A History of England, Period III. Constitutional Monarchy

by J. Franck Bright

Assured of their majority, the Opposition proceeded to attack the late ministry. Their favourite object was Montague, who had laid himself open to their assaults by the pride and luxury which he had exhibited in his good fortune, and still more by the indecent rapacity with which he seized on the valuable place of the Auditorship of the Exchequer, worth at least £4000 a year; this he placed in the hands of his brother, to be held until he should want it. The next victim was Russell, Lord Orford, whose administration only escaped censure by a single vote. And before the session closed, the third point, that of grants of Crown lands, was touched upon in a way which produced much after disaster. The method used on this occasion illustrates a point Rivalry between the two Houses. deserving of notice. The Revolution had placed the supreme power in the hands of Parliament; but Parliament itself consists of two elements, of two Houses drawn from different classes. Besides the general party struggles, besides the frequent contests between King and Parliament, and subsequently between Parliament and people, there was therefore a class rivalry between the two Houses, which had shown itself already on more than one occasion during the reign, and was rendered more prominent now by the fact that the party feeling in the Upper House was on the whole decidedly Whig. The weapon which the Commons intended to use in this strife was their exclusive right of introducing money Bills. Those Bills the Upper House had the power of rejecting entire, but not of amending. The Commons now "tacked" or appended to the Bill for the Land Tax a clause appointing seven Commissioners to inquire into the manner in which the forfeited land in Ireland had been granted out. This obnoxious clause the Lords were compelled to pass, or to reject the Bill entirely, and thus stop the supplies. Though keenly feeling the coercion put upon them, by a plan which would have proved fatal to the Upper House had not the good feeling of the nation and the strength of popular opinion ultimately compelled the Commons to abandon it, the Lords passed the Bill, feeling probably that the present occasion was scarcely important enough for a great constitutional struggle. The Money Bill having been passed, the King, in some anger, prorogued the Parliament (May 4).

As usual, when Parliament was not sitting, William withdrew to Holland, a habit which, now that the war no longer necessitated his presence there, increased his unpopularity in England, and the session of Parliament which he returned to meet in November 1699 was still more stormy than the last.

The Darien scheme.

The discontent in England was backed up by more serious discontent in Scotland. The whole of that nation might be now reckoned among the enemies of the Court. For, during the recess, on the 5th of October, certain news had reached England of the failure of the great Darien scheme, and the complete destruction of those wild hopes of wealth and greatness which had been for the last four years buoying up the Scotch nation. Paterson, the same man whose scheme for the Bank of England had in the hands of Montague proved so successful, was the originator of this disastrous project. He had persuaded himself that the natural wealth of a country has nothing to do with its prosperity. The commercial cities of the ancient world, and Venice and Holland in modern times, had risen to greatness and wealth without any territorial possessions of importance. He believed that he could reproduce this phenomenon in the case of Scotland. The scheme of Columbus had been to introduce the wealth of the East by a short and direct route into Europe, and thus to destroy the traffic of the Venetians. He had found his plan thwarted by the interposition of America; and the discovery of a passage round the Cape of Good Hope had turned all men's attention in that direction, and had been the great source of wealth both to the Dutch and Portuguese. But the plan of Columbus had never been quite forgotten, and Paterson now thought to renew it by establishing a line of communication across the Isthmus of Darien. The Scotch were to colonize and occupy the isthmus, which would become, in the view of the projector, the great emporium of the whole Eastern trade. Although he did not explain the details of his scheme, it was listened to with enthusiasm by his fellow-countrymen; and in 1695, an extraordinary Act passed the Scotch Parliament, and received the assent of the Lord High Commissioner, authorising the formation of a Corporation, half the capital of which was to be held by Scotchmen, with the monopoly of the trade with Asia, Africa, and America for thirty-one years. With the exception of foreign sugar and tobacco, all its imports were to be duty free. Every servant of the Company was free from imprisonment and arrest. The Company was authorized to take possession of unoccupied territories and exercise legal rights, and the King promised to obtain satisfaction at the public charge if foreign powers assaulted it. Subscriptions to the amount of £200,000 and upwards were speedily forthcoming, and a branch of the Company established itself in London. There, however, the absurdities of the plan were at once discovered, and it met with a very cold reception. Any colony, to be useful, must be either in America or in the Spice Islands; now interference in America would not be tolerated by Spain, nor would Holland look on quietly at the occupation of the Spice Islands; a maritime war was in fact inevitable; Scotland, singlehanded, could scarcely hope to carry on such a war, and England would almost infallibly be drawn into it, and this on behalf of a Company which, by changing Scotland into a free port, would virtually make it an enormous centre for smuggling to the extreme detriment of English trade. The attention of the King was drawn to the subject. He expressed his entire disapprobation of the scheme, and dismissed the Lord High Commissioner and the Secretary; but the law was made and could not be rescinded. In 1698, in the midst of wild enthusiasm, 1200 colonists set out from Leith, with Paterson among them, and reached Darien in safety, and there established their colony, but almost immediately came into contact with the neighbouring Spanish governor, and the inevitable war began. At first, however, the reports were favourable, and in the following year a new armament of four ships and 1800 colonists left Scotland for Caledonia, as the new settlement was called. They had not been gone long before news arrived at New York that the colony no longer existed, and that the wretched remnant of its inhabitants had sought refuge in New England. In fact, the climate had proved eminently unhealthy, in spite of the assertions of Paterson. Provisions had failed, and, worn out and enfeebled, the colonists, feeling themselves entirely unable to repell the assaults of Spain, determined to withdraw. After miserable suffering, a few of them reached New York, and the second expedition arrived in Caledonia to find only uninhabited ruins. They determined upon reoccupying these, rebuilt the fort, and during the few healthy months continued, though with heavy losses, to carry out their operations. But before long a Spanish fleet appeared before the town, and an army, marching across the isthmus from Panama, blockaded it on the land side. Resistance was impossible. Already 300 of the new-comers had died, the survivors promised to depart within a fortnight, and on the 11th of April left the colony for ever. The disaster was regarded by the Scotch as a national injury on the part of England. The Company had throughout excited great anger in the Southern kingdom; the colonial governors had done all they could to discourage the colony when it arrived, and the Scotch were ready to trace this opposition to national jealousy,—to attribute it even to William's partiality for his Dutch subjects, whose trade might have been injured. In truth, the whole business was a proof, as William pointed out to the House of Lords, of the difficulty of managing two countries with different interests under one Crown, and the necessity of a closer union between the nations.

