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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While the House of Commons, which had been elected during the
vacancy of the throne, was busily engaged in the work of
proscription, he could not venture to show himself in England.
But when that assembly had ceased to exist, he thought himself
safe. He returned a few days after the Act of Grace had been laid
on the table of the Lords. From the benefit of that Act he was by
name excluded; but he well knew that he had now nothing to fear.
He went privately to Kensington, was admitted into the closet,
had an audience which lasted two hours, and then retired to his
country house.472

During many months be led a secluded life, and had no residence
in London. Once in the spring of 1692, to the great astonishment
of the public, he showed his face in the circle at Court, and was
graciously received.473 He seems to have been afraid that he
might, on his reappearance in Parliament, receive some marked
affront. He therefore, very prudently, stole down to Westminster,
in the dead time of the year, on a day to which the Houses stood
adjourned by the royal command, and on which they met merely for
the purpose of adjourning again. Sunderland had just time to
present himself, to take the oaths, to sign the declaration
against transubstantiation, and to resume his seat. None of the
few peers who were present had an opportunity of making any
remark.474 It was not till the year 1692 that he began to attend
regularly. He was silent; but silent he had always been in large
assemblies, even when he was at the zenith of power. His talents
were not those of a public speaker. The art in which he surpassed
all men was the art of whispering. His tact, his quick eye for
the foibles of individuals, his caressing manners, his power of
insinuation, and, above all, his apparent frankness, made him
irresistible in private conversation. By means of these qualities
he had governed James, and now aspired to govern William.

To govern William, indeed, was not easy. But Sunderland succeeded
in obtaining such a measure of favour and influence as excited
much surprise and some indignation. In truth, scarcely any mind
was strong enough to resist the witchery of his talk and of his
manners. Every man is prone to believe in the gratitude and
attachment even of the most worthless persons on whom he has
conferred great benefits. It can therefore hardly be thought
strange that the most skilful of all flatterers should have been
heard with favour, when he, with every outward sign of strong
emotion, implored permission to dedicate all his faculties to the
service of the generous protector to whom he owed property,
liberty, life. It is not necessary, however, to suppose that the
King was deceived. He may have thought, with good reason, that,
though little confidence could be placed in Sunderland's
professions, much confidence might be placed in Sunderland's
situation; and the truth is that Sunderland proved, on the whole,
a more faithful servant than a much less depraved man might have
been. He did indeed make, in profound secresy, some timid
overtures towards a reconciliation with James. But it may be
confidently affirmed that, even had those overtures been
graciously received,--and they appear to have been received very
ungraciously,--the twice turned renegade would never have
rendered any real service to the Jacobite cause. He well knew
that he had done that which at Saint Germains must be regarded as
inexpiable. It was not merely that he had been treacherous and
ungrateful. Marlborough had been as treacherous and ungrateful;
and Marlborough had been pardoned. But Marlborough had not been
guilty of the impious hypocrisy of counterfeiting the signs of
conversion. Marlborough had not pretended to be convinced by the
arguments of the Jesuits, to be touched by divine grace, to pine
for union with the only true Church. Marlborough had not, when
Popery was in the ascendant, crossed himself, shrived himself,
done penance, taken the communion in one kind, and, as soon as a
turn of fortune came, apostatized back again, and proclaimed to
all the world that, when he knelt at the confessional and
received the host, he was merely laughing at the King and the
priests. The crime of Sunderland was one which could never be
forgiven by James; and a crime which could never be forgiven by
James was, in some sense, a recommendation to William. The Court,
nay, the Council, was full of men who might hope to prosper if
the banished King were restored. But Sunderland had left himself
no retreat. He had broken down all the bridges behind him. He had
been so false to one side that he must of necessity be true to
the other. That he was in the main true to the government which
now protected him there is no reason to doubt; and, being true,
he could not but be useful. He was, in some respects, eminently
qualified to be at that time an adviser of the Crown. He had
exactly the talents and the knowledge which William wanted. The
two together would have made up a consummate statesman. The
master was capable of forming and executing large designs, but
was negligent of those small arts in which the servant excelled.
The master saw farther off than other men; but what was near no
man saw so clearly as the servant. The master, though profoundly
versed in the politics of the great community of nations, never
thoroughly understood the politics of his own kingdom. The
servant was perfectly well informed as to the temper and the
organization of the English factions, and as to the strong and
weak parts of the character of every Englishman of note.

