But however this may be, we find Bolingbroke in correspondence with the Stuart agents in the later part of 1712. Macpherson, 366. And his own correspondence with Lord Strafford shows his dread and dislike of Hanover (Bol. Corr. ii. 487 et alibi). The Duke of Buckingham wrote to St. Germains in July that year, with strong expressions of his attachment to the cause, and pressing the necessity of the prince's conversion to the protestant religion. Macpherson, 327. Ormond is mentioned in the Duke of Berwick's letters as in correspondence with him; and Lockhart says there was no reason to make the least question of his affection to the king, whose friends were consequently well pleased at his appointment to succeed Marlborough in the command of the army, and thought it portended some good designs in favour of him. Id. 376.
Of Ormond's sincerity in this cause there can indeed be little doubt; but there is almost as much reason to suspect that of Bolingbroke as of Oxford; except that, having more rashness and less principle, he was better fitted for so dangerous a counter-revolution. But in reality he had a perfect contempt for the Stuart and tory notions of government, and would doubtless have served the house of Hanover with more pleasure, if his prospects in that quarter had been more favourable. It appears that in the session of 1714, when he had become lord of the ascendant, he disappointed the zealous royalists by his delays as much as his more cautious rival had done before. Lockhart, 470. This writer repeatedly asserts that a majority of the House of Commons, both in the parliament of 1710 and that of 1713, wanted only the least encouragement from the court to have brought about the repeal of the act of settlement. But I think this very doubtful; and I am quite convinced that the nation would not have acquiesced in it. Lockhart is sanguine, and ignorant of England.
It must be admitted that part of the cabinet were steady to the protestant succession. Lord Dartmouth, Lord Powlett, Lord Trevor, and the Bishop of London were certainly so; nor can there be any reasonable doubt, as I conceive, of the Duke of Shrewsbury. On the other side, besides Ormond, Harcourt, and Bolingbroke, were the Duke of Buckingham, Sir William Wyndham, and probably Mr. Bromley.
[327] It is said that the Duke of Leeds, who was now in the Stuart interest, had sounded her in 1711, but with no success in discovering her intention. Macpherson, 212. The Duke of Buckingham pretended, in the above-mentioned letter to St. Germains, June 1712, that he had often pressed the queen on the subject of her brother's restoration, but could get no other answer than, "you see he does not make the least step to oblige me;" or, "he may thank himself for it: he knows I always loved him better than the other." Id. 328. This alludes to the Pretender's pertinacity, as the writer thought it, in adhering to his religion; and it may be very questionable, whether he had ever such conversation with the queen at all. But, if he had, it does not lead to the supposition, that under all circumstances she meditated his restoration. If the book under the name of Mesnager is genuine, which I much doubt, Mrs. Masham had never been able to elicit anything decisive of her majesty's inclinations; nor do any of the Stuart correspondents in Macpherson pretend to know her intentions with certainty. The following passage in Lockhart seems rather more to the purpose: On his coming to parliament in 1710, with a "high monarchical address," which he had procured from the county of Edinburgh, "the queen told me, though I had almost always opposed her measures, she did not doubt of my affection to her person, and hoped I would not concur in the design against Mrs. Masham, or for bringing over the Prince of Hanover. At first I was somewhat surprised, but recovering myself, I assured her I should never be accessary to the imposing any hardship or affront upon her; and as for the Prince of Hanover, her majesty might judge from the address I had read, that I should not be acceptable to my constituents if I gave my consent for bringing over any of that family, either now or at any time hereafter. At that she smiled, and I withdrew; and then she said to the duke (Hamilton), she believed I was an honest man and a fair dealer, and the duke replied, he could assure her I liked her majesty and all her father's bairns."—P. 317. It appears in subsequent parts of this book, that Lockhart and his friends were confident of the queen's inclinations in the last year of her life, though not of her resolution.
The truth seems to be, that Anne was very dissembling, as Swift repeatedly says in his private letters, and as feeble and timid persons in high station generally are; that she hated the house of Hanover, and in some measure feared them; but that she had no regard for the Pretender (for it is really absurd to talk like Somerville of natural affection under all the circumstances), and feared him a great deal more than the other; that she had, however, some scruples about his right, which were counterbalanced by her attachment to the church of England; consequently, that she was wavering among opposite impulses, but with a predominating timidity which would have probably kept her from any change.
[328] The Duchess of Gordon, in June 1711, sent a silver medal to the faculty of advocates at Edinburgh, with a head on one side, and the inscription, "Cujus est"; on the other, the British isles, with the word "Reddite." The dean of faculty, Dundas of Arniston, presented this medal; and there seems reason to believe that a majority of the advocates voted for its reception. Somerville, p. 452. Bolingbroke, in writing on the subject to a friend, it must be owned, speaks of the proceeding with due disapprobation. Bolingbroke Correspondence, i. 343. No measures, however, were taken to mark the court's displeasure.
"Nothing is more certain," says Bolingbroke in his letter to Sir William Wyndham, perhaps the finest of his writings, "than this truth, that there was at that time no formed design in the party, whatever views some particular men might have, against his majesty's accession to the throne."—P. 22. This is in effect to confess a great deal; and in other parts of the same letter, he makes admissions of the same kind: though he says that he and other tories had determined, before the queen's death, to have no connection with the Pretender, on account of his religious bigotry. P. 111.