New Parliament Nov. 16, 1699.

It was thus, supported by the discontent of Scotland, that the malcontents of Parliament resumed the question of the management of the royal property. After a fruitless attack upon Somers, who had indeed received a grant, but one against which no reasonable complaint could be made, they proceeded to follow up the work of the last session, and to act upon the recommendation of the seven Commissioners who had been appointed by the tacked clause of the preceding session. The Crown lands had been constantly dealt Irish forfeitures. with according to the King's pleasure, without parliamentary interference. In early times, however, they had been regarded as a trust. Parliament had frequently demanded that the King should live upon his own revenues, and Acts for the resumption of grants had been passed, the last being that immediately following the battle of Bosworth. Since then the gift of the Crown had been considered a perfectly sound title. Whatever dislike, therefore, William's lavish grants to his Dutch favourites had excited, there would have been very great difficulty in calling in question his right to make them. The use to which the forfeited lands which had fallen into William's hands after the Pacification of Limerick had been put was more open to objection. A Bill ordering them to be applied to the public service had been interrupted and left incomplete, and the King had promised that the Commons should have another opportunity of considering the question. As they had since taken no steps in the matter, he seems to have considered himself free to act as he pleased. Of the forfeited lands, which amounted to about 1,700,000 acres, a fourth had been restored to its ancient possessors, according to the Limerick Pacification. Some of the rest had been mercifully given back to Irishmen, some to men like Ginkel and Galway, who had distinguished themselves in the Irish wars, but by far the larger portion had fallen to the King's personal friends, such as Woodstock, the eldest son of Portland, and Keppel, Lord Albemarle. The Commission could not arrive at unanimity, and sent up two reports. But that of the majority, which was very hostile to Government, was alone accepted by the Commons. It ridiculously over-estimated the grants at a sum of, £2,600,000, and at the same time declared that very undue leniency had been shown to the Irish. Had these grants not been made, and the confiscations properly exacted, much of the present heavy taxation, they said, might have been spared. The Resumption Bill passed. April 10, 1700. Commons, longing to be free from taxes and hating the Dutch favourites, took up the matter with factious warmth, and the Resumption Bill was passed, vesting all the forfeited lands in the hands of trustees, and offering large rewards to informers who would point out lands which ought to have been confiscated. They even, with palpable injustice, included in their inquiry lands which had never been forfeited. Expecting opposition from the Upper House, they again tacked this Bill to the Land Tax Bill. The Lords now determined upon a struggle. Little as they liked the Dutch favourites, they could not allow themselves to be thus overridden. Their opposition was, however, unsuccessful; the nation felt with the Commons, and foreign affairs had reached a crisis which rendered peace at home necessary to the King. The quarrel was pressed so far as to threaten a complete breach between Parliament prorogued. April 11, 1700. the Houses, and a fatal blow to the Constitution. By the influence of the King the Lords were induced to yield, and the triumphant Commons were passing to fresh assaults on the King's friends, when, having passed the Land Tax Bill and thus supplied himself with money, William suddenly prorogued the Houses.

