The History of England from the Accession of James II, Vol. 5

T >> Thomas Babington Macaulay >> The History of England from the Accession of James II, Vol. 5

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22

The press for sailors to man the royal navy was at that time so
hot that Kidd could not obtain his full complement of hands in
the Thames. He crossed the Atlantic, visited New York, and there
found volunteers in abundance. At length, in February 1697, he
sailed from the Hudson with a crew of more than a hundred and
fifty men, and in July reached the coast of Madagascar.

It is possible that Kidd may at first have meant to act in
accordance with his instructions. But, on the subject of piracy,
he held the notions which were then common in the North American
colonies; and most of his crew were of the same mind. He found
himself in a sea which was constantly traversed by rich and
defenceless merchant ships; and he had to determine whether he
would plunder those ships or protect them. The gain which might
be made by plundering them was immense, and might be snatched
without the dangers of a battle or the delays of a trial. The
rewards of protecting the lawful trade were likely to be
comparatively small. Such as they were, they would be got only by
first fighting with desperate ruffians who would rather be killed
than taken, and by then instituting a proceeding and obtaining a
judgment in a Court of Admiralty. The risk of being called to a
severe reckoning might not unnaturally seem small to one who had
seen many old buccaneers living in comfort and credit at New York
and Boston. Kidd soon threw off the character of a privateer, and
became a pirate. He established friendly communications, and
exchanged arms and ammunition, with the most notorious of those
rovers whom his commission authorised him to destroy, and made
war on those peaceful traders whom he was sent to defend. He
began by robbing Mussulmans, and speedily proceeded from
Mussulmans to Armenians, and from Armenians to Portuguese. The
Adventure Galley took such quantities of cotton and silk, sugar
and coffee, cinnamon and pepper, that the very foremast men
received from a hundred to two hundred pounds each, and that the
captain's share of the spoil would have enabled him to live at
home as an opulent gentleman. With the rapacity Kidd had the
cruelty of his odious calling. He burned houses; he massacred
peasantry. His prisoners were tied up and beaten with naked
cutlasses in order to extort information about their concealed
hoards. One of his crew, whom he had called a dog, was provoked
into exclaiming, in an agony of remorse, "Yes, I am a dog; but it
is you that have made me so." Kidd, in a fury, struck the man
dead.

News then travelled very slowly from the eastern seas to England.
But, in August 1698, it was known in London that the Adventure
Galley from which so much had been hoped was the terror of the
merchants of Surat, and of the villagers of the coast of Malabar.
It was thought probable that Kidd would carry his booty to some
colony. Orders were therefore sent from Whitehall to the
governors of the transmarine possessions of the Crown, directing
them to be on the watch for him. He meanwhile, having burned his
ship and dismissed most of his men, who easily found berths in
the sloops of other pirates, returned to New York with the means,
as he flattered himself, of making his peace and of living in
splendour. He had fabricated a long romance to which Bellamont,
naturally unwilling to believe that he had been duped and had
been the means of duping others, was at first disposed to listen
with favour. But the truth soon came out. The governor did his
duty firmly; and Kidd was placed in close confinement till orders
arrived from the Admiralty that he should be sent to England.

To an intelligent and candid judge of human actions it will not
appear that any of the persons at whose expense the Adventure
Galley was fitted out deserved serious blame. The worst that
could be imputed even to Bellamont, who had drawn in all the
rest, was that he had been led into a fault by his ardent zeal
for the public service, and by the generosity of a nature as
little prone to suspect as to devise villanies. His friends in
England might surely be pardoned for giving credit to his
recommendation. It is highly probable that the motive which
induced some of them to aid his design was genuine public spirit.
But, if we suppose them to have had a view to gain, it was to
legitimate gain. Their conduct was the very opposite of corrupt.
Not only had they taken no money. They had disbursed money
largely, and had disbursed it with the certainty that they should
never be reimbursed unless the outlay proved beneficial to the
public. That they meant well they proved by staking thousands on
the success of their plan; and, if they erred in judgment, the
loss of those thousands was surely a sufficient punishment for
such an error. On this subject there would probably have been no
difference of opinion had not Somers been one of the
contributors. About the other patrons of Kidd the chiefs of the
opposition cared little. Bellamont was far removed from the
political scene. Romney could not, and Shrewsbury would not,
play a first part. Orford had resigned his employments. But
Somers still held the Great Seal, still presided in the House of
Lords, still had constant access to the closet. The retreat of
his friends had left him the sole and undisputed head of that
party which had, in the late Parliament, been a majority, and
which was, in the present Parliament, outnumbered indeed,
disorganised and disheartened, but still numerous and
respectable. His placid courage rose higher and higher to meet
the dangers which threatened him. He provided for himself no
refuge. He made no move towards flight; and, without uttering one
boastful word, gave his enemies to understand, by the mild
firmness of his demeanour, that he dared them to do their worst.

