MODERN HISTORY LIBRARY |
CHAPTER X. THE
REVOLUTION AND THE REVOLUTION SETTLEMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN.
(1)
ENGLAND.
(1687—1702.)
The period 1687-1702 is unique in the history of England. Such
achievements as the Bill of Rights and the Act of Settlement, the foundation of
a National Bank and a National Debt, the Toleration Act and the withdrawal of
the Press-Licensing Act, would have exercised an influence both deep and wide
at any time and among any people. But, as taking place among this people and in
this period, they had a peculiar value; for their influence transcended the
bounds of one country and had a European significance and effect. The question
of the removal of the Tests engaged the attention of Princes and diplomatists
in Europe, as well as of Dissenting ministers and Catholic priests in England,
Continental statesmen watched the results of divisions in the English House of
Commons, knowing that on a casual party vote the fate of a great alliance might
depend. The resolutions of the Bank and the state of the currency in England
decided the fate of a campaign on the Continent. A native-born King deserted
England and tried to reconquer it with the aid of Frenchmen and Irishmen; a
foreign potentate defended it with an army of Swedes, Dutchmen, Brandenburgers,
and Englishmen. The rule of an English-born King threatened disgrace and
humiliation to his country; the rule of a Dutchman brought it power and glory
England no longer revolved in an orbit of her own; her course was deflected,
and her movements were determined, by the presence of other bodies in the
political firmament. International policy is here subordinate to internal
history ; but, none the less, the course of domestic policy can often be
explained only by reference to continental problems.
The disasters of James II were chiefly due to the fact that he mistook
tributary streams for main currents of national thought. Thus, he gathered from
the widely different opinions of the clergy that the Establishment was divided
in doctrine; he did not perceive that it would unite against Catholicism. And,
as he perceived the disunion and was blind to the latent strength of the
Establishment, so he saw the superficial unity, and was blind to the underlying
divisions, between Dissenters and Catholics. Obstinate and courageous,
sincerely believing that concession had ruined his father and his brother, he
was the very man to ignore obstacles and attempt impossibilities. He at first
thought that the resolute expression of his will would move the Establishment
to consent to the toleration of Catholics. When this expectation failed, he
turned to the Dissenters, and relied upon their coalescence with the Catholics
to secure toleration for both parties. Such were some of the motives which
inspired the Declaration of Indulgence (issued April 4, 1687), by which he
suspended all penal statutes against Catholics and Dissenters, and admitted
them to public office in corporations, army, or civil service.
The Declaration had been issued on the sole ground of the royal
prerogative, by which, it was claimed, the laws could be suspended.
Unfortunately for James, though opinion veered as to the true limits of royal
power, it was steady on the one point on which he elected to challenge it.
Parliament had pronounced a similar Declaration of Charles II illegal, and the
King had acquiesced and withdrawn it (1672). If precedents counted for
anything, James was legally in the wrong; and, if the legal irregularity was
clear, so also was the political motive inspiring it. It was obvious that a
power which could enforce the doctrines of toleration might eventually also
enforce the doctrines of absolutism, in the teeth of Parliament. Hence, by a
strange but intelligible paradox, the establishment of liberty in religion
would lead to the destruction of it in politics. But, while recognising that
political motives inspired James, it is not necessary to assume that they
excluded all other considerations. His religious sincerity does not seem to
have been questioned by the foreign diplomatists at his Court. His conversion
to the principle of toleration was perhaps late; but the influence of the great
William Penn upon him may explain much. At any rate, when the conversion was
once effected, it remained permanent. Long afterwards, when in exile—and when
he had much to lose by his attitude—James continued to profess at least a
theoretical zeal for toleration.
An attack upon the Universities accompanied the Declaration, and
supplied the mirror in which Englishmen read that toleration meant hostility to
the Establishment. The proceedings against Cambridge are particularly
important, because resistance was here offered even before the issue of the
Declaration. On February 9, 1687, the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge (Peachell)
received a royal letter, commanding him to confer the degree of M.A. upon Alban
Francis, a Benedictine. Nearly the whole Senate at once signed a protest
against the proposal, describing their resistance as proceeding not “from any
principle of disobedience and stubbornness, but from a conscientious sense of
our obligations to laws and oaths.” Eventually the Vice-Chancellor, with eight
delegates (including Isaac Newton), was summoned before the Court of High
Commission (April and May, 1687). Peachell, after being thoroughly bullied by
Jeffreys, was deprived of his office. But the protest succeeded, and Francis
was left without a degree. The proceedings at Oxford were different and more
violent. Catholic influences had already been introduced into Christ Church and
University College without much open protest: In April, 1687, James had sent a
letter recommending Anthony Farmer—a man of bad character who was a convert to
Catholicism—for the presidency of Magdalen. But the Fellows had already met and
elected John Hough to the post. They were hereupon cited before the Commission,
and ultimately expelled. They offered a more dignified, if less successful,
resistance than the Cambridge Vice-Chancellor and his companions; but the
Oxford opposition, being subsequent to the Declaration, was more natural and
has therefore less historic significance.
The interference of James with the Universities has more value as an
illustration of ecclesiastical and popular resentment than as an instance of
royal illegality. For it is hard to say that James had sinned against
established custom. Letters mandatory or dispensatory had expelled or appointed
Fellows under Charles I and II often enough to create precedents. Professed
Lutherans had been admitted to colleges; the ambassador of Morocco had lately
received a degree at Cambridge, in direct defiance of statutes and in the
absence of loud or general disapproval. But when James tried to leaven the
colleges with Roman Catholic Fellows the academic bodies suddenly discovered
and denounced the inroad on their privileges. The conviction that the King
desired to override the existing law was becoming deep-rooted, and it nowhere
found a better expression than in the controversial protests of University
officials. But, if James had not violated the statutes or departed from the
custom of the Universities, he had certainly broken his word. He had confirmed
all the suspicions awakened in the Declaration by an assault upon institutions
which every Anglican believed to be nurseries of the learning, the piety, and
the steadfastness of his Church. He had attempted to humiliate and degrade, he
might actually mean to destroy, the Church which he had repeatedly sworn to
defend. Anglicans began to feel that his measures tended, as the Prince of
Orange told the English ambassador, “really to sap the foundations of the
Protestant religion.”
Meanwhile, the Dissenters were beginning to suspect James as an ally.
All the eloquence of the great William Penn, the reputed author of the
Declaration, could not win over the Nonconformists. It was significant that he
could not even secure the whole body of the Quakers, amongst whom his personal
influence had hitherto been boundless. And, apart from them, the majority of
the Dissenters looked askance at the Declaration, and their chief divines,
Baxter and Howe, actually denounced it. The joint admission of Dissenters and
Catholics to office in the corporations was producing extraordinary results.
Thus, Newcastle had a Papist Mayor and a Puritan Council, and the corporation
vetoed every loyal address put forward by its Catholic head. Such a result was
typical and indeed inevitable; and all the suspicions which could possibly
arise from so unnatural a union were subtly suggested or emphasised by a
pamphlet from the pen of Halifax.
The famous Letter to a Dissenter (published apparently in the middle of
August, 1687) dissected the Declaration with inimitable irony. The incongruity
of an alliance between liberty and infallibility, between Tiverton weavers and
Jesuit priests was skilfully exposed, and well spiced with allusions to the
Popish plot and Romish treachery. Halifax then proceeded to point out the
danger of affronting the Church of England “from a desire of ease and revenge.”
The Declaration depended Solely on the sincerity of the Court, for which there
was no guarantee; and the first act of Princess Mary of Orange, on her
accession, might be to cancel it. Was it worth while to accept a favour of
dubious permanence, from a suspected source, at the certain price of alienating
the whole Establishment? The air of detachment and seriousness, which Halifax
always preserved even in the wittiest and most prejudiced of his pamphlets,
made the effect of this appeal more remarkable. Twenty thousand copies were
sold; and twenty-four answers, each excelling the other in violence of abuse
and feebleness of argument, vainly endeavoured to counteract the effect of the
most successful pamphlet of the age.
It was followed, at an interval of three and a half months, by another
communication which was inferior to it in literary grace, but surpassed it in
political importance. The document, which put into the shade even a pamphlet by
Halifax, was a letter written by Fagel, Grand Pensionary of Holland,
authoritatively announcing the views of the Prince and Princess of Orange upon
the Declaration. Though their opinions had been known to James and to
diplomatists so early as June, 1687, they were not revealed to the English
people until the publication of Fagel’s letter in November. Fagel announced
that the Prince and Princess desired toleration, and wished no man to be
persecuted for matters of private conscience. But, while several religions
might be tolerated in private, the Prince and Princess thought that there could
not in one State be two, “public and established.” Hence they could approve
nothing “so much against the existing laws,” as removal of the Tests, those
necessary safeguards against the Catholics. Such language was admirably chosen.
The Prince and Princess disclaimed the right of interference, while clearly
condemning the methods of James; they profusely protested their duty and
affection to the King, while delicately insinuating that his Declaration was
illegal. The success of Fagel’s letter was so extraordinary that, by the
beginning of 1688, forty-five thousand copies had actually been sold. From this
time the position of the Prince of Orange, as the protector of the public
liberties and the Protestant religion, was recognised by most members of the
Established Church and by the majority of Dissenters.
James and Parliament.—Mission of Dykvelt. [1687
The ablest of English, and one of the ablest of European, statesmen had
thus pronounced against the Declaration of James. But, apart from these weighty
commentaries, the facts themselves seemed to the English people to show clearly
enough that the royal policy was directed first against the Established Church,
and ultimately against the Constitution. James was quite aware of their
suspicions, and of the danger of putting himself legally in the, wrong. He
accordingly sought to secure the sanction of Parliament for the repeal of the
Tests and for the establishment of religious toleration. With this view he made
persistent efforts during the summer of 1687 to establish his personal
influence over members of Parliament by securing their adhesion to himself.
When this system of “closetting” (as it was called) proved a hopeless failure,
he dissolved Parliament (July 2). One last resource remained: a new Parliament
might be packed, and the public officers turned into electioneering agents. If
officials refused to act this part, they could be turned out. In these
circumstances, half the Lords Lieutenant and eight hundred Protestant
magistrates speedily resigned or were dismissed. James proceeded to fill the
corporations, the benches of magistrates and the state departments with his own
nominees. Commissions of “Regulators” filled the corporation councils and the
commissions of the peace with Catholics and Dissenters, and expelled from the
public departments any officials likely to resist the King. Such violent
changes could not be accomplished without disorganising the machinery of State
and producing universal discontent. The continuance of drastic reforms in the
public service, together with a lavish creation of peers, might at any time
place both Houses of Parliament at the feet of James. A revolution of this
kind, if systematically pursued, must eventually be met by a revolution of
another kind; and from this time forward passive constitutional opposition
began to develop into active resistance. By the winter of 1687 James might have
read the signs, for almost all the nobility had deserted his Court and retired
to their country estates. Foreign diplomatists at least were not deceived, and
the sagacious Prince of Orange understood that the time for active interference
was approaching.
In spite of some previous disputes the differences between William and
James did not become acute till 1687. The beginnings of a real quarrel may be
dated from that year, when William sent Dykvelt to England on a mission whose
professed object was one of diplomatic compliment to James (February—May).
Dykvelt speedily revealed his real purpose by arranging for secret interviews
with Devonshire, Halifax, Danby, Shrewsbury, and others, and endeavouring to
ascertain their views as to the Declaration and the policy of James. It appears
that Dykvelt, repeated the main substance of these conversations to James, and
that there is no reason to suspect any direct attempt at conspiracy. But none
the less his mission marks an epoch in the history of the time. William
concluded from Dykvelt’s report that he must abandon all hope of bringing
England into the continental alliance by conciliating James Himself. That this
deduction was correct can be seen from the memoirs of James which, though not
entirely composed by himself, substantially represent his views. He there
explains that, in the war which was seen to be approaching, it seemed to him
that France would attack and weaken the Dutch Republic. As the Dutch were our
rivals in trade he thought that England might gain and could not lose by
neutrality. This account omits one all-important consideration. James, though
in his own way a national king, was not wholly swayed by cynical calculation of
England’s self-interest. He might perhaps have been willing in certain
eventualities to act as the ally of Louis; he would certainly have been
delighted to remain neutral. But, as he said on the eve of his downfall in
1688, he never would declare war upon France. To William the safety of Europe
and of his own country was bound up with bringing England into the scale
against France. The neutrality of James, therefore, compelled William and
foreign diplomatists to interfere in England, and turned an internal struggle
between King and people into an international event of the greatest magnitude.
