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to sooth the angry passions of our neighbours. And CHAP. shall we, just at this moment, exasperate those passions by proclaiming that to be born on the north of the Tweed is a disqualification for all honourable trust?" The ministerial members would gladly have permitted the motion to be withdrawn. But the opposition, elated with hope, insisted on dividing, and were confounded by finding that, with all the advantage of a surprise, they were only one hundred and thirty three to one hundred and seventy three. Their defeat would probably have been less complete, had not all those members who were especially attached to the Princess of Denmark voted in the majority or absented themselves. Marlborough used all his influence against the motion; and he had strong reasons for doing so. He was by no means well pleased to see the Commons engaged in discussing the characters and past lives of the persons who were placed about the Duke of Gloucester. If the High Churchmen, by reviving old stories, succeeded in carrying a vote against the Preceptor, it was by no means unlikely that some malicious Whig might retaliate on the Governor. The Governor must have been conscious that he was not invulnerable; nor could he absolutely rely on the support of the whole body of Tories for it was believed that their favourite leader, Rochester, thought himself the fittest person to superintend the education of his grand nephew.

attack on

From Burnet the opposition went back to Somers. Renewed Some Crown property near Reigate had been granted to Somers. Somers by the King. In this transaction there was nothing that deserved blame. The Great Seal ought always to be held by a lawyer of the highest distinction; nor can such a lawyer discharge his duties in a perfectly efficient manner unless, with the Great Seal, he accepts a peerage. But he may not have accumu

CHAP. lated a fortune such as will alone suffice to support a

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peerage: his peerage is permanent; and his tenure of
the Great Seal is precarious. In a few weeks he may
be dismissed from office, and may find that he has lost
a lucrative profession, that he has got nothing but a
costly dignity, that he has been transformed from a
prosperous barrister into a mendicant lord. Such a
risk no wise man will run. If, therefore, the state is to
be well served in the highest civil post, it is absolutely
necessary that a provision should be made for retired
Chancellors. The Sovereign is now empowered by Act
of Parliament to make such a provision out of the
public revenue. In old times such a provision was or
dinarily made out of the hereditary domain of the
Crown. What had been bestowed on Somers appears
to have amounted, after all deductions, to a net income
of about sixteen hundred a year, a sum which will
hardly shock us who have seen at one time five retired
Chancellors enjoying pensions of five thousand a year
each. For the crime, however, of accepting this grant
the leaders of the opposition hoped that they should be
able to punish Somers with disgrace and ruin. One
difficulty stood in the way. All that he had received
was but a pittance when compared with the wealth with
which some of his persecutors had been loaded by the
last two kings of the House of Stuart. It was not easy
to pass any censure on him which should not imply a
still more severe censure on two generations of Gran-
villes, on two generations of Hydes, and on two gene-
rations of Finches. At last some ingenious Tory
thought of a device by which it might be possible to
strike the enemy without wounding friends. The
grants
of Charles and James had been made in time of peace;
and William's grant to Somers had been made in time
of war.
Malice eagerly caught at this childish dis-

tinction.

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1700.

It was moved that any minister who had CHAP. been concerned in passing a grant for his own benefit while the nation was under the heavy taxes of the late war had violated his trust; as if the expenditure which is necessary to secure to the country a good administration of justice ought to be suspended by war; or as if it were not criminal in a government to squander the resources of the state in time of peace. The motion was made by James Brydges, eldest son of the Lord Chandos, the James Brydges who afterwards became Duke of Chandos, who raised a gigantic fortune out of war taxes, to squander it in comfortless and tasteless ostentation, and who is still remembered as the Timon of Pope's keen and brilliant satire. It was remarked as extraordinary that Brydges brought forward and defended his motion merely as the assertion of an abstract truth, and avoided all mention of the Chancellor. It seemed still more extraordinary that Howe, whose whole eloquence consisted in cutting personalities, named nobody on this occasion, and contented himself with declaiming in general terms against corruption and profusion. It was plain that the enemies of Somers were at once urged forward by hatred and kept back by fear. They knew that they could not carry a resolution directly condemning him. They, therefore, cunningly brought forward a mere speculative proposition which many members might be willing to affirm without scrutinising it severely. But, as soon as the major premise had been admitted, the minor would be without difficulty established; and it would be impossible to avoid coming to the conclusion that Somers had violated his trust. Such tactics, however, have very seldom succeeded in English parliaments; for a little good sense and a little straightforwardness are quite sufficient to confound them. A sturdy Whig member, Sir Rowland

XXV.

CHAP. Gwyn, disconcerted the whole scheme of operations. "Why this reserve?" he said, "Everybody knows your 1700. meaning. Everybody sees that you have not the courage to name the great man whom you are trying to destroy." "That is false,” cried Brydges: and a stormy altercation followed. It soon appeared that innocence would again triumph. The two parties seemed to have exchanged characters for one day. The friends of the government, who in the Parliament were generally humble and timorous, took a high tone, and spoke as it becomes men to speak who are defending persecuted genius and virtue. The malecontents, generally so insolent and turbulent, seemed to be completely cowed. They abased themselves so low as to protest, what no human being could believe, that they had no intention of attacking the Chancellor, and had framed their resolution without any view to him. Howe, from whose lips scarcely anything ever dropped but gall and poison, went so far as to say: "My Lord Somers is a man of eminent merit, of merit so eminent that, if he had made a slip, we might well overlook it." At a late hour the question was put; and the motion was rejected by a majority of fifty in a house of four hundred and nineteen members. It was long since there had been so large an attendance at a division.

แ

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

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Question of

dispute be

Houses.

The question of the Irish forfeitures had been raised; CHAP. and about that question the minds of men, both within and without the walls of Parliament, were in a strangely excitable state. Candid and intelligent men, whatever the Irish veneration they may feel for the memory of William, forfeitures; must find it impossible to deny that, in his eagerness tween the to enrich and aggrandise his personal friends, he too often forgot what was due to his own reputation and to the public interest. It is true that in giving away the old domains of the Crown he did only what he had a right to do, and what all his predecessors had done; nor could the most factious opposition insist on resuming his grants of those domains without resuming at the same time the grants of his uncles. But between those domains and the estates recently forfeited in Ireland there was a distinction, which would not indeed have been recognised by the judges, but which to a popular assembly might well seem to be of grave importance. In the year 1690 a Bill had been brought in for applying the Irish forfeitures to the public service. That Bill passed the Commons, and would probably, with large amendments, have passed the Lords, had not the King, who was under the necessity of attending the Congress at the Hague, put an end to the session. In bidding the Houses farewell on that occasion, he assured them that he should not dispose of the property about which they had been deliberating, till they should have had another opportunity of settling that matter. He had, as he thought, strictly kept his word; for he had not disposed of this property till the Houses had repeatedly met and separated without presenting to him any bill on the subject. They had had the opportunity which he had assured them that they should have. They had had more than one such opportunity. The pledge which he had given had therefore been amply