Constitutional History of England, Henry VII to George II. Volume 2 of 3

by Henry Hallam

Corruption of the parliament.—The real vice of this parliament was not intemperance, but corruption. Clifford, and still more Danby, were masters in an art practised by ministers from the time of James I. (and which indeed can never be unknown where there exists a court and a popular assembly), that of turning to their use the weapons of mercenary eloquence by office, or blunting their edge by bribery.[697] Some who had been once prominent in opposition, as Sir Robert Howard and Sir Richard Temple, became placemen; some, like Garraway and Sir Thomas Lee, while they continued to lead the country party, took money from the court for softening particular votes;[698] many, as seems to have been the case with Reresby, were won by promises, and the pretended friendship of men in power.[699] On two great classes of questions, France and popery, the Commons broke away from all management; nor was Danby unwilling to let his master see their indocility on these subjects. But, in general, till the year 1678, by dint of the means before mentioned, and partly no doubt through the honest conviction of many that the king was not likely to employ any minister more favourable to the protestant religion and liberties of Europe, he kept his ground without any insuperable opposition from parliament.[700]

Character of the Earl of Danby.—The Earl of Danby had virtues as an English minister, which serve to extenuate some great errors and an entire want of scrupulousness in his conduct. Zealous against the church of Rome and the aggrandisement of France, he counteracted, while he seemed to yield to, the prepossessions of his master. If the policy of England before the peace of Nimeguen was mischievous and disgraceful, it would evidently have been far more so, had the king and Duke of York been abetted by this minister in their fatal predilection for France. We owe to Danby's influence, it must ever be remembered, the marriage of Princess Mary to the Prince of Orange, the seed of the revolution and the act of settlement—a courageous and disinterested counsel, which ought not to have proved the source of his greatest misfortunes.[701] But we cannot pretend to say that he was altogether as sound a friend to the constitution of his country, as to her national dignity and interests. I do not mean that he wished to render the king absolute. But a minister, harassed and attacked in parliament, is tempted to desire the means of crushing his opponents, or at least of augmenting his own sway. The mischievous bill that passed the House of Lords in 1675, imposing as a test to be taken by both houses of parliament, as well as all holding beneficed offices, a declaration that resistance to persons commissioned by the king was in all cases unlawful, and that they would never attempt any alteration in the government in church or state, was promoted by Danby, though it might possibly originate with others.[702] It was apparently meant as a bone of contention among the country party, in which presbyterians and old parliamentarians were associated with discontented cavaliers. Besides the mischief of weakening this party, which indeed the minister could not fairly be expected to feel, nothing could have been devised more unconstitutional, or more advantageous to the court's projects of arbitrary power.

It is certainly possible that a minister who, aware of the dangerous intentions of his sovereign or his colleagues, remains in the cabinet to thwart and countermine them, may serve the public more effectually than by retiring from office; but he will scarcely succeed in avoiding some material sacrifices of integrity, and still less of reputation. Danby, the ostensible adviser of Charles II., took on himself the just odium of that hollow and suspicious policy which appeared to the world. We know indeed that he was concerned, against his own judgment, in the king's secret receipt of money from France, the price of neutrality, both in 1676 and in 1678, the latter to his own ruin.[703] Could the opposition, though not so well apprised of these transactions as we are, be censured for giving little credit to his assurances of zeal against that power; which, though sincere in him, were so little in unison with the disposition of the court? Had they no cause to dread that the great army suddenly raised in 1677, on pretence of being employed against France, might be turned to some worse purposes more congenial to the king's temper?[704]