After May, 1687, the relations of William with the Opposition Lords,
which up to this time appear to have been quite constitutional, began to
develop into a conspiracy against James. If James would not join the coalition
against Louis in Europe, William would join the Opposition Lords against James
in England. Even during Dykvelt’s mission Danby had let fall some dark hints
about a design; and Shrewsbury, who came to Holland in August, may have gone
further. But William was determined neither to hazard any rash or premature
attempt, nor to appear in England as a foreign invader. Both of these
resolutions induced slowness and caution, and deepen the obscurity which hangs
over his policy during the winter of 1687. All that can be said with certainty
is that, very early in 1688, he made it clear that he would take no action
unless he received a definite invitation from leading Englishmen. This was
secured to him in June, 1688; and the two events precipitating the crisis were
the birth of a son to James, and the trial of the seven Bishops.
It was known that James II’s queen, Mary of Modena, was about to become
a mother, and it was believed that the most momentous issues would be
determined by the sex of her child. The party of prerogative declared that the
birth of a son to James would solve all difficulties, and produce the
discomfiture of the “Orangeists.” At least one foreign diplomat had a different
opinion. “Such an event,” wrote Hoffmann, the Emperor’s resident in London
(April 2), “would only consolidate the union among them, increase their
aversion from the King, and make them use every effort to prevent the Catholic
succession to the Crown.” The news of the birth of James Edward (the “Old
Pretender”) on June 10 speedily proved that Hoffmann was right. The
“Orangeists” alleged that the Queen had never been with child, and that the
pseudoprince had been smuggled up the backstairs in a warming-pan. The
readiness with which this fable was circulated and believed is a measure of the
unpopularity of James. But statesmen were not content with the effects of the
warming-pan lie upon popular opinion. They speedily resolved that, since the
birth of a son appeared to assure a Catholic successor to James, the only way
of preventing this was to invoke the interference of the Prince of Orange.
At this critical moment James succeeded in alienating the one great
institution in the State not already hostile to him. The clergy of the Establishment
held the doctrine of passive obedience so strongly that they advocated
submission even to the decrees of a Nero. In 1687, James had rightly deemed
their opposition almost unthinkable; in 1688, he took the only measure which
could possibly have produced it. Not content with the establishment of
practical toleration, he was determined to make the Establishment acknowledge
the justice and wisdom of his policy. On May 4, 1688, he reissued the
Declaration of Indulgence, and commanded the Anglican clergy to read it to
their congregations. But even the advocates of non-resistance had no intention
of becoming personal advocates of a measure which struck at their own
supremacy. The Established Church was at length forced to oppose him in
selfdefence. On May 18, Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, and six other
Bishops, petitioned to be excused reading the Declaration. In point of fact,
very few of the clergy actually read it on either of the prescribed days (May
20 and 27). James could not attack the whole mass of the clergy; but he
promptly indicted his episcopal petitioners for libel. He seems to have meant
that they should be tried, condemned, and then released by royal pardon. The
plan was clumsy and the error fatal. When the so-called martyrs of the Church
passed to the Tower, every eye was fixed upon them; the soldiers at the gates
knelt to receive their blessing. Popular enthusiasm penetrated the Law Courts;
the judges were not wholly on the side of James, and the jury at length proved
to be decisively against him. On June 20 the seven Bishops were acquitted amid
indescribable enthusiasm. Halifax waved his hat in the face of the Court like a
schoolboy, and the people lit bonfires in the streets and shouted themselves
hoarse with exultation.
On the same night seven men assembled at Shrewsbury’s house and signed a
letter of invitation to William. This letter, which asked the Prince of Orange
to bring over an army and secure the liberties of the people, was carried to
Holland by Admiral Herbert in the disguise of a common sailor. The signatories
were the Earl of Devonshire, Henry Sydney, and Admiral Russell, who represented
the extreme Whig party; Shrewsbury, a moderate Whig; Compton, Bishop of Loudon,
a Trimmer; Lumley, an ex-Catholic; and Danby, an ex-champion of prerogative.
Two conspicuous Opposition Lords, the Marquis of Halifax and Lord Nottingham,
stood aloof, and preferred to rely upon passive constitutional opposition. But
the diverse character of the signatories shows how James had contrived to unite
against himself almost all parties in the State. Besides the letter of
invitation, William soon received assurances from Lord Churchill, Kirke, and
Trelawney, leading officers in the army, from Vice-Admiral Herbert, whose
influence was great with the navy, and finally from Sunderland, the most
influential adviser of James. As Sunderland was at this moment receiving the
gold of Louis, it is permissible to doubt whether he earned the gratitude of
William. But apart from his assurances, William was confident of strong support
in England, and forthwith began to organise his army and fleet for immediate
action.
In view of the intrigues above mentioned it can cause no surprise that
Hoffmann should have reported in September that King James had against him almost
everybody in his kingdom, and that even his soldiers had become “his most
dangerous enemies.” To secure himself against disaffection in the army, which
had been infected by the “No Popery” riots and Protestant vehemence of the
capital, James had introduced some Irish troops into England in August. Their
appearance occasioned murmurs, riots, discontent and the publication of the
scurrilous ballad Lillibullero. So
extraordinary was the popularity of this song that its author, Thomas Wharton,
afterwards boasted that he had sung a king out of three kingdoms by it. James
did not venture to land any more Irish troops. He was equally afraid to turn
for aid to France, for he knew that an open alliance with Louis would be
dangerous in the existing state of English feeling, while a secret league was
infinitely hazardous. Perhaps he would have risked it, had he realised the
extent of his danger. Louis XIV had repeatedly sent warnings of the design of
the Prince of Orange; but James, with an excess of cunning, argued that these
were only pretexts for entrapping him into an alliance with France. He seems to
have believed the assurances of Mary, William, and the Dutch ambassador, that
no design against England was afoot. His memoirs relate that Sunderland never
failed to ridicule the idea mercilessly when it was discussed in council. As to
the motives of this most acute and perfidious of politicians, many conjectures
have been offered; but the advantage of his policy to the cause of William
remains undeniable.
The task of William had only begun when his naval and military
preparations were complete. He had to convince German Princes and Dutch
burghers that their safety could only be assured by an expedition which would
remove the Dutch army to England, and leave the German lands open to attack
from the most powerful military sovereign in the world. The German Princes,
with Frederick William of Brandenburg foremost among them, had hitherto
remained more or less neutral. Though secretly hostile to Louis, they feared the
French armies which had so often triumphed over the German, and doubted whether
the Dutch navy would triumph over the English. But the Great Elector’s son,
Frederick III, who succeeded him on April 29, 1688, finally brought Brandenburg
out of its neutrality., He cooperated heartily with William, and lent him
troops for his English expedition under the command of the famous Schomherg,:
the Protestant ex-Marshal of France. The Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel and the
Brunswick-Lüneburg Duke at Celle speedily concluded treaties of alliance with
William; the Elector of Hanover intimated approval; and the Elector of Saxony
was drawn in. The Spanish Habsburg appears to have regarded with complacency
the proposed expedition to dethrone a Catholic King, for his envoy at the Hague
subsequently ordered masses to be sung for its success. His Austrian kinsman
was more scrupulous, and it was not until William had established relations
with the Pope (Innocent XI) that he made any impression on the Emperor. Leopold
was at length reconciled to the enterprise by the Papal dispensation, and
yielded a reluctant consent. Thus the Prince of Orange was assured of
assistance from many foreign Princes, before his own people, through their
organ, the States-General, had pronounced in its favour. While the destinies of
Europe were suspended on the vote of the States-General, Louis XIV suddenly
intervened and took the decision from its hands.
Policy of Louis XIV. [1688
The policy of Louis at this crisis can be best understood on the assumption
that his attention was fixed upon Germany rather than upon England or Holland.
He presumably thought the establishment of his own power on the Rhine to be
easier and more immediately probable than the success of William in any design
against England. Yet, during the trial of the Bishops he had vainly offered
large sums of money and the loan of his fleet to James, and later had
repeatedly warned him of William’s designs. Losing patience, he at last
attempted to .force the English King’s hand; but the result of his effort was
only to play the game of his rival. On September 2, his ambassador, d’Avaux,
made an announcement to the assembled States-General of the Dutch Republic, of
which the immediate effect was to secure for William the object at which he had
so consistently aimed. D’Avaux pronounced the vast naval and military
preparations of William to be a menace to England. Owing to the bonds of
“friendship and alliance” existing between England and France, any enterprise
undertaken by the Dutch against England would involve an immediate declaration
of war from France. The States-General were struck dumb with rage by this
haughty and insulting menace. The mighty armaments of William, which had
appeared to lay a heavy burden upon his country, were now seen to be the
instruments of its salvation. But one difficulty still remained. After the
threats of Louis the Dutch were never likely to allow William to go on his
apparently quixotic expedition to England. But just as the diplomacy of Louis
had won over the Dutch to William’s schemes of an alliance against France, the
diplomacy of James was to reconcile them to his plan of an expedition against
England.
James received the news of Louis’ friendly intervention in his favour
with the utmost embarrassment. Conscious of his weakness at home, he resolved
not to compromise his position further by exciting suspicions about a secret
engagement with France. At the moment when the aid of the French fleet was of
vital importance, since his own fleet was smaller than that of the Dutch, James
resolved to pose as the patriotic independent sovereign, secure in his island
kingdom. He emphatically denied the existence of any alliance with France, and
openly rejected her proffered assistance. By this masterpiece of folly he contrived
not only to injure the feelings of the French King, but to awaken his
suspicions. Louis was justly indignant and turned to pursue his own most
pressing needs, well assured that James would soon find out the need of relying
upon France. On September 25, Louis threw the whole of his vast military force,
not upon the Dutch frontier, but against the middle Rhine. Thus the continued
impolicy of James and the momentary misjudgment of Louis brought about what the
ability of William himself could not perhaps have effected. The States-General,
fully assured that the Dutch frontier could not be attacked in force before the
end of the year, gave the long-desired consent, and bade the Prince of Orange
God-speed on his bold venture for the English Crown.
By September a large army and a vast fleet of transports had been
collected, and in October all was ready. On October 19, Herbert embarked his
squadron at Helvoetsluys, and the Dutch warships sailed from the Texel, only to
be driven back by a terrific storm. The enterprise now stood confessed; and
even James was aroused to a sense of impending danger, and employed the
temporary respite in a desperate effort to restore his popularity. On October
27, he dismissed Sunderland, borrowed money from the French King, and implored
his aid. He summoned before him the Bishops, whom he had once treated with such
disdain, and begged for their advice. He gave back their privileges to the
Universities, replaced many of the dismissed public servants, and restored the
charters to London and many other cities. Finally, he dissolved the
Ecclesiastical Commission and promised to summon a new Parliament in November.
But James was as reckless in his policy of conciliation as he had once been in
that of compulsion, and the bewildering suddenness of the changes inspired
universal distrust. His concessions were openly attributed to motives of fear
and necessity, created by the action of a foreign Prince. And, in truth, at
this very moment a proclamation of the Prince of Orange lay in the portfolio of
Fagel, demanding the very reforms that James was hurriedly conceding.
In 1688, as in 1588 and 1798, the course of English history was
profoundly affected by the chances of wind and weather. William had to wait
long, chafing at a delay which seemed infinitely hazardous. But at last on
November 1, the “Protestant breeze” bore gaily out to sea the whole vast
flotilla of 600 ships, with 15,000 soldiers aboard. Like Henry of Bolingbroke
and Edward of York, William had at first thought of landing in Yorkshire. But
the unkindly wind forced him to run for the west coast, though it made up for
this by binding King James’ fleet in the Thames. As William’s fleet passed the
straits of Dover, the assembled crowds on either coast could hear the clash of
cymbals and roll of drums, celebrating his birthday. The breeze bore the fleet
strongly past Plymouth and then suddenly dropped, allowing it to get back to
the harbour of Torbay. The services of the breeze were not yet over, for it
revived on the night of the 6th, and dispersed the fleet of King James, which
had sailed up in the hope of disturbing the landing. The disembarkation began
on the 5th, and was speedily effected. On the 18th William’s cavalry reached
Exeter, and on the 19th the inhabitants were cheering the English regiments of
Mackay and Talmash, gaping at the Dutch guards and the Swedish horse, and
gazing on the stately form of Schomberg and the impassive face of William. The
numerical superiority of the foreign troops to the English regiments in William’s
army illustrated the proportion between the international and the insular
significance of the great enterprise.
On the banner of William were inscribed the words Pro Religione protestante—Pro libero Portamento, and beneath them
his own proud motto, Je maintiendrai.
