Had yet a deep and dangerous consequence;
For as, when raging fevers boil the blood.
The standing lake soon floats into a flood,
And every hostile humour which before
Slept quiet in its channels bubbles o’er;
So several factions from this first ferment
Work up to foam and threat the government.[400]
The lines are a witness against the two great parties whose intrigues were woven to menace the security of the English state. Oates’ false oaths ruined the hopes of the Roman Catholics: the designs of the English Whigs were grounded on them.
Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, was the first statesman to learn the art of organising support for policy from an entire nation. His course in life was determined by the belief that it is the business of a politician to succeed, and to that mass of mankind which is of the same opinion he should be at once apostle and martyr. No means which made for the end he had in view came amiss to his hand; by using good and bad alike, he won the power of drawing round him men who could make some show of virtuous conduct in company with scoundrels of the choicest villainy; and he used them with infinite address. From the age of twenty years he had lived in the glare of public life, ever rising on the tide, true to his own principles and false to all whom in their interest he could serviceably betray. In the Civil War he fought for the king and served him well. As a member of Barebones’ Parliament he was for Cromwell against the Saints. When the Protector threw the lot for absolute rule, it was in him that parliamentary government found its keenest supporter. To this course Shaftesbury remained faithful. The throne on which “foolish Ishbosheth” sat became more rickety under his attacks. When that shadow of his father vanished from the scene, he strove with success against the despotism of the army. He was sent by the Convention Parliament as one of the two commissioners to invite Charles II to return to his kingdom. Under the restored monarchy Shaftesbury found a fair and a wider field for the exercise of talents which he devoted to the cause of religious and political freedom and commercial enterprise. At his request John Locke drew for the state of Carolina a constitution in which toleration was a prominent idea. In the office of Lord Chancellor he earned an abiding reputation for speed and purity of justice. He was an ardent foe of the Dutch republic, the threatening rival of English prosperity. He opposed the Stop of the Exchequer. As the last act in the service of government he counselled the Declaration of Indulgence, for when that was withdrawn there was nothing more to hope from the crown in the fight for liberty. At last he knew the Catholic tendency of the king and, learning perhaps the dupe that he had been made by the Treaty of Dover, flung himself into the bitterest opposition.
The foundation of the Whig party may be referred to the year 1675, when the French ambassador first contracted an alliance with a cabal consisting of four lords, Buckingham, Wharton, Ogle and, chief among them, Shaftesbury,[401] From that time onwards Shaftesbury enjoyed a growing ascendency over his partners. The fight over the bill of Non-Resistance brought them closely together; their victory, though it was by an artifice, gave them strength. But while the new party gained followers in Parliament and support in the country, it was some time before further success was achieved. The Cavalier, otherwise known by the nicknames of the Pensioned and the Pump, Parliament depended too much on the court to allow the possibility of complete triumph to the opposition.[402] Away from Westminster the terror of popery, with a Catholic successor to the crown in view, dominated the country, and on this basis the programme of the Whigs was constructed. Popery and slavery, to quote Shaftesbury’s memorable phrase, went hand in hand. The Whigs aimed at securing the liberties of the nation and reducing the Catholic religion to impotence. The overthrow of Danby with his policy of Anglican supremacy, the dissolution of the House of Commons which lavish and ingenious corruption had bound to his side, the destruction of the Catholic strength in the House of Lords, the downfall of the Duke of York; these were the main ideas in their system. Yet so long as the Lord Treasurer led the Commons by his purse-strings they were unable to mark progress in the open, however much they might gain behind the scenes. So the next two years brought only failure. When Parliament met in February 1677 after a prorogation of fifteen months, the Whigs, resting their case on an obsolete statute of Edward III, elected to argue that after so long an interval it had no legal existence. The move resulted in immediate victory to the government, and Buckingham, Shaftesbury, Salisbury, and Wharton, the chief movers in the Lords, being ordered to ask pardon of the House for their offence, and refusing, were sent to the Tower. Thus, said Marvell, a prorogation without precedent was to be warranted by an imprisonment without example. Danby was strong enough to obtain an unconditional vote of £600,000. When however he introduced a bill for the better securing of the Protestant religion in case of a Catholic heir to the throne, though its drastic provisions passed the Lords easily enough, the mere fact that it seemed to legalise such a state of things roused against it the fury of the Commons, who threw it out, with the added indignity of noting in their journal, Because the body of the bill was contrary to the title.[403] After a few weeks three of the imprisoned peers made submission and were set at liberty; but Shaftesbury still lay in the Tower when in November the government reckoned another stroke to its credit in the marriage of William of Orange and Mary of York. It was not until February 1678 that he was released. To human reckoning it seemed as if the Whig cause was lost. Danby was firmer in power than ever, the royal marriage bade fair to conciliate the nation, the peace of Nymeguen was approaching its tardy conclusion. Well-informed persons believed that the leaders of the opposition were about to confess their defeat and bid farewell to politics.[404] Eight months later an auspicious wind blew Titus Oates on to the scene, and the aspect of affairs was completely changed.