Connection of the popular party with France—Its motives on both sides.—This invincible distrust of the court is the best apology for that which has given rise to so much censure, the secret connections formed by the leaders of opposition with Louis XIV., through his ambassadors Barillon and Rouvigny, about the spring of 1678.[705] They well knew that the king's designs against their liberties had been planned in concert with France, and could hardly be rendered effectual without her aid in money, if not in arms.[706] If they could draw over this dangerous ally from his side, and convince the King of France that it was not his interest to crush their power, they would at least frustrate the suspected conspiracy, and secure the disbanding of the army; though at a great sacrifice of the continental policy which they had long maintained, and which was truly important to our honour and safety. Yet there must be degrees in the scale of public utility; and, if the liberties of the people were really endangered by domestic treachery, it was ridiculous to think of saving Tournay and Valenciennes at the expense of all that was dearest at home. This is plainly the secret of that unaccountable, as it then seemed, and factious opposition, in the year 1678; which cannot be denied to have served the ends of France, and thwarted the endeavours of Lord Danby and Sir William Temple to urge on the uncertain and half-reluctant temper of the king into a decided course of policy.[707] Louis, in fact, had no desire to see the King of England absolute over his people, unless it could be done so much by his own help as to render himself the real master of both. In the estimate of kings, or of such kings as Louis XIV., all limitations of sovereignty, all co-ordinate authority of estates and parliaments, are not only derogatory to the royal dignity, but injurious to the state itself, of which they distract the councils and enervate the force. Great armies, prompt obedience, unlimited power over the national resources, secrecy in council, rapidity in execution, belong to an energetic and enlightened despotism: we should greatly err in supposing that Louis XIV. was led to concur in projects of subverting our constitution from any jealousy of its contributing to our prosperity. He saw, on the contrary, in the perpetual jarring of kings and parliaments, a source of feebleness and vacillation in foreign affairs, and a field for intrigue and corruption. It was certainly far from his design to see a republic, either in name or effect, established in England; but an unanimous loyalty, a spontaneous submission to the court, was as little consonant to his interests; and, especially if accompanied with a willing return of the majority to the catholic religion, would have put an end to his influence over the king, and still more certainly over the Duke of York.[708] He had long been sensible of the advantage to be reaped from a malcontent party in England. In the first years after the restoration, he kept up a connection with the disappointed commonwealth's men, while their courage was yet fresh and unsubdued; and in the war of 1665 was very nearly exciting insurrections both in England and Ireland.[709] These schemes of course were suspended, as he grew into closer friendship with Charles, and saw a surer method of preserving an ascendancy over the kingdom. But, as soon as the Princess Mary's marriage, contrary to the King of England's promise, and to the plain intent of all their clandestine negotiations, displayed his faithless and uncertain character to the French cabinet, they determined to make the patriotism, the passion, and the corruption of the House of Commons minister to their resentment and ambition.

The views of Lord Hollis and Lord Russell in this clandestine intercourse with the French ambassador were sincerely patriotic and honourable: to detach France from the king; to crush the Duke of York and popish faction; to procure the disbanding of the army, the dissolution of a corrupted parliament, the dismissal of a bad minister.[710] They would indeed have displayed more prudence in leaving these dark and dangerous paths of intrigue to the court which was practised in them. They were concerting measures with the natural enemy of their country, religion, honour, and liberty; whose obvious policy was to keep the kingdom disunited that it might be powerless; who had been long abetting the worst designs of our own court, and who could never be expected to act against popery and despotism, but for the temporary ends of his ambition. Yet, in the very critical circumstances of that period, it was impossible to pursue any course with security; and the dangers of excessive circumspection and adherence to general rules may often be as formidable as those of temerity. The connection of the popular party with France may very probably have frustrated the sinister intentions of the king and duke, by compelling the reduction of the army, though at the price of a great sacrifice of European policy.[711] Such may be, with unprejudiced men, a sufficient apology for the conduct of Lord Russell and Lord Hollis, the most public-spirited and high-minded characters of their age, in this extraordinary and unnatural alliance. It would have been unworthy of their virtue to have gone into so desperate an intrigue with no better aim than that of ruining Lord Danby; and of this I think we may fully acquit them. The nobleness of Russell's disposition beams forth in all that Barillon has written of their conferences. Yet, notwithstanding the plausible grounds of his conduct, we can hardly avoid wishing that he had abstained from so dangerous an intercourse, which led him to impair, in the eyes of posterity, by something more like faction than can be ascribed to any other part of his parliamentary life, the consistency and ingenuousness of his character.[712]

