The Commons justly thought that the extraordinary liberality with which they had provided for the public service entitled them to demand extraordinary securities against waste and peculation. A bill was brought in empowering nine Commissioners to examine and state the public accounts. The nine were named in the bill, and were all members of the Lower House. The Lords agreed to the bill without amendments; and the King gave his assent, [798]
The debates on the Ways and Means occupied a considerable part of the Session. It was resolved that sixteen hundred and fifty thousand pounds should be raised by a direct monthly assessment on land. The excise duties on ale and beer were doubled; and the import duties on raw silk, linen, timber, glass, and some other articles, were increased, [799] Thus far there was little difference of opinion. But soon the smooth course of business was disturbed by a proposition which was much more popular than just or humane. Taxes of unprecedented severity had been imposed; and yet it might well be doubted whether these taxes would be sufficient. Why, it was asked, should not the cost of the Irish war be borne by the Irish insurgents? How those insurgents had acted in their mock Parliament all the world knew; and nothing could be more reasonable than to mete to them from their own measure. They ought to be treated as they had treated the Saxon colony. Every acre which the Act of Settlement had left them ought to be seized by the state for the purpose of defraying that expense which their turbulence and perverseness had made necessary. It is not strange that a plan which at once gratified national animosity, and held out the hope of pecuniary relief, should have been welcomed with eager delight. A bill was brought in which bore but too much resemblance to some of the laws passed by the Jacobite legislators of Dublin. By this bill it was provided that the property of every person who had been in rebellion against the King and Queen since the day on which they were proclaimed should be confiscated, and that the proceeds should be applied to the support of the war. An exception was made in favour of such Protestants as had merely submitted to superior force; but to Papists no indulgence was shown. The royal prerogative of clemency was limited. The King might indeed, if such were his pleasure, spare the lives of his vanquished enemies; but he was not to be permitted to save any part of their estates from the general doom. He was not to have it in his power to grant a capitulation which should secure to Irish Roman Catholics the enjoyment of their hereditary lands. Nay, he was not to be allowed to keep faith with persons whom he had already received to mercy, who had kissed his hand, and had heard from his lips the promise of protection. An attempt was made to insert a proviso in favour of Lord Dover. Dover, who, with all his faults, was not without some English feelings, had, by defending the interests of his native country at Dublin, made himself odious to both the Irish and the French. After the battle of the Boyne his situation was deplorable. Neither at Limerick nor at Saint Germains could he hope to be welcomed. In his despair, he threw himself at William's feet, promised to live peaceably, and was graciously assured that he had nothing to fear. Though the royal word seemed to be pledged to this unfortunate man, the Commons resolved, by a hundred and nineteen votes to a hundred and twelve, that his property should not be exempted from the general confiscation.
The bill went up to the Peers, but the Peers were not inclined to pass it without considerable amendments; and such amendments there was not time to make. Numerous heirs at law, reversioners, and creditors implored the Upper House to introduce such provisoes as might secure the innocent against all danger of being involved in the punishment of the guilty. Some petitioners asked to be heard by counsel. The King had made all his arrangements for a voyage to the Hague; and the day beyond which he could not postpone his departure drew near. The bill was therefore, happily for the honour of English legislation, consigned to that dark repository in which the abortive statutes of many generations sleep a sleep rarely disturbed by the historian or the antiquary, [800]
Another question, which slightly and but slightly discomposed the tranquillity of this short session, arose out of the disastrous and disgraceful battle of Beachy Head. Torrington had, immediately after that battle, been sent to the Tower, and had ever since remained there. A technical difficulty had arisen about the mode of bringing him to trial. There was no Lord High Admiral; and whether the Commissioners of the Admiralty were competent to execute martial law was a point which to some jurists appeared not perfectly clear. The majority of the judges held that the Commissioners were competent; but, for the purpose of removing all doubt, a bill was brought into the Upper House; and to this bill several Lords offered an opposition which seems to have been most unreasonable. The proposed law, they said, was a retrospective penal law, and therefore objectionable. If they used this argument in good faith, they were ignorant of the very rudiments of the science of legislation. To make a law for punishing that which, at the time when it was done, was not punishable, is contrary to all sound principle. But a law which merely alters the criminal procedure may with perfect propriety be made applicable to past as well as to future offences. It would have been the grossest injustice to give a retrospective operation to the law which made slavetrading felony. But there was not the smallest injustice in enacting that the Central Criminal Court should try felonies committed long before that Court was in being. In Torrington's case the substantive law continued to be what it had always been. The definition of the crime, the amount of the penalty, remained unaltered. The only change was in the form of procedure; and that change the legislature was perfectly justified in making retrospectively.
