[Footnote 61: P. Fitzgerald says "faction." [W.S.J.]
The Parliament sat as long as the approaching festival would allow; and upon the twenty-second, the land-tax and occasional bills having received the royal assent, the House of Commons adjourned to the fourteenth of January following: but the adjournment of the Lords was only to the second, the prevailing party there being in haste to pursue the consequences of the Earl of Nottingham's clause, which they hoped would end in the ruin of the treasurer, and overthrow the ministry; and therefore took the advantage of this interval, that they might not be disturbed by the Commons.
When this address against any peace without Spain, &c. was carried in the House of Lords, it is not easy to describe the effects it had upon most men's passions. The partisans of the old ministry triumphed loudly, and without any reserve, as if the game were their own. The Earl of Wharton was observed in the House to smile, and put his hands to his neck when any of the ministry was speaking, by which he would have it understood that some heads were in danger. Parker, the chief justice, began already with great zeal and officiousness to prosecute authors and printers of weekly and other papers, writ in defence of the administration: in short, joy and vengeance sat visible in every countenance of that party.[62]
[Footnote 62: See "Journal to Stella," December 13th (vol. ii., p. 299 of present edition). [W.S.J.]
On the other side, all well-wishers to the Queen, the Church, or the peace, were equally dejected; and the treasurer stood the foremost mark both of his enemies' fury, and the censure of his friends: among the latter, some imputed this fatal miscarriage to his procrastinating nature; others, to his unmeasurable public thrift: both parties agreed, that a first minister, with very moderate skill in affairs, might easily have governed the event: and some began to doubt, whether the great fame of his abilities, acquired in other stations, were what he justly deserved: all this he knew well enough, and heard it with great phlegm; neither did it make any alteration in his countenance or humour. He told Monsieur Buys, the Dutch envoy, two days before the Parliament sat, that he was sorry for what was like to pass, because the States would be the first sufferers, which he desired the envoy to remember: and to his nearest friends, who appeared in pain about the public or themselves, he only said that all would be well, and desired them not to be frighted.[63]
[Footnote 63: See Swift's account of an interview with the lord treasurer in his "Journal to Stella," December 8th (ibid., p. 296). [W.S.J.]
It was, I conceive, upon these motives, that the treasurer advised Her Majesty to create twelve new lords,[64] and thereby disable the sting of faction for the rest of her lifetime: this promotion was so ordered, that a third part were of those on whom, or their posterity, the peerage would naturally devolve; and the rest were such, whose merit, birth, and fortune, could admit of no exception.
[Footnote 64: See note, vol. ii., p. 308, and note, vol. v., p. 446. [W.S.J.]
The adverse party, being thus driven down by open force, had nothing left but to complain, which they loudly did; that it was a pernicious[65] example set for ill princes to follow, who, by the same rule, might make at any time an hundred as well as twelve, and by these means become masters of the House of Lords whenever they pleased, which would be dangerous to our liberties. To this it was answered, that ill princes seldom trouble themselves to look for precedents; that men of great estates will not be less fond of preserving their liberties when they are created peers; that in such a government as this, where the Prince holds the balance between two great powers, the nobility and people, it is the very nature of his office to remove from one scale into the other, or sometimes put his own weight in the lightest, so as to bring both to an equilibrium; and lastly, that the other party had been above twenty years corrupting the nobility with republican principles, which nothing but the royal prerogative could hinder from overspreading us.
[Footnote 65: P. Fitzgerald says "dangerous." [W.S.J.]