He entered upon that office amidst enormous obstacles. His enemies were unable to deny that his exertions to overcome the difficulties in his path were marked by financial ability, and by a large measure of temporary success. But as little can it be denied that the immediate triumph laid the groundwork of public troubles to come.
His own account of the situation of affairs, and of the methods taken to improve it, must, of course, be read with the due allowance. The pith of it lies in these sentences:—‘The army was in the field. There was no money in the Treasury. None of the remitters would contract again. The Bank had recently refused to lend the Lord Treasurer Godolphin a hundred thousand pounds. The Army and Navy Services were in debt nearly eleven millions. The Civil List owed £600,000. The annual deficit was, at least, a hundred and twenty-four thousand pounds. The new Commissioners of the Treasury, nevertheless, made provision, within a few days of their appointment, for paying the Army by the greatest remittance that was ever known. |Letter to the Queen, June 9, 1714. (Parl. Hist., vol. vii, App.)| When Parliament met, on the 27th of November, funds had been prepared for the service of the year, and a plan was submitted for easing the nation of nine millions of debt.’
Harley was scarcely warm in his new office before he made the acquaintance of Swift, then full of ambitious though vague schemes for the future, and very angry with the leaders of the Whig party for the coolness with which his proffers, both of counsel and of service, had lately been received.
Early intercourse with Swift. 1710–1711.
At the time of his introduction to Harley, Swift’s immediate business in London consisted in soliciting from the Government a remission of first-fruits to the clergy of Ireland. His nominal colleagues in that trust were the Bishops of Ossory and Killaloe, but the whole weight of the negotiations rested upon Swift’s shoulders. His treatment of it soon displayed his parts. The Minister saw that he was both able and willing to render efficient political service. To the intercourse so begun we owe a life-like portraiture of Harley, under all his aspects, and in every mood of mind. Nor is the depicter himself anywhere seen under stronger light than in those passages of his journal which narrate, from day to day, the rise and fall of the Government founded on the unstable alliance between Harley and St. John.
Of their first interview Swift notes:—‘I was brought privately to Mr. Harley, who received me with the greatest respect and kindness imaginable.’ Of the second:—‘We were two hours alone.... He read a memorial I had drawn up, and put it into his pocket to show the Queen; told me the measures he would take, ... told me he must bring Mr. St. John and me acquainted; and spoke so many things of personal kindness and esteem for me, that I am inclined half to believe what some friends have told me, that he would do everything to bring me over.’ |Journal to Stella; in Works, 2nd Edit., vol. ii, pp. 33; 37; 80.| When the promised interview with Secretary St. John comes to be diarized in its turn:—‘He told me,’ says Swift, ‘among other things, that Mr. Harley complained he could keep nothing from me, I had the way so much of getting into him.’ I knew that was a refinement.... It is hard to see these great men using me like one who was their betters, and the puppies with you in Ireland hardly regarding me.’ Not many weeks had passed before Swift’s pen was at work in defence of the measures of the Government with an energy, a practical and versatile ability, of which, up to that date, there had been scarcely an example, brilliant as was the roll of contemporary writers who had taken sides in the political strife. Swift’s defects, as well as his merits, armed him for his task.
Nor had he been long engaged upon it before he marked, very distinctly, the character both of the rewards to which he aspired, and of the personal independence which he was determined to maintain, in his own fashion.
One day, as he took his leave of Harley, after dining with him, the Minister placed in his hand a fifty pound note. He returned it angrily. And he met Harley’s next invitation by a refusal. Then comes this entry in his diary:—‘I was this morning early with Mr. Lewis, of the Secretary’s office, and saw a letter Mr. Harley had sent to him desiring to be reconciled; but I was deaf to all entreaties, and have desired Lewis to go to him and let him know I expect further satisfaction. If we let these great Ministers pretend too much there will be no governing them. He promises to make me easy if I will but come and see him. But I will not, and he shall do it by message, or I will cast him off.’ |Journal to Stella, p. 169.| The desired concession was made, and in a day or two we find our journalist recording, characteristically enough, that he ‘sent Mr. Harley into the House to call the Secretary [St. John], to let him know I would not dine with him if he dined late.’ And then:—‘I have taken Mr. Harley into favour again.... I will cease to visit him after dinner, for he dines too late for my head.... |Ib., pp. 178; 182.| They call me nothing but “Jonathan,” and I said I believed they would leave me Jonathan as they found me, and that I never knew a Ministry do anything for those whom they make companions of their pleasures.’
Swift was one of the first bystanders who took note of the seeds of dissension which were already growing up between Harley and St. John, and who foresaw the coming parallel between the fate of the new Government and that of its predecessor. On the 4th of March, 1711, he wrote:—‘We must have a Peace, let it be a bad or a good one; though nobody dares talk of it. The nearer I look upon things the worse I like them. I believe the Confederacy will soon break to pieces, and our factions at home increase. The Ministry is upon a very narrow bottom, and stands like an isthmus between the Whigs on one side, and the violent Tories on the other. They are able seamen, but the tempest is too great, the ship too rotten, and the crew all against them.... |Ib., p. 196.| Your Duchess of Somerset, who now has the key, is a most insinuating woman, and I believe they [the Whigs] will endeavour to play the same game that has been played against them.’
The game was suddenly interrupted, though only for a while. An attempt to assassinate Harley gave him a renewed hold upon power and popularity. But its unexpected consequences embittered the jealousies which already menaced his administration with ruin.