[40] Chesterfield’s Letters, November 18th, 1748.
[41] Voltaire, Beuchot’s edition, tom. xxxvii. Lettre xii., p. 172.
CHAPTER II.
STATE OF PARTIES IN ACTION ON THE ACCESSION OF ANNE—HARLEY AND BOLINGBROKE AIM AT OVERTHROWING THE SWAY OF THE DUCHESS—ABIGAIL HILL BECOMES THE INSTRUMENT OF THE DUCHESS’S DOWNFALL.
The year following that in which the Duke d’Anjou succeeded to the throne of Spain saw Anne Queen of England.
On her accession Queen Anne had found three parties in action—the Tories, the Whigs, and the Jacobites. The first asserting the sovereignty of the royal prerogative; the second the extension of public liberty; the last demanding the exclusion of the Protestant George of Hanover, designated by the Commons as the Queen’s heir, and the recall of the Chevalier St. George, the Romanist son of James II., then an exile in France, where Louis XIV. had welcomed him under the title of James III.
Of these three parties, the last, who were desirous of a revolution with a change of dynasty, naturally found themselves excluded from public affairs; the Queen, facile and conciliating, divided the power of the State between the two others, and chose a ministry comprising the most eminent men among both Whigs and Tories.
Those statesmen jointly carried on the government for four years, after which the opposition of their sentiments and interests became so violent that it divided them. The Tories, representing the landed interest, which had suffered during the war, clamoured for peace with all their might; the Whigs, on the contrary, representing the monied interest, had lent their funds to the State, and desired the continuance of hostilities, as it enhanced the value of their capital. The Whigs triumphed in this first struggle. They ejected, in the first instance, three Tories from the Ministry, and afterwards obtained the dismissal of all the rest—Mansel, Harley, and Bolingbroke, and then ruled without division. They reckoned amongst their ranks the most illustrious men of the day: Marlborough, the great soldier; the skilful financier, Godolphin; the formidable speaker, Robert Walpole; the army, public opinion, parliament, and even the very heart of the Queen, through the Duchess of Marlborough, who, intoxicated with her almost unlimited sway, no longer deigned to ask, but commanded.