Early in 1693, it was rumoured that Sunderland was consulted on
all important questions relating to the internal administration
of the realm; and the rumour became stronger when it was known
that he had come up to London in the autumn before the meeting of
Parliament and that he had taken a large mansion near Whitehall.
The coffeehouse politicians were confident that he was about to
hold some high office. As yet, however, he had the wisdom to be
content with the reality of power, and to leave the show to
others.475

His opinion was that, as long as the King tried to balance the
two great parties against each other, and to divide his favour
equally between them, both would think themselves ill used, and
neither would lend to the government that hearty and steady
support which was now greatly needed. His Majesty must make up
his mind to give a marked preference to one or the other; and
there were three weighty reasons for giving the preference to the
Whigs.

In the first place, the Whigs were on principle attached to the
reigning dynasty. In their view the Revolution had been, not
merely necessary, not merely justifiable, but happy and glorious.
It had been the triumph of their political theory. When they
swore allegiance to William, they swore without scruple or
reservation; and they were so far from having any doubt about his
title that they thought it the best of all titles. The Tories, on
the other hand, very generally disapproved of that vote of the
Convention which had placed him on the
throne. Some of them were at heart Jacobites, and had taken the
oath of allegiance to him only that they might be able to injure
him. Others, though they thought it their duty to obey him as
King in fact, denied that he was King by right, and, if they were
loyal to him, were loyal without enthusiasm. There could,
therefore, be little doubt on which of the two parties it would
be safer for him to rely.

In the second place, as to the particular matter on which his
heart was at present set, the Whigs were, as a body, prepared to
support him strenuously, and the Tories were, as a body, inclined
to thwart him. The minds of men were at this time much occupied
by the question, in what way the war ought to be carried on. To
that question the two parties returned very different answers. An
opinion had during many months been growing among the Tories that
the policy of England ought to be strictly insular; that she
ought to leave the defence of Flanders and the Rhine to the
States General, the House of Austria and the Princes of the
Empire; that she ought to carry on hostilities with vigour by
sea, but to keep up only such an army as might, with the help of
the militia, be sufficient to repel an invasion. It was plain
that, if this system were adopted, there might be an immediate
reduction of the taxes which pressed most heavily on the nation.
But the Whigs maintained that this relief would be dearly
purchased. Many thousands of brave English soldiers were now in
Flanders. Yet the allies had not been able to prevent the French
from taking Mons in 1691, Namur in 1692, Charleroy in 1693. If
the English troops were withdrawn, it was certain that Ostend,
Ghent, Liege, Brussels would fall. The German Princes would
hasten to make peace, each for himself. The Spanish Netherlands
would probably be annexed to the French monarchy. The United
Provinces would be again in as great peril as in 1672, and would
accept whatever terms Lewis might be pleased to dictate. In a few
months, he would be at liberty to put forth his whole strength
against our island. Then would come a struggle for life and
death. It might well be hoped that we should be able to defend
our soil even against such a general and such an army as had won
the battle of Landen. But the fight must be long and hard. How
many fertile counties would be turned into deserts, how many
flourishing towns would be laid in ashes, before the invaders
were destroyed or driven out! One triumphant campaign in Kent and
Middlesex would do more to impoverish the nation than ten
disastrous campaigns in Brabant. It is remarkable that this
dispute between the two great factions was, during seventy years,
regularly revived as often as our country was at war with France.
That England ought never to attempt great military operations on
the Continent continued to be a fundamental article of the creed
of the Tories till the French Revolution produced a complete
change in their feelings.476 As the chief object of William was
to open the campaign of 1694 in Flanders with an immense display
of force, it was sufficiently clear to whom he must look for
assistance.