In their eagerness to displace and destroy him they overreached
themselves. Had they been content to accuse him of lending his
countenance, with a rashness unbecoming his high place, to an
illconcerted scheme, that large part of mankind which judges of a
plan simply by the event would probably have thought the
accusation well founded. But the malice which they bore to him
was not to be so satisfied. They affected to believe that he had
from the first been aware of Kidd's character and designs. The
Great Seal had been employed to sanction a piratical expedition.
The head of the law had laid down a thousand pounds in the hope
of receiving tens of thousands when his accomplices should
return, laden with the spoils of ruined merchants. It was
fortunate for the Chancellor that the calumnies of which he was
the object were too atrocious to be mischievous.

And now the time had come at which the hoarded illhumour of six
months was at liberty to explode. On the sixteenth of November
the Houses met. The King, in his speech, assured them in gracious
and affectionate language that he was determined to do his best
to merit their love by constant care to preserve their liberty
and their religion, by a pure administration of justice, by
countenancing virtue, by discouraging vice, by shrinking from no
difficulty or danger when the welfare of the nation was at stake.
"These," he said, "are my resolutions; and I am persuaded that
you are come together with purposes on your part suitable to
these on mine. Since then our aims are only for the general good,
let us act with confidence in one another, which will not fail,
by God's blessing, to make me a happy king, and you a great and
flourishing people."

It might have been thought that no words less likely to give
offence had ever been uttered from the English throne. But even
in those words the malevolence of faction sought and found matter
for a quarrel. The gentle exhortation, "Let us act with
confidence in one another," must mean that such confidence did
not now exist, that the King distrusted the Parliament, or that
the Parliament had shown an unwarrantable distrust of the King.
Such an exhortation was nothing less than a reproach; and such a
reproach was a bad return for the gold and the blood which
England had lavished in order to make and to keep him a great
sovereign. There was a sharp debate, in which Seymour took part.
With characteristic indelicacy and want of feeling he harangued
the Commons as he had harangued the Court of King's Bench, about
his son's death, and about the necessity of curbing the insolence
of military men. There were loud complaints that the events of
the preceding session had been misrepresented to the public, that
emissaries of the Court, in every part of the kingdom, declaimed
against the absurd jealousies or still more absurd parsimony
which had refused to His Majesty the means of keeping up such an
army as might secure the country against invasion. Even justices
of the peace, it was said, even deputy-lieutenants, had used King
James and King Lewis as bugbears, for the purpose of stirring up
the people against honest and thrifty representatives. Angry
resolutions were passed, declaring it to be the opinion of the
House that the best way to establish entire confidence between
the King and the Estates of the Realm would be to put a brand on
those evil advisers who had dared to breathe in the royal ear
calumnies against a faithful Parliament. An address founded on
these resolutions was voted; many thought that a violent rupture
was inevitable. But William returned an answer so prudent and
gentle that malice itself could not prolong the dispute. By this
time, indeed, a new dispute had begun. The address had scarcely
been moved when the House called for copies of the papers
relating to Kidd's expedition. Somers, conscious of innocence,
knew that it was wise as well as right to be perfectly ingenuous,
and resolved that there should be no concealment. His friends
stood manfully by him, and his enemies struck at him with such
blind fury that their blows injured only themselves. Howe raved
like a maniac. "What is to become of the country, plundered by
land, plundered by sea? Our rulers have laid hold on our lands,
our woods, our mines, our money. And all this is not enough. We
cannot send a cargo to the farthest ends of the earth, but they
must send a gang of thieves after it." Harley and Seymour tried
to carry a vote of censure without giving the House time to read
the papers. But the general feeling was strongly for a short
delay. At length, on the sixth of December, the subject was
considered in a committee of the whole House. Shower undertook to
prove that the letters patent to which Somers had put the Great
Seal were illegal. Cowper replied to him with immense applause,
and seems to have completely refuted him. Some of the Tory
orators had employed what was then a favourite claptrap. Very
great men, no doubt, were concerned in this business. But were
the Commons of England to stand in awe of great men? Would not
they have the spirit to censure corruption and oppression in the
highest places? Cowper answered finely that assuredly the House
ought not to be deterred from the discharge of any duty by the
fear of great men, but that fear was not the only base and evil
passion of which great men were the objects, and that the
flatterer who courted their favour was not a worse citizen than
the envious calumniator who took pleasure in bringing whatever
was eminent down to his own level. At length, after a debate
which lasted from midday till nine at night, and in which all the
leading members took part, the committee divided on the question
that the letters patent were dishonourable to the King,
inconsistent with the law of nations, contrary to the statutes of
the realm, and destructive of property and trade. The
Chancellor's enemies had felt confident of victory, and had made
the resolution so strong in order that it might be impossible for
him to retain the Great Seal. They soon found that it would have
been wise to propose a gentler censure. Great numbers of their
adherents, convinced by Cowper's arguments, or unwilling to put a
cruel stigma on a man of whose genius and accomplishments the
nation was proud, stole away before the door was closed. To the
general astonishment there were only one hundred and thirty-three
Ayes to one hundred and eighty-nine Noes. That the City of London
did not consider Somers as the destroyer, and his enemies as the
protectors, of trade, was proved on the following morning by the
most unequivocal of signs. As soon as the news of his triumph
reached the Royal Exchange, the price of stocks went up.