[329] Lockhart gives us a speech of Sir William Whitelock in 1714, bitterly inveighing against the elector of Hanover, who, he hoped, would never come to the crown. Some of the whigs cried out on this that he should be brought to the bar; when Whitelock said he would not recede an inch; he hoped the queen would outlive that prince, and in comparison to her he did not value all the princes of Germany one farthing. P. 469. Swift, in "Some Free Thoughts upon the present State of Affairs," 1714, speaks with much contempt of the house of Hanover and its sovereign; and suggests, in derision, that the infant son of the electoral prince might be invited to take up his residence in England. He pretends in this tract, as in all his writings, to deny entirely that there was the least tendency towards jacobitism, either in any one of the ministry, or even any eminent individual out of it; but with so impudent a disregard of truth that I am not perfectly convinced of his own innocence as to that intrigue. Thus, in his "Inquiry into the Behaviour of the Queen's last Ministry," he says, "I remember, during the late treaty of peace, discoursing at several times with some very eminent persons of the opposite side with whom I had long acquaintance. I asked them seriously, whether they or any of their friends did in earnest believe, or suspect the queen or the ministry to have any favourable regards towards the Pretender? They all confessed for themselves that they believed nothing of the matter," etc. He then tells us that he had the curiosity to ask almost every person in great employment, whether they knew or had heard of any one particular man, except professed nonjurors, that discovered the least inclination towards the Pretender; and the whole number they could muster up did not amount to above five or six; among whom one was a certain old lord lately dead, and one a private gentleman, of little consequence and of a broken fortune, etc. (vol. 15, p. 94, edit. 12mo, 1765). This acute observer of mankind well knew that lying is frequently successful in the ratio of its effrontery and extravagance. There are, however, some passages in this tract, as in others written by Swift, in relation to that time, which serve to illustrate the obscure machinations of those famous last years of the queen.
[330] On a motion in the House of Lords that the protestant succession was in danger, April 5, 1714, the ministry had only a majority of 76 to 69, several bishops and other tories voting against them. Parl. Hist. vi. 1334. Even in the Commons the division was but 256 to 208. Id. 1347.
[331] Somerville has a separate dissertation on the danger of the protestant succession, intended to prove that it was in no danger at all, except through the violence of the whigs in exasperating the queen. It is true that Lockhart's Commentaries were not published at this time; but he had Macpherson before him, and the Memoirs of Berwick, and even gave credit to the authenticity of Mesnager, which I do not. But this sensible, and on the whole impartial writer, had contracted an excessive prejudice against the whigs of that period as a party, though he seems to adopt their principles. His dissertation is a laboured attempt to explain away the most evident facts, and to deny what no one of either party at that time would probably have in private denied.
[332] The queen was very ill about the close of 1713; in fact it became evident, as it had long been apprehended, that she could not live much longer. The Hanoverians, both whigs and tories, urged that the electoral prince should be sent for; it was thought that whichever of the competitors should have the start upon her death would succeed in securing the crown. Macpherson, 385, 546, 557 et alibi. Can there be a more complete justification of this measure, which Somerville and the tory writers treat as disrespectful to the queen? The Hanoverian envoy, Schutz, demanded the writ for the electoral prince without his master's orders; but it was done with the advice of all the whig leaders (Id. 592), and with the sanction of the Electress Sophia, who died immediately after. "All who are for Hanover believe the coming of the electoral prince to be advantageous; all those against it are frightened at it." Id. 596. It was doubtless a critical moment; and the court of Hanover might be excused for pausing in the choice of dangers, as the step must make the queen decidedly their enemy. She was greatly offended, and forbade the Hanoverian minister to appear at court. Indeed she wrote to the elector, on May 19, expressing her disapprobation of the prince's coming over to England, and "her determination to oppose a project so contrary to her royal authority, however fatal the consequences may be." Id. 621. Oxford and Bolingbroke intimate the same. Id. 593; and see Bolingbroke Correspondence, iv. 512, a very strong passage. The measure was given up, whether from unwillingness on the part of George to make the queen irreconcilable, or, as is at least equally probable, out of jealousy of his son. The former certainly disappointed his adherents by more apparent apathy than their ardour required; which will not be surprising, when we reflect that, even upon the throne, he seemed to care very little about it. Macpherson, sub ann. 1714, passim.
[333] He was strongly pressed by his English adherents to declare himself a protestant. He wrote a very good answer. Macpherson, 436. Madame de Maintenon says, some catholics urged him to the same course, "par une politique poussée un peu trop loin." Lettres à la Princesse des Ursins, ii. 428.
[334] The rage of the tory party against the queen and Lord Oxford for retaining whigs in office is notorious from Swift's private letters, and many other authorities. And Bolingbroke, in his letter to Sir W. Wyndham, very fairly owns their intention "to fill the employments of the kingdom, down to the meanest, with tories."—"We imagined," he proceeds, "that such measures, joined to the advantages of our numbers and our property, would secure us against all attempts during her reign; and that we should soon become too considerable not to make our terms in all events which might happen afterwards; concerning which, to speak truly, I believe few or none of us had any very settled resolution." P. 11. It is rather amusing to observe that those who called themselves the tory or church party, seem to have fancied they had a natural right to power and profit, so that an injury was done them when these rewards went another way; and I am not sure that something of the same prejudice has not been perceptible in times a good deal later.
[335] Though no republican party, as I have elsewhere observed, could with any propriety be said to exist, it is easy to perceive that a certain degree of provocation from the Crown might have brought one together in no slight force. These two propositions are perfectly compatible.
[336] This is well put by Bishop Willis in his speech on the bill against Atterbury. Parl. Hist. viii. 305. In a pamphlet, entitled "English Advice to the Freeholders" (Somers Tracts, xiii. 521), ascribed to Atterbury himself, a most virulent attack is made on the government, merely because what he calls the church party had been thrown out of office. "Among all who call themselves whigs," he says, "and are of any consideration as such, name me the man I cannot prove to be an inveterate enemy to the church of England; and I will be a convert that instant to their cause." It must be owned perhaps that the whig ministry might better have avoided some reflections on the late times in the addresses of both houses; and still more, some not very constitutional recommendations to the electors, in the proclamation calling the new parliament in 1714 Parl. Hist. vi. 44, 50. "Never was prince more universally well received by subjects than his present majesty on his arrival; and never was less done by a prince to create a change in people's affections. But so it is, a very observable change hath happened. Evil infusions were spread on the one hand; and, it may be, there was too great a stoicism or contempt of popularity on the other." "Argument to prove the Affections of the People of England to be the best Security for the Government," p. 11 (1716). This is the pamphlet written to recommend lenity towards the rebels, which Addison has answered in the Freeholder. It is invidious, and perhaps secretly jacobite. Bolingbroke observes, in the letter already quoted, that the Pretender's journey from Bar, in 1714, was a mere farce, no party being ready to receive him; but "the menaces of the whigs, backed by some very rash declarations [those of the king], and little circumstances of humour, which frequently offend more than real injuries, and by the entire change of all persons in employment, blew up the coals."—P. 34. Then, he owns, the tories looked to Bar. "The violence of the whigs forced them into the arms of the Pretender." It is to be remarked on all this, that, by Bolingbroke's own account, the tories, if they had no "formed design" or "settled resolution" that way, were not very determined in their repugnance before the queen's death; and that the chief violence of which they complained was, that George chose to employ his friends rather than his enemies.