His proclamation, published in England on November 5, expanded these
sentiments. It declared that there was no attempt at conquest, and that the
Prince had only come at the invitation of Lords Temporal and Spiritual. It
denounced the dispensing power, the expulsion of the Judges, the establishment
of the Court of High Commission, the attack on the corporations, and the
raising of an army of Irish Papists. It concluded by hinting, in accordance
with the widespread popular rumour, that the Prince of Wales was a
supposititious child, and that Parliament must decide on his legitimacy. The
proclamation was speedily followed by a supplementary manifesto denouncing “the
pretended redressments and concessions” of James as illusory, and declaring
that only a settlement by a free Parliament could be final or satisfactory. It
is not easy to see how far this proclamation represents William’s real views;
but its purpose was to excite popular feeling rather than to propound a
definite settlement. In particular it contained no hint of William’s intention
of bringing England into the alliance against France. On the still more urgent
question of his own designs upon the Crown, the proclamation is equally silent.
On November 16 tidings of the landing at Torbay arrived, and James at
once directed the royal army to concentrate at Salisbury. On the 17th James
decided to join his army, of which Lord Churchill was commander-in-chief. When
James set out, half-a-dozen noblemen had already joined William; Danby had
raised the north and captured York; Devonshire was in arms at Derby, Delamere
in Cheshire. The serious moral effect of these defections was such as to leave
no resource to James but an immediate battle. But, on the morning of the 23rd,
he had already decided to retreat, “as,” wrote Barillon to Louis, “he had
intended from the first.” On the night of the 24th, Churchill and the Duke of
Grafton fled to William. On the 25th James, as he left Andover, learnt of the
defection of Ormond and Prince George of Denmark. On nearing London the unhappy
father heard of the flight of his daughter the Princess Anne. He found his
capital in a ferment, and his hopes at their lowest ebb. So disastrous had been
these last few days to James that the prescient Hoffmann was already able to
foretell the result of the struggle. On December 9 he wrote to the Emperor that
the English affair would be terminated in two or three months, and that all the
forces now in arms would soon march conjointly against France.
When departing for Salisbury, James had refused a petition for a new
Parliament, on the ground that the invasion made it impossible. But on November
27 he summoned a presentable substitute in the shape of a great Council of
Peers, which thirty or forty attended. At the meeting Clarendon bitterly
reproached the King, while Halifax spoke with more delicacy and respect. Their
speeches outlined clearly the difference between the two parties represented by
them. The High Churchmen were incensed with James because of his attack on the
Establishment; the Moderates were less hostile because less fanatical. The
upshot was a resolution to send Nottingham, Halifax, and Godolphin as
Commissioners to treat with the Prince of Orange. On December 2 they started on
their mission, which they appear to have conducted in good faith. In reality
they had been completely deceived by the King, who merely wished to gain time
for preparing his flight to France. On December 9, James despatched his wife
and the Prince of Wales to France by way of Portsmouth, promising to follow
them in twenty-four hours. During the night of the 10th-11th, he cancelled the
recently prepared writs of the new Parliament, and also wrote a letter to
Feversham, who interpreted it as an order to disband the royal army under his
command. At three in the morning, taking with him the Great Seal, which was
afterwards fished up from the Thames, James secretly fled from Whitehall to
Sheemess. On the afternoon of the same day the Commissioners returned to
London, to find the city in terror and the King gone.
The flight of James has always been regarded as the most fatal of all
his mistakes. His avowed intention was to dissolve the Government of the State
and to produce confusion by his flight, so as to make it clear to the people
that the return pf the King was the sole security pf law and order. But he had
taken measures before his departure which were actually instrumental in
preventing this result. He had summoned the Peers to assist the Privy Council
on the 11th; and it was natural, when they met and heard of his flight, that
they should assume provisional authority. The assembly chose Halifax as its
president, and drafted a resolution to cooperate with the Prince of Orange in
procuring a free Parliament. On the 13th, they received a letter from James
with the bewildering news that he had fallen into the hands of the mob at
Faversham, in Kent. Assistance was promptly sent, and on the 16th, the Earl of
Feversham, amid shouting crowds, escorted the King back to the palace he had
deserted. On the same day the Privy Council Registers show that James held a
last Privy Council, attended by eight councillors, at which some orders were
issued to the Lords Lieutenant and the Secretary of the Admiralty. But neither
the Lords Lieutenant nor Samuel Pepys seem to have paid any attention to the
last commands which King James ever issued in England.
1689] Effects of James’ flight.—Projects for a Settlement.
The duplicity with which James had deceived not only William but his own
Commissioners, his evident desire to produce disorder, his craven flight—all
these things provoked general indignation. But his flight brought something
more than wrath and humiliation upon James—it revealed his innermost secret. It
was now fatally clear that France was the goal on which he had determined for
his flight, and that he would trust to French arms for his restoration. France
was the Power which had persecuted the Protestants and humiliated England;
William, who had always defended the one, was now ready to befriend the other.
The Prince of Orange saw his advantage and made prompt use of it. Until the
flight of James, it seems certain that he had hoped for no more than a regency.
Now—from the moment of the flight—he seems to have conceived the plan of
directly assuming the Crown. His obvious policy was to convince England that
James was the ally of France, that hereditary enemy of her race and her
religion. Hence the second flight of James was, with consummate skill,
facilitated by William. At ten on the night of December 17 the Dutch guards
invested Whitehall, and carried off King James to Rochester early the next
morning. Once there, James found his guards relaxed, and avenues of escape
open. The man whom Turenne had declared to be inaccessible to fear was now a
prey to almost childish terrors. He declared that there was but one step from
the prison to the grave, and the memory of the fate of Richard II and of his
own father hovered before his eyes. He therefore eagerly seized his opportunity
and, on December 23, 1688, quitted the soil of England for ever. By this second
flight, which William had deliberately encouraged, James committed political
suicide. When Hoffmann first heard of the intended flight of the Queen and the
Prince of Wales, he expressed his opinion to the Emperor that, if they went to
France, the son would lose his crown. This far-sighted prediction applied even
more strongly to the case of James himself. By remaining in England, James
might have retained great influence and caused great difficulties, as his father
had contrived to do while discredited and a prisoner. But once in France,
however uncontrolled, he seemed the sworn friend, almost the henchman, of
England’s traditional foe. When William heard the news of the King’s flight, he
bade the French ambassador quit England within twenty-four hours. The action
marked the complete immediate harmony between the wishes of the English people
and the policy of the Dutch Stadholder. The protector of the public liberties
and the Protestant religion of England had, with the applause of the nation,
enlisted its resources in the service of that “Great Design” which he so
inflexibly pursued, and of that “Grand Alliance” of which he was the recognised
head. The English people did not as yet realise that “the Great Deliverer” had,
in Halifax’ luminous sentence, merely “taken England on his way to France.”
With the opening of the year 1689 our interest shifts from the affairs
of France and the Grand Alliance to the internal problems of England. All
parties were agreed that James, as an actually ruling sovereign, was now an
impossibility; but all parties differed as to the new settlement. The main
lines of division were already shaped in December; but they were blurred and
confused by the flight of James. The extreme High Church Tories, headed by
Clarendon, advocated a regency, with James as the nominal sovereign; Danby and
a small body of Tories argued that James had abdicated by flight, that proofs
of his son’s legitimacy were unobtainable, and that judgment therefore going by
default, the next legal successor was Mary. The Whigs, under Somers and
Maynard, went further and proposed the simple and logical plan of declaring the
throne vacant and filling it by election. Halifax headed a fourth party of
“Trimmers” or Moderates, who advocated giving the Crown to William and Mary. He
objected to the plans both of Somers and Clarendon, wishing the settlement to
rest, not upon logical perfection or historic precedent, but simply upon
grounds of practical necessity.
On the news of James’ second flight William had, at the request of the
Lords Spiritual and Temporal, the members of Charles II’s Parliaments and the
Common Council of London, assumed the administration. Following their
instructions, he issued a circular to constituent bodies, requesting them to
elect representatives for a Convention. William made no attempt to interfere
with the elections. The secret of his calm is to be found in a momentous
interview with Halifax about this time, which Halifax has recorded with his own
hand. It shows clearly that William was resolved to retire if James returned to
England, and to refuse the Regency if it was offered him. Regarding his
succession to full power as practically assured, he awaited the progress of
events with imperturbable calm. Perhaps no member of the Convention Parliament,
which assembled on January 22, as yet thought that events would end in the way
which William already foresaw. The Commons speedily (January 28) resolved that
James, “having endeavoured to subvert the constitution by breaking the original
contract between King and people, and by the advice of Jesuits and other
persons, had violated the fundamental laws and withdrawn himself out of the
kingdom, and that the throne had thereby become vacant.” The logic of the resolution
was as bad as its grammar; for it was obvious that, though desertion of the
kingdom might produce vacancy of the throne, by all precedents misgovernment
and acceptance of bad advice could not. Yet all three reasons were alleged as
causes of vacancy and abdication. The lack of logic marked in fact the
compromise of principles and the blending of views between the moderate Tories
and the Whigs.
On January 29 this resolution was sent up to the Lords, together with
another, to the effect that a Popish King had been found by experience
inconsistent with a Protestant Government. This second resolution excited no
dispute, and even no comment; but the first gave rise to the most envenomed
controversy. The parties of Clarendon, Danby and Halifax were in conflict in
the Lords, with startling results. The Lords threw out the “vacancy” clause;
the Commons declined to accept this amendment; and the two Houses were thus at
a complete deadlock. A conference took place on February 6, in which the views
of all parties were stated with remarkable clearness. Clarendon and Pembroke
appealed to the seven disputed successions in English history to prove that the
vacancy of the throne had never been assumed, and that the hereditary principle
had always theoretically prevailed. But there was a flaw in this argument which
the Whigs were not slow to see. Maynard pointed out that if, as even Tories
admitted, James had lost the exercise of his power, someone had a right now to
that power. Both Houses had agreed to the resolution that no Papist could in
future be King, and therefore Clarendon’s faction, while urging that James was
the nominal King, could not propose the Prince of Wales as either the actual or
eventual ruler. Why not, then, admit the Whig doctrine of the original contract
between King and people, with its proviso that the throne became elective when
the contract was broken? The Whigs had the worst of the precedents and the best
of the arguments; but their doctrine of an elective Crown still appeared too
revolutionary for the Lords. At this point Halifax intervened, basing his
appeal neither on history nor on logic, but on the grounds of practical
common-sense. He argued that the Crown would only be made elective in the way
of exception and pro hoc vice, and would then revert to the original hereditary
channel. Frankly admitting the need of some break with tradition, he advanced
the overwhelming plea of necessity, the defence of revolutionaries as well as
of tyrants. When the Lords again debated the question alone, Halifax, to the
great wrath of Clarendon, “drove furiously,” and carried the acceptance of the
Commons’ resolution intact. It only remained now to settle the succession.
William had declared publicly, at the beginning of the month, that he would
return to Holland unless he were chosen King regnant conjointly with his wife,
with the whole administration vested in himself. On February 6 the Lords
resolved, without a division, that the Prince and Princess of Orange should be
declared King and Queen of England. William accepted the vote on behalf of Mary
and himself, and within a week the pair were proclaimed King and Queen from the
steps of Whitehall.
With the settlement of the Crown immediate practical difficulties
vanished, anarchy was averted, and a vigorous external policy was continuously
pursued. But the great constitutional problems, the sphere of direct royal
power, the relations of King to Parliament, to the Courts of Justice, and to
the army—all these were still unsettled. A committee, appointed to secure the
laws and liberties of the kingdom, with the all-accomplished Somers in the
chair, had already drawn up a Declaration of Right (February 12). This
resolution was afterwards expanded, renamed the Bill of Rights, and passed as a
statute by the new Parliament (October). The Declaration and the Bill were
intended as a final summing-up and settlement of the long struggle between King
and Parliament, and as a manifesto and defence of the Revolution. The Bill of
Rights therefore opens with a lengthy controversial statement as to the
misdeeds of James and the virtues of William, before “asserting the ancient
rights and liberties of England.” It would be difficult to say that new rights
were claimed or old laws infringed. But new precedents were certainly created;
for on almost all disputed points the verdict went decisively in favour of
Parliament and against the King. The reason why the greatness of the change was
not very obvious at the Revolution is to be sought in what took place at the
Restoration. By the settlement of 1660 the powers of Parliament were greatly
enlarged, and the substantial increase of its powers became apparent long
before 1688. The Revolution of 1688, in increasing the power of Parliament,
only moved along a path already marked out for it by the political developments
of the generation immediately preceding. In this fact lies the chief
explanation of the anomaly, on which Macaulay so frequently insisted, that the
great changes of the Bill of Rights were accomplished without any positive change
in law.
