1689.] ABUSES IN GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS. 101 "the foreigners were warmer clothed than our own men, in great coats over their close coats; of which the English had none." Lastly, the troops "were not well furnished with shoes: some came late ;-they were not consigned to anybody." The Commons naturally became furious at these recitals of neglect and peculation. Shales, the Commissary of the Stores, was the chief mark for their indignation. "If ever you have the war carried on with honour and success," said Colonel Birch, "you must hang this man." The House wanted to criminate higher men than the Commissary of the Stores, whose experience in what was useful as well as what was dishonest had been acquired in the army of James. The Commons resolved upon an indecent address to the king, to ask him to inform them who had recommended Shales. William consulted his higher sense of honour by refusing to be an informer. A wiser course was adopted than hanging Shales. A Commission was sent to Ireland, to remedy these abuses. The state of the navy was not more satisfactory than that of the army. The indefatigable Secretary of the navy, Pepys, though now out of office, had his keen eye upon the abuses of that department of which he had the most intimate knowledge of any man. At a dinner at which Evelyn was present, Pepys "deplored the sad condition of our navy, as governed by inexperienced men since the Revolution." He was for building frigates. He desired "they would leave off building such high decks, which were for nothing but to gratify gentlemencommanders, who must have all their effeminate accommodations, and for pomp. It would be the ruin of our fleets, if such persons were continued in command, they neither having experience, nor being capable of learning, because they would not submit to the fatigue and inconvenience which those who were bred seamen would undergo.+" The Victualling of the Fleet was as notoriously infamous as the Commissariat of the Army. The Victuallers were ordered by the House into custody; but the affair seems to have evaporated in talk. "I believe the fleet is as ill victualled as if our enemies had done it," was the sense of the House, thus expressed by Mr. Hampden. "You may talk of raising money, but not of raising seamen, said another member. The seamen would not serve to be starved and poisoned. With a Council in which there was far more hatred than concord; with a Parliament in which the evils of Party greatly outweighed its advantages; with a Church equally divided in opinion-" of whom the moderate and sober part were for a speedy reformation of divers things, which it was thought might be made in our Liturgy, for the inviting of Dissenters, others more stiff and rigid, for no condescension at all;" with the dry rot of corruption in all the administrative departments of government, we can scarcely be surprised that William panted for another field of action, in which his own energies could be fairly put forth. "The going to a campaign," he said, "was naturally no unpleasant thing to him; he was sure he understood that better than how to govern England."§ And so the sickly man advised with sir Christopher Wren about building for him a house of wood, that should be carried with the army like a showman's booth; and though his constant cough had driven him from Whitehall to Kensington for purer S Burnet, vol. iv. p. 82. 102 OPENING OF THE NEW PARLIAMENT. [1690. air, he resolved to take no heed of those who manifested a real or pretended concern for his health. He would see with his own eyes if affairs in Ireland were irretrievable... Upon the king himself almost wholly devolved the duty of making a fit preparation for his campaign, by searching into the abuses of the military departments, and of remedying evils of such disastrous magnitude. He wrote to his friend Portland, after the prorogation of Parliament, "All will depend upon success in Ireland. I must apply myself entirely to regulate everything in the best way I can. There is no small work on my hands, being so badly assisted as I am." * At the opening of Parliament on the 20th of March, 1690, some changes had been made in the ministry, and in the lesser offices, "so that," says Burnet, "Whig and Tory were now pretty equally mixed; and both studied 'to court the king by making advances upon the money-bills." The king had a tolerably equal contempt for both factions; and his sense of the baseness of some public men is recorded by the historian of his own time. Sir John Trevor, who had been Master of the Rolls under James, "being a Tory in principle, undertook to manage that party, provided he was furnished with such sums of money as might purchase some votes; and by him began the practice of buying off men, in which hitherto the king had kept to stricter rules. I took the liberty once to complain to the king of this method. He said he hated it as much as any man could do; but he saw it was not possible, considering the corruption of the age, to avoid it, unless he would endanger the whole." The corruption of the age lasted through three generations. It had "lighter wings to fly" when paper-credit came. It grew more rampant under the second George than under the first. It flourished through half the reign of the third George. It would have lasted to our time if the people had not become fully acquainted with the proceedings of their representatives. It could not live in the light of public opinion, shed upon the nation by the free publication of the debates. We can scarcely blame king William for using the ready means of self-defence, whilst his enemies freely employed the subtlest arts for his overthrow. It was difficult for him to trust any one. His