The necessity which had driven him to this step was the reopening of the question of the Spanish succession. In January 1699 the Electoral Prince had died. The whole question thus assumed a new shape, and William's undivided attention was required. For the same reason, probably, and to allay the opposition in the House, he thought it necessary to remove Somers from office, and to place the Great Seal in the hands of Sir Nathan Wright. The Second Partition Treaty, which the King was now engaged in arranging, was such as was rendered necessary by the death of the Second Partition Treaty. third claimant. The bulk of the Spanish dominions was now to be given to the Archduke. It was to him that now Spain, the Indies, and the Netherlands were assigned, while Milan, which had formerly fallen to his share, was to be transferred to France, to be ultimately exchanged for Lorraine, a German fief, very important to round off the French dominions. But again these arrangements were upset. Portocarrero, the Spanish minister, was in the French interest, and supported by Harcourt, the ablest French diplomatist. By playing upon national feeling, which was strong against any partition, these statesmen excited the anger of the Spaniards against William, who had already incurred their enmity by his fancied support of the Darien scheme; and Charles was at length impressed with the absolute necessity of making another will. The events of the late session had given rise to the belief that William was not really master of England, while the visible greatness of France seemed to afford the best chance of keeping the Spanish monarchy undivided; the will was therefore made in favour of the Dauphin's son Philip, Duke of Anjou, who was declared heir to the whole of the Spanish dominions. The treaty was not well received in England. While one party clamoured that too much was given to France, another complained of the injustice of forestalling the wishes of the Spanish people, and there was a general feeling of anger at the secresy with which the treaty had been arranged, a treaty which might easily draw England into a foreign war, and which had been concluded entirely without consulting Parliament. This anger reached its highest point when, in November, the King of Spain died, and Louis, in defiance of all his treaties, accepted his grandson's great inheritance. William had determined that the whole responsibility should lie with himself, trusting in his own diplomatic skill; he had been beaten at his own arts, and his great treaty was absolutely useless.

William's unpopularity.

In fact, there was no time when the King had been so unpopular or his enemies so strong. Nearly every class, except his own immediate followers among the Whigs, were alienated from him; the mass of the people had suffered from heavy taxation, the nobles were sore at the unwise preference given to foreigners; the whole nation shared in this feeling, and disliked his constant absences from home; the scandal of the Irish forfeitures had just been brought to light; the country gentry remembered with anger the failure of their Land Bank, and saw with envy the increasing importance of the moneyed interest. One thing was plain, that nothing could be done with a Parliament so adverse as the last, with a ministry so powerless as the late holders of power had New ministry. Dec. 1700. proved. William therefore dissolved the Parliament, summoning a new one for the following February; and, freeing himself from the old ministry, called to his councils Rochester, the late Queen's uncle and the head of the High Church Tories, with Godolphin and Sir Charles Hedges. For the present his only hope lay in the possibility of a general European war; of this as yet there was but little sign. Austria had indeed refused to acknowledge the new King of Spain, and withdrawn its ambassador from Madrid, but in other countries it seemed as if the will of the late Spanish King would be quietly accepted. William himself could do nothing, and for the time was compelled to submit. His new ministry entreated him to New Parliament. Feb. 1701. acknowledge Philip; his Parliament showed no disposition to support him in any hostile steps against France. Two questions which he placed before them in his opening speech were, the succession of the throne of England, the settlement to which had been rendered necessary by the late death of the Duke of Gloucester, the young son of the Princess Anne (July 29, 1700), and the position which England should assume in the face of the altered aspect of European politics. It was in vain, upon this latter point, that he attempted to urge them to energy. The King of France had driven the Dutch to acknowledge Philip, by suddenly entering the Low Countries, and capturing 15,000 of their troops who had been intended to garrison the barrier fortresses. William and the Dutch States had in vain demanded the withdrawal of the French troops and the surrender of the strongholds. But even this act of aggression did not arouse the Parliament to energy. They acknowledged the obligations of England under the Treaty of 1677, and promised to send succours to the Dutch, but there seemed no immediate prospect of any grants for the purpose. Nor was the other point much more Succession Act. vigorously prosecuted. A Bill of Succession was indeed produced, but nearly every clause seemed evidently aimed against the King's former conduct. The new sovereign was not to leave the kingdom without leave of Parliament; no person not a born Englishman was to be capable of holding any position of trust, or of receiving any grant from the Crown. England was not to be engaged in war for the defence of any dominions not belonging to the Crown of England. All matters relating to the Government were to be transacted in the Privy Council, and countersigned by such members of that body as should advise or consent to them. Having thus secured, as they thought, the insular position of England, the House proceeded to settle the succession upon the Electress Sophia of Hanover. Thus, though the Protestant succession was secured, a Bill which William had hoped would be a singular expression of popular sympathy with his own efforts was in fact a vote of censure on many of the acts of his reign.

Impeachments against the Whigs.