In the third place, the Whigs were the stronger party in
Parliament. The general election of 1690, indeed, had not been
favourable to them. They had been, for a time, a minority; but
they had ever since been constantly gaining ground; they were now
in number a full half of the Lower House; and their effective
strength was more than proportioned to their number; for in
energy, alertness and discipline, they were decidedly superior to
their opponents. Their organization was not indeed so perfect as
it afterwards became; but they had already begun to look for
guidance to a small knot of distinguished men, which was long
afterwards widely known by the name of the junto. There is,
perhaps, no parallel in history, ancient or modern, to the
authority exercised by this council, during twenty troubled
years, over the Whig body. The men who acquired that authority in
the days of William and Mary continued to possess it, without
interruption, in office and out of office, till George the First
was on the throne.

One of these men was Russell. Of his shameful dealings with the
Court of Saint Germains we possess proofs which leave no room for
doubt. But no such proofs were laid before the world till he had
been many years dead. If rumours of his guilt got abroad, they
were vague and improbable; they rested on no evidence; they could
be traced to no trustworthy author; and they might well be
regarded by his contemporaries as Jacobite calumnies. What was
quite certain was that he sprang from an illustrious house, which
had done and suffered great things for liberty and for the
Protestant religion, that he had signed the invitation of the
thirtieth of June, that he had landed with the Deliverer at
Torbay, that he had in Parliament, on all occasions, spoken and
voted as a zealous Whig, that he had won a great victory, that he
had saved his country from an invasion, and that, since he had
left the Admiralty, every thing had gone wrong. We cannot
therefore wonder that his influence over his party should have
been considerable.

But the greatest man among the members of the junto, and, in some
respects, the greatest man of that age, was the Lord Keeper
Somers. He was equally eminent as a jurist and as a politician,
as an orator and as a writer. His speeches have perished; but his
State papers remain, and are models of terse, luminous, and
dignified eloquence. He had left a great reputation in the House
of Commons, where he had, during four years, been always heard
with delight; and the Whig members still looked up to him as
their leader, and still held their meetings under his roof. In
the great place to which he had recently been promoted, he had so
borne himself that, after a very few months, even faction and
envy had ceased to murmur at his elevation. In truth, he united
all the qualities of a great judge, an intellect comprehensive,
quick and acute, diligence, integrity, patience, suavity. In
council, the calm wisdom which he possessed in a measure rarely
found among men of parts so quick and of opinions so decided as
his, acquired for him the authority of an oracle. The superiority
of his powers appeared not less clearly in private circles. The
charm of his conversation was heightened by the frankness with
which he poured out his thoughts.477 His good temper and his good
breeding never failed. His gesture, his look, his tones were
expressive of benevolence. His humanity was the more remarkable,
because he had received from nature a body such as is generally
found united with a peevish and irritable mind. His life was one
long malady; his nerves were weak; his complexion was livid; his
face was prematurely wrinkled. Yet his enemies could not pretend
that he had ever once, during a long and troubled public life,
been goaded, even by sudden provocation, into vehemence
inconsistent with the mild dignity of his character. All that was
left to them was to assert that his disposition was very far from
being so gentle as the world believed, that he was really prone
to the angry passions, and that sometimes, while his voice was
soft, and his words kind and courteous, his delicate frame was
almost convulsed by suppressed emotion. It will perhaps be
thought that this reproach is the highest of all eulogies.

The most accomplished men of those times have told us that there
was scarcely any subject on which Somers was not competent to
instruct and to delight. He had never travelled; and, in that
age, an Englishman who had not travelled was generally thought
incompetent to give an opinion on works of art. But connoisseurs
familiar with the masterpieces of the Vatican and of the
Florentine gallery allowed that the taste of Somers in painting
and sculpture was exquisite. Philology was one of his favourite
pursuits. He had traversed the whole vast range of polite
literature, ancient and modern. He was at once a munificent and
severely judicious patron of genius and learning. Locke owed
opulence to Somers. By Somers Addison was drawn forth from a cell
in a college. In distant countries the name of Somers was
mentioned with respect and gratitude by great scholars and poets
who had never seen his face. He was the benefactor of Leclerc. He
was the friend of Filicaja. Neither political nor religious
differences prevented him from extending his powerful protection
to merit. Hickes, the fiercest and most intolerant of all the
nonjurors, obtained, by the influence of Somers, permission to
study Teutonic antiquities in freedom and safety. Vertue, a
strict Roman Catholic, was raised by the discriminating and
liberal patronage of Somers from poverty and obscurity to the
first rank among the engravers of the age.