The Bill of Rights denounced as illegal the assumption of a royal power
of suspending or dispensing with laws, or of erecting a Court of High
Commission or other special Courts. Levying money by prerogative, or keeping a
standing army in peace-time without consent of Parliament, are likewise
declared to be against the law. Parliament is to be free in its elections, in
its subjects of debate, and “ought to be held frequently.” The rights of the
people as a whole are secured in the right to petition the King. The rights of
the sovereign are restricted by the provision that Papists, and those marrying
Papists, are de facto excluded from the throne. On these terms, and with these
limitations, William and Mary are acknowledged as joint sovereigns. There were
two serious omissions, subsequently removed by the Act of Settlement. No real
attempt was made to exempt the judges from undue royal influence, and a clause
including Sophia of Brunswick-Luneburg in the succession was struck out by the
Lords.
Bill of Rights. Political theorists of the Revolution. Harrington and
Locke.
Perhaps the most striking insertion in the Bill of Rights was the
provision declaring standing armies illegal, and placing the power of the sword
beneath the control of Parliament. Yet an express law declared the whole power
of the militia, and immemorial custom admitted the general control of the army,
to lie solely with the King. Hence this provision was an innovation, and a very
great one, based on the general repugnance to standing armies, initiated during
the Protectorate and expressed in the Parliaments of the Restoration, but
nowhere decisively asserted by statute or custom. William, who said he came to
England to restore the invaded liberties of the people, not to circumscribe the
acknowledged rights of the Crown, was to find the novelty of this particular
provision most unpleasing. Incidentally, the parliamentary control over the
army tended towards a similar control over foreign policy. Eventually, it was
the most important influence in establishing and maintaining one of the
fundamental maxims of our modem constitution, that the military power in the
State is and must be subordinate to the civil. It is doubtless in the main true
that the Bill of Rights makes few positive legal changes, but the provision as
to the power of the sword is one of them. Here at least the Bill of Rights
breaks with the black-letter of precedent, and asserts new principles of
fundamental and far-reaching importance.
To a well-informed contemporary observer the smallness of the actual
change effected by the Revolution would hardly have been apparent. He must have
noted the triumph of the policy of the Exclusionists in the provision excluding
Papists from the Crown. During 1680-1, that party had been utterly broken; its
leaders had died upon the scaffold or fled the country in disgrace. Within
eight years from that date its main principle had first been championed by
Halifax, the greatest of its opponents, and finally accepted by the country as
a whole. The cause of this remarkable change is to be found, partly in the
accidental circumstances of the Revolution, partly in the slow growth of a
political theory which owed far less to Coke and the precedents of the past
than to Harrington, Locke, and the philosophy of the future. The main ideas on
which the Revolution was based were expressed by Harrington and Locke. Of
these, the one may be said to have taught the lessons of forty years of
revolution, the Other to have provided the theory by which the change of
government was to be defended.
During the years 1610-60 every political theory had received some
application and every one in turn had been found wanting. The conviction had
gradually been enforced that the old monarchy, with all its practical disadvantages,
was superior to the new republic with all its theoretical perfections.
Monarchy, though somewhat limited by the increased influence of Parliament,
emerged from the welter of anarchy powerful and venerated. Regicide became, in
the eyes of the . nation, the most odious of crimes, and this belief was based
on reasonable as well as upon sentimental grounds. For Harrington, while
advocating fantastic schemes for a republic, had contrived to demonstrate the
practical advantages of a monarchy. This was the unforeseen result of his
assertion that the sole test and proof of good government was the connection of
property with power. To confine the franchise to property-holders would
manifestly produce a government based on experience and stability. So argued Harrington,
and his readers drew an unexpected inference. The characteristics, of the old
monarchy had been inequality of possessions, gradation of classes, the
supremacy of rich over poor; of land over capital. What were all these but the
reign of property, which produced securities for stable government? It was this
tendency in political thought, that largely accounts for the sudden and total
disappearance of republicanism, which is so remarkable a phenomenon in 1688.
William excluded all regicides from his amnesty; and in the vast flood of
pamphlets called forth by the Revolution it is hard to find one of note or
importance which may be called republican.
The union of property and power produced a just balance in the State,
and for this discovery, though it was also to be found in the later pamphlets
of Milton, Harrington was regarded as the Columhus of political science. His
ideas permeate the whole Revolution settlement, in which there is but little
appeal to absolute or general principle, and hardly a whisper of parliamentary
reform. Private property in land is the basis of all authority; power is
rigidly confined to an aristocracy of freeholders, and the reign of property is
acknowledged and complete. “For the divine right of Kings,” writes Lord Acton, “it
[the Revolution] established the divine right of freeholders; and their
domination extended for seventy years under the authority of John Locke, the
philosopher of government by the gentry.”
It is true to say that there existed few or no republicans in 1688, if
that term designates men who desired to abolish the hereditary monarchy. But,
if it means men who asserted the doctrine of popular sovereignty, then there
were many such, of whom the most eminent was Locke. His “Two Treatises on
Government” were not published till the summer of 1689. But he had been the
intimate of Shaftesbury, and, as the friend of Somers and other leading Whigs,
had first-hand knowledge of the ideas of the Revolution settlement. Indeed the
inconsistencies and contradictions, the imperfections,, and the over-emphasis,
of his work betray too clearly that his theory was intended to apply to
practical political needs. It was in fact chiefly in practical applications
that the originality of Locke consisted. There was nothing very new in his
doctrines of contract between king and people, of limitations on royal power
and extensions of popular sovereignty, and of the justification for the
deposition of kings. But ideas which had floated in the brains of solitary
thinkers, or had amused the intellects of scholastics, were used by Locke for
the practical purpose of glorifying and defending an actual and not an imagined
Revolution.
It must always be regretted that Locke did not directly measure blades
with Hobbes. In the Leviathan the latter had written the greatest work on
political thought as yet produced in England, and the ablest defence of
absolute monarchy ever published in Europe. But his cynical attack on the
clergy had alienated the Establishment, and extreme loyalty found its philosopher
not in Hobbes but in Filmer. The Patriarcha of Sir Robert Filmer—a popular exposition of the doctrines of Divine Right and
passive obedience—had been written in 1642 and published in 1680. It was
adopted in all its tenets by the University of Oxford, and became generally
popular with the royalist party. Hence Locke set out with the primary intention
of destroying “Sir Robert” and “his wonderful system,” rather than of confuting
Hobbes. Locke easily disposed of Filmer and “the hereditary jurisdiction of
Adam,” and it was only in constructing his own theory in the second part of his
treatise that he came indirectly into contact with Hobbes.
The end of all government is the good of the people, and the good of the
people Locke defines as “the preservation of (private) property,” to “secure
which men enter into society.” On that ground and with that object people meet
together and make an Original Contract to submit to a common recognised
authority. This contract is broken, and the society dissolved, when private
property and personal liberty are endangered. With an absolute Prince the
people cannot be assured of this preservation and these rights, for the
absolute sovereign, being above law, is not bound to respect it. Hence the
people as a whole are the best judge whether the general good is being
endangered and whether the social contract is near to breaking. To avoid a
reckless sanction of revolution, Locke carefully defines the cases in which
resistance is justifiable, in the instance of a hypothetical State, whose
constitution is transparently based on the English. These cases are: first,
when a single person sets his own arbitrary will in place of the laws which are
the will of society; next, interference with the electors or ways of election;
then, the delivery of the people into the subjection of a foreign Power;
lastly, neglect or abandonment of the government by the supreme executive
power. In all these cases government is dissolved, the contract broken, and
resistance justifiable. It will not escape notice that all these cases included
actions of which James might plausibly be accused. Locke argued for a
particular purpose, with practical qualifications; and he fairly pays the
penalty of one who binds up a political pamphlet in the cover of a philosophic
treatise. He can claim as a recompense that he became the oracle of the Whigs,
that he inspired the political ideas of his country for nearly a hundred years,
and was for at least fifty the most influential political philosopher in
Europe.
The English Revolution, unlike the French, never carried its originating
principles to the extreme of logical severity. It showed little idealism and
much common-sense, often allowing practical considerations to outweigh
consistency or principle. Moreover, its international and diplomatic character
rendered personal factors of great importance, and the form which it finally
assumed was profoundly affected by the personalities of both William and James.
In his exile James was accustomed to ascribe every disaster to his advisers.
But it is certain that Mary of Modena, Father Petre, and the extreme Catholics
opposed some of his most impolitic measures, and that Penn and Sunderland
opposed others. And, even supposing his ordinary counsellors to have been
unwise, James had frequently disbelieved the information and disregarded the
advice of Louis. His actions and opinions dining and after 1688 exhibit a
complete misunderstanding of the limits of the possible, and show that he lived
in a world of illusion. If to these considerations is added that of his
well-known haughtiness and love of power, it is reasonable to conclude that his
worst counsellor was himself, and his neglect of other advice the main cause of
his fall. On the other hand, the respect and deference shown by William to his
English advisers was one of the main reasons of his success. The firm stand of
the seven Bishops, the pen of Burnet, the voice of Clarendon, and the policy of
Compton, brought the Established Church for the moment on to the side of
William. The calm diplomacy of Shrewsbury and the resolute purpose of Danby
brought over the moderate Whigs and Tories; the well-timed desertion of
Churchill secured the army. The eloquence of Somers inspired the Commons to
settle the Succession, and the arguments of Halifax induced the Lords to agree
in it. The influence of Halifax, or of his “trimming” policy, is apparent
everywhere—in the moderation, the cautious temporising, the concessions to
expediency, and the compromises of principle, in which the Revolution abounded.
The last cause of the moderation and tranquillity of the Revolution is
to be found in the personality of William, and in the elements and forces which
he controlled. His European outlook enabled him to entertain views of a purely
practical kind and to judge the struggle with a calmness which no Englishman
could equal. He decided to interfere only when assured of powerful support, and
when his own interests would have been endangered by delay. The impolicy of
James and the caution of William combined to produce a result very rare in
history—namely, a foreign intervention which successfully accomplished a great
internal revolution with the minimum of bloodshed and change. Other
explanations are to be found in more impersonal forces, especially in the
course of events which bewildered contemporaries by their sudden and
kaleidoscopic changes. The vigorous minority, which supported William, alone
had a clear-cut plan and purpose. Hence it came about that even ardent
royalists were surprised into revolt against their King. This is admirably
illustrated by two well-known incidents recorded in Clarendon’s Diary. On
November 15, 1688, Clarendon hears of the flight of his son, Lord Cornbury, to
William, and writes: “ O God, that my son should be a rebel! The Lord in his
mercy look upon me, and enable me to support myself under this most grievous
calamity!” On November 30 he records calmly and without comment that he has
himself decided to fly to the Prince of Orange. His change of front is
bewilderingly sudden, but there is no reason to doubt his sincerity. In
revolutions events move and men think with unwonted rapidity.
The pressure of events had wrought strange conversions among the Tory
landed gentry, but the impression made upon the people as a whole had similar
and even more striking effects. The indifference of the people to a revolution
is usually the cause of its failure; here it was the reason of its success.
“The People,” said Halifax, “can seldom agree to move together against a
Government, but they can sit still to see it undone.” Indeed, though at first
cold towards William, the people refused to stir a finger for James, and their
indifference most powerfully influenced the event. It rendered the Revolution,
although aristocratic in appearance and execution, popular in principle and in
its eventual result. Hence the religious motive, though, not at first sight the
most apparent, is still the deepest cause of the Revolution. In the Exclusion
period the people had shown that, if the choice had to be made, they preferred
a Protestant sovereign with very large powers to a Catholic with very limited
ones. Of 1688 Guizot boldly asserts that “in no country and at no time has the
faith of the masses exercised more control over the faith of their government.”
There can be little doubt that this view is correct, though the revolution was
initiated by the great nobles, effected by the aid of a foreign ruler and a
composite army, and consummated by a constitutional settlement made by country
gentlemen in the House of Commons. Never, perhaps, have the goodwill of a
people, the rebellion of an aristocracy, and the armed interference of a
foreigner, had equally striking and beneficent results.
The character of William, though excellently suited to effect, was
little calculated to sustain, a successful revolution. Bred a soldier from his
boyhood, he had the excellences and defects of his training. He was swift to
decide and to execute, calm in judgment, resolute in purpose, serene and
immovable in the face of tumult or danger. But he was ready on occasion to
sanction acts of ruthless cruelty, and he often showed considerable lack of
scruple and some indifference to high principle. His cold, keen nature made him
deficient in sympathy, and unable to consider or even to perceive, other views
than his own. Able to overawe and to command, he was never able to awaken
enthusiasm or inspire affection. Thus it came about that, with many of the
qualities of a great general, he could never win victories over Condé or
Luxembourg; and, though possessing almost all the essentials of a great
diplomatist, he could never bind together a divided alliance with the graceful
art of a Marlborough. Though he achieved his real aims, he never struck the
popular imagination as forcibly as many a lesser man. He lives in history not
as the idol of cheering mobs but as the champion of threatened liberties, not
as the darling of one country but as the preserver of many.
William was not qualified by previous training or character to
understand the proud and jealous nation over which it was now his lot to rule.