[337] The trials after this rebellion were not conducted with quite that appearance of impartiality which we now exact from judges. Chief Baron Montagu reprimanded a jury for acquitting some persons indicted for treason; and Tindal, an historian very strongly on the court side, admits that the dying speeches of some of the sufferers made an impression on the people, so as to increase rather than lessen the number of jacobites. Continuation of Rapin, p. 501 (folio edit.). There seems, however, upon the whole, to have been greater and less necessary severity after the rebellion in 1745; and upon this latter occasion it is impossible not to reprobate the execution of Mr. Ratcliffe (brother of that Earl of Derwentwater who had lost his head in 1716), after an absence of thirty years from this country, to the sovereign of which he had never professed allegiance nor could owe any, except by the fiction of our law.
[338] Parl. Hist. 73. It was carried against Oxford by 247 to 127, Sir Joseph Jekyll strongly opposing it, though he had said before (Id. 67) that they had more than sufficient evidence against Bolingbroke on the statute of Edward III. A motion was made in the Lords, to consult the judges whether the articles amounted to treason, but lost by 84 to 52. Id. 154. Lord Cowper on this occasion challenged all the lawyers in England to disprove that proposition. The proposal of reference to the judges was perhaps premature; but the house must surely have done this before their final sentence, or shown themselves more passionate than in the case of Lord Strafford.
[339] Parl. Hist. vii. 486. The division was 88 to 56. There was a schism in the whig party at this time; yet I should suppose the ministers might have prevented this defeat, if they had been anxious to do so. It seems, however, by a letter in Coxe's Memoirs of Walpole, vol. ii. p. 123, that the government were for dropping the charge of treason against Oxford, "it being very certain that there is not sufficient evidence to convict him of that crime," but for pressing those of misdemeanour.
[340] Parl. Hist. vii. 105.
[341] Parl. Hist. vi. 972. Burnet, 560, makes some observations on the vote passed on this occasion, censuring the late ministers for advising an offensive war in Spain. "A resolution in council is only the sovereign's act, who upon hearing his counsellors deliver their opinions, forms his own resolution; a counsellor may indeed be liable to censure for what he may say at that board; but the resolution taken there has been hitherto treated with a silent respect; but by that precedent it will be hereafter subject to a parliamentary inquiry." Speaker Onslow justly remarks that these general and indefinite sentiments are liable to much exception, and that the bishop did not try them by his whig principles. The first instance where I find the responsibility of some one for every act of the Crown strongly laid down is in a speech of the Duke of Argyle, in 1739. Parl. Hist. ix. 1138. "It is true," he says, "the nature of our constitution requires that public acts should be issued out in his majesty's name; but for all that, my lords, he is not the author of them."
[342] "Lord Bolingbroke used to say that the restraining orders to the Duke of Ormond were proposed in the cabinet council, in the queen's presence, by the Earl of Oxford, who had not communicated his intention to the rest of the ministers; and that Lord Bolingbroke was on the point of giving his opinion against it, when the queen, without suffering the matter to be debated, directed these orders to be sent, and broke up the council. This story was told by the late Lord Bolingbroke to my father." Note by Lord Hardwicke on Burnet (Oxf. edit. vi. 119). The noble annotator has given us the same anecdote in the Hardwicke State Papers, ii. 482; but with this variance, that Lord Bolingbroke there ascribes the orders to the queen herself, though he conjectured them to have proceeded from Lord Oxford.
[343] Parl. Hist. vii. 292. The apprehension that parliament, having taken this step, might go on still farther to protract its own duration, was not quite idle. We find from Coxe's Memoirs of Walpole, ii. 217, that in 1720, when the first septennial House of Commons had nearly run its term, there was a project of once more prolonging its life.
[344] Parl. Hist. vii. 589.
[345] The arguments on this side are urged by Addison, in the Old Whig; and by the author of a tract, entitled "Six Questions Stated and Answered."
[346] The speeches of Walpole and others, in the Parliamentary Debates, contain the whole force of the arguments against the peerage bill. Steele in the Plebeian opposed his old friend and coadjutor, Addison, who forgot a little in party and controversy their ancient friendship.
Lord Sunderland held out, by way of inducements to the bill, that the Lords would part with scandalum magnatum, and permit the Commons to administer an oath; and that the king would give up the prerogative of pardoning after an impeachment. Coxe's Walpole, ii. 172. Mere trifles, in comparison with the innovations projected.
[347] The letters in Coxe's Memoirs of Walpole, vol. ii., abundantly show the German nationality, the impolicy and neglect of his duties, the rapacity and petty selfishness of George I. The whigs were much dissatisfied; but fear of losing their places made them his slaves. Nothing can be more demonstrable than that the king's character was the main cause of preserving jacobitism, as that of his competitor was of weakening it.
The habeas corpus was several times suspended in this reign, as it had been in that of William. Though the perpetual conspiracies of the jacobites afforded a sufficient apology for this measure, it was invidiously held up as inconsistent with a government which professed to stand on the principles of liberty. Parl. Hist. v. 153, 267, 604; vii. 276; viii. 38. But some of these suspensions were too long, especially the last, from October 1722 to October 1723. Sir Joseph Jekyll, with his usual zeal for liberty, moved to reduce the time to six months.
[348] "It was first settled by a verbal agreement between Archbishop Sheldon and the Lord Chancellor Clarendon, and tacitly given into by the clergy in general as a great ease to them in taxations. The first public act of any kind relating to it was an act of parliament in 1665, by which the clergy were, in common with the laity, charged with the tax given in that act, and were discharged from the payment of the subsidies they had granted before in convocation; but in this act of parliament of 1665 there is an express saving of the right of the clergy to tax themselves in convocation, if they think fit; but that has been never done since, nor attempted, as I know of, and the clergy have been constantly from that time charged with laity in all public aids to the Crown by the House of Commons. In consequence of this (but from what period I cannot say), without the intervention of any particular law for it, except what I shall mention presently, the clergy (who are not lords of parliament) have assumed, and without any objection enjoyed, the privilege of voting in the election of members of the House of Commons, in virtue of their ecclesiastical freeholds. This has constantly been practised from the time it first began; there are two acts of parliament which suppose it to be now a right. The acts are 10 Anne, c. 23; 18 Geo. II. c. 18. Gibson, Bishop of London, said to me, that this (the taxation of the clergy out of convocation) was the greatest alteration in the constitution ever made without an express law." Speaker Onslow's note on Burnet (Oxf. edit. iv. 508).