The generosity with which Somers treated his opponents was the
more honourable to him because he was no waverer in politics.
From the beginning to the end of his public life he was a steady
Whig. His voice was indeed always raised, when his party was
dominant in the State, against violent and vindictive counsels;
but he never forsook his friends, even when their perverse
neglect of his advice had brought them to the verge of ruin.

His powers of mind and his acquirements were not denied, even by
his detractors. The most acrimonious Tories were forced to admit,
with an ungracious snarl, which increased the value of their
praise, that he had all the intellectual qualities of a great
man, and that in him alone, among his contemporaries, brilliant
eloquence and wit were to be found associated with the quiet and
steady prudence which ensures success in life. It is a remarkable
fact, that, in the foulest of all the many libels that were
published against him, he was slandered under the name of Cicero.
As his abilities could not be questioned, he was charged with
irreligion and immorality. That he was heterodox all the country
vicars and foxhunting squires firmly believed; but as to the
nature and extent of his heterodoxy there were many different
opinions. He seems to have been a Low Churchman of the school of
Tillotson, whom he always loved and honoured; and he was, like
Tillotson, called by bigots a Presbyterian, an Arian, a Socinian,
a Deist, and an Atheist.

The private life of this great statesman and magistrate was
malignantly scrutinised; and tales were told about his
libertinism which went on growing till they became too absurd for
the credulity even of party spirit. At last, long after he had
been condemned to flannel and chicken broth, a wretched
courtesan, who had probably never seen him except in the stage
box at the theatre, when she was following her vocation below in
a mask, published a lampoon in which she described him as the
master of a haram more costly than the Great Turk's. There is,
however, reason to believe that there was a small nucleus of
truth round which this great mass of fiction gathered, and that
the wisdom and selfcommand which Somers never wanted in the
senate, on the judgment seat, at the council board, or in the
society of wits, scholars and philosophers, were not always proof
against female attractions.478

Another director of the Whig party was Charles Montague. He was
often, when he had risen to power, honours and riches, called an
upstart by those who envied his success. That they should have
called him so may seem strange; for few of the statesmen of his
time could show such a pedigree as his. He sprang from a family
as old as the Conquest; he was in the succession to an earldom,
and was, by the paternal side, cousin of three earls. But he was
the younger son of a younger brother; and that phrase had, ever
since the time of Shakspeare and Raleigh, and perhaps before
their time, been proverbially used to designate a person so poor
as to be broken to the most abject servitude or ready for the
most desperate adventure.

Charles Montague was early destined for the Church, was entered
on the foundation of Westminster, and, after distinguishing
himself there by skill in Latin versification, was sent up to
Trinity College, Cambridge. At Cambridge the philosophy of Des
Cartes was still dominant in the schools. But a few select
spirits had separated from the crowd, and formed a fit audience
round a far greater teacher.479 Conspicuous among the youths of
high promise who were proud to sit at the feet of Newton was the
quick and versatile Montague. Under such guidance the young
student made considerable proficiency in the severe sciences; but
poetry was his favourite pursuit; and when the University invited
her sons to celebrate royal marriages and funerals, he was
generally allowed to have surpassed his competitors. His fame
travelled to London; he was thought a clever lad by the wits who
met at Will's, and the lively parody which he wrote, in concert
with his friend and fellow student Prior, on Dryden's Hind and
Panther, was received with great applause.

At this time all Montague's wishes pointed towards the Church. At
a later period, when he was a peer with twelve thousand a year,
when his villa on the Thames was regarded as the most delightful
of all suburban retreats, when he was said to revel in Tokay from
the Imperial cellar, and in soups made out of birds' nests
brought from the Indian Ocean, and costing three guineas a piece,
his enemies were fond of reminding him that there had been a time
when he had eked out by his wits an income of barely fifty
pounds, when he had been happy with a trencher of mutton chops
and a flagon of ale from the College buttery, and when a tithe
pig was the rarest luxury for which he had dared to hope. The
Revolution came, and changed his whole scheme of life. He
obtained, by the influence of Dorset, who took a peculiar
pleasure in befriending young men of promise, a seat in the House
of Commons. Still, during a few months, the needy scholar
hesitated between politics and divinity. But it soon became clear
that, in the new order of things, parliamentary ability must
fetch a higher price than any other kind of ability; and he felt
that in parliamentary ability he had no superior. He was in the
very situation for which he was peculiarly fitted by nature; and
during some years his life was a series of triumphs.

