Boufflers now demanded forty-eight hours to bury his dead, which was granted him; and, in truth, he had need of it, for his trenches were choked with the fallen, and his force was already reduced to about one-third its original strength. When he entered the town, the garrison mustered fifteen thousand men; now it was only about five thousand. When the dead were buried, Boufflers offered to surrender in ten days if he were not relieved before; but the Allies would not listen to anything but an immediate surrender, and he complied, on condition that the garrison should be allowed to march out with the honours of war, but leaving the artillery and stores to the conquerors. The Allies announced the surrender to Villeroi by the discharge of their artillery, and by a running fire of all their musketry three times repeated. He knew the meaning of it, and retreated towards Mons.
Accordingly, on the 26th of August, Boufflers marched forth with drums beating and flags flying, William, the Elector of Bavaria, and all the officers being assembled to witness this gratifying spectacle. Boufflers lowered his sword in token of submission to the Elector of Bavaria, and the troops marched on. Before Boufflers, however, passed out of the trenches, Dykvelt informed him that he was the prisoner of the King of England. Boufflers was highly enraged at what he regarded as an act of gross perfidy; but he was informed that he was detained in consequence of his sovereign having broken the cartel, and refused to deliver up the captured garrisons of Dixmude and Deynze, and that he was held as a hostage for the faithful discharge of the articles agreed upon. There was no denying the perfidy of his king, which had caused this incident, and Boufflers sent an express to inform Louis, who immediately returned a promise that the garrisons should be sent back, and Boufflers was forthwith released. On his return to Fontainebleau, he was received by Louis as if he were a conqueror, and created a duke, with a grant of money to enable him to support his new rank. The capture of Namur was the great event of the campaign, and spread exultation throughout all the countries of the Allies. It seemed to wipe out the successive defeats of Mons, Fleurus, Landen, and the former loss of Namur; it showed the Allies at length victorious, and Louis discomfited and on the wane.
William arrived in London from Holland on the 20th of October. He was received with acclamations, illuminations, and ringing of bells. His progress through London and to Kensington was like that of a conqueror. As if he were destined to take no rest, that very day the Council was assembled, and it was concluded to dissolve Parliament. William, however, had been enjoying relaxation at Loo, and no doubt this question of the dissolution of Parliament had been discussed and arranged prior to his arrival. It was deemed wiser to take the nation at this moment when it was in a good humour, than to defer the dissolution till the 25th of next March, when, by the Triennial Act, Parliament must expire, and the public mind might be different. Another motive was said to operate with William—the impeachment of Leeds. William was always very reluctant to bring great delinquents to justice; but in the case of Leeds there were causes for this reluctance which we must respect. It was to Leeds, when he was yet Lord Danby, that William owed his match with Mary, and Mary had ever had the greatest regard for Leeds, who, on his part, had served her assiduously during the king's absences. A new Parliament would not be likely to take up again his impeachment, and, accordingly, the old one was dissolved, and the new one called for the 22nd of November.
This announcement threw into full activity the newly acquired liberty of the press. Since the Revolution, despite the restrictions of the censorship, the press had been extremely busy, and when it was obliged to work in secret, it had been all the more venomous. The Jacobites had employed it to spread sedition and lies, but it now came forward in favour of the king and the Constitution. There were tracts on the election, and besides the old news-letters, there were regular newspapers which advocated their own views, but with a decency and moderation which surprised all parties. Amongst the pamphlets was one—the last literary effort of Halifax—called, "Some Cautions Offered to those who are to Choose Members," which gave some good advice, especially not to choose lawyers, because they were in the habit of pleading on both sides, and were sure to look after their own advancement more than that of the country; nor officers in the army, who, the writer thought, were out of place in Parliament, attempting to do what no man ever can do—serve two masters. He also warned them against pensioners and dependents on the Crown, who do not make good representatives of the people; and against those who, for reasons best known to themselves, had opposed the Triennial Bill. Finally, he bade them seek honest Englishmen, but warned them that they were not very easy to find. The constituencies followed his advice, and the Whig party were victorious. Some of the members of the late Parliament most opposed to Government were not returned—as Sir John Knight, for Bristol, who had been so furious against William's favourite Dutchmen, and Seymour, for Exeter. Neither could John Hampden, who had saved his neck in the Rye House Plot by the loss of character, and had since shown as much insolence in Parliament as he did meanness then, get returned, and in his mortification he committed suicide—to such degeneracy had fallen the grandson of the illustrious patriot.