[349] The first authority I have observed for this pretension is an address of the House of Lords (19 Nov. 1675) to the throne, for the frequent meeting of the convocation, and that they do make to the king such representations as may be for the safety of the religion established. Lords' Journals. This address was renewed February 22, 1677. But what took place in consequence I am not apprised. It shows, however, some degree of dissatisfaction on the part of the bishops, who must be presumed to have set forward these addresses, at the virtual annihilation of their synod which naturally followed from its relinquishment of self-taxation.
[350] Kennet, 799, 842; Burnet, 280. This assembly had been suffered to sit, probably, in consequence of the tory maxims which the ministry of that year professed.
[351] Wilkins's Concilia, iv.; Burnet, passim; Boyer's Life of Queen Anne, 225; Somerville, 82, 124.
[352] The lower house of convocation, in the late reign, among their other vagaries, had requested "that some synodical notice might be taken of the dishonour done to the church by a sermon preached by Mr. Benjamin Hoadley at St. Lawrence Jewry, Sept. 29, 1705, containing positions contrary to the doctrine of the church, expressed in the first and second parts of the homily against disobedience and wilful rebellion." Wilkins, iv. 634.
[353] These qualities are so apparent, that after turning over some forty or fifty tracts, and consuming a good many hours on the Bangorian controversy, I should find some difficulty in stating with precision the propositions in dispute. It is, however, evident that a dislike, not perhaps exactly to the house of Brunswick, but to the tenor of George I.'s administration, and to Hoadley himself as an eminent advocate for it, who had been rewarded accordingly, was at the bottom a leading motive with most of the church party; some of whom, such as Hare, though originally of a whig connection, might have had disappointments to exasperate them.
There was nothing whatever in Hoadley's sermon injurious to the established endowments and privileges, nor to the discipline and government, of the English church, even in theory. If this had been the case, he might be reproached with some inconsistency in becoming so large a partaker of her honours and emoluments. He even admitted the usefulness of censures for open immoralities, though denying all church authority to oblige any one to external communion, or to pass any sentence which should determine the condition of men with respect to the favour or displeasure of God. Hoadley's Works, ii. 465, 493. Another great question in this controversy was that of religious liberty, as a civil right, which the convocation explicitly denied. And another related to the much debated exercise of private judgment in religion, which, as one party meant virtually to take away, so the other perhaps unreasonably exaggerated. Some other disputes arose in the course of the combat, particularly the delicate problem of the value of sincerity as a plea for material errors.
[354] Tindal, 539.
[355] Parl. Hist. vi. 362.
[356] 10 Anne, c. 2.
[357] 12 Anne, c. 7; Parl. Hist. vi. 1349. The schism act, according to Lockhart, was promoted by Bolingbroke, in order to gratify the high tories, and to put Lord Oxford under the necessity of declaring himself one way or other. "Though the Earl of Oxford voted for it himself, he concurred with those who endeavoured to restrain some parts which they reckoned too severe; and his friends in both houses, particularly his brother auditor Harley, spoke and voted against it very earnestly."—P. 462.
[358] 5 Geo. I. c. 4. The whigs out of power, among whom was Walpole, factiously and inconsistently opposed the repeal of the schism act, so that it passed with much difficulty. Parl. Hist. vii. 569.
[359] The first act of this kind appears to have been in 1727. 1 Geo. II. c. 23. It was repeated next year, intermitted the next, and afterwards renewed in every year of that reign except the fifth, the seventeenth, the twenty-second, the twenty-third, the twenty-sixth, and the thirtieth. Whether these occasional interruptions were intended to prevent the nonconformists from relying upon it, or were caused by some accidental circumstance, must be left to conjecture. I believe that the renewal has been regular every year since the accession of George III. It is to be remembered, that the present work was first published before the repeal of the test act in 1828.
[360] We find in Gutch's Collectanea Curiosa, vol. i. p. 53, a plan, ascribed to Lord Chancellor Macclesfield, for taking away the election of heads of colleges from the fellows, and vesting the nomination in the great officers of state, in order to cure the disaffection and want of discipline which was justly complained of. This remedy would have been perhaps the substitution of a permanent for a temporary evil. It appears also that Archbishop Wake wanted to have had a bill, in 1716, for asserting the royal supremacy, and better regulating the clergy of the two universities (Coxe's Walpole, ii. 122); but I do not know that the precise nature of this is anywhere mentioned. I can scarcely quote Amherst's Terræ Filius as authority; it is a very clever, though rather libellous, invective against the university of Oxford at that time; but from internal evidence, as well as the confirmation which better authorities afford it, I have no doubt that it contains much truth.
Those who have looked much at the ephemeral literature of these two reigns must be aware of many publications fixing the charge of prevalent disaffection on this university, down to the death of George II.; and Dr. King, the famous jacobite master of St. Mary Hall, admits that some were left to reproach him for apostasy in going to court on the accession of the late king in 1760. The general reader will remember the Isis by Mason, and the Triumph of Isis by Warton; the one a severe invective, the other an indignant vindication; but in this instance, notwithstanding the advantages which satire is supposed to have over panegyric, we must award the laurel to the worse cause, and, what is more extraordinary, to the worse poet.
[361] Layer, who suffered on account of this plot, had accused several peers, among others Lord Cowper, who complained to the house of the publication of his name; and indeed, though he was at that time strongly in opposition to the court, the charge seems wholly incredible. Lord Strafford, however, was probably guilty; Lords North and Orrery certainly so. Parl. Hist. viii. 203. There is even ground to suspect that Sunderland, to use Tindal's words, "in the latter part of his life had entered into correspondencies and designs, which would have been fatal to himself or to the public."—P. 657. This is mentioned by Coxe, i. 165; and certainly confirmed by Lockhart, ii. 68, 70. But the reader will hardly give credit to such a story as Horace Walpole has told, that he coolly consulted Sir Robert, his political rival, as to the part they should take on the king's death. Lord Orford's Works, iv. 287.