Some weeks elapsed before the Tories ventured again to attack
him. In the meantime they amused themselves by trying to worry
another person whom they hated even more bitterly. When, in a
financial debate, the arrangements of the household of the Duke
of Gloucester were incidentally mentioned, one or two members
took the opportunity of throwing reflections on Burnet. Burnet's
very name sufficed to raise among the High Churchmen a storm of
mingled merriment and anger. The Speaker in vain reminded the
orators that they were wandering from the question. The majority
was determined to have some fun with the Right Reverend Whig, and
encouraged them to proceed. Nothing appears to have been said on
the other side. The chiefs of the opposition inferred from the
laughing and cheering of the Bishop's enemies, and from the
silence of his friends, that there would be no difficulty in
driving from Court, with contumely, the prelate whom of all
prelates they most detested, as the personification of the
latitudinarian spirit, a Jack Presbyter in lawn sleeves. They,
therefore, after the lapse of a few hours, moved quite
unexpectedly an address requesting the King to remove the Bishop
of Salisbury from the place of preceptor to the young heir
apparent. But it soon appeared that many who could not help
smiling at Burnet's weaknesses did justice to his abilities and
virtues. The debate was hot. The unlucky Pastoral Letter was of
course not forgotten. It was asked whether a man who had
proclaimed that England was a conquered country, a man whose
servile pages the English Commons had ordered to be burned by the
hangman, could be a fit instructor for an English Prince. Some
reviled the Bishop for being a Socinian, which he was not, and
some for being a Scotchman, which he was. His defenders fought
his battle gallantly. "Grant," they said, "that it is possible to
find, amidst an immense mass of eloquent and learned matter
published in defence of the Protestant religion and of the
English Constitution, a paragraph which, though well intended,
was not well considered, is that error of an unguarded minute to
outweigh the services of more than twenty years? If one House of
Commons, by a very small majority, censured a little tract of
which his Lordship was the author, let it be remembered that
another House of Commons unanimously voted thanks to him for a
work of very different magnitude and importance, the History of
the Reformation. And, as to what is said about his birthplace, is
there not already ill humour enough in Scotland? Has not the
failure of that unhappy expedition to Darien raised a
sufficiently bitter feeling against us throughout that kingdom?
Every wise and honest man is desirous to soothe the angry
passions of our neighbours. And shall we, just at this moment,
exasperate those passions by proclaiming that to be born on the
north of the Tweed is a disqualification for all honourable
trust?" The ministerial members would gladly have permitted the
motion to be withdrawn. But the opposition, elated with hope,
insisted on dividing, and were confounded by finding that, with
all the advantage of a surprise, they were only one hundred and
thirty-three to one hundred and seventy-three. Their defeat would
probably have been less complete, had not all those members who
were especially attached to the Princess of Denmark voted in the
majority or absented themselves. Marlborough used all his
influence against the motion; and he had strong reasons for doing
so. He was by no means well pleased to see the Commons engaged in
discussing the characters and past lives of the persons who were
placed about the Duke of Gloucester. If the High Churchmen, by
reviving old stories, succeeded in carrying a vote against the
Preceptor, it was by no means unlikely that some malicious Whig
might retaliate on the Governor. The Governor must have been
conscious that he was not invulnerable; nor could he absolutely
rely on the support of the whole body of Tories; for it was
believed that their favourite leader, Rochester, thought himself
the fittest person to superintend the education of his grand
nephew.