favourite minister was the Whig, Shrewsbury. Read his correspondence, and he appears the fairest of advisers. He writes to the king, "I wish you could have established your party upon the moderate and honest principled men of both factions; but as there be a necessity of declaring, I shall make no difficulty to own my sense, that your majesty and the government are much more safe depending upon the Whigs, whose designs, if any against, are improbable and remoter than with the Tories, who, many of them, questionless, would bring in king James; and the best of them, I doubt, have a regency still in their heads; for though I agree them to be the properest instruments to carry the prerogative high, yet I fear they have so unreasonable a veneration for monarchy, as not altogether to approve the foundation yours is built upon." § William manifested some favour to the Tories, and Shrewsbury resigned the seals as Secretary of State. Burnet says, "he saw the Whigs, by using the king ill, were driving him into the Tories; and he thought these Note in Macaulay, vol. iii. p. 537. + Ibid. p. 74. Burnet, vol. iv. p. 71. § Coxe, "Shrewsbury Correspondence," p. 15. 1690.] JEALOUSY IN SETTLING THE REVENUE. 103 would serve the king with more zeal if he left his post." William, continues Burnet, "loved the earl of Shrewsbury." The man represented as so sullen and so cold, pressed his favourite Secretary, again and again, to hold the seals. Shrewsbury steadily refused; and his "agitation of mind threw him into a fever that nearly cost him his life." It has been proved, beyond doubt, that this friend of William resigned the seals by the command of king James, to whom he had tendered his services. James, in a paper submitted to the French government in 1692, said, "There is the earl of Shrewsbury, who, being Secretary of State to the prince of Orange, surrendered his charge by my order." Shrewsbury, from weakness of character, was faithless to the master whom he admired; and his alienation was very temporary. Others were treacherous through the baseness of their natures; and, in betraying the prince whom they had contributed to raise, did not hesitate to betray their country. Whatever may have been the amount of individual baseness, and of party violence, amongst the legislators of this period-however unpleasant their jealousy of arbitrary power might have been to a king who truly desired to rule over a free people-the spirit of the Long Parliament had not departed from the second Parliament of the Revolution. However desirous Whig or Tory might be to gain favour with the sovereign, they agreed in refusing to grant the duties of Customs to the crown for life, as they had been granted to William's two predecessors. "Why should they entertain a jealousy of me," the king said to Burnet, "who came to save their religion and liberties, when they trusted king James so much, who intended to destroy them ? " Wisely and boldly did the bishop answer him: King James would never have run into those counsels that ruined him, if he had obtained the revenue only for a short term." On a previous occasion, when this question of the settlement of the revenue was raised, William said to Burnet, "he understood the good of a commonwealth as well as of a kingly government; and it was not easy to determine which was best: but he was sure the worst of all governments was that of a king without treasure and without power." ‡ We may well believe that William had no desire to use treasure or power for despotic purposes; and yet we may rejoice that the Commons of England stoutly resolved to prevent the possibility of the Crown becoming dangerous by being too independent. For out of the practical working of the Constitution, through many a struggle, it has come to be understood that the sovereign can have no interest separate from the public advantage; and that the representatives of the people would grossly err in any attempt to lower the personal dignity of the sovereign. The real relations of the executive and the legislative power have practically changed, without any change in the constitutional theory of their rights. Under the well understood principle that the advisers of the Crown cannot exist with a minority in the House of Commons, the dignity of the Crown is in no degree lessened by any opposition which may enforce a change of the servants of the Crown. It was otherwise when the sovereign was in a considerable degree his own minister; and when his servants did not act under a joint * Macaulay, vol. iii. p. 596, note. + "Own Time," vol. iv. p. 75. + Ibid. p. 60 104 ACT OF RECOGNITION.-ACT OF GRACE. [169). responsibility. William drew a distinction between the good of a commonwealth and the good of a kingly government. Practically, the distinction has almost ceased to exist in our times. But we venture to think that our constitutional historian scarcely makes allowance for the remaining influence of the traditions of the monarchy when he says of William, "he could expect to reign on no other terms than as the chief of a commonwealth."