[362] State Trials, xvi. 324; Parl. Hist. viii. 195 et post. Most of the bishops voted against their restless brother; and Willis, Bishop of Salisbury, made a very good but rather too acrimonious a speech on the bill. Id. 298. Hoadley, who was no orator, published two letters in the newspaper, signed "Britannicus," in answer to Atterbury's defence; which, after all that had passed, he might better have spared. Atterbury's own speech is certainly below his fame, especially the peroration. Id. 267.
No one, I presume, will affect to doubt the reality of Atterbury's connections with the Stuart family, either before his attainder or during his exile. The proofs of the latter were published by Lord Hailes in 1768, and may be found also in Nicholls's edition of Atterbury's Correspondence, i. 148. Additional evidence is furnished by the Lockhart Papers, vol. ii. passim.
[363] The Stuart papers obtained lately from Rome, and now in his majesty's possession, are said to furnish copious evidence of the jacobite intrigues, and to affect some persons not hitherto suspected. We have reason to hope that they will not be long withheld from the public, every motive for concealment being wholly at an end.
It is said that there were not less than fifty jacobites in the parliament of 1728. Coxe, ii. 294.
[364] The tories, it is observed in the MS. journal of Mr. Yorke (second Earl of Hardwicke), showed no sign of affection to the government at the time when the invasion was expected in 1743, but treated it all with indifference. Parl. Hist. xiii. 668. In fact a disgraceful apathy pervaded the nation; and according to a letter from Mr. Fox to Mr. Winnington in 1745, which I only quote from recollection, it seemed perfectly uncertain, from this general passiveness, whether the revolution might not be suddenly brought about. Yet very few comparatively, I am persuaded, had the slightest attachment or prejudice in favour of the house of Stuart; but the continual absence from England, and the Hanoverian predilections of the two Georges, the feebleness and factiousness of their administration, and of public men in general, and an indefinite opinion of misgovernment, raised through the press, though certainly without oppression or arbitrary acts, had gradually alienated the mass of the nation. But this would not lead men to expose their lives and fortunes; and hence the people of England, a thing almost incredible, lay quiet and nearly unconcerned, while the little army of Highlanders came every day nearer to the capital. It is absurd, however, to suppose that they could have been really successful by marching onward; though their defeat might have been more glorious at Finchley than at Culloden.
[365] See Parl. Hist. xiii. 1244; and other proofs might be brought from the same work, as well as from miscellaneous authorities of the age of George II.
[366] See in the Lockhart Papers, ii. 565, a curious relation of Charles Edward's behaviour in refusing to quit France after the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. It was so insolent and absurd that the government was provoked to arrest him at the opera, and literally to order him to be bound hand and foot; an outrage which even his preposterous conduct could hardly excuse.
Dr. King was in correspondence with this prince for some years after the latter's foolish, though courageous, visit to London in September 1750; which he left again in five days, on finding himself deceived by some sanguine friends. King says he was wholly ignorant of our history and constitution. "I never heard him express any noble or benevolent sentiment, the certain indications of a great soul and good heart; or discover any sorrow or compassion for the misfortune of so many worthy men who had suffered in his cause." Anecdotes of his own Times, p. 201. He goes on to charge him with love of money and other faults. But his great folly in keeping a mistress, Mrs. Walkinshaw, whose sister was housekeeper at Leicester House, alarmed the jacobites. "These were all men of fortune and distinction, and many of them persons of the first quality, who attached themselves to the P. as to a person who they imagined might be made the instrument of saving their country. They were sensible that by Walpole's administration the English government was become a system of corruption; and that Walpole's successors, who pursued his plan without any of his abilities, had reduced us to such a deplorable situation that our commercial interest was sinking, our colonies in danger of being lost, and Great Britain, which, if her powers were properly exerted, as they were afterwards in Mr. Pitt's administration, was able to give laws to other nations, was become the contempt of all Europe."—P. 208. This is in truth the secret of the continuance of jacobitism. But possibly that party were not sorry to find a pretext for breaking off so hopeless a connection, which they seem to have done about 1755. Mr. Pitt's great successes reconciled them to the administration; and his liberal conduct brought back those who had been disgusted by an exclusive policy. On the accession of a new king they flocked to St. James's; and probably scarcely one person of the rank of a gentleman, south of the Tweed, was found to dispute the right of the house of Brunswick after 1760. Dr. King himself, it may be observed, laughs at the old passive obedience doctrine (page 193); so far was he from being a jacobite of that school.
A few nonjuring congregations lingered on far into the reign of George III., presided over by the successors of some bishops whom Lloyd of Norwich, the last of those deprived at the revolution, had consecrated in order to keep up the schism. A list of these is given in D'Oyly's Life of Sancroft, vol. ii. p. 34, whence it would appear that the last of them died in 1779. I can trace the line a little farther: a bishop of that separation, named Cartwright, resided at Shrewsbury in 1793, carrying on the business of a surgeon. State Trials, xxiii. 1073. I have heard of similar congregations in the west of England still later. He had, however, become a very loyal subject to King George: a singular proof of that tenacity of life by which religious sects, after dwindling down through neglect, excel frogs and tortoises; and that, even when they have become almost equally cold-blooded!
[367] Parl. Hist. viii. 904.
[368] Id. vii. 536.
[369] 8 Geo. 2, c. 30; Parl. Hist. viii. 883.
[370] The military having been called in to quell an alleged riot at Westminster election in 1741, it was resolved (Dec. 22nd) "that the presence of a regular body of armed soldiers at an election of members to serve in parliament is a high infringement of the liberties of the subject, a manifest violation of the freedom of elections, and an open defiance of the laws and constitution of this kingdom." The persons concerned in this, having been ordered to attend the house, received on their knees a very severe reprimand from the speaker. Parl. Hist. ix. 326. Upon some occasion, the circumstances of which I do not recollect, Chief Justice Willis uttered some laudable sentiments as to the subordination of military power.