From Burnet the opposition went back to Somers. Some Crown
property near Reigate had been granted to Somers by the King. In
this transaction there was nothing that deserved blame. The Great
Seal ought always to be held by a lawyer of the highest
distinction; nor can such a lawyer discharge his duties in a
perfectly efficient manner unless, with the Great Seal, he
accepts a peerage. But he may not have accumulated a fortune such
as will alone suffice to support a peerage; his peerage is
permanent; and his tenure of the Great Seal is precarious. In a
few weeks he may be dismissed from office, and may find that he
has lost a lucrative profession, that he has got nothing but a
costly dignity, that he has been transformed from a prosperous
barrister into a mendicant lord. Such a risk no wise man will
run. If, therefore, the state is to be well served in the highest
civil post, it is absolutely necessary that a provision should be
made for retired Chancellors. The Sovereign is now empowered by
Act of Parliament to make such a provision out of the public
revenue. In old times such a provision was ordinarily made out of
the hereditary domain of the Crown. What had been bestowed on
Somers appears to have amounted, after all deductions, to a net
income of about sixteen hundred a year, a sum which will hardly
shock us who have seen at one time five retired Chancellors
enjoying pensions of five thousand a year each. For the crime,
however, of accepting this grant the leaders of the opposition
hoped that they should be able to punish Somers with disgrace and
ruin. One difficulty stood in the way. All that he had received
was but a pittance when compared with the wealth with which some
of his persecutors had been loaded by the last two kings of the
House of Stuart. It was not easy to pass any censure on him which
should not imply a still more severe censure on two generations
of Granvilles, on two generations of Hydes, and on two
generations of Finches. At last some ingenious Tory thought of a
device by which it might be possible to strike the enemy without
wounding friends. The grants of Charles and James had been made in
time of peace; and William's grant to Somers had been made in
time of war. Malice eagerly caught at this childish distinction.
It was moved that any minister who had been concerned in passing
a grant for his own benefit while the nation was under the heavy
taxes of the late war had violated his trust; as if the
expenditure which is necessary to secure to the country a good
administration of justice ought to be suspended by war; or as if
it were not criminal in a government to squander the resources of
the state in time of peace. The motion was made by James Brydges,
eldest son of the Lord Chandos, the James Brydges who afterwards
became Duke of Chandos, who raised a gigantic fortune out of war
taxes, to squander it in comfortless and tasteless ostentation,
and who is still remembered as the Timon of Pope's keen and
brilliant satire. It was remarked as extraordinary that Brydges
brought forward and defended his motion merely as the assertion
of an abstract truth, and avoided all mention of the Chancellor.
It seemed still more extraordinary that Howe, whose whole
eloquence consisted in cutting personalities, named nobody on
this occasion, and contented himself with declaiming in general
terms against corruption and profusion. It was plain that the
enemies of Somers were at once urged forward by hatred and kept
back by fear. They knew that they could not carry a resolution
directly condemning him. They, therefore, cunningly brought
forward a mere speculative proposition which many members might
be willing to affirm without scrutinising it severely. But, as
soon as the major premise had been admitted, the minor would be
without difficulty established; and it would be impossible to
avoid coming to the conclusion that Somers had violated his
trust. Such tactics, however, have very seldom succeeded in
English parliaments; for a little good sense and a little
straightforwardness are quite sufficient to confound them. A
sturdy Whig member, Sir Rowland Gwyn, disconcerted the whole
scheme of operations. "Why this reserve?" he said, "Everybody
knows your meaning. Everybody sees that you have not the courage
to name the great man whom you are trying to destroy." "That is
false," cried Brydges; and a stormy altercation followed. It soon
appeared that innocence would again triumph. The two parties
seemed to have exchanged characters for one day. The friends of
the government, who in the Parliament were generally humble and
timorous, took a high tone, and spoke as it becomes men to speak
who are defending persecuted genius and virtue. The malecontents,
generally so insolent and turbulent, seemed to be completely
cowed. They abased themselves so low as to protest, what no human
being could believe, that they had no intention of attacking the
Chancellor, and had framed their resolution without any view to
him. Howe, from whose lips scarcely any thing ever dropped but
gall and poison, went so far as to say: "My Lord Somers is a man
of eminent merit, of merit so eminent that, if he had made a
slip, we might well overlook it." At a late hour the question was
put; and the motion was rejected by a majority of fifty in a
house of four hundred and nineteen members. It was long since
there had been so large an attendance at a division.