Of him, as of several of his contemporaries, especially of
Mulgrave and of Sprat, it may be said that his fame has suffered
from the folly of those editors who, down to our own time, have
persisted in reprinting his rhymes among the works of the British
poets. There is not a year in which hundreds of verses as good as
any that he ever wrote are not sent in for the Newdigate prize at
Oxford and for the Chancellor's medal at Cambridge. His mind had
indeed great quickness and vigour, but not that kind of quickness
and vigour which produces great dramas or odes; and it is most
unjust to him that his loan of Honour and his Epistle on the
Battle of the Boyne should be placed side by side with Comus and
Alexander's Feast. Other eminent statesmen and orators, Walpole,
Pulteney, Chatham, Fox, wrote poetry not better than his. But
fortunately for them, their metrical compositions were never
thought worthy to be admitted into any collection of our national
classics.

It has long been usual to represent the imagination under the
figure of a wing, and to call the successful exertions of the
imagination flights. One poet is the eagle; another is the swan;
a third modestly compares himself to the bee. But none of these
types would have suited Montague. His genius may be compared to
that pinion which, though it is too weak to lift the ostrich into
the air, enables her, while she remains on the earth, to outrun
hound, horse and dromedary. If the man who possesses this kind of
genius attempts to ascend the heaven of invention, his awkward
and unsuccessful efforts expose him to derision. But if he will
be content to stay in the terrestrial region of business, he will
find that the faculties which would not enable him to soar into a
higher sphere will enable him to distance all his competitors in
the lower. As a poet Montague could never have risen above the
crowd. But in the House of Commons, now fast becoming supreme in
the State, and extending its control over one executive
department after another, the young adventurer soon obtained a
place very different from the place which he occupies among men
of letters. At thirty, he would gladly have given all his chances
in life for a comfortable vicarage and a chaplain's scarf. At
thirty-seven, he was First Lord of the Treasury, Chancellor of
the Exchequer and a Regent of the kingdom; and this elevation he
owed not at all to favour, but solely to the unquestionable
superiority of his talents for administration and debate.

The extraordinary ability with which, at the beginning of the
year 1692, he managed the conference on the Bill for regulating
Trials in cases of Treason, placed him at once in the first rank
of parliamentary orators. On that occasion he was opposed to a
crowd of veteran senators renowned for their eloquence, Halifax,
Rochester, Nottingham, Mulgrave, and proved himself a match for
them all. He was speedily seated at the Board of Treasury; and
there the clearheaded and experienced Godolphin soon found that
his young colleague was his master. When Somers had quitted the
House of Commons, Montague had no rival there. Sir Thomas
Littleton, once distinguished as the ablest debater and man of
business among the Whig members, was content to serve under his
junior. To this day we may discern in many parts of our financial
and commercial system the marks of the vigorous intellect and
daring spirit of Montague. His bitterest enemies were unable to
deny that some of the expedients which he had proposed had proved
highly beneficial to the nation. But it was said that these
expedients were not devised by himself. He was represented, in a
hundred pamphlets, as the daw in borrowed plumes. He had taken,
it was affirmed, the hint of every one of his great plans from
the writings or the conversation of some ingenious speculator.
This reproach was, in truth, no reproach. We can scarcely expect
to find in the same human being the talents which are necessary
for the making of new discoveries in political science, and the
talents which obtain the assent of divided and tumultuous
assemblies to great practical reforms. To be at once an Adam
Smith and a Pitt is scarcely possible. It is surely praise enough
for a busy politician that he knows how to use the theories of
others, that he discerns, among the schemes of innumerable
projectors, the precise scheme which is wanted and which is
practicable, that he shapes it to suit pressing circumstances and
popular humours, that he proposes it just when it is most likely
to be favourably received, that he triumphantly defends it
against all objectors, and that he carries it into execution with
prudence and energy; and to this praise no English statesman has
a fairer claim than Montague.