When Parliament met on the 22nd, they chose Paul Foley as Speaker of the Commons. The king, in his speech, again demanded large supplies for the continuance of the war, and informed them that the funds granted last Session had fallen far short of the expenses. This was by no means agreeable news, and William well knew that there was a large party in the country which complained loudly of this system of foreign warfare, which, like a bottomless gulf, swallowed up all the resources of the country. But he took care to flatter the national vanity by praising the valour of the English soldiers, and by expressing his confidence that England would never consent to the French king making himself master of Europe, and that nothing but the power and bravery of England could prevent it. He complained that his Civil List was fixed so low that he could not live upon it; and, passing from his own affairs, he recommended to their consideration the deplorable state of the coinage.
When the address came to be considered, some strong speeches were delivered against the enormous demands made by the king for this continual war. Musgrave and Howe represented the nation as bleeding to death under this Dutch vampyrism; but William had touched the right chord in the national character, and an address of thanks and zealously promised support was carried. The Commons likewise voted again above five millions for the services of the year.
The first business which occupied the attention of the Commons was the state of the currency. The old silver coin had become so clipped and sweated that, on an average, it now possessed little more than half its proper weight. The consequence was, all transactions in the country were in a state of confusion, and the most oppressive frauds were practised, especially on the poor. They were paid in this nominal coin, but, when they offered it for the purchase of the articles of life, the vendors refused to receive it at more than its intrinsic worth, by which means the price of everything was nearly doubled. The old hammered money was easily imitated, and whilst the clippers went on diminishing the weight of the coin, the forgers were as busy producing spurious imitations of it. The most terrible examples were made of such coiners, till juries refused to send such numbers of them to be hanged. All money-dealers received the coin only at its value by weight, but paid it out by tale, and thus made enormous fortunes. The house of Duncombe, Earls of Feversham, is said to have thus raised itself from insignificance to a coronet.
The House of Lords, therefore, took up the subject of recoinage, and invited the Commons to unite with them in it; but the Commons, considering it a matter more properly belonging to them, went into a committee of the whole House on the subject. The debate continued for several days. There was a strong party opposed to recoinage, on the ground that, if the silver coin were called in, there would be no money to pay the soldiers abroad, nor for merchants to take up their bills of exchange with; that the consequence would be universal stagnation and misery. But at this rate the old coin must have stayed out so long that literally there would none of it be left. It was resolved to have a new coinage; but Lowndes, the Secretary of the Treasury, proposed that the standard should be lowered—in fact, that a nominal instead of a real value should be impressed upon it; that ninepence should be called a shilling—as if thereby any greater value could be given to it. This mode of raising the price of everything by lowering the value of the coinage, which would now be laughed at by the merest tyro in political economy, had then its partisans; but John Locke exploded the whole delusion in a little tract written at the desire of Somers, which showed all the inconveniences and injustice which would flow from a lowered standard. There were, however, other difficulties to be met, and these were, whether the Government or the public should bear the loss of the clipped coin, and by what means it could best be called in. If the Government bore the loss, and ordered all persons to bring in their clipped coin and receive full-weighted coin instead, that would be a direct premium on clipping, and all the coin would be clipped before it was paid in. Somers proposed as a remedy to proclaim that all the hammered coins should henceforth be taken by Government only by weight; but that, after having been weighed within three days, every one should take it back with a note authorising him to receive the difference between the deficiency of weight and the full weight at a future time. By this means Government would have suffered the loss.
Locke, on the contrary, proposed that Government should receive all clipped coin up to a day to be announced, at full value; after that day only at its value by weight; and something of this kind was carried by Montague after a debate in the House. It was ordered that, after a certain day, no clipped money should pass except in payment of taxes, or as loans to Government. After another fixed day, no clipped money should pass in any payment whatsoever; and that, on a third day, all persons should bring in all their clipped money to be recoined, making just what it would, and after that time clipped money should not be a legal tender at any value, or be received at the Mint.
By this plan the holders of clipped money suffered part of the loss where they could not be in time; but the public eventually bore the greatest part of it, for a Bill was brought in to indemnify Government for its share of the loss, by a duty on glass windows, which was calculated to raise twelve hundred thousand pounds. This was the origin of that window-tax which under William Pitt's Government grew to such a nuisance.