Doubt as to the acceptance of money by the popular party.—I have purposely mentioned Lord Russell and Lord Hollis apart from others who were mingled in the same intrigues of the French ambassador, both because they were among the first with whom he tampered, and because they are honourably distinguished by their abstinence from all pecuniary remuneration, which Hollis refused, and which Barillon did not presume to offer to Russell. It appears however from this minister's accounts of the money he had expended in this secret service of the French Crown, that, at a later time, namely about the end of 1680, many of the leading members of opposition, Sir Thomas Littleton, Mr. Garraway, Mr. Hampden, Mr. Powle, Mr. Sacheverell, Mr. Foley, received sums of 500 or 300 guineas, as testimonies of the King of France's munificence and favour. Among others, Algernon Sidney, who, though not in parliament, was very active out of it, is more than once mentioned. Chiefly because the name of Algernon Sidney had been associated with the most stern and elevated virtue, this statement was received with great reluctance; and many have ventured to call the truth of these pecuniary gratifications in question. This is certainly a bold surmise; though Barillon is known to have been a man of luxurious and expensive habits, and his demands for more money on account of the English court, which continually occur in his correspondence with Louis, may lead to a suspicion that he would be in some measure a gainer by it. This however might possibly be the case without actual peculation. But it must be observed that there are two classes of those who are alleged to have received presents through his hands; one, of such as were in actual communication with himself; another, of such as Sir John Baber, a secret agent, had prevailed upon to accept it. Sidney was in the first class; but, as to the second, comprehending Littleton, Hampden, Sacheverell, in whom it is as difficult to suspect pecuniary corruption as in him, the proof is manifestly weaker, depending only on the assertion of an intriguer that he had paid them the money. The falsehood either of Baber or Barillon would acquit these considerable men. Nor is it to be reckoned improbable that persons employed in this clandestine service should be guilty of a fraud, for which they could evidently never be made responsible. We have indeed a remarkable confession of Coleman, the famous intriguer executed for the popish plot, to this effect. He deposed in his examination before the House of Commons, in November 1678, that he had received last session of Barillon £2500 to be distributed among members of parliament, which he had converted to his own use.[713] It is doubtless possible that Coleman having actually expended this money in the manner intended, bespoke the favour of those whose secret he kept by taking the discredit of such a fraud on himself. But it is also possible that he spoke the truth. A similar uncertainty hangs over the transactions of Sir John Baber. Nothing in the parliamentary conduct of the above-mentioned gentlemen in 1680 corroborates the suspicion of an intrigue with France, whatever may have been the case in 1678.

I must fairly confess however that the decided bias of my own mind is on the affirmative side of this question; and that principally because I am not so much struck, as some have been, by any violent improbability in what Barillon wrote to his court on the subject. If indeed we were to read that Algernon Sidney had been bought over by Louis XIV. or Charles II. to assist in setting up absolute monarchy in England, we might fairly oppose our knowledge of his inflexible and haughty character, of his zeal, in life and death, for republican liberty. But there is, I presume, some moral distinction between the acceptance of a bribe to desert or betray our principles and that of a trifling present for acting in conformity to them. The one is, of course, to be styled corruption; the other is repugnant to a generous and delicate mind, but too much sanctioned by the practice of an age far less scrupulous than our own, to have carried with it any great self-reproach or sense of degradation. It is truly inconceivable that men of such property as Sir Thomas Littleton or Mr. Foley should have accepted 300 or 500 guineas, the sums mentioned by Barillon, as the price of apostasy from those political principles to which they owed the esteem of their country, or of an implicit compliance with the dictates of France. It is sufficiently discreditable to the times in which they lived, that they should have accepted so pitiful a gratuity; unless indeed we should in candour resort to an hypothesis which seems not absurd, that they agreed among themselves not to offend Louis, or excite his distrust, by a refusal of this money. Sidney indeed was, as there is reason to think, a distressed man; he had formerly been in connection with the court of France,[714] and had persuaded himself that the countenance of that power might one day or other be afforded to his darling scheme of a commonwealth; he had contracted a dislike to the Prince of Orange, and consequently to the Dutch alliance, from the same governing motive: is it strange that one so circumstanced should have accepted a small gratification from the King of France which implied no dereliction of his duty as an Englishman, or any sacrifice of political integrity? And I should be glad to be informed by the idolaters of Algernon Sidney's name, what we know of him from authentic and contemporary sources which renders this incredible.