It is indeed hardly possible to believe that some of those who opposed the bill were duped by the fallacy of which they condescended to make use. The feeling of caste was strong among the Lords. That one of themselves should be tried for his life by a court composed of plebeians seemed to them a degradation of their whole order. If their noble brother had offended, articles of impeachment ought to be exhibited against him: Westminster Hall ought to be fitted up: his peers ought to meet in their robes, and to give in their verdict on their honour; a Lord High Steward ought to pronounce the sentence and to break the staff. There was an end of privilege if an Earl was to be doomed to death by tarpaulins seated round a table in the cabin of a ship. These feelings had so much influence that the bill passed the Upper House by a majority of only two, [801] In the Lower House, where the dignities and immunities of the nobility were regarded with no friendly feeling, there was little difference of opinion. Torrington requested to be heard at the bar, and spoke there at great length, but weakly and confusedly. He boasted of his services, of his sacrifices, and of his wounds. He abused the Dutch, the Board of Admiralty, and the Secretary of State. The bill, however, went through all its stages without a division, [802]
Early in December Torrington was sent under a guard down the river to Sheerness. There the Court Martial met on board of a frigate named the Kent. The investigation lasted three days; and during those days the ferment was great in London. Nothing was heard of on the exchange, in the coffeehouses, nay even at the church doors, but Torrington. Parties ran high; wagers to an immense amount were depending; rumours were hourly arriving by land and water, and every rumour was exaggerated and distorted by the way. From the day on which the news of the ignominious battle arrived, down to the very eve of the trial, public opinion had been very unfavourable to the prisoner. His name, we are told by contemporary pamphleteers, was hardly ever mentioned without a curse. But, when the crisis of his fate drew nigh, there was, as in our country there often is, a reaction. All his merits, his courage, his good nature, his firm adherence to the Protestant religion in the evil times, were remembered. It was impossible to deny that he was sunk in sloth and luxury, that he neglected the most important business for his pleasures, and that he could not say No to a boon companion or to a mistress; but for these faults excuses and soft names were found. His friends used without scruple all the arts which could raise a national feeling in his favour; and these arts were powerfully assisted by the intelligence that the hatred which was felt towards him in Holland bad vented itself in indignities to some of his countrymen. The cry was that a bold, jolly, freehanded English gentleman, of whom the worst that could be said was that he liked wine and women, was to be shot in order to gratify the spite of the Dutch. What passed at the trial tended to confirm the populace in this notion. Most of the witnesses against the prisoner were Dutch officers. The Dutch real admiral, who took on himself the part of prosecutor, forgot himself so far as to accuse the judges of partiality. When at length, on the evening of the third day, Torrington was pronounced not guilty, many who had recently clamoured for his blood seemed to be well pleased with his acquittal. He returned to London free, and with his sword by his side. As his yacht went up the Thames, every ship which he passed saluted him. He took his seat in the House of Lords, and even ventured to present himself at court. But most of the peers looked coldly on him; William would not see him, and ordered him to be dismissed from the service, [803]
There was another subject about which no vote was passed by either of the Houses, but about which there is reason to believe that some acrimonious discussion took place in both. The Whigs, though much less violent than in the preceding year, could not patiently see Caermarthen as nearly prime minister as any English subject could be under a prince of William's character. Though no man had taken a more prominent part in the Revolution than the Lord President, though no man had more to fear from a counterrevolution, his old enemies would not believe that he had from his heart renounced those arbitrary doctrines for which he had once been zealous, or that he could bear true allegiance to a government sprung from resistance. Through the last six months of 1690 he was mercilessly lampooned. Sometimes he was King Thomas and sometimes Tom the Tyrant, [804] William was adjured not to go to the Continent leaving his worst enemy close to the ear of the Queen. Halifax, who had, in the preceding year, been ungenerously and ungratefully persecuted by the Whigs, was now mentioned by them with respect and regret; for he was the enemy of their enemy, [805] The face, the figure, the bodily infirmities of Caermarthen, were ridiculed, [806] Those dealings with the French Court in which, twelve years before, he had, rather by his misfortune than by his fault, been implicated, were represented in the most odious colours. He was reproached with his impeachment and his imprisonment. Once, it was said, he had escaped; but vengeance might still overtake him, and London might enjoy the long deferred pleasure of seeing the old traitor flung off the ladder in the blue riband which he disgraced. All the members of his family, wife, son, daughters, were assailed with savage invective and contemptuous sarcasm, [807] All who were supposed to be closely connected with him by political ties came in for a portion of this abuse; and none had so large a portion as Lowther. The feeling indicated by these satires was strong among the Whigs in Parliament. Several of them deliberated on a plan of attack, and were in hopes that they should be able to raise such a storm as would make it impossible for him to remain at the head of affairs. It should seem that, at this time, his influence in the royal closet was not quite what it had been. Godolphin, whom he did not love, and could not control, but whose financial skill had been greatly missed during the summer, was brought back to the Treasury, and made First Commissioner. Lowther, who was the Lord President's own man, still sate at the board, but no longer presided there. It is true that there was not then such a difference as there now is between the First Lord and his colleagues. Still the change was important and significant. Marlborough, whom Caermarthen disliked, was, in military affairs, not less trusted than Godolphin in financial affairs. The seals which Shrewsbury had resigned in the summer had ever since been lying in William's secret drawer. The Lord President probably expected that he should be consulted before they were given away; but he was disappointed. Sidney was sent for from Ireland; and the seals