[371] Lord Hardwicke threw out the militia bill in 1756, thinking some of its clauses rather too republican, and, in fact, being adverse to the scheme. Parl. Hist. xv. 704; H. Walpole's Memoirs, ii. 45; Coxe's Memoirs of Lord Walpole, 450.
[372] By the act of 6 Anne, c. 7, all persons holding pensions from the Crown during pleasure were made incapable of sitting in the House of Commons; which was extended by 1 Geo. I. c. 56, to those who held them for any term of years. But the difficulty was to ascertain the fact; the government refusing information. Mr. Sandys, accordingly proposed a bill in 1730, by which every member of the Commons was to take an oath that he did not hold any such pension, and that, in case of accepting one, he would disclose it to the house within fourteen days. This was carried by a small majority through the Commons, but rejected in the other house; which happened again in 1734 and in 1740. Parl. Hist. viii. 789; ix. 369; xi. 510. The king, in an angry note to Lord Townshend, on the first occasion, calls it "this villainous bill." Coxe's Walpole, ii. 537, 673. A bill of the same gentleman to limit the number of placemen in the house had so far worse success, that it did not reach the Serbonian bog. Parl. Hist. xi. 328, Bishop Sherlock made a speech against the prevention of corrupt practices by the pension bill, which, whether justly or not, excited much indignation, and even gave rise to the proposal of a bill for putting an end to the translation of bishops. Id. viii. 847.
[373] 25 Geo. 2, c. 22. The king came very reluctantly into this measure: in the preceding session of 1742, Sandys, now become chancellor of the exchequer, had opposed it, though originally his own; alleging, in no very parliamentary manner, that the new ministry had not yet been able to remove his majesty's prejudices. Parl. Hist. xii. 896.
[374] Mr. Fox declared to the Duke of Newcastle, when the office of secretary of state, and what was called the management of the House of Commons, was offered to him, "that he never desired to touch a penny of the secret service money, or to know the disposition of it farther than was necessary to enable him to speak to the members without being ridiculous." Dodington's Diary, 15th March 1754. H. Walpole confirms this in nearly the same words. Mem. of Last Ten Years, i. 332.
[375] In Coxe's Memoirs of Sir R. Walpole, iii. 609, we have the draught, by that minister, of an intended vindication of himself after his retirement from office, in order to show the impossibility of misapplying public money, which, however, he does not show; and his elaborate account of the method by which payments are made out of the exchequer, though valuable in some respects, seems rather intended to lead aside the unpractised reader.
[376] This secret committee were checked at every step for want of sufficient powers. It is absurd to assert, like Mr. Coxe, that they advanced accusations which they could not prove, when the means of proof were withheld. Scrope and Paxton, the one secretary, the other solicitor, to the treasury, being examined about very large sums traced to their hands, and other matters, refused to answer questions that might criminate themselves; and a bill to indemnify evidence was lost in the upper house. Parl. Hist. xii. 625 et post.
[378] Parl. Hist. vi. 1265. Walpole says, in speaking for Steele, "the liberty of the press is unrestrained; how then shall a part of the legislature dare to punish that as a crime, which is not declared to be so by any law framed by the whole?"
[380] The instances are so numerous, that to select a few would perhaps give an inadequate notion of the vast extension which privilege received. In fact, hardly anything could be done disagreeable to a member, of which he might inform the house, and cause it to be punished.
[381] 12 Will. 3, ch. 3.
[382] Journals, 11th Feb. It had been originally proposed, that the member making the complaint should pay the party's costs and expenses, which was amended, I presume, in consequence of some doubt as to the power of the house to enforce it.
[383] 10 G. 3, c. 50.
[384] Resolved, That whatever ill consequences may arise from the so long deferring the supplies for the year's service, are to be attributed to the fatal counsel of putting off the meeting of a parliament so long, and to unnecessary delays of the House of Commons. Lords' Journals, 23rd June 1701. The Commons had previously come to a vote, that all the ill consequences which may at this time attend the delay of the supplies granted by the Commons for the preserving the public peace, and maintaining the balance of Europe, are to be imputed to those who, to procure an indemnity for their own enormous crimes, have used their utmost endeavours to make a breach between the two houses. Commons' Journals, June 20th.
[385] Journals, 8th May; Parl. Hist. v. 1250; Ralph, 947. This historian, who generally affects to take the popular side, inveighs against this petition, because the tories had a majority in the Commons. His partiality, arising out of a dislike to the king, is very manifest throughout the second volume. He is forced to admit afterwards, that the house disgusted the people by their votes on this occasion. P. 976.
[386] History of the Kentish Petition; Somers Tracts, xi. 242; Legion's Paper; Id. 264; Vindication of the Rights of the Commons (either by Harley or Sir Humphrey Mackworth); Id. 276. This contains in many respects constitutional principles; but the author holds very strong language about the right of petitioning. After quoting the statute of Charles II. against tumults on pretence of presenting petitions, he says: "By this statute it may be observed, that not only the number of persons is restrained, but the occasion also for which they may petition; which is for the alteration of matters established in church or state, for want whereof some inconvenience may arise to that county from which the petition shall be brought. For it is plain by the express words and meaning of that statute that the grievance or matter of the petition must arise in the same county as the petition itself. They may indeed petition the king for a parliament to redress their grievances; and they may petition that parliament to make one law that is advantageous, and repeal another that is prejudicial to the trade or interest of that county; but they have no power by this statute, nor by the constitution of the English government, to direct the parliament in the general proceedings concerning the whole kingdom; for the law declares that a general consultation of all the wise representatives of parliament is more for the safety of England than the hasty advice of a number of petitioners of a private county, of a grand jury, or of a few justices of the peace, who seldom have a true state of the case represented to them."—P. 313.