He had spent twenty years of his life in a vain attempt to understand the
vagaries of the Council of Amsterdam, and he was too old and too impatient to
humour or cajole a new representative assembly. His letters to Heinsius, Grand
Pensionary of Holland, are full of complaints about the ruinous delays and the
trivialities of Parliament, his strange prejudices and fatal blindness. The
impossibility of forecasting the attitude of the Commons from day to day, the
cabals which produce such astounding changes and turn people from black to
white, the stupidity of individuals, the hateful spirit of party, the intrigues
which will finish by destroying the country and himself—all these he confides
to his sympathetic correspondent. “Les gens” wrote he, January 21, 1698, “ne s’occupent ici que d'une prétendue
liberté, tandis qu'ilts sont forcés de reconnaitre qu'ills n'ont jamais étés si
libres, el qu'ils n'ont même rien à redouter de mon part”. His people were unable to discern his true character; and he bitterly,
but not altogether justly, resented their failure to understand him. He had no
ability for finance, and while possessing the energy, he had not the gifts of a
great administrator. Though devoid of ostentation, his manners were harsh and
repellent, and showed none of the graces to which England was accustomed in her
kings. His wretched health seriously affected his temper and disposition. Calm
and steady at great crises, he was often peevish and irascible on lesser
occasions, chafing at small delays and slight irritations. His fondness for
Dutchmen and favourites, though to some extent justified by the
untrustworthiness of the most prominent Englishmen, cannot be excused in the
cases of Keppel and Lady Orkney. These trivial excuses for the slight esteem in
which the English held him, were strengthened by one far deeper and more
fundamental, which caused his unpopularity to increase with the advance of
years and with the unfolding of his policy.
William’s political ideas were large and grand—those of an international
statesman genuinely labouring for the good of Europe as a whole. To his “great
design” he really subordinated every particular interest, so far as in him lay.
Thus, in 1689 he forced his own countrymen into a disadvantageous and
humiliating convention with England, and treated their remonstrances with
indifference. By looking for the same magnanimity in his new subjects, he
showed how fundamentally he misread their temperament. He had declared to the
English that he came to restore their Parliament and religion; it became
increasingly evident that he had come to engage them in continental war. He did
not remember that England had been comparatively free from continent warfare
since the death of Elizabeth, and had retained a horror of standing armies
since the death of Cromwell. Nor could he see that, after 1692, her interests
were far less engaged in the struggle than those of the land Powers. When, on
April 6, 1701, he wrote to Heinsius that he had to do with people “whom it is
necessary to lead by indirect ways for their own good,” he put into a single
sentence both his own defence and the justification of his English subjects.
The defects in William’s character, which obscured its real elements of
greatness, were in no small measure disguised by the influence of his wife.
Mary was the most popular of women, and her gentle charm did much to counteract
the unfavourable personal impression produced by her husbands Though William
sometimes added harshness to the crime of infidelity, her devotion towards him
never ceased. Her letters breathe a spirit of exquisite sincerity and
gentleness, and evince a resigned and touching belief in Providence. Indeed,
the whole-hearted religious fervour of Mary did much to incline the Church of
England to acquiesce in the new order. The Calvinistic William was not
unnaturally or unjustly suspected of lukewarmness towards the Establishment.
But the influence of Mary, her unaffected piety and zeal for the Church, and the
care with which she watched over the appointment of Bishops; disarmed the
resentment of the Tories. Moreover, as Regent in 1690 and 1692 she showed some
capacity in civil affairs, and a courage little short of heroic after the
appalling news of Beachy Head (1690). William gradually became aware of her
devotion and her services and softened towards her in later years. When her
death occurred (December 28, 1694), he was so painfully affected that it seemed
he would follow her to the grave. The nation mourned with him, and Prior, in
touching verse, bade him forget that “grief which hinders Europe being freed.”
But the English could not continue to regard the foreign ruler in the same
light as when he had been the husband of the warm-hearted English Queen. After
her death his popularity, which had never been great, declined so rapidly, as
not only to retard the continuance of the war, but even to endanger the throne.
1689] William's first Parliament.
The difficulties which beset William at the beginning of his reign were
increased by the natural reaction after the Revolution. A resolute minority had
effected a settlement substantially upon its own lines; it was certain that the
more traditional and conservative forces, which had yielded to the shock of circumstance,
would soon reassert their strength. William formed his first administration
with the express view of lessening the effect of this recoil, by balancing
between the different parties. He seems in this to have followed the counsel of
the famous “Trimmer” Halifax, who himself became Privy Seal and who advised the
appointment of the Whig Shrewsbury and the Tory Nottingham as Secretaries of
State. In his contemporary account Burnet says, that the inclusion of
Nottingham in the Ministry “first preserved the Church, and then the Crown.” As
Nottingham, though only a moderate Tory, was a notorious champion of the
Church, as religious questions were now specially in the foreground, all devout
Churchmen hailed his appointment and that of Caermarthen (Danby), who was made
President of the Council, as an earnest of the good intentions of the
Calvinistic King.
The religious measures of William’s reign are dealt with elsewhere. The
Toleration Act passed in 1689 secured the loyalty of the Dissenters to the
existing regime, though various signs hinted at future trouble between Dissent
and Establishment. At the same time the imposition of a new oath of allegiance
and supremacy produced the deposition of the Archbishop of Canterbury and six
other bishops, and caused the famous schism of the Non-jurors within the
Established Church itself. Meanwhile, the financial settlement was producing
important results by making the King more dependent on Parliament. The Commons
granted the King an annual revenue of about £800,000. But the duties and
customs, amounting to about four hundred thousand, which had been settled for
life on James, were granted to William and Mary for only four years. The
principle thus suggested, of creating conditions which enforced on the King the
frequent summoning of Parliament, was further developed by the Mutiny Act. This
Act, suggested by the mutiny of a regiment in William’s service, passed the
conventional condemnation on standing armies unsanctioned by Parliament. It
expressly declared illegal the establishment of Courts-martial and military
discipline, unless annually reenacted by statute, though such powers had till
now always been exercised by royal prerogative. So long as William possessed a
standing army, which it was obvious he would always do his utmost to retain, an
annual summoning of Parliament would be essential.
In October, 1689, the new Parliament met, legalised the acts of the
Convention Parliament, and passed the Bill of Rights. The Whigs, flushed with
success and intoxicated by their recent triumph, resolved to make their
opponents atone for the sins of the past. Everything was thus thrown into
confusion, for it was possible, by reviving the memories of the Rye House Plot,
to attack members of the existing Ministry. The Lords appointed a committee,
popularly known as the “Murder Committee,” to enquire who were answerable for
the deaths of Russell, Sidney, and other Exclusionists. Though John Howe and
John Hampden were implacable in the Commons, Shrewsbury managed to repress the
most violent outbursts in the Lords, and the proceedings of the murder
committee speedily collapsed. But the Whigs had another expedient for
persecuting their opponents. They inserted clauses in the Corporation Bill, to
render any man, who had been a party to the surrender of his town charter under
Charles II, incapable of holding office in his borough for seven years. This
clause, which would have resulted in a wholesale disfranchisement of Tories,
was brought forward in the absence of many members. But the proposal was too
violent; some of the moderate Whigs hesitated; the Tories hurried back to town.
The obnoxious clause was rejected (January, 1690), and the Tories,
emboldened by their success, then tried to pass an Indemnity Bill, which
provided for a general amnesty for the past. But here they met with a reverse;
the moderate Whigs came back to their allegiance, and threw the Bill out in
committee. The reunited Whigs were proceeding to engraft upon the original Bill
a Bill of pains and penalties against various Tory offenders, when their
progress was suddenly interrupted. The King, who had viewed these disputes with
the utmost impatience, dissolved Parliament (February, 1690).
William was so disgusted with the violence of the previous Parliament
that, in the general election which followed, he for the first time resorted to
an unsparing use of political corruption. The result was the triumph of the
moderate Tory party. Even before the results of the election were known,
William had decided to effect changes in the Ministry. The dismissal of Halifax
forms a real landmark in ministerial history (February, 1690). Henceforth the
King was without his most '’conciliatory and unprejudiced advisers, and the
policy of “trimming” and of compromise was gradually abandoned. The wits said
that the King had exchanged the “White Marquis” (Halifax) for the “Black”
(Caermarthen), thus implying that, for the moment, Tory influence predominated.
On the new Parliament William pressed a measure, which was largely due to his
own personal initiative, and which has justly been claimed as one of his chief
titles to renown—namely, an Act of Grace (May 20, 1690), exempting only
regicides and thirty others from pardon. After very little discussion the
House, as if ashamed of its violence in the previous session, accepted the
Bill. Past errors and criminals were thus buried in oblivion, and a fruitful
cause of bitterness removed. Above all it at last became possible for real
energy to be infused into the conduct of the war, and for William to take the
field with a united nation at his back.
William's Irish campaign.—La Hogue.
The great campaigns of the period in which the Grand Alliance waged war
in Italy and Flanders, in Ireland and Catalonia, on the Danube and the Rhine,
in the Channel and in the Mediterranean, can only be noticed here in their more
insular aspects. To the continental Powers the most imminent danger was from
the land forces of Louis. Unlike them England had most to fear from the
predominance of the sea-power of France. Throughout 1689 William seems not to
have realised the immense peril threatening from Ireland, so long as the
question of naval supremacy hung in the balance. The English in Ireland were
confronted by a revolt of three-fourths of the population, and by the more
formidable presence of veteran regiments from France. They might well be
overmatched, if the French fleet could sweep the seas and blockade the coast of
Ireland. Towards the end of 1689 William realised the danger; and henceforth he
showed remarkable energy. In June, 1690, he sailed from England to assume
command in Ireland, leaving Mary as Regent with a council of nine to assist
her. In his absence the Grand Alliance fared ill alike on sea and land. On July
1 Luxembourg won a great victory over the Allied Army at Fleurus; on the
previous day Admiral Tourville severely defeated the Allied Fleet off Beachy
Head. Disgrace accompanied disaster, for Admiral Herbert (Lord Torrington), by
allowing the main brunt of the fighting to be borne by the Dutch, somewhat
unjustly incurred the censure most fatal to a sailor. The strategic
consequences were not as serious as is sometimes supposed, nor was the Cross of
St. George almost banished from the seas. None the less, Tourville triumphantly
swept the Channel, threatened the southern coasts, and burnt Teignmouth. In
this extremity the spirit of the nation rose; subscriptions poured in; crowds
of volunteers rushed to arms; and London took the lead in patriotic ardour. But
the hour of suspense was not long, for, on July 4, a courier rode through the
City with the news that William had won a great victory in Ireland.
William had come to Ireland only just in time. On the very day that the
sea-power of England was temporarily destroyed he was able triumphantly to
restore its military renown. By his victory of the Boyne (July 1) William
secured the fall of Drogheda and Dublin and the flight of James from Ireland.
But as yet William’s power stopped at low-water-mark. Without a fleet he found
it impossible to reduce Limerick, though Marlborough was able to capture Cork
and Kinsale. In 1691, Russell replaced Torrington in command of the navy, and
held in check the sea-power of France. The inevitable result was the fall of
the hopes of Louis and James in Ireland. In July the last Irish army was routed
at Aughrim, and the appearance of an English squadron in the Shannon decided
the fate of Limerick, the last Irish fortress of note which held out (October
3, 1691). On May 19 (O. S.), 1692, the French fleet was utterly defeated by Admiral
Russell off Cape La Hogue, under the very eyes of King James, who watched in
anguish from the shore. Henceforward the command of the sea was triumphantly
restored to England. After this the French could carry on a destructive
privateering warfare, and the English were also repelled with great loss from
attacks on the French coast at St Malo (August, 1692) and at Brest (1694). But
such reverses were irritant rather than dangerous; and, the fighting fleet of
France having been once swept from the seas, neither England nor Ireland could
be in vital danger of invasion. Not even William’s defeat at Steinkirke (August
3,1692, O.S.) nor the fall of Namur (May) could dash the hopes of England.
Two attempts to restore James had thus failed, the first at the Boyne,
the second off Cape La Hogue—a third remained to be planned. The energy and
firmness which James had once displayed, alike in the shock of battle and amid
civic strife, had deserted him at the end of 1688, and they never returned. In
Ireland he showed a vacillation and weakness admitted by his own followers, and
openly proclaimed by French generals and statesmen. The inconsistent series of
proclamations issued to his rebellious subjects (1689-93) awoke dismay in his
supporters and in his opponents. In 1693 (July 29) Luxembourg achieved his last
triumph over William by worsting him in the bloody rout of Neerwinden (Landen).