* The Statute-book contains an Act of a dozen lines, which passed with little effectual opposition, although well calculated to produce a trial of strength between the two great parties. It is the Act whereby the Lords and Commons recognise and acknowledge that William and Mary "were, are, and of right ought to be, by the laws of this realm, our sovereign liege lord and lady, king and queen." This Act also declares that all the Acts made in the Parliament assembled on the 13th of February, 1688 [1689], are laws and statutes of this kingdom. Upon this point the Lords debated long and warmly. In the Commons, the question was settled in two days; for Somers put the House in a dilemma. This parliament, he said, depends entirely on the foundation of the last. "If that were not a legal parliament, they who were then met, and had taken the oaths enacted by that parliament, were guilty of high treason: the laws repealed by it were still in force, so they must presently return to king James." The Whigs had their triumph in so easily carrying this Bill. It was a triumph of common sense. They were justly defeated upon an attempt to impose a new test upon the people. A Bill was introduced in the House of Commons, requiring every person holding office to abjure king James. To make the proposed measure still more odious, any justice of the peace was empowered to tender the oath of abjuration at his pleasure, and to commit to prison whoever refused to take it. The Bill was rejected by a small majority. The measure, with some modifications, was then tried anew in the House of Peers. "I have taken so many oaths in my time," said lord Wharton, who looked back to the days of the Long Parliament, "that I hope God will forgive me if I have not kept them all. I should be very unwilling to charge myself with more at the end of my days." The old Puritan interpreted the real feelings of every honest man about the multiplication of political oaths. It was well known that William had no desire for such a measure as this oath; and thus, after many angry words and insinuations, the abjuration of king James was abandoned. King William strengthened his throne far more effectually than by a test arbitrarily administered, by authorising Carmarthen to present to the Peers an Act of Grace for political offences. Bitter memories of the past had prevented the passing of Indemnity Bills. William resolved that the cause of the Revolution should not be disgraced with forfeitures and bloodshed, as was that of the Restoration. The exceptions to the Act of Grace were the surviving regicides-who had been excepted under the Act of Charles II. These were far out of the reach of such a visitation for the crime of forty years standing. Thirty of the evil instruments of James were excepted by name; and, last of all, "George, lord Jeffreys, deceased.” Hallam, "Constitutional History," chap. xv. 2 Gul. & Mar. c. 1. Burnet, vol. iv. p. 73 1690.] WILLIAM GOES TO IRELAND. 105 This " Act for the King and Queen's most gracious general and free pardon," was passed by both Houses without debate. It was one of the most effectual means to prevent a recurrence of "the long and great troubles and discords that have been within this kingdom." Yet the clemency of William was sneered at by those who received its benefits, and condemned by those who were baulked of their revenges. The king closed the Session on the 20th of May; and an Act having been passed to give the queen power to administer the government in his absence, he prepared to take the conduct of the war in Ireland. William left London on the 4th of June. He had selected nine privycouncillors to advise the queen in the conduct of affairs. It was difficult wholly to rely upon the honesty of this Council, in which there was a mixture of the leading men of the opposite factions. It was a time of great anxiety. Plots were in course of detection; invasion might be expected. The king determined to go where the necessity was most pressing. "He seemed to have a great weight upon his spirits, from the state of his affairs, which was then very cloudy. He said, for his own part, he trusted in God, and would either go through with his business, or perish in it. He only pitied the poor queen, repeating that twice with great tenderness; and wished that those who loved him would wait much on her, and assist her." * William had done everything in his power to ensure success in his great enterprise. Schomberg had been largely reinforced. His army had grievously suffered from sickness and neglect. The pestilence which had thinned its ranks was deemed by the court of king James, "a visible mark of God's judgment upon that wicked and rebellious generation." + William, " a fatalist in religion" according to Smollett, had a rational confidence that God might manifest His judgments through the industry and zeal of His creatures; and he had set about to repair all that had been amiss in the previous organisation of the Irish army. He had now in Ireland thirty-six thousand troops, well fed, properly clothed, not wanting in the munitions of war, prepared by his own vigilant superintendence to take the field with those advantages without which the skill of a general, and the bravery of his men, may be thrown away. The English knew how carefully it had been endeavoured to repair the evils of the last autumn and winter. Still the people were anxious and doubtful. There is a curious instance of the uncertainty attached by public opinion to the determination of the king to attempt the reduction of Ireland,-an instance also of the gambling spirit of that age. Rowland Davies, Dean of Ross, who had been ejected from his benefices, is going with the army of William as a Chaplain. He and four of his friends desire to raise money; and they borrow four hundred pounds under a bond, signed and sealed at Jonathan's Coffeehouse, the great resort of stock-jobbers, "for the payment of six hundred pounds within a month after king William and queen Mary are in actual possession of Dublin and Cork." Of the condition and prospects of king James, a lamentable account is given by his official biographer. The duke of Berwick had been beaten at Belturbet; Charlemont had surrendered; but these misfortunes "were nothing in comparison of the disappointments the king met Burnet, vol. iv. p. 82. VOL. V.-132. +"Life of James II." vol. ii. p. 385. "Journal" of Rowland Davies, p. 101. |