These are certainly what must appear in the present day very strange limitations of the subject's right to petition either house of parliament. But it is really true that such a right was not generally recognised, nor frequently exercised, in so large an extent as is now held unquestionable. We may search whole volumes of the journals, while the most animating topics were in discussion, without finding a single instance of such an interposition of the constituent with the representative body. In this particular case of the Kentish petition, the words in the resolution, that it tended to destroy the constitution of parliament and subvert the established government, could be founded on no pretence but its unusual interference with the counsels of the legislature. With this exception, I am not aware (stating this, however, with some diffidence) of any merely political petition before the Septennial bill in 1717, against which several were presented from corporate towns; one of which was rejected on account of language that the house thought indecent; and as to these it may be observed, that towns returning members to parliament had a particular concern in the measure before the house. They relate, however, no doubt, to general policy, and seem to establish a popular principle which stood on little authority. I do not of course include the petitions to the long parliament in 1640, nor one addressed to the Convention, in 1689, from the inhabitants of London and Westminster, pressing their declaration of William and Mary; both in times too critical to furnish regular precedents. But as the popular principles of government grew more established, the right of petitioning on general grounds seems to have been better recognised; and instances may be found, during the administration of Sir Robert Walpole, though still by no means frequent. Parl. Hist. xii. 119. The city of London presented a petition against the bill for naturalisation of the Jews, in 1753, as being derogatory to the Christian religion as well as detrimental to trade. Id. xiv. 1417. It caused, however, some animadversion; for Mr. Northey, in the debate next session on the proposal to repeal this bill, alluding to this very petition, and to the comments Mr. Pelham made on it, as "so like the famous Kentish petition that if they had been treated in the same manner it would have been what they deserved," observes in reply, that the "right of petitioning either the king or the parliament in a decent and submissive manner, and without any riotous appearance against anything they think may affect their religion and liberties, will never, I hope, be taken from the subject." Id. xv. 149; see also 376. And it is very remarkable that notwithstanding the violent clamour excited by that unfortunate statute, no petitions for its repeal are to be found in the journals. They are equally silent with regard to the marriage act, another topic of popular obloquy. Some petitions appear to have been presented against the bill for naturalisation of foreign protestants; but probably on the ground of its injurious effect on the parties themselves. The great multiplication of petitions on matters wholly unconnected with particular interests cannot, I believe, be traced higher than those for the abolition of the slave trade in 1787; though a few were presented for reform about the end of the American war, which would undoubtedly have been rejected with indignation in any earlier stage of our constitution. It may be remarked also that petitions against bills imposing duties are not received, probably on the principle that they are intended for the general interests, though affecting the parties who thus complain of them. Hatsell, iii. 200.
The convocation of public meetings for the debate of political questions, as preparatory to such addresses or petitions, is still less according to the practice and precedents of our ancestors; nor does it appear that the sheriffs or other magistrates are more invested with a right of convening or presiding in assemblies of this nature than any other persons; though, within the bounds of the public peace, it would not perhaps be contended that they have ever been unlawful. But that their origin can be distinctly traced higher than the year 1769, I am not prepared to assert. It will of course be understood, that this note is merely historical, and without reference to the expediency of that change in our constitutional theory which it illustrates.
[387] State Trials, xiv. 849.
[388] Parl. Hist. vi. 225 et post; State Trials, xiv. 695 et post.
[389] Parl. Hist. xiv. 888 et post, 1063; Walpole's Memoirs of the last Ten Years of George II., i. 15 et post.
[390] Journals, vii. 9th July 1725.
[391] Commons' Journals, 25th Oct. 1689.
[392] Id. Dec. 5.
[393] Parl. Hist. vii. 803.
[394] Lords' Journals, 10th Jan. 1702; Parl. Hist. vi. 21.
[395] Hargrave's Juridical Arguments, vol. i. p. 1, etc.
[396] State Trials, vi. 1369; 1 Modern Reports, 159.
[397] Id., xii. 822; T. Jones, Reports, 208.
[398] Journals, 10th, 12th, 19th July 1689.
[399] State Trials, xiv. 849.
[400] Id., viii. 30.
[401] This is very elaborately and dispassionately argued by Mr. Hargrave in his Juridical Arguments, above cited; also vol. ii. p. 183. "I understand it," he says, "to be clearly part of the law and custom of parliament that each house of parliament may inquire into and imprison for breaches of privilege." But this he thinks to be limited by law; and after allowing it clearly in cases of obstruction, arrest, assault, etc., on members, admits also that "the judicative power as to writing, speaking, or publishing, of gross reflections upon the whole parliament or upon either house, though perhaps originally questionable, seems now of too long a standing and of too much frequency in practice to be well counteracted." But after mentioning the opinions of the judges in Crosby's case, Mr. H. observes: "I am myself far from being convinced that commitment for contempts by a house of parliament, or by the highest court of judicature in Westminster Hall, either ought to be, or are thus wholly privileged from all examination and appeal."
[402] Mr. Justice Gould, in Crosby's case, as reported by Wilson, observes: "It is true this court did, in the instance alluded to by the counsel at the bar (Wilkes's case, 2 Wilson, 151), determine upon the privilege of parliament in the case of a libel; but then that privilege was promulged and known; it existed in records and law-books, and was allowed by parliament itself. But even in that case we now know that we were mistaken; for the House of Commons have since determined, that privilege does not extend to matters of libel." It appears, therefore, that Mr. Justice Gould thought a declaration of the House of Commons was better authority than a decision of the court of common pleas, as to a privilege which, as he says, existed in records and law-books.
[403] "I am far from subscribing to all the latitude of the doctrine of attachments for contempts of the king's courts of Westminster, especially the King's Bench, as it is sometimes stated, and it has been sometimes practised." Hargrave, ii. 213.
"The principle upon which attachments issue for libels on courts is of a more enlarged and important nature: it is to keep a blaze of glory around them, and to deter people from attempting to render them contemptible in the eyes of the people." Wilmot's Opinions and Judgments, p. 270. Yet the king, who seems as much entitled to this blaze of glory as his judges, is driven to the verdict of a jury before the most libellous insult on him can be punished.
[404] Hargrave, ubi supra.
[405] This effect of continual new statutes is well pointed out in a speech ascribed to Sir William Wyndham in 1734: "The learned gentleman spoke (he says) of the prerogative of the Crown, and asked us if it had lately been extended beyond the bounds prescribed to it by law. Sir, I will not say that there have been lately any attempts to extend it beyond the bounds prescribed by law; but I will say that these bounds have been of late so vastly enlarged that there seems to be no great occasion for any such attempt. What are the many penal laws made within these forty years, but so many extensions of the prerogative of the Crown, and as many diminutions of the liberty of the subject? And whatever the necessity was that brought us into the enacting of such laws, it was a fatal necessity; it has greatly added to the power of the Crown, and particular care ought to be taken not to throw any more weight into that scale." Parl. Hist. ix. 463.
