savings at interest on good
security. So great was that difficulty that the practice of
hoarding was common. We are told that the father of Pope the
poet, who retired from business in the City about the time of the
Revolution, carried to a retreat in the country a strong box
containing near twenty thousand pounds, and took out from time to
time what was required for household expenses; and it is highly
probable that this was not a solitary case. At present the
quantity of coin which is hoarded by private persons is so small
that it would, if brought forth, make no perceptible addition to
the circulation. But, in the earlier part of the reign of William
the Third, all the greatest writers on currency were of opinion
that a very considerable mass of gold and silver was hidden in
secret drawers and behind wainscots.

The natural effect of this state of things was that a crowd of
projectors, ingenious and absurd, honest and knavish, employed
themselves in devising new schemes for the employment of
redundant capital. It was about the year 1688 that the word
stockjobber was first heard in London. In the short space of four
years a crowd of companies, every one of which confidently held
out to subscribers the hope of immense gains, sprang into
existence; the Insurance Company, the Paper Company, the
Lutestring Company, the Pearl Fishery Company, the Glass Bottle
Company, the Alum Company, the Blythe Coal Company, the
Swordblade Company. There was a Tapestry Company which would soon
furnish pretty hangings for all the parlours of the middle class
and for all the bedchambers of the higher. There was a Copper
Company which proposed to explore the mines of England, and held
out a hope that they would prove not less valuable than those of
Potosi. There was a Diving Company which undertook to bring up
precious effects from shipwrecked vessels, and which announced
that it had laid in a stock of wonderful machines resembling
complete suits of armour. In front of the helmet was a huge glass
eye like that of a cyclop; and out of the crest went a pipe
through which the air was to be admitted. The whole process was
exhibited on the Thames. Fine gentlemen and fine ladies were
invited to the show, were hospitably regaled, and were delighted
by seeing the divers in their panoply descend into the river and
return laden with old iron, and ship's tackle. There was a
Greenland Fishing Company which could not fail to drive the Dutch
whalers and herring busses out of the Northern Ocean. There was a
Tanning Company which promised to furnish leather superior to the
best that was brought from Turkey or Russia. There was a society
which undertook the office of giving gentlemen a liberal
education on low terms, and which assumed the sounding name of
the Royal Academies Company. In a pompous advertisement it was
announced that the directors of the Royal Academies Company had
engaged the best masters in every branch of knowledge, and were
about to issue twenty thousand tickets at twenty shillings each.
There was to be a lottery; two thousand prizes were to be drawn;
and the fortunate holders of the prizes were to be taught, at the
charge of the Company, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, Spanish,
conic sections, trigonometry, heraldry, japanning, fortification,
bookkeeping and the art of playing the theorbo. Some of these
companies took large mansions and printed their advertisements in
gilded letters. Others, less ostentatious, were content with ink,
and met at coffeehouses in the neighbourhood of the Royal
Exchange. Jonathan's and Garraway's were in a constant ferment
with brokers, buyers, sellers, meetings of directors, meetings of
proprietors. Time bargains soon came into fashion. Extensive
combinations were formed, and monstrous fables were circulated,
for the purpose of raising or depressing the price of shares. Our
country witnessed for the first time those phenomena with which a
long experience has made us familiar. A mania of which the
symptoms were essentially the same with those of the mania of
1720, of the mania of 1825, of the mania of 1845, seized the
public mind. An impatience to be rich, a contempt for those slow
but sure gains which are the proper reward of industry, patience
and thrift, spread through society. The spirit of the cogging
dicers of Whitefriars took possession of the grave Senators of
the City, Wardens of Trades, Deputies, Aldermen. It was much
easier and much more lucrative to put forth a lying prospectus
announcing a new stock, to persuade ignorant people that the
dividends could not fall short of twenty per cent., and to part
with five thousand pounds of this imaginary wealth for ten
thousand solid guineas, than to load a ship with a well chosen
cargo for Virginia or the Levant. Every day some new bubble was
puffed into existence, rose buoyant, shone bright, burst, and was
forgotten.368

The new form which covetousness had taken furnished the comic
poets and satirists with an excellent subject; nor was that
subject the less welcome to them because some of the most
unscrupulous and most successful of the new race of gamesters
were men in sad coloured clothes and lank hair, men who called
cards the Devil's books, men who thought it a sin and a scandal
to win or lose twopence over a backgammon board. It was in the
last drama of Shadwell that the hypocrisy and knavery of these
speculators was, for the first time, exposed to public ridicule.
He died in November 1692, just before his Stockjobbers came on
the stage; and the epilogue was spoken by an actor dressed in
deep mourning. The best scene is that in which four or five stern
Nonconformists, clad in the full Puritan costume, after
discussing the prospects of the Mousetrap Company and the
Fleakilling Company, examine the question whether the godly may
lawfully hold stock in a Company for bringing over Chinese
ropedancers. "Considerable men have shares," says one austere
person in cropped hair and bands; "but verily I question whether
it be lawful or not." These doubts are removed by a stout old
Roundhead colonel who had fought at Marston Moor, and who reminds
his weaker brother that the saints need not themselves see the
ropedancing, and that, in all probability, there will be no
ropedancing to see. "The thing," he says, "is like to take; the
shares will sell well; and then we shall not care whether the
dancers come over or no." It is important to observe that this
scene was exhibited and applauded before one farthing of the
national debt had been contracted. So ill informed were the
numerous writers who, at a later period, ascribed to the national
debt the existence of stockjobbing and of all the immoralities
connected with stockjobbing. The truth is that society had, in
the natural course of its growth, reached a point at which it was
inevitable that there should be stockjobbing whether there were a
national debt or not, and inevitable also that, if there were a
long and costly war, there should be a national debt.

How indeed was it possible that a debt should not have been
contracted, when one party was impelled by the strongest motives
to borrow, and another was impelled by equally strong motives to
lend? A moment had arrived at which the government found it
impossible, without exciting the most formidable discontents, to
raise by taxation the supplies necessary to defend the liberty
and independence of the nation; and, at that very moment,
numerous capitalists were looking round them in vain for some
good mode of investing their savings, and, for want of such a
mode, were keeping their wealth locked up, or were lavishing it
on absurd projects. Riches sufficient to equip a navy which would
sweep the German Ocean and the Atlantic of French privateers,
riches sufficient to maintain an army which might retake Namur
and avenge the disaster of Steinkirk, were lying idle, or were
passing away from the owners into the hands of sharpers. A
statesman might well think that some part of the wealth which was
daily buried or squandered might, with advantage to the
proprietor, to the taxpayer and to the State, be attracted into
the Treasury. Why meet the extraordinary charge of a year of war
by seizing the chairs, the tables, the beds of hardworking
families, by compelling one country gentleman to cut down his
trees before they were ready for the axe, another to let the
cottages on his land fall to ruin, a third to take away his
hopeful son from the University, when Change Alley was swarming
with people who did not know what to do with their money and who
were pressing every body to borrow it?