The ignominious failure of the attacks on Somers and Burnet
seemed to prove that the assembly was coming round to a better
temper. But the temper of a House of Commons left without the
guidance of a ministry is never to be trusted. "Nobody can tell
today," said an experienced politician of that time, "what the
majority may take it into their heads to do tomorrow." Already a
storm was gathering in which the Constitution itself was in
danger of perishing, and from which none of the three branches of
the legislature escaped without serious damage.

The question of the Irish forfeitures had been raised; and about
that question the minds of men, both within and without the walls
of Parliament, were in a strangely excitable state. Candid and
intelligent men, whatever veneration they may feel for the memory
of William, must find it impossible to deny that, in his
eagerness to enrich and aggrandise his personal friends, he too
often forgot what was due to his own reputation and to the public
interest. It is true that in giving away the old domains of the
Crown he did only what he had a right to do, and what all his
predecessors had done; nor could the most factious opposition
insist on resuming his grants of those domains without resuming
at the same time the grants of his uncles. But between those
domains and the estates recently forfeited in Ireland there was a
distinction, which would not indeed have been recognised by the
judges, but which to a popular assembly might well seem to be of
grave importance. In the year 1690 a Bill had been brought in for
applying the Irish forfeitures to the public service. That Bill
passed the Commons, and would probably, with large amendments,
have passed the Lords, had not the King, who was under the
necessity of attending the Congress at the Hague, put an end to
the session. In bidding the Houses farewell on that occasion, he
assured them that he should not dispose of the property about
which they had been deliberating, till they should have had
another opportunity of settling that matter. He had, as he
thought, strictly kept his word; for he had not disposed of this
property till the Houses had repeatedly met and separated without
presenting to him any bill on the subject. They had had the
opportunity which he had assured them that they should have. They
had had more than one such opportunity. The pledge which he had
given had therefore been amply redeemed; and he did not conceive
that he was bound to abstain longer from exercising his undoubted
prerogative. But, though it could hardly be denied that he had
literally fulfilled his promise, the general opinion was that
such a promise ought to have been more than literally fulfilled.
If his Parliament, overwhelmed with business which could not be
postponed without danger to his throne and to his person, had
been forced to defer, year after year, the consideration of so
large and complex a question as that of the Irish forfeitures, it
ill became him to take advantage of such a laches with the
eagerness of a shrewd attorney. Many persons, therefore, who were
sincerely attached to his government, and who on principle
disapproved of resumptions, thought the case of these forfeitures
an exception to the general rule.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22