The hopes of James now stood high, for in this same year the French privateers
destroyed an enormous Anglo-Dutch convoy from Smyrna. But in 1694, though an
English expedition to Brest was disastrously repulsed, the English navy swept
the seas, and William held his own in Flanders. In 1695 he took the offensive,
and, finding the incompetent Villeroi at the head of the French army in the place
of Luxembourg, was able to recapture Namur (October, 1695) in the most
brilliant and successful campaign which he ever directed. During the last
months of 1694 the English fleet had triumphantly wintered in the Bay of Cadiz,
and had thus assured England’s command over both Mediterranean and Atlantic.
Louis thus found his fleet swept from the seas, and his armies seriously
weakened on the land.
James at St Germain.—Assassination Plot. [1689-96
Few historic contrasts have more pathos than that which these years
presented between the luxurious splendours and the thronging crowds of
courtiers which surrounded the omnipotent sovereign at Versailles, and the
unreal pageantry, the fast dwindling band of exiles, which clung to the phantom
King at St Germain. Like most exiles, James vastly exaggerated the strength of
the party in his favour in England. His delusions were fostered by assurances
from Godolphin, Marlborough, and Russell, and by correspondence with Anne,
Penn, Halifax, Dartmouth, and Shrewsbury. In spite of all his flatterers, Louis
had a more real grasp of the English situation than that to which James and his
followers attained. He now made it clear that he would not risk sending a
French force until a rising offering fair chances of success should have broken
out in England. This resolution on the part of Louis determined the form of the
third and last serious attempt to reestablish James. In January, 1696, the Duke
of Berwick, the natural son of James, came over to England in disguise, and, failing
to organise an armed insurrection, hurried back to France to avoid being party
to a plot. A plan to assassinate William was at this time being devised by
George Porter and a few other Jacobites in England. The plot was not unknown to
James, and the exiled monarch came to Calais to await the flash of a beacon
fire from Dover cliffs, which was to be the announcement of William’s death. On
receiving the signal, James was to step on board a fleet of French transports,
and convey an expeditionary force to England. That signal never came, for the
“Assassination Plot” was detected (February 24, 1696). Porter turned King’s
evidence, with the result that his own life was spared by William, though Sir
John Fenwick, who knew nothing of the real nature of the plot, was executed.
While he was awaiting the signal James had written pious letters to de Rancé
the austere Cistercian Abbot of La Trappe, hinting that “a visible interference
of the good God for His greater glory” would soon be manifested in his favour.
When this did not appear, his thoughts turned elsewhere; and henceforward he
edified divines by his devotion to religion, as much as he enraged statesmen by
his indifference to politics. After 1696, when James refused the French offer
to support his election to the Crown of Poland, Louis ceased to regard him as
an independent political factor, as, indeed, he ceased to consider himself. The
influence of de Rancé had transformed him into a mystical recluse, whose
garments were touched by pilgrims from afar, whose miracles were attested by
bishops, whose holiness was admitted by the Pope.
The progress of the War, from the shame of Beachy Head and Steinkirke to
the triumphs of La Hogue and Namur, had been viewed in England with mingled
feelings. After 1692, and still more after 1694, the war seemed to be carried
on for aggrandisement rather than defence, for gain not for existence.
England’s trade interests in the Indies or Mediterranean might indeed be
secured or impaired by the progress of the war in Flanders. But many English
did not measure the war either by the loss of convoys or ships to Whig
merchants, or by gain in security to German Princes and Dutch burghers. The
landed gentry, who formed the backbone of the Tory party, simply calculated
whether the war in Flanders really gave adequate benefits to England in return
for its enormous expense and frequent disasters. This exclusive consideration
of insular interests, which made Parliament willing to grant large sums for the
navy, but reluctant to increase the army, William could not understand. He
speaks contemptuously of “the inconceivable blindness of people here,” and
ascribes it to the spirit of party; yet in this matter he was really thwarted
on national, not Upon partisan, grounds. But the causes of his irritation were
perfectly natural. He could not but be conscious, though his gaze was fixed
upon Europe rather than upon the Indies, that the War was exalting beyond
measure the maritime and commercial supremacy of England. The Dutch were forced
by treaty to supply a larger proportion of troops than of ships to the common
cause. Hence their commerce and marine suffered. If William’s conversations
with Montanus are to be believed, he had realised long before 1688 that the
inclusion of England in the Alliance must advance her shipping and commerce to
the detriment of that of his own people. In any case, he had realised this
during the war, and was therefore exasperated on finding that, when he had
sacrificed so much for the common cause, England did so little to help him. He
was giving her the commercial and naval empire of the globe, and she showed her
gratitude by cutting down the numbers of the army and starving his military
campaigns.
Milton had discovered that war moved by two main nerves, one of iron and
the other of gold; and Louis had declared in the midst of his victories that
the Power with the last gold piece would win. Hence it is as much to the
superiority of organisation and method in developing their economic resources,
as to their superiority in naval power, that the English kingdom and the Dutch
Republic owed their eventual triumph over France. That England should depend on
her own food supplies in time of war, and upon a prosperous landed class in
time of peace, had been accepted dogmas for some years before 1688. A series of
severe prohibitory Acts, beginning in 1671, had penalised and checked the
importation of foreign corn. The Bounty Act of 1689 gave large bounties on the
export of corn to foreign countries, and thus increased the home output. The
economic result was to produce immense immediate prosperity to English
agriculture, though com was encouraged to the detriment of turnip and grass
cultivation, and to the retarding of a more scientific system of agriculture.
As with the economic effects, so with the political, the result was to give
prosperity to what was existent without providing for the future. The new Act
favoured the landed gentry at the expense of the merchant, gave an undue
preference to the landlord, who possessed capital, and discouraged the small
yeoman who did not. The result was to increase and make permanent the power of
the landed gentry and of real property, the confirmation of which was so
distinct a mark of the Revolution settlement. The Bounty Act was the economic
counterpart of the philosophy of Locke and Harrington. It was by the operation
of this Act that the landowners were enabled to hold at bay for so long the
rising forces of wealth and commerce. The earlier economic laws of the reign
gave security to the landed class, just as the later gave security to the
commercial; and these facts, though marking the transition of political power
from Tory to Whig, show that the Revolution settlement was likewise national in
character and aim.
The general commercial policy of England is perhaps the only department
of public life in which the Revolution made no striking or even apparent
innovation. Though immense developments of her commerce and shipping took place
within the period, England’s trade really increased by means of the sword or
diplomacy, and not in the main through any specifically new commercial
provisions. For the main lines of mercantilist policy were already laid in the
Poor Laws, the Corn Laws, and the Navigation Laws. A broad system of national
policy thus existed, which was amended in detail but not disturbed in
principle. In 1696 a reorganisation of the committee of the Privy Council
dealing with commerce and colonies was necessitated by the persistent
criticisms of Parliament. The Board of Trade was constituted with a permanent
staff as well as privy councillors, in order to prevent further encroachments
of Parliament upon the executive. By these means some order was reintroduced
into departments which had been carefully organised by James, and much neglected
by William. The chief effect of the new Board, of which Locke was an active
member, was the adoption of an exclusive mercantilist policy, which gradually
ruined the nascent linen and cloth industries of Ireland, in order to protect
the drapers and clothiers of England.
The debts of the Protectorate and the extravagances of the Restoration
monarchy had been immense; but the outbreak of the continental war speedily
entailed expenditure on a scale unknown to Cromwell or to Charles. The
extravagant Charles had maintained an army of less than nine thousand men; for
the frugal and thrifty James an annual income of less than fifteen thousand
pounds had usually sufficed. Englishmen recalled these days with regret when
the Dutch deliverer showed them the cost of freedom by demanding an army of
over eighty thousand men and an income of nearly six millions (1693). The first
real measures to grapple with the problems of expenditure and revenue were
taken in 1692, and the impulse came in the main from the Whig party and their
famous financier Montagu. The method of raising subsidies which had prevailed
in the first half of the century was now hopelessly obsolete. Under the
Commonwealth and the Restoration a new plan had been tried. The sum to be
raised was fixed, and then distributed according to assessments based on the
reputed wealth of each county. In 1692 a newer and more exact valuation of
landed estates was made, and it was decided to fix a rate on the values of the
rentals which should vary as necessity demanded. The only serious drawback was
that the new valuation was in many respects inaccurate, and fell with undue
severity on the Eastern Counties. Still, the new tax was the most productive
yet imposed, and when, as in 1693, the rate of 4s. in the pound was imposed,
about two millions annually flowed into the Exchequer.
The National Debt. Projects for a National Bank. [1640-93
Nothing is more obvious to a modern observer than that there must occur
crises in the history of every nation, when it can no longer settle all its
obligations at the end of each year. Such a crisis had already occurred in the
history of France and of Holland, both of which had large debts. It had, in
fact, also occurred in England, when Charles II refused to repay to the
goldsmiths the sum of £1,300,000 which he had borrowed from them (January,
1672). In 1692 the creditors had received no interest for ten years, and they
seemed to have no prospect of repayment of capital. With this unhappy example
before him, the average Englishman might well consider the contraction of a
debt by Government, which extended beyond the end of the year, to be suggested
by the discreditable shifts of a royal spendthrift or the mischievous
innovations of a foreigner. All this was very different in Holland, where Sir
William Temple had long ago pointed out the advantages of a national debt as a
sound investment for private individuals. On every side and in every enterprise
stock-jobbing drew on or deluded the individual investor. Watered stock and
bogus companies, over-capitalisation and falsification of accounts—none of the
expedients or disasters of modem speculation were wanting. The scale was indeed
small, but the modern financial world already existed in miniature. Montagu had
resolved to divert to the national Exchequer some of that wealth which private
enterprise was hiding in cupboards or dissipating in companies. He Could not
but perceive the double advantage of providing individuals with good
investments on national security and the State with easily-raised loans. Two
things were wanting—a national debt and a national bank, the chief agents which
impart steadiness and balance to modern finance; and both Montagu was now to
provide. The proposal of a Government loan for nine hundred thousand pounds was
carried through Parliament (1693). The loan was based on the ordinary
principles upon which national debts were then founded. It pledged the existing
credit of the State, and it also levied a tax upon posterity; for it was
certain that the annuities established by it could not be extinguished for at
least half a century. The principles so clearly established were certain to
receive a speedy extension.
At the end of 1693, Montagu, face to face with another serious deficit,
was ready with a host of expedients, in the shape of a poll-tax, stamp duties,
and lottery loans. But, despite all this ingenuity, another million was needed,
and supplied by the expedient of a national bank. The idea of a national bank
was far less familiar to Englishmen than that of a system of a national credit.
Before this time merchants had usually kept their surplus cash in their own
houses, buried it like Pepys in their gardens, or deposited it in the Tower or
Corporation Treasury. But, from 1640 onwards, the uncertainties of war and distrust
of the Government constrained them to place their money in the strongrooms of
the goldsmiths. From these causes the system of banking and exchange received
an unprecedented development, and under Charles II private banks became
numerous and flourishing. The most famous of early private bankers was Sir
Francis Child, who numbered among his customers Cromwell and the Prince of
Orange, Churchill and Nell Gwyn. After England had secured her own private
banks, she began to examine the national banks of other countries. Those of
Venice and Genoa had long been famous; the Bank of Amsterdam was now the most
renowned financial institution in the world, and Englishmen were never slow to
borrow the methods and the practice of Dutch finance.
Business men generally began to realise that the lowering of interest,
the circulation of a paper currency, and the general steadiness of the
financial world would all be secured by the establishment of a national bank.
The scheme appears to have been first suggested in a reasonable form by Francis
Cradock in 1660; and henceforward innumerable pamphlets on the subject were
issued, varying in merit from the masterly expositions of Petty to the
ridiculous fallacies of Chamberlain and Murray. The commercial necessity for
such an institution had been obvious even in the time of the Restoration; the
political necessity for it became overwhelming after the Revolution. The
goldsmiths, who acted as private bankers, speedily found that the more business
they did with the Government the less they did with the public. A contemporary
authority tells us that, when King William sought even a small loan from the
City of London, Ministers of State went from shop to shop and office to office
soliciting it. Even these trivial loans were furnished rather from motives of
honour and patriotism than from hope of gain. It was at this moment that
William Paterson, a traveller of vast financial experience, genius, and
resource, submitted to the Government a pamphlet containing a practical plan
for a national bank (1691). The Government was favourable, but Parliament was
adverse, and for three years the subject dropped. But in 1694 Montagu planned
to raise his loan of £1,200,000 by establishing a bank, and found himself
strongly supported by the City. Montagu’s plan, which was an adaptation of
Paterson’s, was to raise the loan, with its interest of 8 per cent, secured by
a new duty on tonnage. Those who took up the loan were to form a company, with
the title of “Governor and Company of the Bank of England.” They were permitted
to borrow money at 4 per cent., while lending to the Government at 8. They were
allowed to transact private business, but restricted from trading in anything
but bills of exchange, bullion, and forfeited pledges. Paterson, in a new pamphlet
(1694), demonstrated that the Bank’s action must have beneficial effects, and
lower the rate of interest just as the Banks of Amsterdam and Genoa had done.
