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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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