were delivered to him. The first intimation which the Lord President received of this important appointment was not made in a manner likely to soothe his feelings. "Did you meet the new Secretary of State going out?" said William. "No, Sir," answered the Lord President; "I met nobody but my Lord Sidney." "He is the new Secretary," said William. "He will do till I find a fit man; and he will be quite willing to resign as soon as I find a fit man. Any other person that I could put in would think himself ill used if I were to put him out." If William had said all that was in his mind, he would probably have added that Sidney, though not a great orator or statesman, was one of the very few English politicians who could be as entirely trusted as Bentinck or Zulestein. Caermarthen listened with a bitter smile. It was new, he afterwards said, to see a nobleman placed in the Secretary's office, as a footman was placed in a box at the theatre, merely in order to keep a seat till his betters came. But this jest was a cover for serious mortification and alarm. The situation of the prime minister was unpleasant and even perilous; and the duration of his power would probably have been short, had not fortune, just at this moment, put it in his power to confound his adversaries by rendering a great service to the state, [808]
The Jacobites had seemed in August to be completely crushed. The victory of the Boyne, and the irresistible explosion of patriotic feeling produced by the appearance of Tourville's fleet on the coast of Devonshire, had cowed the boldest champions of hereditary right. Most of the chief plotters passed some weeks in confinement or in concealment. But, widely as the ramifications of the conspiracy had extended, only one traitor suffered the punishment of his crime. This was a man named Godfrey Cross, who kept an inn on the beach near Rye, and who, when the French fleet was on the coast of Sussex, had given information to Tourville. When it appeared that this solitary example was thought sufficient, when the danger of invasion was over, when the popular enthusiasm excited by that danger had subsided, when the lenity of the government had permitted some conspirators to leave their prisons and had encouraged others to venture out of their hidingplaces, the faction which had been prostrated and stunned began to give signs of returning animation. The old traitors again mustered at the old haunts, exchanged significant looks and eager whispers, and drew from their pockets libels on the Court of Kensington, and letters in milk and lemon juice from the Court of Saint Germains. Preston, Dartmouth, Clarendon, Penn, were among the most busy. With them, was leagued the nonjuring Bishop of Ely, who was still permitted by the government to reside in the palace, now no longer his own, and who had, but a short time before, called heaven to witness that he detested the thought of inviting foreigners to invade England. One good opportunity had been lost; but another was at hand, and must not be suffered to escape. The usurper would soon be again out of England. The administration would soon be again confided to a weak woman and a divided council. The year which was closing had certainly been unlucky; but that which was about to commence might be more auspicious.
In December a meeting of the leading Jacobites was held, [809] The sense of the assembly, which consisted exclusively of Protestants, was that something ought to be attempted, but that the difficulties were great. None ventured to recommend that James should come over unaccompanied by regular troops. Yet all, taught by the experience of the preceding summer, dreaded the effect which might be produced by the sight of French uniforms and standards on English ground. A paper was drawn up which would, it was hoped, convince both James and Lewis that a restoration could not be effected without the cordial concurrence of the nation. France,—such was the substance of this remarkable document,—might possibly make the island a heap of ruins, but never a subject province. It was hardly possible for any person, who had not had an opportunity of observing the temper of the public mind, to imagine the savage and dogged determination with which men of all classes, sects and factions were prepared to resist any foreign potentate who should attempt to conquer the kingdom by force of arms. Nor could England be governed as a Roman Catholic country. There were five millions of Protestants in the realm: there were not a hundred thousand Papists: that such a minority should keep down such a majority was physically impossible; and to physical impossibility all other considerations must give way. James would therefore do well to take without delay such measures as might indicate his resolution to protect the established religion. Unhappily every letter which arrived from France contained something tending to irritate feelings which it was most desirable to soothe. Stories were every where current of slights offered at Saint Germains to Protestants who had given the highest proof of loyalty by following into banishment a master zealous for a faith which was not their own. The edicts which had been issued against the Huguenots might perhaps have been justified by the anarchical opinions and practices of those sectaries; but it was the height of injustice and of inhospitality to put those edicts in force against men who had been driven from their country solely on account of their attachment to a Roman Catholic King. Surely sons of the Anglican Church, who had, in obedience to her teaching, sacrificed all that they most prized on earth to the royal cause, ought not to be any longer interdicted from assembling in some modest edifice to celebrate her rites and to receive her consolations. An announcement that Lewis had, at the request of James, permitted the English exiles to worship God according to their national forms would be the best prelude to the great attempt. That attempt ought to be made early in the spring. A French force must undoubtedly accompany His Majesty. But he must declare that he brought that force only for the defence of his person and for the protection of his loving subjects, and that, as soon as the foreign oppressors had been expelled, the foreign deliverers should be dismissed. He must also promise to govern according to law, and must refer all the points which had been in dispute between him and his people to the decision of a Parliament.
It was determined that Preston should carry to Saint Germains the resolutions and suggestions of the conspirators, John Ashton, a person who had been clerk of the closet to Mary of Modena when she was on the throne, and who was entirely devoted to the interests of the exiled family, undertook to procure the means of conveyance, and for this purpose engaged the cooperation of a hotheaded young Jacobite named Elliot, who only knew in general that a service of some hazard was to be rendered to the good cause.