Wyndham ridiculed the idea that the army must not be reduced, because ‘a certain gentleman was afraid of the Pretender.’ Lord Polwarth (afterwards Earl of Marchment) went further. He could scarcely see the use of an army at all, and did not believe that there were Jacobites to be afraid of. ‘I am sure his Majesty, and all the rest of the Royal Family, might remain in St. James’s Palace, or in any other part of the kingdom, in the utmost safety, though neither of them had any such thing as that now called a soldier to attend them. Of this now we have a glaring proof every day before our eyes. His royal highness the Prince of Wales has now no guards to attend him. He passes every day to and fro in the streets of London, and travels everywhere about London without so much as one soldier to guard him. Nay, he has not so much as one sentry upon his house in St. James’s Square, and yet his Royal Highness lives, I believe, in as great security, at his house in St. James’s Square, without one sentry to guard him, as his Majesty can be supposed to do in St. James’s Palace with all the guards about him.’
The debate in the Lords was of much the same quality as that in the Commons. Farewell to liberty if there be a standing army. On the other side:—Freedom will perish if the king cannot back his will by force of bayonets. The Government, of course, succeeded.
‘AGAMEMNON.’
The debates encouraged the Jacobites to hope. They were evidently feared, and opportunity might yet serve them. The wise men at Westminster had declared it. Meanwhile, the stage recommended them to consider the difficulties of Government, and to make the best of the one under which they lived. Thomson put his tragedy ‘Agamemnon’ under the protection of the Princess of Wales, trusting she would ‘condescend to accept of it.’ In the tragedy itself, in which there is much blank verse that is only honest prose in that aspiring form, there are few political allusions; but the following passage was undoubtedly meant as incense for Cæsar, and instruction for his people—Whigs and Jacobites.
Agamemnon . . . —Know, Ægisthus,
That ruling a free people well in peace,
Without or yielding, or usurping, power;—
Maintaining firm the honour of the laws,
Yet sometimes soft’ning their too rigid doom,
As mercy may require, steering the state