CHAP. very clearly.

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1698.

"I foresee," he writes, "that I shall be driven to take an extreme course, and that I shall see you again in Holland sooner than I had imagined."* In fact he had resolved to go down to the Lords, to send for the Commons, and to make his last speech from the throne. That speech he actually prepared and had it translated. He meant to tell his hearers that he had come to England to rescue their religion and their liberties; that, for that end, he had been under the necessity of waging a long and cruel war; that the war had, by the blessing of God, ended in an honourable and advantageous peace; and that the nation might now be tranquil and happy, if only those precautions were adopted which he had on the first day of the session recommended as essential to the public security. Since, however, the Estates of the Realm thought fit to slight his advice, and to expose themselves to the imminent risk of ruin, he would not be the witness of calamities which he had not caused and which he could not avert. He must therefore request the Houses to present to him a bill providing for the government of the realm: he would pass that bill, and withdraw from a post in which he could no longer be useful; but he should always take a deep interest in the welfare of England; and, if what he foreboded should come to pass, if in some day of danger she should again need his services, his life should be hazarded as freely as ever in her defence.

When the King showed his speech to the Chancellor, that wise minister forgot for a moment his habitual selfcommand. "This is extravagance, Sir," he said: "this is madness. I implore your Majesty, for the sake of your own honour, not to say to anybody else what you have said to me." He argued the matter during two * Dec. 8. 1698.

hours, and no doubt lucidly and forcibly. William CHAP. listened patiently; but his purpose remained unchanged.

The alarm of the ministers seems to have been increased by finding that the King's intention had been confided to Marlborough, the very last man to whom such a secret would have been imparted unless William had really made up his mind to abdicate in favour of the Princess of Denmark. Somers had another audience, and again began to expostulate. But William cut him short. "We shall not agree, my Lord; my mind is made up." "Then, Sir," said Somers, "I have to request that I may be excused from assisting as Chancellor at the fatal act which Your Majesty meditates. It was from my King that I received this seal; and I beg that he will take it from me while he is still my King."

In these circumstances the ministers, though with scarcely the faintest hope of success, determined to try what they could do to meet the King's wishes. A select Committee had been appointed by the House of Commons to frame a bill for the disbanding of all the troops above seven thousand. A motion was made by one of the Court party that this Committee should be instructed to reconsider the number of men. Vernon acquitted himself well in the debate. Montague spoke with even more than his wonted ability and energy, but in vain. So far was he from being able to rally round him such a majority as that which had supported him in the preceding Parliament, that he could not count on the support even of the placemen who sate at the same executive board with him. Thomas Pelham, who had, only a few months before, been made a Lord of the Treasury, tried to answer him. "I own," said Pelham, "that last year I thought a large land force necessary: this year I think such a force unnecessary; but I deny that I have been guilty of any inconsistency. Last year the great ques

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1698.

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CHAP. tion of the Spanish succession was unsettled, and there was serious danger of a general war. That question has now been settled in the best possible way; and we may look forward to many years of peace." A Whig of still greater note and authority, the Marquess of Hartington, separated himself on this occasion from the Junto. The current was irresistible. At last the voices of those who tried to speak for the Instruction were drowned by clamour. When the question was put, there was a great shout of No, and the minority submitted. To divide would have been merely to have exposed their weakness.

Unpopularity of

By this time it became clear that the relations between Montague. the executive government and the Parliament were again what they had been before the year 1695. The history of our polity at this time is closely connected with the history of one man. Hitherto Montague's career had been more splendidly and uninterruptedly successful than that of any member of the House of Commons, since the House of Commons had begun to exist. And now fortune had turned. By the Tories he had long been hated as a Whig: and the rapidity of his rise, the brilliancy of his fame, and the unvarying good luck which seemed to attend him, had made many Whigs his enemies. He was absurdly compared to the upstart favourites of a former age, Carr and Villiers, men whom he resembled in nothing but in the speed with which he had mounted from a humble to a lofty position. They had, without rendering any service to the State, without showing any capacity for the conduct of great affairs, been elevated to the highest dignities, in spite of the murmurs of the whole nation, by the mere partiality of the Sovereign. Montague owed everything to his own merit and to the public opinion of his merit. With his master he appears to have had very little in

tercourse, and none that was not official. He was in
truth a living monument of what the Revolution had
done for the Country. The Revolution had found him
a young student in a cell by the Cam, poring on the
diagrams which illustrated the newly discovered laws of
centripetal and centrifugal force, writing little copies of
verses, and indulging visions of parsonages with rich
glebes, and of closes in old cathedral towns; had deve-
loped in him new talents; had held out to him the hope
of prizes of a very different sort from a rectory or a pre-
bend. His eloquence had gained for him the ear of the
legislature. His skill in fiscal and commercial affairs
had won for him the confidence of the City. During
four years he had been the undisputed leader of the
majority of the House of Commons; and every one of
those years he had made memorable by great parlia-
mentary victories, and by great public services. It
should seem that his success ought to have been gratify-
ing to the nation, and especially to that assembly of
which he was the chief ornament, of which indeed he
might be called the creature. The representatives of
the people ought to have been well pleased to find that
their approbation could, in the new order of things, do
for the man whom they delighted to honour all that the
mightiest of the Tudors could do for Leicester, or the
most arbitrary of the Stuarts for Strafford. But, strange
the Commons soon began to regard with an evil
eye that greatness which was their own work. The
fault indeed was partly Montague's. With all his
ability, he had not the wisdom to avert, by suavity and
moderation, that curse, the inseparable concomitant of
prosperity and glory, which the ancients personified
under the name of Nemesis. His head, strong for all
the
purposes of debate and arithmetical calculation, was
weak against the intoxicating influence of success and

to

say,

CHAP.

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CHAP. fame. He became proud even to insolence. Old comXXIV. panions, who, a very few years before, had punned and 1698. rhymed with him in garrets, had dined with him at

cheap ordinaries, had sate with him in the pit, and had lent him some silver to pay his seamstress's bill, hardly knew their friend Charles in the great man who could not forget for one moment that he was First Lord of the Treasury, that he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, that he had been a Regent of the kingdom, that he had founded the Bank of England and the new East India Company, that he had restored the currency, that he had invented the Exchequer Bills, that he had planned the General Mortgage, and that he had been pronounced, by a solemn vote of the Commons, to have deserved all the favours which he had received from the Crown. It was said that admiration of himself and contempt of others were indicated by all his gestures and written in all the lines of his face. The very way in which the little jackanapes, as the hostile pamphleteers loved to call him, strutted through the lobby, making the most of his small figure, rising on his toe, and perking up his chin, made him enemies. Rash and arrogant sayings were imputed to him, and perhaps invented for him. He was accused of boasting that there was nothing that he could not carry through the House of Commons, that he could turn the majority round his finger. A crowd of libellers assailed him with much more than political hatred. Boundless rapacity and corruption were laid to his charge. He was represented as selling all the places in the revenue department for three years' purchase. The opprobrious nickname of Filcher was fas tened on him. His luxury, it was said, was not less inordinate than his avarice. There was indeed an attempt made at this time to raise against the leading Whig politicians and their allies, the great moneyed