HISTORY OF GREAT BRITAIN DURING THE REIGN OF QUEEN ANNE. CHAPTER I. MEANWHILE the business of the Lower House had proceeded with a tranquillity in striking contrast to the virulent displays of party feeling which had been exhibited by the Lords. The jealous spirit which prompted Somers and Wharton to attack their best friends, the Ministers, was but little shared by their followers in the Commons. Before the end of the year all the more important resolutions about supplies had been passed; and Godolphin and Marlborough had every reason to be satisfied with the liberality of the House. The sums granted for carrying on the war amounted to nearly six millions sterling. That the Tories, as a body, disapproved of the enormous expenditure upon land forces, there seems good grounds for believing, and in the present House they were at least as numerous as the Whigs; but they were content to keep their objections to themselves, and voted the public money as cheerfully as their rivals. The explanation of this supineness may be that the Tories of lower rank were men of less independent ideas than the chiefs of the party. Rochester, Nottingham, Haversham, were free and outspoken in their opposition, without a care as to what were the personal feelings or opinions of the sovereign. Their followers seem to have adopted the personal inclinations of the sovereign, whenever they could be ascertained, as the guide of their political conduct; and nothing had as yet transpired to breed a doubt as to the sincerity of Anne's periodical recommendations to prosecute the war with vigour. Upon another matter the Commons were eager to please her. It was easy to surmise that an inquiry into the abuses of an establishment of which Prince George was the head, would be distasteful. The memorial of the merchants met in consequence with but little favour in the Lower House. The witnesses for the petitioners were constantly made to feel that those before whom they were urging their case were less desirous to get at the truth than to ensnare them into contradictions. The inquiry would, in all probability, have been abandoned, had it been safe to adopt this course. But the mismanagement of the Council had excited indignation too deep and universal to be disregarded. A compromise was therefore arrived at by which some degree of justice should be measured out to the petitioners, without offending the Queen. No censure was passed upon the Council; but an Act was passed to render it in future obligatory upon those who had the direction of the navy to keep forty-three ships of war continually cruising about the coasts of Great Britain.* Much time was spent in endeavouring to adjust certain difficulties of a temporary nature which arose out of the relations of this country with Scotland. The Union had been welcomed by all classes of the English with a satisfaction in striking contrast to the sullen rage with which the treaty was regarded in that part of her Majesty's dominions which seemed most likely to be the greatest gainer by it. Queensberry had been glad, as soon as he was able to prorogue the Scottish Parliament, to quit a country where he could not show himself without being hooted and pelted, and to hasten up to London. The moment he crossed the border, the manners of the populace towards him underwent an agreeable change. All along the northern road the people turned out to greet the Minister, whose cool intrepidity and address had succeeded, in the face of the most determined spite and fury, in carrying through a measure eminently calculated to promote the welfare and pros * Parliamentary History; Burnet; Boyer; Lettres Historiques. perity of two nations. The magistrates were waiting at the gate of every large town to conduct the distinguished guest to his lodgings. A circumstance still more demonstrative of the turn English feeling had taken was the marks of friendliness which persons of all ranks delighted in paying to the numerous Scotchmen who accompanied Queensberry. For the first time since the two kingdoms had been brought under one Crown, the natives of the northern part of the island found that a Scottish face and a Scottish accent could be seen and heard without provoking insult. The Commissioner's entry into London resembled a triumphal procession. The road from Barnet to Highgate was covered by the coaches of the nobility and by gentlemen on horseback. All the Whig peers, all the members of the House of Commons who had voted for the Union, assembled to do honour to the man who had brought the project safely through so many dangers. Since the Act of ratification passed, Anne had been overwhelmed with addresses from almost every corporation in England, complimenting her in loyal strains upon having performed a work so difficult that it had been the glory of her predecessors merely to attempt it.† It was ordered by proclamation that the 1st of May, the day from which the Union was to commence, should be observed as a day of public thanksgiving, and throughout England the rejoicings were in full accordance with this order. Once more the Londoners had an opportunity of witnessing the pageant, now grown familiar, of the sovereign repairing in state to St. Paul's, to return thanks for the signal mercies of Providence. The text from which the Bishop of Oxford preached was the very appropriate one from the Psalms, " Behold, how good and pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!" In Scotland, on the other hand, the day from which it was destined that the country should enter on a career of prosperity almost as brilliant as that predicted for it by such seers as Law and Chamberlayne, was, by the care of the clergy, kept as a day of national mourning with the object of propitiating an incensed God, who must surely have inflicted the • Boyer. + London Gazette; Lettres Historiques; Boyer. The University of Oxford distinguished itself by its silence on this occasion. Union upon the Scottish people as a just punishment for their sins.* The difficulties which now engaged the attention of both Houses, were brought on by the eagerness of sharp traders, not only in England and Scotland, but even upon the Continent, to take advantage of an unguarded point in the treaty of Union. It had been agreed that, until the 1st of May, each kingdom should retain its existing scale of customs; but that, after that period the English scale should be extended to Scotland. The existing Scottish customs on wine, spirits and other foreign productions were trifling in comparison with the heavy tax demanded in England. An importer, therefore, of commodities, ultimately designed for the English market, if he wished to obtain a cargo at the lighter rates, had but to direct its shipment to a Scottish instead of to an English port. The cargo would be landed, after payment of the Scottish customs, might remain in Scotland until the Union, and might then be brought free into England. There was, moreover, another way in which money could be made with little difficulty and no risk whatever. Under certain statutes any person who sent tobacco, pepper, and some other descriptions of colonial produce into Scotland, was allowed a drawback of sixpence in the pound upon the duties he had paid when they were landed in England. It was an easy thing for a merchant, who had on hand a stock of such commodities, to pass them into Scotland before the 1st of May, to pocket the drawback, and then to bring them back into England as soon as the Union had commenced. Such being the state of the case, it is not strange that, from the moment the news was received that the Union had passed the Scottish Parliament, the smaller fry of traders should have been everywhere on the alert. An amount of business quite unprecedented was during three months transacted in the seaports of Scotland. Ships were arriving every day from France with cargoes of wines and silks; coffee and spices, luxuries which never could have been intended for the markets of an . impoverished people, were set on shore from Holland; while tobacco, in most unusual quantities, kept the officers of the custom-houses on the border continually employed in refunding • Boyer. |