The consequence must be to attract money and trade from abroad, and thus to
benefit all borrowers, merchants, and ultimately also landed proprietors.
The comparative ease with which the Bill passed the two Houses, and the
extraordinary readiness with which it was subscribed in the City, appear very
surprising in face of the enormous clamour raised outside the walls of
Parliament. The objections put forward throw a ray of powerful light upon the
economic knowledge and political condition of the age. The economic arguments
against it were that the establishment of the Bank would render it hard to borrow
money upon mortgage, and thereby diminish the value of land. In addition, the
free circulation of money would be impeded, and local centres be denuded of
cash. The political arguments against the Bill partook more of prejudice than
of weight, except in one instance. The reasonable objection that the Bank might
endanger public liberty by its relations with the Crown, was removed by the
insertion of a clause preventing the Bank from advancing loans to the Crown
save by Act of Parliament. The other political arguments, brought forward as
they were by men of both parties, had an agreeable variety. The Whig section
argued that the Bank would introduce absolutism, the Tory that it would
introduce republicanism. The Tory party saw a more special danger to the landed
interest, and declared with some plausibility that a private company of Whig
merchants were thus endowed with power in perpetuity. The whole question seems
to have been decided less on the merits of the new institution, than from
motives of expediency and patriotism. As Caermarthen pointed out in the Lords,
there might be objectionable clauses in the Bill, but it was the only means of
providing money for the navy to take the sea that summer. This practical
argument sufficed, where all others might have failed.
Like so many other measures of the time, the Bill for establishing the
Bank, though it bore the Whig stamp, was still the outcome of compromise and
was directed to a genuinely national end. It is less clear, than in the case of
his other financial measures, how far Montagu understood the real value of his
creation— whether he was making shift with an expedient designed to be
temporary, or whether he intended his creation to rival the great banks of the
Continent, or realised that it might become the greatest of financial
institutions. On the whole, it would seem that the Bank in its origin was
carefully adjusted to the needs of the time, with due regard to the spirit of
individual enterprise and with care to avoid too much dependence on the State.
It differed fundamentally from all banks except those of Genoa and Stockholm.
Other banks were primarily established as offices of exchange, as places where
good coin could he obtained, or as banks of deposit—that is, safes from which
in theory at least the original coins could be recovered. But the Bank of
England boldly circulated notes, without pretending that its paper currency
corresponded exactly to the amount of its bullion. Again, its notes were not
legal tender in England, as were the notes of the national banks of Amsterdam,
Genoa and Venice. Thirdly, it had in no sense an exclusive monopoly; for the
Government reserved the right of discharging the loan and dissolving the
organisation in 1705, and raised up a formidable rival to it in 1696. The
new Bank was eminently original, and in its originality lay no small part of
its danger, for it had many of the burdens and singularly few of the advantages
of a connection with the State.
The dangers which so speedily menaced the Bank were partially caused by
the inexperience of its promoters, but even more hy the malice of its
opponents. The goldsmiths bought up the notes which the Bank issued for
circulation and waited their time to inflict a blow on an institution whose
success they believed would seriously injure their own private banks. The
operation of the Recoinage Act supplied the opportunity in two years. This
measure had long been rendered necessary because the clipped or damaged coins
of James I or Elizabeth had been treated as of equal value with the good milled
coins of Charles II and James II. To the amazement of contemporaries, increased
issues of milled crowns did not increase the circulation of good currency.
Gresham’s law, that bad money drives out good, was illustrated on a gigantic
scale, and bad money circulated, while most of the good coins were melted down,
exported, and sold as bullion. Both in town and country the face value of the
coins rose on the average to about twice their peal value as metal.
Stringent Acts to prevent exportation and melting proved ineffective,
and a drastic recoinage became essential. Singularly enough the remedy
eventually adopted was framed by the united counsels of the greatest lawyer,
the greatest financier, the greatest political, and the greatest natural philosopher
of the age, namely, Somers, Montagu, Locke, and Newton.
The main principles of the settlement were laid down by Locke in his
famous currency pamphlets. His views, that the new coinage should follow the
established standard in weight and denomination, and that the loss incurred by
recoinage should be borne by the State, were accepted by the Ministry. The
actual form of the Bill was suggested by Somers and carried by Montagu, whilst
the practical measures of recoinage were taken by Sir Isaac Newton as Master of
the Mint. By the Recoinage Act (January, 1696), it was provided that the old
clipped coins should cease to be legal tender on May 4s, though full
equivalents of their face value in the new milled coins were to be issued as
fast as possible. The withdrawal from circulation of such large amounts of coin
made itself sensibly felt, and it was this very moment of distress that the
goldsmiths selected to deliver their long-planned stroke against the Bank.
On May 4 the goldsmiths organised a run on the Bank, at the moment when
the Treasury had swallowed all available coin. Ruin and bankruptcy seemed
imminent. The Directors refused to cash such notes as they held to have been
presented with malicious intent, bidding the goldsmiths seek their remedy at law.
But a run on the Bank had begun, and they could not refuse to honour notes
presented by ordinary creditors. Yet even here they were able to pay only a
percentage. The recoinage went on slowly; the scarcity of coin showed no
relaxation for three months, and very little for twelve. In January, 1697,
William could still tell Heinsius that he had no money to secure the
ratification of the treaty with Denmark and no subsidies to pay his troops—nay,
could not even despatch a certain diplomatic agent, being actually unable to
defray his travelling expenses. If such were the straits of princes, it may be
imagined what were those of the Bank Directors or of still humbler persons. It
was only after March, 1697, that the crisis had definitely passed, either for the
Bank or the country. The difficulties had been enormous and the sufferings
great, while the actual expenses of recoinage involved the Exchequer in a loss
of little under three millions. Money and suffering would both have been saved,
had the remedy been adopted some years earlier. As it was, it came but just in
time. Had it been deferred a year longer, the consequence might have been more
serious than the loss of a pitched battle by land or sea. But the settlement
was successful, and the most subtle and one of the most serious causes of
commercial crises and fluctuation was removed by the establishment of a sound
currency system.
Before they had recovered from the attack of the goldsmiths, the Bank
Directors had to meet an assault from the landed gentry, thus experiencing at
once the united force of the economic and the political opposition to their
original establishment. A coalition of Whig and Tory landed gentry, with the
support of King William, carried a badly-devised project for the establishment
of a Land Bank in spite of Montagu’s opposition (May, 1696). Subscriptions
opened in June, and owing to the almost total failure to attract subscribers,
the project was entirely abandoned on August 1. But it was one of the ironies
of the situation that the Bank of England, which had been so much damaged by
the creation of the Land Bank, was even more endangered by its destruction.
Hardly were their rivals crushed than Montagu applied to the Directors of the
Bank of England for an immediate loan, which the Land Bank had promised but, in
consequence of its failure, had not supplied. Montagu pleaded William’s direct
statement that nothing short of £200,000 in cash could enable his army to take
the field. On August 15 the Directors made a further call of 20 per cent.,
which the General Court of subscribers accepted from patriotic rather than
financial motives. In ten days the bullion was pouring into the King’s coffers,
the Allies presented an imposing front in the field, and a decision of the
money-market had, not for the last time, exercised a momentous effect upon a
military campaign.
Montagu wrote to William, telling him that, as the Bank had risked all
for the Government, Government must now risk something for the Bank. William
assented, not perhaps perceiving that he entrenched the Whig party in the
citadel of the State, by settling the Bank on a firm basis. In view of the
scandalous treatment meted out to the Bank by the Government in 1696, the
privileges granted in 1697, though immense, were hardly excessive. The Bank was
to be guaranteed its position till 1710, when the Government received the right
of discharging its obligations. It was allowed authority to issue notes, on
condition that they should be payable on demand. Last, and perhaps most
important, a monopoly was granted; no society of the nature of a bank was to be
authorised by Parliament till 1710. The neglect to establish branch
institutions and secure the organisation of local credit was to entail much
future distress in the country. To this and other faulty provisions it was due
that, during the first century of existence of the Bank, it had to undergo
crises more serious than its predecessors at Genoa, Venice or Amsterdam had
encountered in the same number of years.
Even now the Bank of England remained only a joint-stock company,
pursuing the ends of individual enterprise, under the control and with the
encouragement of the State. Though Montagu eventually provided that the Bank
should become a national institution, he immediately secured that it should be
a partisan one. The failure of the Land Bank had meant the rout of Jacobites
and Tories, and the Whig merchants, who had risked their fortunes in the Bank
of England, had fought for William as energetically and more successfully than
his soldiers in the field. For the moment a Whig policy was imposed on a
willing nation. The Bank plumped its weight on the side of Revolution and
against the Church, and the bags of Whig money-lenders outweighed the sermons
of Jacobite clergymen. Addison’s famous allegory pictures the Stewart rushing
into the Grocers’ Hall, turning money-bags into bladders and gold coin into
rubbish, and sending the goddess Credit off in a fainting fit. Whether or not
James II would really have repudiated the State obligations contracted after
1688, is doubtful. But the belief that he would was a wide-spread and
deep-rooted superstition, which contributed immensely to the stability of the
new order of things and to the supremacy of the Whig party.
1676-95] The Press.
Before turning to the development of party government, we may deal with
the great measure which established the freedom of the Press. For both these
changes had eventually international effects, far wider than are usually caused
by events of such an apparently domestic character. It is impossible to view
any part of the reign of William without perceiving to how great an extent
public opinion criticised and influenced political action. Even James himself
had showed deference to that supreme tribunal, before it passed its irrevocable
sentence upon him. The criticisms of minorities in Parliament had frequently
revealed cases of grave injustice, and had prevented the perpetration of
scandalous political jobs and maladministration alike under Charles, James and
William. But a force stronger than the voices of the Opposition in Parliament
was required to extend and to secure the power of public opinion, and that
force could only be found in a free press. In the Areopagitica Milton had nobly pleaded that cause; but the great soldier
of the Commonwealth had exercised the most rigorous press-censorship ever
known. Under Charles and James the Licensing Acts had been renewed; and in 1676
Sunderland had expressed his desire to suppress the “damnable trade” of
supplying news-letters to the coffee-houses.
During the turmoil of the Revolution shoals of pamphlets had been
unchecked by licensing or censorship. The pamphlets of Burnet, Locke, Somers,
Chamberlain, and Paterson most powerfully influenced and moulded religious,
political, and economic opinion. Owing to a series of accidents, needless to
relate and unimportant in themselves, it was eventually decided (1695) not to
renew the Licensing Act. Henceforth, the number of printing presses was not
limited and vexatious restrictions were removed. Ministers still reserved the
right of prosecuting printers for attacks on the Government, and under Anne,
both Godolphin and Bolingbroke showed that serious restrictions could be
imposed on the press through this means and by the expedient of a paper-tax.
But, apart from these restrictions, the liberty of the Press—with its subtle
influences of suggestion, its broad powers of criticism, abuse and exhortation,
with all its immeasurable consequences for securing the toleration and freedom
of opinion—was at last acknowledged and established.
To understand the political movements of the time, it is needful to
grasp the form of the executive Government, as it then existed. The King could
check the Lords by a threat of creating peers, and the Commons by the use of
his veto and the power of dissolution. In these cases his power was immediate.
But in administration also he had a wide and direct influence apart from his
Ministers. King James had, with general applause, personally directed the naval
administration and written his own speeches for Parliament and Privy Council.
The relations of the King and his Council are equally significant. It is
certain that before the reign of William, the power of the Privy Council had
passed into the hands of a number of committees, which the King directly
controlled. Some of these committees were permanent or “standing,” as for
Ireland and for trade; others secret, as for foreign affairs and foreign and
domestic intelligence; others appointed ad hoc for various special purposes,
diplomatic, commercial or judicial. All these bodies were indifferently
described as “cabinets,” though the term was more usually applied to the
foreign committee and to that for intelligence. These committees dealt with
matters in detail, decided upon them, and acquainted the King with their
decisions, which, if approved by the King, were presented to the Privy Council.
Discussions sometimes took place at that Council; but its consent was not very
much more than a formality. The power and authority of the King were really
supreme. He alone constituted and selected the committees, and could dismiss
recalcitrant committee members or privy councillors with a stroke of his pen.