Among the modern statutes which have strengthened the hands of the executive power, we should mention the riot act (1 Geo. I. stat. 2, c. 5), whereby all persons tumultuously assembled to the disturbance of the public peace, and not dispersing within one hour after proclamation made by a single magistrate, are made guilty of a capital felony. I am by no means controverting the expediency of this law; but, especially when combined with the aid of a military force, it is surely a compensation for much that may seem to have been thrown into the popular scale.
[406] 9 Geo. 2, c. 35, sect. 10, 13; Parl. Hist. ix. 1229. I quote this as I find it: but probably the expressions are not quite correct; for the reasoning is not so.
[407] Coxe's Walpole, i. 296; H. Walpole's Works, iv. 476. The former, however, seems to rest on H. Walpole's verbal communication, whose want of accuracy, or veracity, or both, is so palpable that no great stress can be laid on his testimony. I believe, however, that the fact of George I. and his minister conversing in Latin may be proved on other authority.
[408] H. Walpole's Memoirs of the last Ten Years; Lord Waldegrave's Memoirs. In this well written little book, the character of George II. in reference to his constitutional position, is thus delicately drawn: "He has more knowledge of foreign affairs than most of his ministers, and has good general notions of the constitution, strength, and interest of this country; but, being past thirty when the Hanover succession took place, and having since experienced the violence of party, the injustice of popular clamour, the corruption of parliaments, and the selfish motives of pretended patriots, it is not surprising that he should have contracted some prejudices in favour of those governments where the royal authority is under less restraint. Yet prudence has so far prevailed over these prejudices, that they have never influenced his conduct. On the contrary, many laws have been enacted in favour of public liberty; and in the course of a long reign there has not been a single attempt to extend the prerogative of the Crown beyond its proper limits. He has as much personal bravery as any man, though his political courage seems somewhat problematical; however, it is a fault on the right side; for had he always been as firm and undaunted in the closet as he showed himself at Oudenarde and Dettingen, he might not have proved quite so good a king in this limited monarchy,"—P. 5. This was written in 1757.
The real tories, those I mean who adhered to the principles expressed by that name, thought the constitutional prerogative of the Crown impaired by a conspiracy of its servants. Their notions are expressed in some "Letters on the English Nation," published about 1756, under the name of Battista Angeloni, by Dr. Shebbeare, once a jacobite, and still so bitter an enemy of William III. and George I. that he stood in the pillory, not long afterwards, for a libel on those princes (among other things); on which Horace Walpole justly animadverts, as a stretch of the law by Lord Mansfield destructive of all historical truth. Memoirs of the last Ten Years, ii. 328. Shebbeare, however, was afterwards pensioned, along with Johnson, by Lord Bute, and at the time when these letters were written, may possibly have been in the Leicester House interest. Certain it is, that the self-interested cabal who belonged to that little court endeavoured too successfully to persuade its chief and her son that the Crown was reduced to a state of vassalage, from which it ought to be emancipated; and the government of the Duke of Newcastle, as strong in party connection as it was contemptible in ability and reputation, afforded them no bad argument. The consequences are well known, but do not enter into the plan of this work.
[409] Many proofs of this occur in the correspondence published by Mr. Coxe. Thus Horace Walpole writing to his brother Sir Robert, in 1739, says: "King William had no other object but the liberties and balance of Europe; but, good God! what is the case now? I will tell you in confidence; little, low, partial, electoral notions are able to stop or confound the best conducted project for the public." Memoirs of Sir R. Walpole, iii. 535. The Walpoles had, some years before, disapproved the policy of Lord Townshend on account of his favouring the king's Hanoverian prejudices. Id. i. 334. And, in the preceding reign, both these whig leaders were extremely disgusted with the Germanism and continual absence of George I. (Id. ii. 116, 297), though first Townshend, and afterwards Walpole, according to the necessity, or supposed necessity, which controls statesmen (that is, the fear of losing their places), became in appearance the passive instruments of royal pleasure.
It is now, however, known that George II. had been induced by Walpole to come into a scheme, by which Hanover, after his decease, was to be separated from England. It stands on the indisputable authority of Speaker Onslow. "A little while before Sir Robert Walpole's fall (and as a popular act to save himself, for he went very unwillingly out of his offices and power), he took me one day aside, and said, 'What will you say, speaker, if this hand of mine shall bring a message from the king to the House of Commons, declaring his consent to having any of his family, after his death, to be made, by act of parliament, incapable of inheriting and enjoying the crown, and possessing the electoral dominions at the same time?' My answer was, 'Sir, it will be as a message from heaven.' He replied, 'It will be done.' But it was not done; and I have good reason to believe, it would have been opposed, and rejected at that time, because it came from him, and by the means of those who had always been most clamorous for it; and thus perhaps the opportunity was lost: when will it come again? It was said that the prince at that juncture would have consented to it, if he could have had the credit and popularity of the measure, and that some of his friends were to have moved it in parliament, but that the design at St. James's prevented it. Notwithstanding all this, I have had some thoughts that neither court ever really intended the thing itself; but that it came on and went off, by a jealousy of each other in it, and that both were equally pleased that it did so, from an equal fondness (very natural) for their own native country." Notes on Burnet (iv. 490, Oxf. edit.). This story has been told before, but not in such a manner as to preclude doubt of its authenticity.
[410] A bill was brought in for this purpose in 1712, which Swift, in his History of the Last Four Years, who never printed anything with his name, naturally blames. It miscarried, probably on account of this provision. Parl. Hist. vi. 1141. But the queen, on opening the session, in April 1713, recommended some new law to check the licentiousness of the press. Id. 1173. Nothing, however, was done in consequence.
[411] Bolingbroke's letter to the Examiner, in 1710, excited so much attention that it was answered by Lord Cowper, then chancellor, in a letter to the Tatler (Somers Tracts, xiii. 75), where Sir Walter Scott justly observes, that the fact of two such statesmen becoming the correspondents of periodical publications shows the influence they must have acquired over the public mind.