Secret treaties of the king with France.—France, in the whole course of these intrigues, held the game in her hands. Mistress of both parties, she might either embarrass the king through parliament, if he pretended to an independent course of policy, or cast away the latter, when he should return to his former engagements. Hence, as early as May 1678, a private treaty was set on foot between Charles and Louis, by which the former obliged himself to keep a neutrality, if the allies should not accept the terms offered by France, to recall all his troops from Flanders within two months, to disband most of his army and not to assemble his parliament for six months; in return he was to receive 6,000,000 livres. This was signed by the king himself on May 27; none of his ministers venturing to affix their names.[715] Yet at this time he was making outward professions of an intention to carry on the war. Even in this secret treaty, so thorough was his insincerity, he meant to evade one of its articles, that of disbanding his troops. In this alone he was really opposed to the wishes of France; and her pertinacity in disarming him seems to have been the chief source of those capricious changes of his disposition, which we find for three or four years at this period.[716] Louis again appears not only to have mistrusted the king's own inclinations after the Prince of Orange's marriage, and his ability to withstand the eagerness of the nation for war, but to have apprehended he might become absolute by means of his army, without standing indebted for it to his ancient ally. In this point therefore he faithfully served the popular party. Charles used every endeavour to evade this condition; whether it were that he still entertained hopes of attaining arbitrary power through intimidation, or that, dreading the violence of the House of Commons, and ascribing it rather to a republican conspiracy than to his own misconduct, he looked to a military force as his security. From this motive we may account for his strange proposal to the French king of a league in support of Sweden, by which he was to furnish fifteen ships and 10,000 men, at the expense of France, during three years, receiving six millions for the first year, and four for each of the two next. Louis, as is highly probable, betrayed this project to the Dutch government; and thus frightened them into that hasty signature of the treaty of Nimeguen, which broke up the confederacy and accomplished the immediate objects of his ambition. No longer in need of the court of England, he determined to punish it for that duplicity, which none resent more in others than those who are accustomed to practise it. He refused Charles the pension stipulated by the private treaty, alleging that its conditions had not been performed; and urged on Montagu, with promises of indemnification, to betray as much as he knew of that secret, in order to ruin Lord Danby.[717]

Fall of Danby—His impeachment.—The ultimate cause of this minister's fall may thus be deduced from the best action of his life; though it ensued immediately from his very culpable weakness in aiding the king's base inclinations towards a sordid bargaining with France. It is well known that the famous letter to Montagu, empowering him to make an offer of neutrality for the price of 6,000,000 livres, was not only written by the king's express order, but that Charles attested this with his own signature in a postscript.

This bears date five days after an act had absolutely passed to raise money for carrying on the war; a circumstance worthy of particular attention, as it both puts an end to every pretext or apology which the least scrupulous could venture to urge in behalf of this negotiation, but justifies the whig party of England in an invincible distrust, an inexpiable hatred, of so perfidious a cozener as filled the throne. But as he was beyond their reach, they exercised a constitutional right in the impeachment of his responsible minister. For responsible he surely was; though, strangely mistaking the obligations of an English statesman, Danby seems to fancy in his printed defence that the king's order would be a sufficient warrant to justify obedience in any case not literally unlawful. "I believe," he says, "there are very few subjects but would take it ill not to be obeyed by their servants; and their servants might as justly expect their master's protection for their obedience." The letter to Montagu, he asserts, "was written by the king's command, upon the subject of peace and war, wherein his majesty alone is at all times sole judge, and ought to be obeyed not only by any of his ministers of state, but by all his subjects."[718] Such were, in that age, the monarchical or tory maxims of government, which the impeachment of this minister contributed in some measure to overthrow. As the king's authority for the letter to Montagu was an undeniable fact, evidenced by his own handwriting, the Commons in impeaching Lord Danby went a great way towards establishing the principle that no minister can shelter himself behind the throne by pleading obedience to the orders of his sovereign. He is answerable for the justice, the honesty, the utility of all measures emanating from the Crown, as well as for their legality; and thus the executive administration is, or ought to be, subordinate, in all great matters of policy, to the superintendence and virtual control of the two Houses of Parliament. It must at the same time be admitted that, through the heat of honest indignation and some less worthy passions on the one hand, through uncertain and crude principles of constitutional law on the other, this just and necessary impeachment of the Earl of Danby was not so conducted as to be exempt from all reproach. The charge of high treason for an offence manifestly amounting only to misdemeanour, with the purpose, not perhaps of taking the life of the accused, but at least of procuring some punishment beyond the law,[719] the strange mixture of articles, as to which there was no presumptive proof, or which were evidently false, such as concealment of the popish plot, gave such a character of intemperance and faction to these proceedings, as may lead superficial readers to condemn them altogether.[720] The compliance of Danby with the king's corrupt policy had been highly culpable, but it was not unprecedented; it was even conformable to the court standard of duty; and as it sprung from too inordinate a desire to retain power, it would have found an appropriate and adequate chastisement in exclusion from office. We judge perhaps somewhat more favourably of Lord Danby than his contemporaries at that juncture were warranted to do; but even then he was rather a minister to be pulled down than a man to be severely punished. His one great and undeniable service to the protestant and English interests should have palliated a multitude of errors. Yet this was the mainspring and first source of the intrigue that ruined him.