Further, he alone gave authority and legality to the committees. During William’s
reign those Ministers, who were members of the most committees and who held the
dozen most important offices of State, gradually began to form a kind of
general committee. This body is sometimes termed the Cabinet, and to it William
often deferred. But he could always set aside its decisions as he did those of
other committees, and its authority depended wholly upon his will. This is
shown by the admitted fact that the King could take a step of his own in
foreign polity on the advice of a single Minister. It is also evident that he
could on his own authority, as in 1690 and 1692, constitute a Council or
Cabinet, whose numbers varied at his pleasure, as the supreme authority in his
absence. The King’s position, therefore, was that he transacted business with a
number of different committees, in which he formed the centre of power and
union. He had the main direction of foreign affairs, and immense opportunities
for influence and control in other directions. He was really his own chief
Minister; but, from inexperience in domestic affairs and preoccupation in
foreign, William could not attend to administrative details or gauge the
shifting currents of popular opinion. It is very evident that, under such
conditions, a system of party government, based on a united Ministry, could not
easily arise. For the King was the pivot on which everything turned; and till
the end of 1692 he refused either to be the instrument of a single party, or to
devolve his power upon a single man or group of men.
In his relations with Parliament, William, his Ministers, and the House
of Commons, were alike dominated by a most mischievous theory, to which the
great authority of Locke had recently lent renewed life. This was the theory
that legislature and executive were and ought to remain separate, that the
King’s Ministers were the executive, the two Houses the critical body. There
was no doubt a sense in which this was true, in that Parliament and the
Ministry ought to some extent to be independent of each other. But it was madness
to assert this theory in its full completeness just after the Revolution had
placed new and great powers in the hands of the Commons. In the event of an
absolute exclusion of Crown officials from the Lower House, one of two results
must have followed. Either the King would have drawn his Ministers exclusively
from the peers—in which case administration would have been entirely in the
hands of the aristocracy; or he would have trained a staff of clerks—in which
case administration would have been in the hands of a bureaucracy. In either
case the Commons would have been a body which could check, criticise and
harass, but not actively direct the Government. The strength of the popular
House must therefore have been weakened and endangered.
The insight of men of William’s day did not pierce into the future; it
was governed by remembrance of the past. Men were oppressed with the fear of
the Crown and of the undue influence exercised by Charles and James upon
members of Parliament, upon corporations, and electors. This was the real cause
of the vigour of Locke’s theory and the real origin of the Place-Bills, of
which the earliest was brought before the Commons at Christmas, 1692. It
actually provided for the entire and absolute exclusion from the Commons of all
holding office under the Crown. When it was known that existing place-holders
would not be disturbed till the dissolution of the existing Parliament, the
Bill passed the Commons with marvellous rapidity. It was thrown out by the
narrowest majorities in the Lords. After various adventures the Place-Bill was
finally rejected in the Commons in 1694. Thus was averted for the time being
the danger of an absolute separation between executive and legislature, while
the regular session of the latter was assured by the passing of a Bill
providing for Triennial Parliaments (1694).
The Whig “Junto”. [1692-9
The extraordinary conduct of Parliament was largely due to imperfect
harmony not only between King, Ministers, and legislature, but between
party-leaders and their followers. This the Whigs were the first to realise, in
a dim, imperfect fashion, through the agency of the discredited Sunderland.
That ex-Minister’s career had been such as to disgrace him even in that age of
loose political conscience and easy public virtue. But his past did not prevent
him from giving, not only the Whigs, but William himself, some valuable lessons
in the art of government. In 1693 Sunderland counselled William to favour the
Whigs and admit them to office, first because their political theory favoured
the Revolution, next because they favoured the war, and last because they were
the stronger party in the Lower House. The fact that the majority of the
Commons, which in 1690 was certainly Tory, was in 1693 uncertain or inclining
to be Whig, marks the lack of cohesion and the presence of chaos in the
parties. This indeed is the explanation of the extraordinary vicissitudes that befell
the various Place and Triennial Bills. After 1692 the Tories were gradually
beginning to oppose the war, and the immense power of Crown influence over
parliamentary placemen was naturally thrown against them. In addition to this a
small knot or junto of statesmen was
gradually imparting to the Whigs an organisation and discipline, such as
Shaftesbury had given to the Exclusionists. Somers, already the first among the
lawyers, Montagu, destined to prove the first of the financiers, Wharton, the
first of the wire-pullers, and Russell, the naval hero of the day, formed the
famous Whig Junto, soon to be the
ruling force in politics. It is certain that William did not appreciate the
full import of Sunderland’s advice; but he gradually and almost unconsciously
began to act upon it. Somers had been made a peer and Lord Keeper so early as
March, 1693; the Tory Nottingham was courteously dismissed; the Whig Shrewsbury
resumed the seals of Secretary. The situation then became curious; for
William’s chief confidence was not yet given to the Whigs, though they formed
the bulk of his Ministry. He still relied in the main upon the Tory Caermarthen
and upon Sunderland, who was not a Minister at all.
In 1695 Caermarthen was implicated in the scandals of the East India
Company, and was obliged to resign. His withdrawal was followed in 1697 by that
of Godolphin, the last of the Tory Ministers. The Ministry became exclusively
Whig, just at the moment when the Peace of Ryswyk was carried to a successful
conclusion amid general rejoicings. With peace the old hatred of standing
armies reasserted itself, and the forces were immediately cut down to 10,000
men in the face of William’s intense disapproval. It was in vain that Somers
wrote the famous “Balancing Letter,” to calm the national hatred of militarism.
The feeling may not have been justified, yet it was at least not partisan, but
genuinely national. For, though, the majority of the Commons was Whig, it
united with the Tories against its own leaders; and in 1699 a hostile House
forced William to dismiss his famous “Blues,” his dearly-loved regiments of
Dutch Guards. In 1699 Parliament severely attacked the grants of Irish lands,
made by the King to his Dutch favourites and to Lady Orkney, and in the next
year actually passed a Bill for their resumption. William in despair at length
summoned the Tories Rochester and Godolphin to the Ministry. They succeeded in
checking the attacks on the King, by giving a free rein to attacks upon the
former Ministers; Bentinck (now Earl of Portland), Russell (now Lord Orford),
Montagu (now Earl of Halifax), and Somers, were all impeached. But it was not for
nothing that William had filled the Upper House with Whig Bishops and peers.
The impeachments eventually failed; but their effect had been to remove from
office and to discredit the intended victims.
1699-1701] The Act of Settlement.—Death of James II.
In the midst of all the turmoil and party intrigue of 1701, the Ministry
contrived to add the keystone to the arch of the Revolution by passing the Act
of Settlement. This famous Act had been necessitated by the death of the Duke
of Gloucester—the only surviving son of Anne. The Act supplied two important
omissions in the Bill of Rights. In the first place judges were to receive
fixed salaries, and to be removable only after being convicted in the
law-courts or on address from both Houses of Parliament. In other words the
judge, though appointed, could not be removed, by the King. A long step was
thus taken towards that separation of the powers, which Locke declared
essential to liberty, and which Montesquieu was actually to regard as the
characteristic excellence of the English constitution. The other important
provision of the Act of Settlement decided that the Crown should pass on the
death of Anne to the Electress Sophia and her Protestant descendants. It is
often said that this provision established the elective character of the
English Crown. This was not the opinion of contemporaries, nor was it that of
Burke. Mary and William had been acknowledged Queen and King, because the
Prince of Wales was already excluded by the resolution that no Papist could
reign, and the Act of Settlement merely confirmed this principle. Expediency
had rendered it needful to alter the succession, and to make the Crown elective
pro hoc vice, but the case was not intended to form a precedent. In this, as in
every other instance, the Revolution settlement rested upon compromise rather
than upon the general principles, which, however, the particular action went
far towards establishing in each case.
The Act of Settlement had not been passed before the international
situation began to dwarf the importance of internal events. The accession of
Louis’ grandson, Philip, to the whole inheritance of Spain destroyed the
balance of power and endangered the existence of Holland. England, secure on
the other side of the Channel, remained unmoved, and William wrote to Heinsius
that he would secretly engage her in the coming war. But he did not find it
easy to attain this object. At length the pride of Louis and the Whig
merchants’ evident apprehension of being entirely excluded from the commerce of
the New World, began to stir the pulse of the nation. This resentment was
inflamed to the highest pitch by Louis’ action on the death of James (September
6, 1701), in recognising his son as James III of England. In a moment, the
country was wild with rage, and William, riding on the wave of popular anger,
was able to include England in his “Great Alliance.”
But just when a new and vaster struggle than he had yet waged was
opening—at the moment of all others when he wished to live—it was ordained that
he should die. He had fractured his collar-bone, and a chill, which followed on
the accident, was too much for his enfeebled frame. He died at Kensington on
March 8, 1702.
On a survey of the whole period of the Revolution and reign, the
imagination is struck by the comparatively small part played by William upon
the English stage, and the immense figure which he made upon the European. By a
tragic irony, he spent his life in opposing in England the very tendencies
which he was promoting abroad. On the Continent William stood for the principle
that the too great predominance of one Power, being dangerous to all the
others, must be checked by their union. Yet it was right that there should be a
balance of power in the Constitution as well as in diplomacy, in England as
well as in Europe. By apportioning the balance of power between King and
Parliament, by separating the judicial from the executive powers, the Act of
Settlement did much to further the theory of checks and balances. According to
this theory no power is absolute and uncontrolled in the State, and where there
are limitations on power the rights of minorities are secured. The checks upon
uncontrolled executive power imposed by the existence of a quasi-independent
legislature and judicature were strengthened by the growth of party government,
the development of political, and the beginning of religious, toleration, and
the establishment of a free press. Such theoretical views and such practical
checks had not been unknown in Holland even before their adoption in England.
But, speaking generally, nothing was more opposed to contemporary political
thought than Locke’s view that different powers in the State should move in
independent spheres, and that none should be uncontrolled or supreme. Nothing has
therefore exercised more influence upon the future than this view, and its
effect is revealed in the framing of the constitution of the United States, and
in any other constitution which has taken the English polity for its model.
In England William was too anxious to retain the great privileges of the
Crown, unable to see that, by this policy, he invited all other powers in the
State in resistance to the predominance of one—the Executive. Hence he
sometimes had to face in England a coalition of both parties or even of
Parliament and people. Judgment or his fortune always enabled him to avert a
crisis which would, have been disastrous, but many of the great reforms of the
age were undertaken in his despite or without his decided approval. In the
constitutional and legislative problems, whose settlement so profoundly
affected the destiny of political institutions, William exercised an influence
which was actually small and not always beneficial. The immense development of
the national power and resources, the foundation of what were to be the most
renowned system of national credit and the most famous financial institution in
the world—all these he viewed with indifference or even hostility. In
commercial and colonial policy he had no active interest, though he was careful
to secure England’s rights in the diplomatic treaties of the time. On the other
hand, it is only fair to say that in urging forward the need of political
amnesty in the Act of Grace, and the cause of religious liberty in the
Toleration Act, he was at once more enlightened and more disinterested than any
Englishman of the time. James or Halifax desired religious liberty, Nottingham
and Somers political toleration, perhaps more earnestly than William. But no
single Englishman so sincerely desired and so simultaneously and consistently
forwarded both causes.
The constitutional principles introduced by the Revolution can hardly be
said to be new, and the curiously concrete method of their application only
rendered probable, and did not finally determine, their development and
triumph. The Bill of Rights expressed the idea that resistance to tyranny was
justifiable, and the Act of Settlement did much to forward the imperfectly
apprehended view that government finally rested on consent of the majority, and
that the gift of the crown lay ultimately with the people. Thus were
foreshadowed for a particular end the principles, which eventually became
general and absolute, which enabled Jefferson to overthrow the sway of
England’s constitutional Parliament over America, and Rousseau to assail the
rule of absolute kings in Europe.
While veneration is paid to Locke, to Halifax, and to Somers, for
devising the theory and creating the practice of a constitution which has been
the model to so many others in the world, something must be allowed to the
great man who defended it from external assault, and who accomplished as great
a work for the good of Europe as any of these achieved for the institutions of
England. William did for the continental polity what Locke and Halifax did for
the English. He asserted and maintained, in the name of the allied States of
Europe, the right of confining within due bounds the aggressive and
predominating spirit of one nation or element which endangered the liberty of
all others. It is possible to suppose that, if Locke and Halifax had never
lived, England might have still preserved her freedom; but it is impossible to
hold that, if William had never lived, the States of western Europe might not
have lost theirs. And, in securing the one object, William really secured the
other, for by arresting the progress of despotic France he assured the triumph
of constitutional England. It was in this final sense that the interests of
England and of Europe, the policies of Halifax and of William, were
inseparable. And though Englishmen persist in regarding William as a ruler
often unsympathetic or indifferent to their special interests, Europe cannot
fail to see in him one who laboriously and triumphantly toiled, amid infinite
difficulties, for the general interests of a continent.
(2) SCOTLAND FROM THE RESTORATION TO THE UNION
OF THE PARLIAMENTS.
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