CHAP.
XXIV.

1698.

ment that he is entrusted with the administration.
Office of itself does much to equalise politicians. It by
no means brings. all characters to a level; but it does
bring high characters down and low characters up to-
wards a common standard. In power the most patriotic
and most enlightened statesman finds that he must
disappoint the expectations of his admirers; that, if he
effects any good, he must effect it by compromise; that
he must relinquish many favourite schemes; that he
must bear with many abuses. On the other hand,
power turns the very vices of the most worthless adven-
turer, his selfish ambition, his sordid cupidity, his
vanity, his cowardice, into a sort of public spirit. The
most greedy and cruel wrecker that ever put up false
lights to lure mariners to their destruction will do his
best to preserve a ship from going to pieces on the
rocks, if he is taken on board of her and made pilot:
and so the most profligate Chancellor of the Exchequer
must wish that trade may flourish, that the revenue
may come in well, and that he may be able to take
taxes off instead of putting them on.
The most pro-
fligate First Lord of the Admiralty must wish to re-
ceive news of a victory like that of the Nile rather than
of a mutiny like that at the Nore. There is, therefore,
a limit to the evil which is to be apprehended from the
worst ministry that is likely ever to exist in England.
But to the evil of having no ministry, to the evil of
having a House of Commons permanently at war with
the executive government, there is absolutely no limit.
This was signally proved in 1699 and 1700. Had the
statesmen of the Junto, as soon as they had ascertained
the temper of the new Parliament, acted as statesmen
similarly situated would now act, great calamities would
have been averted. The chiefs of the opposition must
then have been called upon to form a government. With

the
power of the late ministry the responsibility of the
late ministry would have been transferred to them; and
that responsibility would at once have sobered them.
The orator whose eloquence had been the delight of
the Country party would have had to exert his ingenuity
on a new set of topics. There would have been an end
of his invectives against courtiers and placemen, of
piteous moanings about the intolerable weight of the
land tax, of his boasts that the militia of Kent and
Sussex, without the help of a single regular soldier,
would turn the conquerors of Landen to the right about.
He would himself have been a courtier: he would him-
self have been a placeman: he would have known that
he should be held accountable for all the misery which
a national bankruptcy or a French invasion might pro-
duce: and, instead of labouring to get up a clamour for
the reduction of imposts, and the disbanding of regi-
ments, he would have employed all his talents and in-
fluence for the purpose of obtaining from Parliament
the means of supporting public credit, and of putting
the country in a good posture of defence. Meanwhile
the statesmen who were out might have watched the
new men, might have checked them when they were
wrong, might have come to their help when, by doing
right, they had raised a mutiny in their own absurd
and perverse faction. In this way Montague and
Somers might, in opposition, have been really far more
powerful than they could be while they filled the highest
posts in the executive government and were outvoted
every day in the House of Commons. Their retirement
would have mitigated envy; their abilities would have
been missed and regretted; their unpopularity would
have passed to their successors, who would have grie-
vously disappointed vulgar expectation, and would have
been under the necessity of eating their own words

CHAP.

XXIV.

1698.

XXIV.

1698.

CHAP. in every debate. The league between the Tories and the discontented Whigs would have been dissolved; and it is probable that, in a session or two, the public voice would have loudly demanded the recall of the best Keeper of the Great Seal, and of the best First Lord of the Treasury, the oldest man living could remember.

But these lessons, the fruits of the experience of five generations, had never been taught to the politicians of the seventeenth century. Notions imbibed before the Revolution still kept possession of the public mind. Not even Somers, the foremost man of his age in civil wisdom, thought it strange that one party should be in possession of the executive administration while the other predominated in the legislature. Thus, at the beginning of 1699, there ceased to be a ministry; and years elapsed before the servants of the Crown and the representatives of the people were again joined in an union as harmonious as that which had existed from the general election of 1695 to the general election of 1698. The anarchy lasted, with some short intervals of composedness, till the general election of 1705. No portion of our parliamentary history is less pleasing or more instructive. It will be seen that the House of Commons became altogether ungovernable, abused its gigantic power with unjust and insolent caprice, browbeat King and Lords, the Courts of Common Law and the Constituent bodies, violated rights guaranteed by the Great Charter, and at length made itself so odious that the people were glad to take shelter, under the protection of the throne and of the hereditary aristocracy, from the tyranny of the assembly which had been chosen by themselves.

The evil which had brought on so much discredit on representative institutions was of gradual though of

CHAP.

XXIV.

rapid growth, and did not, in the first session of the Parliament of 1698, take the most alarming form. The lead of the House of Commons had, however, entirely 1698. passed away from Montague, who was still the first minister of finance, to the chiefs of the turbulent and discordant opposition. Among those chiefs the most powerful was Harley, who, while almost constantly acting with the Tories and High Churchmen, continued to use, on occasions cunningly selected, the political and religious phraseology which he had learned in his youth among the Roundheads. He thus, while high in the esteem of the country gentlemen and even of his hereditary enemies, the country parsons, retained a portion of the favour with which he and his ancestors had long been regarded by Whigs and Nonconformists. He was therefore peculiarly well qualified to act as mediator between the two sections of the majority.

disbanding

The bill for the disbanding of the army passed with Bill for little opposition through the House till it reached the the army. last stage. Then, at length, a stand was made, but in vain. Vernon wrote the next day to Shrewsbury that the ministers had had a division which they need not be ashamed of; for that they had mustered a hundred and fifty four against two hundred and twenty one. Such a division would not be considered as matter of boast by a Secretary of State in our time.

The bill went up to the House of Lords, where it was regarded with no great favour. But this was not one of those occasions on which the House of Lords can act effectually as a check on the popular branch of the legislature. No good would have been done by rejecting the bill for disbanding the troops, unless the King could have been furnished with the means of maintaining them; and with such means he could be furnished only by the House of Commons. Somers, in a speech of

XXIV.

1698.

CHAP. which both the eloquence and the wisdom were greatly admired, placed the question in the true light. He set forth strongly the dangers to which the jealousy and parsimony of the representatives of the people exposed the country. But anything, he said, was better than that the King and the Peers should engage, without hope of success, in an acrimonious conflict with the Commons. Tankerville spoke with his usual ability on the same side. Nottingham and the other Tories remained silent; and the bill passed without a division.

By this time the King's strong understanding had mastered, as it seldom failed, after a struggle, to master, his rebellious temper. He had made up his mind to fulfil his great mission to the end. It was with no common pain that he admitted it to be necessary for him to give his assent to the disbanding bill. But in this case it would have been worse than useless to resort to his veto. For, if the bill had been rejected, the army would have been dissolved, and he would have been left without even the seven thousand men whom the Commons were willing to allow him. He determined, therefore, to comply with the wish of his people, and at the same time to give them a weighty and serious but friendly admonition. Never had he succeeded better in suppressing the outward signs of his emotions than on the day on which he carried this determination into effect. The public mind was much excited. The crowds in the parks and streets were immense. The Jacobites came in troops, hoping to enjoy the pleasure of reading shame and rage on the face of him whom they most hated and dreaded. The hope was disappointed. The Prussian Minister, a discerning observer, free from the passions which distracted English society, accompanied the royal procession from St. James's Palace to Westminster Hall. He well knew how bitterly William had been